These are some of the designs for new signs for the Town of Gaines as proposed by Bill Downey of Downey Signs.

GAINES – The Town of Gaines will have new welcome signs on Route 104, and also two signs each at the Town Hall and Highway Department.

The Town Board approved a bid from Bill Downey of Downey Signs to make six new signs total for $4,150. Downey will make the signs using carved redwood. He will prime them and put on three coats of paint, Town Supervisor Carol Culhane said.

Downey made the town signs for Barre in a similar style. He has 25 years in the sign business.

“I just think with the redwood there is no substitute,” Culhane said.

Culhane is an artist and will try to develop a town logo for the signs that includes cobblestones and a stagecoach.

In other action, the Town Board:

Approved a $9,000 contract with Wendel Energy to take an inventory of the town’s 10 meter pits, including photos and an assessment of the conditions of each site.

Discussed eliminating the $75 hook-up fee for town water customers who turn off their water during winter. They wouldn’t be charged the restoration fee as long as they continue paying a $16 quarterly service charge.

The board may vote on the issue next month.

Approved a resolution seeking more state funding for towns and villages through the Aid and Incentives to Municipalities program, which currently gives $715 million annually to upstate cities.

The resolution, approved by the Town Board calls on the state to increase AIM funding by 50 percent with more money going to municipalities based on population density, and police and other services provided, with considerations made for tax exempt property as well.

Passed a resolution seeking a repeal of the SAFE Act, a gun control measure approved by Gov. Cuomo and the State Legislature in January 2013.

File photo by Tom Rivers – Albion firefighters responded to a chimney fire on Ridge Road in Gaines last March 12 during a blizzard.

ALBION – A deal over 20 years that gave Gaines property owners drastically low fire protection rates will end after 2015. Village of Albion officials said Gaines should expect a much bigger bill for fire protection in the future.

Gaines residents outside the village pay 35 cents per $1,000 of assessed property for fire protection in 2015. That is by far the lowest rate in Orleans County. Most residents in the towns pay fire protection rates over $1 per $1,000 of assessed property.

“It’s going to be a significant increase over what they are paying now,” village attorney John Gavenda said during a joint meeting Monday evening among officials from the village and town of Albion.

Albion town residents pay a $1.23-rate for fire protection from the village’s fire department.

The issue was raised during the town and village meeting because the village would like to continue the fire protection contract with the town of Albion, a contract that has included small increases in recent years.

Gavenda said the contract with Gaines will need to be negotiated this year. Gaines could either contract with Albion or Carlton, or start its own fire department. Whatever the town decides, Gavenda said the town won’t be getting such a bargain price for fire protection.

The village agreed to a 20-year deeply discounted rate in 1995 in exchange for Gaines making the sewer plant on Densmore Street tax exempt. Current village officials don’t think it was a fair deal.

Village Trustee Peter Sidari said the village shouldn’t have had to pay taxes to Gaines for the sewer plant. The town should have made that exempt without pushing for such a low fire protection rate 20 years ago, Sidari said.

The village has many tax exempt sites within its borders from other governments, including the school district, state and county. Sidari said the village doesn’t bill them, and the town should have done the same for the village.

“There’s no secret that they have to pay more,” Gavenda said about Gaines. “They are on a very favorable contract.”

Gavenda said the village expects to soon sit down with Gaines officials to discuss the future fire protection contract.

Here are the fire protection rates for towns for 2015:

Albion, $1.23; Barre, $1.45; Carlton, 75 cents; Clarendon, $1.01; Gaines, 35 cents; Kendall – $1.40 to Kendall and $1.61 to Morton; Murray – $1.57 to Holley and $1.59 to Fancher-Hulberton-Murray; Ridgeway, $1.17; Shelby, $1.49; and Yates, 52 cents to Lyndonville.

Sr. Master Sgt. Cliff Thom was deployed to Afghanistan

Photos by Tom Rivers  – Cliff Thom walks down the hallway in the Albion Middle School this morning with his son Jacob and wife Tara. All of the classrooms emptied into the hallway and students and teachers applauded for Thom and his family.

ALBION – The High School Band played “I’ll Be Home For Christmas.” And then Cliff Thom entered into the band room, wearing his military uniform. He walked up to his daughter Catherine and put his arm around her.

Catherine, a sophomore, had her back to the door and was focused on playing her clarinet. But then she realized the person who cozied up to her was her father.

Catherine jumped up and gave him a hug. Her father is back home today after more than 5 months of active duty in Afghanistan.

Today he saw his three kids for the first time since June 29.

Catherine Thom and her father Cliff Thom embrace after seeing each other today for the first time since late June.

Thom, 42, has served in the military for 24 years. He also is a full-time electrician, working in Rochester. He and his wife, Tara, live in Gaines with their three children: Catherine, 15; Jacob, 11; and Sarah, 8.

He is a senior master sergeant in the U.S. Air Force. He is in the Reserve, which typically requires one weekend a month and two weeks a year of training. There is always the chance of deployment.

Thom talks to middle school students in Jonathan Sanford’s class about Afghanistan. Thom’s son Jacob is in the class.

Thom does his training out of the Air Reserve Station in Niagara Falls. He is a command chief from that site. In Afghanistan, he served as an operations superintendent.

At a base in Afghanistan, Thom and his unit loaded cargo from aircraft.

“My job is loading the planes,” Thom told a class of Middle Schoolers today. “It’s an important job because it supports everyone else.”

Thom surprised his son Jacob, a sixth grader in Jonathan Sanford’s class, this morning.

Thom told students it’s very hot in Afghanistan with temperatures well over 100 degrees. In his five-plus months there, it seldom rained and there were very few clouds the entire time.

It cooled down to about 90 degrees during the summer nights. In early December, the temperatures were in the 70s during the day and dropped to the 30s at night.

“It’s windy, dusty and dirty,” he told the students. “It’s very sandy. It’s all tan or brown.”

Jonathan Sanford, a social studies teacher, takes a picture of Cliff Thom with his son Jacob and Jacob’s classmates.

Sanford, a social studies teacher, thanked Thom for his service and willingness to go so far away.

“I know I speak for all of the kids when I say thank you for your service,” Sanford said.

Sanford told the students that the United States enjoys its safety and peace due to soldiers. He noted they all volunteer to enlist.

“They serve their country,” Sanford said. “It’s a very noble thing to do.”

Thom walked through a corridor of students and staff in the middle school, all thanking him for his service.

After surpirsing Jacob at the middle school, Thom and his wife headed to the high school to surprise Catherine who was in band.

Mike Thaine, the band teacher, thanked the Thom family for sharing the surprise with students.

“This is one band practice you will never forget,” Thaine told the students.

Cliff Thom, right, greets the high school band where his daughter plays the clarinet.

Thom admitted he was nervous this morning before seeing his children. He doesn’t like a lot of attention, he said.

He didn’t want to wait until the end of the school day to see them. He said the deployment and separation was a little easier because he could text with his family and talk with them through Google Hangouts, which is similar to Skype.

Many of his local friends also saw him do the Ice Bucket Challenge while in Afghanistan. His wife posted a link to the video of that on her Facebook page.

Thom greets his youngest daughter Sarah during lunch in the elementary school cafeteria. Sarah grabbed his hat.

After connecting with his children, Thom said the family was headed for lunch at the Village House restaurant. He wanted a bacon cheeseburger deluxe.

Photos by Tom Rivers

GAINES – The call went out from dispatch at 12:15 p.m. about an accident on Crandall Road in the Town of Gaines.

Firefighters, a state trooper and an ambulance saw a trail of debris, including a demolished mailbox, along Ridge Road, just east of Crandall Road. But they couldn’t find the car in the accident – until they checked down Crandall Road where a car had been driven off the road into the brush.

There weren’t any injuries in the incidents. No additional information has been released.

Photo by Tom Rivers – Al Capurso of Gaines has created several mini log cabin scenes as tributes to pioneer residents in Orleans County. He is pictured with his latest creation. He has donated the log cabin dioramas to the Cobblestone Museum, Clarendon Historical Society and the Holland Land Office Museum.

Photo by Tom Rivers

Photo by Tom Rivers – The Clarendon cabin (above) bears the name of the town’s founder, Eldredge Farwell, who discovered Clarendon in 1810 while looking for his brother Isaac’s lost horse. He traced Isaac’s footprints along the border of Sandy Creek and was impressed with the waterfalls in Clarendon.

Photo by Tom Rivers

GAINES – In the spring Al Capurso was out in his backyard with a knife, cutting down thick grape vines that were wrapped around trees.

Capurso studied the thick vines and noticed they bore semblance to mini logs. His mind and hands started working, and began building a small log cabin. It sits on a shelf in his kitchen, a tribute to pioneer residents who settled in the area about 200 years ago.

Capurso has a strong interest in the county’s pioneer history. He and his family put up a historical marker on the Courthouse Lawn last year for William McAllister and his wife, who were Albion’s first settlers in 1811, building a log cabin where the current County Clerks Building stands.

Capurso also did the research and convinced the local and federal governments to name Gilbert Creek in Gaines and Carlton in honor of another pioneer.

With the grape vines, Capurso cut them in 7 and 9 inch chunks and created a mini log cabin. He notched the wood, made a roof out of bark, and put in windows and doors. He added corals for livestock, a swing for children, and a wood lot. He even planted trees around the sites.

It takes Capurso about a month to make the scenes, and he has donated three of them to historical organizations. As he makes them, he finds himself transported to about 200 years ago, when the area’s first settlers were tasked with surviving in the wilderness.

“Everything back then was ‘make do,'” he said. “You made do with what you had.”

Capurso has given log cabin dioramas to the Holland Land Office Museum in Batavia, the Clarendon Historical Society and the Cobblestone Museum.

Farwell saw the waterfalls as a potential source of power for business. He moved his family to Clarendon in 1811 and built saw and grist mills. The town was originally named Farwell’s Mills but was renamed to Clarendon. Farwell was from Clarendon, Vermont.

Farwell also had six children when he moved to Clarendon. Capurso added a swing by the miniature cabin.

“I dedicated this one to children who grew up as pioneers in the wilderness,” he said on Tuesday at his Gaines home on Route 279.

Capurso is a volunteer at the Cobblestone Museum. He gave the museum a cabin that made in honor of John Proctor.

John Proctor is often referred to by historians as the Paul Revere of Ridge Road. On a December night in 1813, he rode by horseback on the Ridge from Gaines to Clarkson to warn of the approach of British and the Indians after the burning of Lewiston.

The following morning he joined a regiment that was headed to Lewiston. The regiment would capture the enemy quartered at Molyneaux Tavern. A historical marker on a large stone on Route 104 shares the story of Proctor. The stone is on the south side of Ridge Road, a few houses west of the Route 98 intersection.

Capurso would like to build a full-size replica cabin as a tribute to the pioneers. That would be about 20 feet by 20 feet. He would need to find a site and volunteers for the project.

Photos by Tom Rivers

GAINES – A truck driver was attempting to turn around on Route 98 when the vehicle slipped into a ditch in the Town Gaines, just north of Watt Farms.

Albion firefighters, James Fisher (right) and David Nayman, were out directing traffic around the truck today at about 1:30 p.m. Firefighters were called to the scene at about 11:45 a.m. A tow truck was on scene to pull out the truck.

County’s only National Historic Landmark looks to build on success from 2014

File photo by Tom Rivers – Matt Ballard and Sarah Karas, co-directors of the Cobblestone Society Museum, are pictured in front of the Ward House (built in 1836) with the Cobblestone Universalist Church (built in 1834) in back. The museum opened six weeks earlier this year and expanded its programming.

CHILDS – The Cobblestone Museum saw attendance nearly double this past year when the National Historic Landmark opened on Mother’s Day, six weeks earlier than normal, and worked to expand programming, including a series on medicine in the 19th Century.

A new Museum Crawl also linked museums and historic sites on Route 98 from Batavia to Lake Ontario. It resulted in about 50 new visitors for the Cobblestone Museum. Altogether there were 1,475 visitors to the museum in 2014, up from the 876 that were counted in 2013.

“It seems like we’re going in the right direction,” said Matt Ballard, co-director of the museum. “We just have to stick with it.”

Ballard put together an exhibit – “Medicine at the Museum” – about medical care in the 1800s. The museum has an extensive collection of artifacts, and many were also donated from community members for the exhibit, which ran until Oct. 12.

“Medicine at the Museum” features photos and write-ups on many of the pioneer physicians and pharmacists in the county. The museum also hosted a lecture series with four speakers discussing Orleans and WNY medical history.

Ballard is now working on an exhibit for next year about World War I. The war lasted from 1914 to 1918, with the United States joining in 1917.

The Cobblestone Society had its annual meeting on Thursday and Susan Rudnicky, president, cited several successes, including the growing attendance. The museum also used grants and donations to complete a new roof on the Cobblestone Church and a next-door brick house.

“The church is near and dear to all of our hearts,” Rudnicky told about 70 people at the meeting at Tillman’s Village Inn. “Keeping it in good condition is pre-eminent. We have to keep it in good condition.”

Sarah Karas, co-director of the Cobblestone Museum, addresses about 70 people who attended the annual meeting for the Cobblestone Society on Thursday. She is joined by Matt Ballard, at right, and leaders of the Board of Directors, sitting.

The Cobblestone Society hired Ballard and Karas as co-directors in the spring. They both have other jobs and shared the duties in running the museum and its complex of historic structures.

Ballard and Karas both graduated in the Class of 2006 at Albion, and they both have master’s degrees in library science at the University of Buffalo. Karas works at Genesee Community College in Batavia and Ballard works at Hilbert College in Hamburg.

They have different strengths and interests. Karas organized weddings, trained volunteers and docents, redesigned the gift shop and worked on the museum’s social media with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Ballard brings a passion for genealogy and research to the position.

“Matt and Sarah are doing what I hoped people would be doing when I retired,” Bill Lattin, the long-time museum director, said at the annual meeting. “I’m very grateful for what they’ve done in carrying the museum into the 21st Century.”

The museum isn’t without challenges. Rudnicky said the organization would benefit from more revenue for upkeep of the buildings and to better pay its staff. Cobblestone Society Treasurer Ken Braunbach said the organization dipped into $30,000 of its investment funds in 2014. Those accounts are now down to $163,010.

The organization has been pushing more tours and weddings, as well as other events to bring in revenue. But ultimately, Rudnicky said other support will be needed to build a strong Cobblestone Museum for the future.

Orleans County currently doesn’t have the museum in its budget. Museum leaders have reached out to county legislators, and several took tours of the museum property in late October.

Rudnicky is stepping down as president and will remain on the board of directors. Mary Anne Braunbach will be the organization’s new president. Other new board members include Al Capurso, Louise Wu and Karen Desjardins.

Photos by Peggy Barringer
KNOWLESVILLE – The Eagle Harbor United Methodist Church held a Holiday Craft Show on Saturday at the Orleans County 4-H Fairgrounds. Santa was on hand at the event to greet children.

Amanda Edick and Dustin Gardner are pictured in front of Dirt Road Designs, which they run with another partner, Elyse Catlin. Edick and Gardner said that they were excited to be doing their very first craft show and sold several items.

One of the craft show organizers, Leslie Allen (left), takes a basket of baked goods around to the vendors who may not have chance to get away from their tables to browse. The craft show is a fund-raiser for the church, which is led by Pastor Susan Boring.

Another new vendor at the show included Come On Get Snappy Photobooth by Peggy Barringer. Dmitry Allport assists Peggy with her booth while she was taking photos for the Orleans Hub.

Darlene Nenni and Jody Lubba sell tickets to the food items offered at the craft show in the Trolley Building. They said the beef on weck and chili were about even for popularity.