Step bears name of Danolds, who were friends with George Pullman and influential Universalists

Photos by Tom Rivers – David Heminway is pictured with his grandson Nathaniel Metzler, 8, on a carriage step that Heminway dug up and reset last year. He also repositioned the hitching posts and sandstone sidewalk panels.

A close-up view of the Danolds carriage step

EAGLE HARBOR – Most of the carriage step had disappeared into the soil. David Heminway saw the tops of letters on the step but wasn’t sure what it said because the majority of the stone was buried.

Last year Heminway set about unearthing the step. It was in his front yard in Eagle Harbor. Heminway and his wife Joanne bought a house in 2006 at 3209 Eagle Harbor-Waterport Rd. It took about two years of work before they could move in. The house wasn’t original at the site. The first house burned down more than a century ago. That original house was owned by the Danolds family.

When Heminway dug down to see what was on the carriage step, he recognized the Danolds name. Heminway, a machinist for the state Canal Corp., also has been an active volunteer the past 20 years for the Cobblestone Society and Museum. In the Cobblestone Church there is a Danolds Room, dedicated to Charles and Mary Jane Danolds.

Mrs. Danolds suggested the Cobblestone Universalist Church name its building “The Church of the Good Shepherd.”

Her husband was friends with George Pullman. In the 1850s, when the canal was enlarged, Danolds had a contract to expand the canal and he hired Pullman to move some of the houses that were in the way of the expansion.

Pullman was also a local furniture maker. He would move to Chicago and become a titan of industry with railroad sleeping cars.

Danolds kept up a friendship with Pullman and while the two were vacationing in the Thousand Islands in 1890, Danolds made a pitch for Pullman to help build a new Universalist Church in Albion. Pullman agreed as long as the locals would commit some of their own funds to the project.

The new church opened in 1895 as a memorial to Pullman’s parents, James Lewis Pullman and Emily Caroline Pullman.

Pullman was one of the great industrialists of the 19th Century, but Danolds was no slouch. He ran a mill in Eagle Harbor, where he ground wheat into flour, said Bill Lattin, Orleans County historian.

These portraits of Mary Jane and Charles Danolds hang in the Cobblestone Church in Childs.

Danolds also owned the Cobblestone Inn, sold horses to the Union during the Civil War, worked to enlarge the canal and was a key leader of the local Universalist Church.

“He was a real entrepreneur in his own time,” Lattin said.

The Danolds carriage step, once prominent in front of the Danolds homestead, gradually sank to the point only the top was visible.

Heminway decided to reset a sandstone sidewalk and two hitching posts last year. He also brought up the carriage step and hired Mike Jessmer to fix the sandstone steps by the house.

Heminway worked on the project for about six months. It was a lot of work. The carriage step weighs about 1,500 pounds. The sidewalk panels are also very heavy. He used a tractor with a fork lift to move them. He set the carriage step on about 2 feet of crusher run stone. That should prevent the step from sinking in the future.

David Heminway and his grandson Nathaniel Metzler pose the carriage step in front of Heminway’s house on Eagle Harbor-Waterport Road.

He considered moving the hitching posts, carriage step and sidewalk panels closer to the house. He didn’t want to have to mow around a bunch of obstacles, but decided they wouldn’t look right back by the house.

“I think they belong out front where they are,” he said.

Heminway made the sure the hitching posts and carriage step were set far back enough out of the right of way by the the road. He didn’t want to be told he would have to move them again someday.

He is happy to have the step fully visible, and is pleased to have an artifact from a prominent community member from generations ago.

The step shows the talent of the stone carvers from that era with the inscription of “DANOLDS” and detailing on the front. The stone also has two steps where many of the carriage blocks were one-step stones.

Heminway is pleased to have the artifacts from the horse-and-buggy era in his front lawn.

“They’re not making any more carriage steps,” he said.

Lattin praised the Heminways for bringing a historical asset back to the local landscape.

“I thought it was great that they resurrected it,” Lattin said.

GAINES – The Cobblestone Society Museum will kick off a new four-part lecture series next month about medical care and its history in Western New York.

The lectures all begin at 4 p.m. on Sundays at the Cobblestone Church, 14389 Ridge Rd. There is a $5 suggested donation. That price includes admission to an exhibit about early physicians and medicine in Orleans County.

That exhibit is in the first floor of the historic church and highlights more than 20 doctors from the county. The exhibit includes some of their tools and equipment, including a bag used for house calls. (Orleans Hub will feature that exhibit in a separate article to be posted soon.)

The lecture series is designed to bring more visitors to the museum and highlight pioneering medical care in the region.

The following lectures are planned at the museum:

The Development of Buffalo’s Medical School

Dr. Ronald Batt

Dr. Ronald Batt from the University at Buffalo will be the first speaker in the series on Aug. 17.

Founded on May 11, 1846, The University of Buffalo was established to train local physicians in the Buffalo area. Opening in 1847, the University welcomed Millard Fillmore as the first chancellor. He filled the position in a part-time capacity while serving as President of the United States. The establishment of Buffalo’s Medical School represents an important part in the growth of Western New York.

Batt is a professor of clinical gynecology at SUNY University at Buffalo. His master’s thesis was focused around the development and formation of Buffalo’s Medical School and the history of the Buffalo area.

The museum will have a special artifact on loan for this event: a death mask of Dr. Roswell Park. Several masks were cast following Dr. Park’s death in 1914, including those in the collections of the Buffalo Historical Society and the University at Buffalo’s Medical Sciences Library. This is believed to be the third of three that were cast.

The Search for Health: Sanitariums and Health Resorts of WNY

Erica Wanecski of the Medina Historical Society will discuss health resorts during a lecture at 4 p.m. on Aug. 31.

Wanecski has worked in the medical field for more than 20 years. She currently works in the education field with deaf children.

Provided photo – Pictured is the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Mich. It first opened in 1866 as the Western Health Reform Institute and was operated by John Harvey Kellogg (inventor of corn flakes) in the mid-1870s.

With an interest in history, she became curious about the history of the Castle on the Hill, a health resort and sanitarium in Dansville. She researched health spas, patent medicines and other medical-related topics. This presentation will focus on the history of Sanitariums and Health Resorts in Western New York.

Sanitariums existed during a time when medicinal treatments for ailments such as Tuberculosis were non-existent. The concept of health resorts and sanitariums developed into an idea similar to luxury resorts where members of the middle and upper class would travel away from home to experience state-of-the-art medical treatments guaranteed to improve their quality of life.

Trivial Tales of Orleans County Physicians

Orleans County Historian Bill Lattin will give this lecture at 4 p.m. on Sept. 14. Lattin will share human-interest stories from his up-and-coming book.

The program will include stories about several of the physicians featured in the Cobblestone Museum exhibit and others who have practiced throughout the area in the last 100 years.

Come join us as we hear the history of Orleans County’s finest physicians, told from an amusing and entertaining perspective.

Dying on Script: A Look at Victorian Attitudes Towards Illness and Death in the 19th Century

Derek Maxfield, GCC professor

Derek Maxfield, a history professor at Genesee Community College, will give a lecture, “Dying on Script: A Look at Victorian Attitudes Towards Illness and Death in the 19th Century.”

Maxfield’s presentation at 4 p.m. on Sept. 28 will explore the effects of medicine on the lives of families during the Victorian era. Looking back, many would consider the attitudes relating to death to be a morbid fascination or obsession.

Social norms developed around extended periods of mourning, a dictation of mourning dress, and exorbitant and extravagant funerals. A “Cult of Death” seemed to develop as families invested in mourning art, jewelry made from the hair of deceased loved ones, post-mortem photographs, and expensive cemetery monuments adorned with symbolism.

Maxfield will highlight a unique aspect of Victorian culture, representing the “final stage” in the 19th century treatment of severe medical ailments.

The lecture series is made possible through Genesee-Orleans Regional Arts Council and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Photos by Tom Rivers

GAINES – The cobblestone structures get a lot of the attention – as they should – at the Cobblestone Society Museum, but the museum also includes six outhouses, including the one used by Rufus Bullock and his family.

(In the top photo, museum co-director Sarah Karas is pictured with the Bullock outhouse, which is located behind the Ward House next to the Cobblestone Church.)

Bullock grew up in Albion and went on to be the governor of Georgia during Reconstruction after the Civil War. He gained prestige as president of the Macon and Augusta Railroad in 1867. He was elected governor and served from 1868 to 1871. Bullock was an abolitionist and successfully fought accusations of corruption while he was governor in Georgia.

He returned to live out his life in Albion and is buried at Mount Albion Cemetery. His house still stands at the northwest corner of West Park and Liberty streets.

The Cobblestone Church was built in 1834 and is the oldest cobblestone church in North America. But it’s not the oldest structure on the museum grounds. That distinction goes to this outhouse that was erected in the early 1830s.

The finest of the six outhouses is this one, which has five seats inside. This outhouse is next to the Farmer’s Hall.

Take a look inside the five-seater.