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[yatescountyhistorycenter]

Did Yates County used to have five villages?

By Jonathan Monfiletto

I would like to think the answer to the question I have posed in the title of this article is a resounding yes. After all, the Penn Yan Express of July 24, 1867 contained an item titled “Incorporated” and including the following declaration: “The village of Branchport has been granted a Charter and is now, as we understand, an incorporated village, in accordance with the vote of its citizens as announced in this paper two or three weeks since.”

Penn Yan became Yates County’s first officially incorporated village in 1833; Dundee became the second in 1848. Rushville followed in third in 1866; Dresden incorporated as the fourth – as far as I know – the next year. Indeed, the “Incorporated” item goes on to state: “Dresden is also aspiring to the dignity of an incorporated village, having voted in favor of incorporation at a late election.”

Regarding the vote in Branchport, the Express of July 10, 1867 indicated such an election took place in Branchport the Saturday before. “There was little or no opposition to the movement – the question being carried unanimously in the affirmative,” the newspaper stated in a “Branchport Items” column. “There is a good deal of enterprise and public spirit in Branchport, and this move is one that will add to the growth and thrift of that already thriving village.”

As delightful as these snippets are to uncover and peruse, the major problem with them – and it is a major problem in my mind – is they seem to be the only hard evidence I can uncover with regard to the idea (or fact?) that Branchport once existed as an officially incorporated village. Now a hamlet of the town of Jerusalem at the tip of the west branch of Keuka Lake, Branchport was once a thriving commercial area – as many small communities once were – and may have been its own village as well. However, to say the evidence is confusing and contradictory is about the same as saying the sky is blue and the grass is green. Yes, of course it is.

I located these items from the Express through our digitized newspaper database, which is hosted online through New York State Historical Newspapers (https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/). Yet, among the more than 700 results I browsed, I found neither proceedings of any Branchport village boards nor results of any Branchport village elections. A typewritten history of Branchport from our subject files asserts the village incorporated in 1867 and elected a president (a position similar to the office of mayor) and trustees on an annual basis. Another typewritten document from the files lists some of the “known presidents of the village”: Robert German in 1873, William Rynders in 1874 and again in 1881, Charles Hibbard from 1875 to 1876, and John L. Bronson in 1882.

Again, that seems to be the only hard evidence I can find to point to Branchport having been a real village (Pinocchio just exclaimed, “I’m a real boy!” in my head) at one point in time. Among the said 700-plus search results – using “village of Branchport” and “Branchport village” as keyword terms – nearly all of them reference a village of Branchport but seems to show it as nothing more than a wooden village (yes, a lame analogy with another Pinocchio reference), using village as a colloquial term. I have found similar references to the village of Bellona from sources who know Bellona is just a hamlet – a major one at that, having been settled around a stagecoach stop halfway between Geneva and Penn Yan – and not a village within the town of Benton.

Still, among those 700-plus search results are a few that seem to assert Branchport was indeed a real village, though to me they lack the smoking-gun hard evidence to make that a certain fact. For example, an article in the Yates County Chronicle, profiling 84-year-old Samuel Davis as one of the oldest residents of Jerusalem, contains an interesting parenthetical thought, noting Davis came to Jerusalem at the turn of the 19th century when “not a tree was cut in the vicinity of that somewhat assuming, (incorporated!) but moderate village of Branchport.��� A letter to the editor in the Express in June 1874 references a meeting of the Board of Excise of the Village of Branchport during which the board granted a liquor license to a local drug store but denied the same to the Branchport Hotel. In December 1874, the Board of Health of the Village of Penn Yan banned residents of the village of Branchport from entering Penn Yan because of a small pox outbreak in Branchport.

These latter references are not alone in mentioning groups – including the Jerusalem Town Board, the Branchport Fire District, and the local Republican Committee – that met in, or discussed matters related to, a supposed village of Branchport or in mentioning a supposed village of Branchport alongside Yates County’s other villages. The Dundee Observer of June 8, 1881 listed population numbers for Yates County and its communities according to the 1880 U.S. Census; 271 people called Branchport home at that time. While there is an asterisk next to unincorporated villages – Bellona, Himrods’ Corners, and Eddytown among them – Branchport has no such asterisk, indicating it was an incorporated village. Proposed enlargements of the boundaries of the village of Penn Yan, considered by the New York State Legislature at various points, list the village of Branchport in relation to Penn Yan’s borders.

According to the November 22, 1882 edition of the Express, Louisa J. Wagener sued the village of Branchport after suffering an injury during a fall caused by – according to her argument – a defective or faulty sidewalk. “The injury sustained was the dislocation of the right shoulder joint, or the fracture of the neck of the scapula, by reason of which the use of the arm has been seriously and permanently impaired,” the newspaper noted in reporting the court awarded Wagener $2,000 (just over $64,000 in 2023 dollars). I threw the quote in for the shock value, but the item seems to indicate the village of Branchport was a real entity since only real entities can be sued. On the other hand, August 18, 1886, a publication called The Pioneer carried – on the same page – sketches titled “Village of Middlesex” and “Village of Branchport.” Since Middlesex has never been an incorporated village, though there is a hamlet of Middlesex Center, that image leads me to believe Branchport was never a truly incorporated village either.

On October 14, 1891, the Express carried the statistics for Yates County from the Census of the prior year. Branchport gained two more people for a population of 273, and once again the list seems to indicate it was an incorporated village. In fact, only the county’s nine towns and five incorporated villages are included; the list contains no other hamlets or communities. Indeed, October 6, 1897, while celebrating the opening of the Penn Yan, Keuka, Park, and Branchport Railway, the Chronicle published a brief history of the village of Branchport, noting: “In 1867 the village became incorporated, taking upon itself certain municipal characteristics that its local affairs might be ordered and governed independent of the township of Jerusalem, of which it forms a part.” Apparently, the village of Branchport was separate from the town of Jerusalem at some point and for at least three decades.

Over time, there are numerous seemingly colloquial references to the village of Branchport, where the newspaper calls the community a village but it isn’t necessarily an incorporated village. In October 1907, residents there started the Branchport Village Improvement Society, but whether they lived in an actual incorporated village then is unclear. Likewise, the Branchport Chamber of Commerce formed in March 1920 to oversee the community interests of the village of Branchport. When the Yates County Board of Supervisors established more county highways in March 1913, it referred to roadways in the village of Branchport.

When Yates County celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Sullivan Expedition in 1929, there was a general committee to oversee the county’s part of the commemoration in Geneva. Then, there were 14 smaller committees – one for each town and village – to oversee the festivities within its borders. That count includes committees for nine towns and five villages – with Branchport listed among the villages that exist today. So, Branchport may have been an incorporated village then, but the only record of an election taking place there that I could find was the vote to create the Branchport Fire District in 1933. Still, a report on the Jerusalem town budget in 1953 showed there were separate tax rates for the village of Branchport and for the town at large, indicating Branchport was a separate taxing entity and perhaps an incorporated village. Five years later, though, a legal notice referred to the hamlet of Branchport as the location of the Jerusalem town office.

In the 1960s, reports of a proposal for the town of Jerusalem to establish a water district in Branchport refers to the community as a village. A 1978 listing of deed transfers also refers to the village of Branchport alongside Yates County's other villages.

Branchport, of course, is no longer – if it ever was – an incorporated village and nowadays is considered a hamlet of the town of Jerusalem. Was Branchport ever an officially incorporated village? Looking at the evidence through more than 100 years of newspapers, part of me believes it was once a village and part of me thinks it never was a village. Can anyone out there shed some light for me?

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[yatescountyhistorycenter]

Whatever happened to the Bluff Point ZIP code?

By Jonathan Monfiletto

By the time you read this article, the Yates County History Center’s Oliver’s Travels blog on Tumblr will have surpassed 100 entries. Almost all of those 100 entries have involved me – the writer, YCHC’s museum educator – seeking to inform my audience on a specific topic related to local history.

However, I’m switching it up for this entry and not entirely on purpose. I’m looking to you – my audience – for concrete information on when the Bluff Point Post Office closed and what happened to the hamlet’s ZIP code and why people still have Bluff Point addresses anyway. I have done about as extensive research as I feel I can in this regard, but I haven’t come up with any solid answers to my questions. I would appreciate hearing from anyone who can shed more light on these mysteries for me.

Occasionally, I title my article with a question or begin the first paragraph of my article with a question, and then I use the remainder of the article to answer that question as best as I can through the information I have uncovered in my research. In this case, though, I truly do not know the answer to these questions with certainty. Yet, I will do my best to provide some insight into them with this article.

In my duties as YCHC’s administrative assistant, I keep a list of our board trustees and their contact information posted on my desk. One day awhile back, I happened to notice one of our trustees has a Keuka Park address with a 14478 ZIP code while another one of our trustees has a Bluff Point address also with a 14478 ZIP code. I wondered how two communities could have the same ZIP code, so I began researching Bluff Point and Keuka Park and their respective post offices.

When I realized Bluff Point no longer even has a post office, I went to work trying to figure out what happened to it and when it closed. That proved to be a more difficult task than I thought it would be. According to The Chronicle-Express of January 13, 1983, Yates County Legislator Joe Healy, of Jerusalem – the town that encompasses both hamlets of Bluff Point and Keuka Park – proposed, but eventually withdrew, a resolution opposing the temporary closing of the Bluff Point Post Office. Healy asserted “temporarily means permanently” in the postal world.

Indeed, two weeks later, Doris Staples’ Bluff Point column in The Chronicle-Express noted the temporary closing of the Bluff Point Post Office as of January 21. However, I found neither a record of the post office ever reopening after that point nor a record of its official closure. An article in the November 24, 1984 edition of The Chronicle-Express references the post office in Bluff Point as well as post offices in Keuka Park and Branchport. Nevertheless, the Bluff Point Post Office did apparently close for good around that time, and Bluff Point’s ZIP code seemingly went away with it.

When the U.S. Post Office introduced Zone Improvement Plan codes in 1963, the hamlet of Bluff Point was assigned a ZIP code of 14417, while Keuka Park received a ZIP code of 14478 and Branchport was labeled with 14418 (you might be wondering why I brought up Branchport; just bear with me and you’ll find out). Indeed, an August 1984 newspaper advertisement for Jud’s Stone House Nursery lists a Bluff Point address with a 14417 ZIP code. In March 1987, a newspaper advertisement for Jud’s Stone House Nursery lists a Bluff Point address with a 14478 ZIP code. Perhaps that suggests a time frame within which the Bluff Point Post Office closed or at least the hamlet’s ZIP code was done away with.

It turns out Branchport no longer has a post office either, even though that hamlet still has its own ZIP code. In August 1991, according to The Chronicle-Express, the Branchport Post Office lost the space it was leasing inside Branchport Elementary when the Penn Yan Central School District decided it needed that space for its own use. While local and postal officials attempted to find a new location for the post office, that move eventually left the Keuka Park Post Office as the only option for Branchport residents conducting postal business.

For a time, Branchport residents could receive their mail at a series of outdoor mailboxes, but they complained about the inadequacy of this outdoor setup and the inability to fully conduct postal business there. At some point, the Branchport Post Office went away for good just like its companion in Bluff Point. Still, the hamlet of Branchport held onto its ZIP code unlike the hamlet of Bluff Point.

Again, my questions: First, what happened to the Bluff Point Post Office? I have a satisfactory explanation of why and when the Branchport Post Office closed, because the post office lost its lease for its space and officials either could not or would not find a new location. All I have for Bluff Point is word of the temporary closing of its post office.

Second, what happened to Bluff Point’s ZIP code? Related to that, why does the hamlet share a ZIP code with Keuka Park, why do people still have Bluff Point addresses, and why did Branchport keep its ZIP code when it didn’t keep its office? I have no explanation through my research for any of these questions.

I recently had the opportunity to ask the aforementioned trustee with a Bluff Point address if she could shed light on any of my questions. Indeed, she could recall the Bluff Point Post Office closing for good within a few years after she and her husband moved to the hamlet in the early 1980s. So, it seems from her answer that the temporary closing of the post office became permanent after all.

Now, her explanation of the ZIP codes: Because Bluff Point and Keuka Park are in close proximity to each other, and because Bluff Point residents receive their mail through Keuka Park anyway, the two hamlets have the same ZIP code. However, because Bluff Point is a more rural area while Keuka Park is an urban center, so to speak, there is a need to delineate between addresses for the two hamlets. In fact, she told me GPS directions and internet address lookups do make the distinction between the two.

Branchport kept its ZIP code because it, like Keuka Park, has an urban-center type of hamlet. Nevertheless, Branchport residents receive their mail through Keuka Park. Those seem like pretty good explanations to me, so I’m glad I took the chance to pose my questions to this trustee.

Do any residents of Bluff Point, Keuka Park, or Branchport have anything else to say or add? I always hope to educate my audience through this blog, but I hope you can educate me as well.

[yatescountyhistorycenter]

A glimpse of firefighting in Yates County

By Jonathan Monfiletto

As I think about local Yates County history topics to write about for this Oliver’s Travels blog (and I’m always thinking of things to research and write about, and I’ll never run out of ideas for things to research and write about), I have often thought I would like to capture the history of firefighting and fire departments in Yates County in some form or fashion. My father was a volunteer firefighter and EMT in my hometown for many years, so I know firsthand how firefighters, EMTs, and all kinds of first responders are among the most noble professionals (and often unpaid at that) in our society.

So, as I share the history of some of the fire departments around Yates County, I dedicate this article to anyone who has ever served as a first responder in any capacity, whether in Yates County or anywhere else. To these courageous and steadfast men and women, I simply say thank you.

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 The Himrod Fire Department has, to me, the most interesting origin story of any of the fire departments I researched through the subject files of the Yates County History Center. The fire department formed in the spring of 1968 through the benevolence of Daisy Marquis Jones, who had established the foundation bearing her name the same year. Jones donated the Himrod Road property in the hamlet on which she and her husband, dairy farmer J. Nelson Jones, had their home for the firehouse and headquarters. According to what I found while researching Daisy Marquis Jones, the person and the foundation, the foundation has continued to support the fire department ever since.

In May 1968, the newly-formed fire department had 37 members, 19 of whom had completed New York State training in firefighting and three of whom had completed officers training. Then, the members were receiving instruction in a pump operating school, as the department had purchased a 500-gallon-a-minute pumper and was in the process of remodeling a tanker. The department expected to purchase more equipment as its funding permitted.

The fire department’s first call was a grass fire, to which 11 firefighters responded; they had the fire out in four minutes. “Himrod citizens have been aware of the need for a fire department in their unprotected area for some time,” a May 7, 1968 article in The Geneva Times stated. Now, they had the protection of their own fire department as well as departments in Dundee, Penn Yan, and surrounding areas through mutual aid.

Twenty years later, in the spring of 1988, Himrod firefighters purchased the Bellview Dairy property – once operated by J. Nelson Jones – across Himrod Road from the former site of the Jones home. The department funded the purchase and subsequent improvements out of its own finances as well as a contribution from the Daisy Marquis Jones Foundation.

The department planned to use the dairy building to store its parade truck and other equipment and to build a reservoir behind the building to use as a water supply rather than depending on Seneca Lake. Firefighters also hoped the property would become a community center with a baseball diamond or basketball court and other amenities for the public.

In December 2006, however, firefighters began transforming the former dairy building – which they named the Leo Lyons Building after Daisy Marquis Jones’ nephew and the foundation’s trustee – into a training maze. While the building had been used for training for many years, this project took things to a new level by incorporating an obstacle course through the building’s various rooms to simulate the conditions firefighters might encounter during a structure fire.

The features of the maze could be moved and modified so firefighters wouldn’t get used to the layout of the building and could prepare for various situations. And, the building wasn’t used exclusively by firefighters in Himrod or Yates County but was open to other departments around the region.

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 The Branchport Fire Department, organized in April 1936, acted not just as an emergency response force for the hamlet but also as a civic organization to support the people there. According to a newspaper article published 11 years after its founding, the department “combined the efforts usually undertaken by the Chamber of Commerce, the Kiwanis and Rotary clubs, and a village board of trustees,” beginning by supporting men and women from the area who served during World War II. While the department up to that point had contributed to annual drives of the Salvation Army, Red Cross, and Christmas Seals and supported the work of various church organizations, its own work started with sending a local newspaper to every service member from the town of Jerusalem and the section of Steuben County the department covers. At one point, that list exceeded 100 names.

After the war, firefighters erected the town honor roll and made it into a permanent memorial, situated by St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. The original board was widened to make room for all of the names and decorative aspects, and the firefighters formed a permanent committee to be in charge of the memorial.

In 1940, the department sponsored a Boy Scout troop, though the troop disbanded after a few years. Firefighters hosted basketball games for boys of two age groups during the winter months, buying uniforms for the boys and growing their work until the sport developed under the sponsorship of the Jerusalem Township Youth Recreation program. In 1947, the department planned to remodel a baseball diamond in the hamlet for both baseball and softball games and use the land as an ice skating rink in the wintertime. Firefighters also expected to start a girls basketball team and host craft classes and tennis games. They also built ping pong tables and developed indoor activities for youth in the community hall that was built as an addition to the Branchport Methodist Church. Of course, the firefighters had helped build that hall.

Naturally, the fire department held fire prevention classes, through groups such as 4-H Clubs, and annual fire prevention contests for children. Firefighters also bought 100 fire extinguishers and distributed them throughout the community. To these efforts, firefighters attributed a steady decrease in calls from 47 in 1937 to an average of 24 or 25 per year a decade later.

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Dundee might host one of the oldest fire departments in Yates County, as the village formed a company in the 1850s referred to as Dundee Fire Company No. 1. H.W. Pierce led the company of about 35 men, but it apparently either folded or its protection was deemed inadequate for the village. Three decades later, in the 1880s, residents raised their concerns to the village board, which once again took action to form a fire company.

In the spring of 1888, the village board voted unanimously to raise $500 in taxes to purchase a hook and ladder truck with buckets, axes, and other equipment to fight fires. The current engine house was repaired and enlarged so the equipment could be properly stored, and fire extinguishers were also ordered to aid the firefighters. When the equipment was purchased, the actual amount came to $345 instead of the original $500 that was to be raised.

Thus, Dundee formed the G.P.L. Hooks Company, named for George P. Lord, one of its organizers along with Philo Rogers. The company started with 50 proposed members, who needed to be approved by the village board, and the company was on its way to providing fire protection for the village.

[yatescountyhistorycenter]

A friendship for the birds

By Jonathan Monfiletto

Verdi Burtch and Clarence Stone were a little more than a year apart in age, with Verdi born in Penn Yan in December 1868 and Clarence in Fish Creek in Oneida County in February 1870. Both men moved to Branchport in their childhood years, and both men found themselves involved in family businesses – Clarence in a steam flour mill for which his father was the engineer and Verdi in his father’s carriage manufacturer and later his brothers’ general store. While it was certainly their common love of studying and examining the birds of the Finger Lakes region that brought them together, it was just as certainly these common threads that kept Clarence and Verdi together as friends throughout their lives.

In fact, Verdi wrote Clarence’s – nicknamed Stony – biographical sketch in Berlin Hart Wright’s “Memories of Local Naturalists,” and he penned the only sketch in this book not written by Berlin Hart Wright. According to Verdi, Stony learned to run the engine at the mill as an early teenager and later became engineer on the steamboat Cricket. But Stony’s interest in birds grew at the same point, and according to Verdi, he made his first written observation of birds at age 18. “Soon after this he and the writer began to compare notes and go afield together,” Verdi wrote.

Verdi’s love of birds, according to his own biographical sketch, began at age 6 when his father – a brother-in-law to Dr. Samuel Hart Wright – presented his son with a copy of Wood’s Natural History with its numerous cuts of birds and animals. Later on, Verdi had access to his Uncle Sammy’s large collection of books on natural history. From there, his desire for knowledge of wildlife only increased and he began a systematic study with frequent trips into nature. In fact, his obituary notes he played hooky from school to watch the first wild geese settle on Keuka Lake and traded sleep for the chance to watch the flights of jewel-colored warblers coming north.

Stony and Verdi both took up professional careers in their adulthood to supplement their naturalist hobbies. When the mill changed hands around 1912, Stony moved to the family farm of his wife, Mary R. Miller, and worked as a mechanic in a Prattsburg garage and at the Morrow plant in Elmira during World War I. From that location, he made frequent trips along the Chemung River and found freshwater shells that were entirely different from those found in Keuka Lake. He sent samples to his pal, Verdi, for identification. In 1920, Stony got a job as a guide in the Adirondack League Club in Old Forge, which gave him the opportunity to learn about the birds in the mountain forests.

Meanwhile, Verdi worked in his father’s carriage shop until his father’s death, and then he took up house painting and interior decorating as a livelihood. He and his wife, Maud E. Townsend, moved to Penn Yan, and he continued his trade there. The home of “Uncle Sammy” and cousin Berlin wasn’t too far away, and Verdi and the two Hart Wrights gathered there with others interested in natural science to discuss their collections and their interests in classification of specimens.

Both Stony and Verdi apparently had musical talent in addition to their scientific ability; Stony played the E flat cornet while Verdi played baritone horn, trombone, and clarinet, and both may have played in the Penn Yan band at the same time. Both men – in their bird-watching and bird-studying hobbies – also took an interest in photography of birds. Stony began his photography work as early as 1898, and he took hundreds of photographs that he sold to museums, papers, and magazines and used to illustrate his own articles on bird lore for various publications. Verdi had started out hunting birds to learn their body structure and habits and then collecting their nests and eggs for further examination; he found photography gave him a more intimate understanding of bird habits and individualities than did the first two tasks.

Stony might best be known for Camp Freedom – a house body made and mounted on a Ford chassis that the Stones traveled in to Florida during the winters. Having taken up printing as a livelihood and using a hand printing press, Stony even took the printing press aboard Camp Freedom and accepted orders for printing work during his travels. In the fall of 1924, Stony built Chasm Lodge on the bank of Chidsey Gully in northern Steuben County for the family’s summer home. The home became “a Mecca for bird students,” according to Verdi, and Verdi stated the visitors’ register contains names from many different states while the roster of bird visitors numbered 140 species at the time of Stony’s death. Stony died in Geneva in September 1933 after falling violently ill on a camping trip in Ovid and being rushed to the hospital.

Verdi may best be known for his bird banding work, which he began in 1921 in collaboration with the U.S. Biological Survey. He – and others – would place a metal tag or band on a bird's leg, giving the date and place of banding, and then report the finding and location of any banded bird they found. The practice has resulted in increasing knowledge of the annual migrations of birds, and Verdi’s own work showed many species return every year to Keuka Lake for nesting, coming back to the same spot from northern Canada or southern Florida year after year. Verdi outlived his friend by 12 years, dying in Branchport in December 1945.

[yatescountyhistorycenter]

Walking for Lady Liberty

By Jonathan Monfiletto

While writing my recent blog article on two of Yates County’s rural schoolhouses – Barrington District No. 10 and Jerusalem District No. 1 – I searched through our box of rural school photographs to see if I could find photos of either of these two schoolhouses other than the photos in Jennie L. Hiler’s book “Memories of the Rural Schools of Yates County, New York.” Amid my search, I came across this photo depicting students and teachers from Branchport Elementary School walking together and holding signs reading “Walk for Liberty” and listing their respective teacher and grade.

Judging from the coloring and fading of the photo, it came from a newspaper collection, as I have seen other photos similar in appearance in our collection of photos from The Chronicle-Express. I thought perhaps the photo and the walk it depicts had something to do with the civil rights movement, but the date on the back of the photo is from 1985 so I knew that couldn’t be it. Then I thought perhaps the event had something to do with apartheid in South Africa, as the anti-apartheid movement seems to have been heating up around then.

So, naturally, I turned to our digitized newspaper collection to see what I could find out, especially since the photo from Branchport Elementary School seems to have been a newspaper photo. And, I found out the walk did not have anything to do with apartheid or any other noble human rights cause; instead, it was related to a noble patriotic cause, as the students and their teachers walked to raise money toward the restoration of the Statue of Liberty.

While the photo I came across features Branchport Elementary School, I came across an article from the June 6, 1985 edition of The Chronicle-Express that highlights students and teachers from Penn Yan schools – Penn Yan Elementary, St. Michael’s, and Emmanuel Baptist Academy. On the morning of Wednesday, May 29, 1985, more than 1,000 children from these schools – as well as teachers and faculty – left their schools to parade through the streets of Penn Yan on the Walk for Liberty. The group headed down Liberty Street and back up Main Street in what the newspaper described as “a flag-waving parade that ended at the Yates County Courthouse lawn,” where local school and public officials hosted a brief ceremony.

The marchers carried flags and signs and drew bystanders to join them on their walk to the courthouse, where they stood for the national anthem and the raising of the American flag and listened to several brief presentations. The presentations included a reading by Amy Tournour of “The New Colossus,” the poem written by Emma Lazarus as a tribute to the Statue of Liberty.

The Statue of Liberty was being restored for its 100th anniversary the following year, so the schoolchildren learned about the statue and its symbolism of democracy to prepare them for their walk. Then, the children raised $2,000 in pledges by their families toward the national Lady Liberty Campaign to fund the renovation project. The children returned to their school day following the ceremony at the courthouse, the newspaper notes.

An item that appeared in the June 13, 1985 edition of The Chronicle-Express indicates the students and teachers of Branchport Elementary School marched separately from their cohorts in Penn Yan because conflicts prevented the students and teachers from Branchport from traveling to Penn Yan. It is unclear whether that means they walked on a different day or at the same time but in a different location. The Branchport students, teachers, and administrators left school and marched with various musical instruments to the Branchport Library and back to the school; a flag raising ceremony took place on the school lawn when they returned. This included Becky Burton reciting a composition she wrote for the occasion.

The Branchport Walk for Liberty was apparently one of the last hurrahs for Branchport Elementary School, as the school seems to have closed at the end of that school year. “The last days of the Branchport Elementary School are busy ones with special programs being presented by classes and PTA groups,” the newspaper item states. “As soon as the school days are over for the children, workers will begin to clean and close the school. Children will be entering the Penn Yan school classrooms in the fall.”

[yatescountyhistorycenter]

Livin’ on love, buyin’ on time

By Jonathan Monfiletto

The first photograph is a portrait of Caleb and May (French) Barton taken on their wedding day, June 5, 1898. The second photograph is a picture of Mr. and Mrs. Barton celebrating their anniversary exactly 50 years later on June 5, 1948. Just take a moment to gaze at these two photos and admire a couple who seem as much in love with each other 50 years after saying “I do” as they were when they first walked up the aisle as husband and wife.

I came across these photos during my internship at the Yates County History Center in the summer of 2021, as I cataloged and organized what I call the people photographs collection – four boxes of photographs arranged alphabetically by the subjects’ last names. I was intrigued when I found a photo of a couple on their wedding day and then, almost right next to it in an otherwise unordered jumble of photos, a photo of the same couple on their 50th anniversary.

When I became an employee of the History Center in December 2021, I decided I should locate these photos and share them in a Valentine’s Day Facebook post. I did just that, learning and sharing more details about the Bartons and their wedding and anniversary celebrations in the process.

According to the Wednesday, June 8, 1898 edition of the Yates County Chronicle, Caleb and May were married the previous Sunday, June 5 in “one of the largest gatherings ever witnessed in Branchport” at the Baptist church, following that morning’s Children’s day service. Now, I’m not sure if the large gathering was people coming to the children’s service or people waiting for the Bartons’ wedding. But the church “was beautifully decorated with flowers, birds and old gloria,” the Chronicle states, noting the “speaking by the children was excellent” and then came “a very important feature of the program” with the wedding. Since the Bartons’ wedding coincided with the children’s service and was considered an important part of it, I assume they were somehow involved with the church and perhaps with the children’s program.

The Rev. A.A. Wickham, the church’s pastor, officiated as May French (erroneously listed as Mary French in the article), of Branchport, married Caleb Barton, of Pulteney. The bride and groom stood under “a most beautiful bell,” 10 feet in diameter, during the services. Its top was made of snow balls and lined with red flowers. The Chronicle closes with, “All join in wishing them a pleasant life’s journey.”

Exactly 50 years later, according to the Thursday, June 3, 1948 edition of The Chronicle-Express, Mr. and Mrs. Barton planned to celebrate their golden anniversary on Saturday, June 5 with an open house at their home in Pulteney from 3 to 6 p.m. On Jun 10, 1948, the Penn Yan Courier noted a large crowd gathered at the Bartons’ home for the celebration. Mrs. Barton wore her wedding gown, and a large wedding cake adored the table. “It was a day to be remembered by all,” the newspaper stated.

The Bartons remained married for almost another four years; the May 1, 1952 edition of The Chronicle-Express carries Mr. Barton’s obituary – calling him Edwin Caleb Barton in the text but referring to him as Caleb E. Barton in a photo caption. Born August 16, 1867 in Pulteney, he died at age 84 on April 29, 1952 at Hopkins Nursing Home in Guyanoga. A lifelong resident of Pulteney, Mr. Barton and his wife lived in their home since 1901. The Bartons apparently did not have children; aside from Mrs. Barton, Mr. Barton’s survivors are his sister and several nieces and nephews. While I could not find an obituary for Mrs. Barton in our newspaper collection, a photo of the Bartons’ gravestone and information about them on Find-A-Grave reveal Mrs. Barton was born in 1875 and died on June 15, 1962 at age 86 or 87.

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