#sewardmcdonald

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Penn Yan screams for ice cream

By Jonathan Monfiletto

Let me tell you, I don’t really come up with the ideas for the articles that appear on this blog. Instead, they just sort of appear to me.

OK, please allow me to clarify that a little bit. Of course, I come up with the ideas for the articles that appear on this blog – I choose a topic, I dig into the research through subject or family files and archival collections and other resources, I decide on an angle for the article, and then I write the article. However, often the original idea for the topic I choose appears to me through some sort of happenstance or serendipity.

Such is the case with the subject of this article – Seward’s Candy Shop, which was located at 19 Main St. in Penn Yan, in the Odd Fellows building, where Milly’s Pantry is now located, and owned and operated by a man named Seward McDonald. While scheduling photos to post on our Facebook page, I noticed July 17 was National Ice Cream Day. After looking for a photo of people eating ice cream, I came across in our archival collections an ice cream menu that simply said “Seward’s” on the front and contained the signatures of several people with the surnames of Emerson and Voorhees on the back, with the menu and prices in the middle.

I had never heard of Seward’s and didn’t know anything about it, so I turned to two of our volunteers – sisters – whose maiden name is Emerson and whose mother’s maiden name is Voorhees. They didn’t remember Seward’s either, but they distinctly recalled each of the family members – their parents, both sets of grandparents, uncles and aunts – who had signed their names on the menu for some reason. They dated the menu to between 1934 and 1938 based upon when their parents married and when a relative died, and they surmised family members may have been in the area to celebrate their parents’ wedding.

I dug into our collection of digitized newspapers to find out about Seward’s, whose full name, owner’s name, and location I soon learned. I also reached into our family files to learn more about Seward McDonald, starting with his 50 years as a merchant in Penn Yan by the time of his death at age 70 on January 30, 1941. According to his obituary, Mr. McDonald opened Seward’s Candy Shop on June 14, 1913 and he started out his business career 20 years before that as a clerk in the Lown Dry Goods store. He bought the local confectionary store from a Mr. Smith and kept it in the same location – the Odd Fellows Temple building – throughout his tenure as its owner.

Our newspaper collection, naturally for a local business, contains numerous ads soliciting the goods of Seward’s Candy Shop, and it seems the business never considered it a bad time to have some candy or some ice cream. Seward’s, according to its advertisements, prided itself on selling Whitman’s, Schrafft’s, and Gobelin’s candies and serving Dairylea ice cream. The advertisements remind the viewer to purchase candy as gifts for Easter or Mother’s Day and to buy ice cream for one’s Halloween party or Thanksgiving dinner. In addition to serving as an ice cream parlor, the shop sold ice cream bricks – the equivalent to a carton today. In a series of comical, perhaps intentionally so, ads, the shop encouraged parents to make their children happier and healthier by putting candy in their lunch for school and adults to lose weight or gain energy by eating candy.

On January 28, 1932, it was announced in The Chronicle-Express that Seward’s Candy Shop would move to the other side of the Odd Fellows building, into a space being vacated by the Wilkins and Ellis sporting goods store that was in bankruptcy at the time. The Market Basket grocery store would expand into the larger space then occupied by Seward’s. Looking at the building now, Seward’s had been located in the space currently occupied by Milly’s Pantry market and merely moved across the hallway to where The Pinwheel Café is now. The musical chairs of relocation was expected to happen in three months, after renovation work was done. It seems the change took longer than expected, however, as The Chronicle-Express announced on July 7, 1932 the remodeled stores were now open to the public.

Mr. McDonald and his wife, Anna, lived at 175 Main St. in the village, the house right next door to St. Mark’s Episcopal Church – in fact, the couple (apparently, they had no children, as neither of their obituaries mentions any children as survivors) were active congregants of St. Mark’s. Seward’s Candy Shop was also an active supporter of the church and community, hosting food sales and other events to support the church and other causes. McDonald was also an active member of the downtown business community; one advertisement showed a person could earn free admission to the Elmwood Theatre by patronizing, among several other businesses, Seward’s Candy Shop.

During the Great Depression, an advertisement showed Seward’s standing with its fellow businesses in support of the National Recovery Act to relieve unemployment and stimulate the local economy and encourage the community to do the same. Advertisements during World War II showed Seward’s and fellow businesses joining together to encourage people in the community to purchase war bonds to support the war effort.

When McDonald died, Bernard Hansen – who had worked for McDonald as a candy maker – took over the business and kept the name. On a related side note, in the days when newspaper obituaries described a person’s cause of death more vividly and morbidly than in modern times, McDonald is described as having “dropped dead in his confectionary store at 2:30 p.m. Thursday, January 30,” shortly after returning to the store from having lunch at home.

I imagine McDonald walked the few blocks from 175 Main St. to 19 Main St. and back every day; his obituary states he “faithfully attended his business without vacations and despite warnings of limited health.” His strength “seemed as usual” that day, however, and his death “at work where he enjoyed many fine friendships was as he had wished.”

On August 11, 1955, a front-page item in The Chronicle-Express announced Hansen had sold the Seward’s Candy Shop business to Hugh W. Bentley Jr. Even though the article states Bentley “contemplates no drastic changes in the popular store until he has fully familiarized himself with its operation,” this is the last trace of Seward’s Candy Shop I have been able to find so far in our newspaper collection. A March 1956 ad listing Seward’s Candy Shop indicates Bentley kept the name, at least for a time, though one of the next hits is a September 1963 notice of a rummage sale at the “old Seward Candy Shop,” indicating perhaps the store had closed altogether.