LeRoy Pennysaver & News

LE ROY PENNYSAVER & NEWS - NOVEMBER 10, 2019 by Lynne Belluscio We all drive past this building and probably don’t pay much attention to it, but this past summer I received a request from Richard Lind in New Mexico who wanted to know more about the Reamer & Green mill. He wanted to write an article about the building that has been replicated by the Al- toona Model Works (for mod- el railroads) in Martinsburg, Pennsylvania. I also discovered that they had replicated a build- ing in Elba. The models come in three different scales and I think somewhere in our col- lection, in some box, we have one of these models. Mr. Lind wanted to know if the struc- ture was a roller mill that made flour at one time and he wanted to know the name of the busi- ness. He thought that because of its unique design that it was once a water-powered flour mill that had been “moved out of the floodplain of Oatka Creek, and to which wood silos and an up- per elevator structure were add- ed.” He also noted that there was no footprint of the building on the 1897 Sanborn fire insur- ance map. I was pretty sure it wasn’t a flour mill and hadn’t been moved from the creek. Some information was readily avail- able by looking closely at the photograph in the 1940 Book. According to the caption, this was the Le Roy Seed Growers Inc. located at 75 Lake Street established in 1907. It dealt with dried beans, wheat, cab- bage, potatoes, and hay which were “prepared for markets east of the Mississippi, from Maine to Key West. O. C. Curtis, Pres- ident.” The newspaper clipping file provided Mr. Curtis’ obituary. Olin C. Curtis died on April 12, 1955. He was born in Hilton on September 25, 1873 and he moved to LeRoy with his wife Lovinia Cosman in 1907. He was a trustee of the Methodist Church, a member of the Oat- ka Hose Company and the Le- Roy Business Council. It’s not known when he sold the busi- ness, but the building eventually became part of the Reamer farm which was located on Nilesville road. After posting a question and photograph on LeRoy Then and Now, several people shared stories of the mill. Rose Scott said that her mother worked there in the late 40s and early 50s. “I had to bring her lunch once and I was scared to death.” Steve Reamer said that his uncle John Green, ran the mill. Steve worked for his uncle and they processed kidney beans, black beans, Navy beans from their farm and for other farmers in the area. His uncle died in the 1960s and no one had much in- terest in continuing the business after that. Steve wrote: “I remember learning how to put the burlap bags under the chute that sat on the scale. We would pull the stitcher over and sew up the bag. (The bags were filled 50 lbs or 100 lbs.) We would stack them on a two- wheel dolly. I wasn’t very big at the time so pushing the dolly was really hard. Pushing 500 lbs. up that ramp to the very front was pretty hard for me. A semi would back up to the building and we had to use a plank into the back of the truck since there wasn’t a dock plate like most factories had. We would stack five high (in the truck) except over the wheels where there would be 7 high.” “Inside the building was very dry and dusty. There was very little moving air and by the end of the day I was parched. Once in a while my uncle or grandfather would go to Bar- bers or Dargan’s and bring back a soda. Mrs. Palone from the greenhouse (where Bubba’s Landscaping is now) would sometimes come over with water. It was noisy, dirty but I worked hard, learned a lot and even had fun at times with my uncle. My uncle was really a nice guy and he never went any- where without his golf clubs in his truck.” I wrote to Mr. Lind and ex- plained that this was not a flour mill, but a grain mill. Farmers would bring their produce to the mill and unload it. The mill could run the beans or wheat through a machine that would remove the chaff and dirt. When the mill was first built, farmers could bring other commod- ities – potatoes and cabbage and they would be packed for shipment on the railroad. Later, shipments were made by truck. When I went over to take some photos I noticed a lot of white Navy beans on the ground that had fallen through a hole in the wall. This area of LeRoy near the railroad tracks on Lake Road was certainly a hub of activity in the late 1800s and early 1900s. North of the Curtis building was the New York Central station. Across the street was the huge limestone cold storage building where apples were stored in bar- rels and then shipped by rail to New York and Chicago. Next to the Curtis Mill (south of the mill today) was the huge Kee- ney Bean plant (which burned in March 1958). South of the Keeney building was a transfer building (Mooney’s). Next was the Buffalo, Pittsburg and Roch- ester station. ( D&R restaurant) And where Bob Adam’s Auto is now was the LeRoy Roller Mill which ground wheat into flour. The Erie Railroad station was across the street. West of the mills, behind the BP&R Railroad station was the LeRoy Plow works, and fur- ther west was the LeRoy Salt Company. All of these mills and factories depended on the three railroads – the NY Central, the Erie and the BP&R - that con- verged and crossed Lake Street and Oatka Creek. Reamer & Green Mill