LeRoy Pennysaver & News

LE ROY PENNYSAVER & NEWS - MARCH 21, 2021 by Lynne Belluscio I am preparing materials to go to school, that will make it possible for the fourth grade students and their teachers to relive a day in a one room school. I have bought more copies of the McGuffey’s Third Eclectic Readers, and have had twenty copies of two early LeRoy maps made. The 1933 map of the Town includes all the school districts, before the schools were centralized and the location of each school house. And using the map, the students are asked the following questions: There are seven towns that border the town of LeRoy. One is Stafford. What are the other six towns? There are two counties that border the town of LeRoy. One is Livingston County. What is the other county? (Without the map in front of you, can you answer the questions?) The other map is the 1904 map of the Village of LeRoy. The students are asked to find the corner of Wolcott Street and East Main Street – where the school is located now, and to see what university owned the property in 1904. And no, it’s not Ingham University, which was located on the corner from 1837 until it closed in 1894. Much to everyone’s surprise, in 1904, the property was owned by Yale University. The mortgage of the Ingham property was held by Mr. Lampson. When Ingham defaulted on their payments, Lampson called in the mortgage. Although there were attempts by the alumnae to pay off the debt, that never happened. When Lampson died, he directed much of his property to be given to Yale University, so before the site was purchased for the new Union Free School, it indeed was owned by Yale. (To be honest, the kids aren’t too amazed at that, but the teachers are.) The map shows the footprint of the first Ingham building and the attached lecture hall. There is the brick (in pink) dormitory, which had been built in the late 1880s. It had a very modern gymnasium on the top floor. Just south of the dormitory is a small building, known as the Ingham Cottage. It was the home of the Ingham family when they lived in LeRoy. And then there was the stone (grey) Staunton Art Conservatory. When the property was readied for the new Union Free School building, it was necessary to exhume the bodies of the Ingham family who were buried in a small cemetery. The bodies were moved to Machpelah Cemetery, and a rather gruesome description of that was published in the LeRoy Gazette. The first buildings razed were the old lecture hall and early dormitory. Then the brick dormitory was torn down and all the bricks were hauled to the west end of the Main Street bridge, and were used to raise the elevation of the new cement bridge. The entrances to the Eagle, and the building next to the creek (now Farmer’s Creekside Inn), were raised up several feet. The Ingham Cottage was cut in half, and the two pieces were moved to 19 and 27 Lincoln Avenue, where they are still today. The beautiful Staunton Conservatory remained in place for several years. Janet Frost remembered attending kindergarten in the building. There was hope that it could be renovated and used as a library. In fact, Ernest Woodward, hoped that the Staunton Conservatory could be used for the new Woodward Memorial Library, but that didn’t happen. Instead, the Conservatory was taken apart, stone by stone, and reassembled into the Library. The last change made on the corner, was to eliminate the “point” on Trigon Park. Unlike many early settlements, LeRoy did not have a village square. It had a village triangle. Four streets converged at the east end of the bridge – East Main Street, Wolcott Street, Church Street and Trigon Park. This 1904 map, also helped to solve another mystery. Recently, I had a phone call asking about South Avenue. I had never heard of South Avenue, but I was told that it runs between South Street and East Avenue and that there are houses on South Avenue. Sure enough, on the 1904 map, there are three houses, owned by Mrs. Gardener, W. Newton and Thomas Ford. In 1904, the land on the north side of South Avenue belonged to Orator Woodward, the owner of Jell-O. After his death in 1906, the property was owned by his wife Cora, but soon their son, Ernest inherited the property and he tore down his father’s house, Hill Bar, and built his mansion, Poplar Lane. He had a bridle path and a riding park and it is believed that he had the three houses torn down, or moved. South Avenue had never been paved, and it became overgrown and it just disappeared and people forgot about it. Interestingly enough, South Avenue appears on a much earlier map of the Village - - even before the Woodwards owned the property adjacent to it, so until further research can be done, it is unclear when it was established. More questions that the students have to answer, using the maps, is the story of the railroads. On the 1904 map, they have to locate the railroad bridges over the Oatka Creek (three), and then count the number of tracks that crossed Lake Street (seven). And finally, find the B.R.& P railroad station, (that we know as the D&R Depot), and discover what B.R.& P stand for. There’s a lot of history that we all can learn from these maps. Maps