LE ROY PENNYSAVER & NEWS - JULY 24, 2022 by Lynne Belluscio Most folks know the story of the Soldier’s monument on Trigon Park, but not a lot of people know about the cannons that flanked the monument for about twenty years. The monument was dedicated on “Decoration Day” on May 30, 1906. It commemorates the veterans of the Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Civil War. It seems that the community was interested in acknowledging its participation in the “War of the Rebellion” – as the Civil War was called, and someone made contact with government officials, and two large cannons from Boston Harbor were brought to Le Roy and mounted on limestone pillars on either side of the Soldier’s Monument. There may be other photographs of the cannons, but the best image appears on a postcard published by the Arcade Newsstand of LeRoy. It is pretty obvious that the two cannons are Rodman cannons. They are identified by their curved, smooth bottle shape and a flat end or “casabel.” Technically, a Rodman is “columbaid” which could fire both shot and shell. (Columbaids were large-caliber, smoothbore, muzzle-loading cannons and were used primarily for seacoast defense from the War of 1812 until the early years of the 20th century.) Rodman cannons were designed by a Union artilleryman, Lt. Thomas Jackson Rodman, and went into production at Fort Pitt in Pittsburgh in 1844-1845. They were built in 8-inch, 10-inch, 13-inch, 15-inch and 20-inch bore. The size of the bore determines the weight of the cannons. Unfortunately, the bore size of the cannons in LeRoy are not known. Traditionally, cannons were cast solid and then the cannon was bored out which unfortunately produced voids and tension cracks. Rodman devised a method of hollow casting and the cannon cooled from the inside to the outside which produced a much stronger gun that reduced the frequency of the cannon exploding. Rodman cannons were cast at the Fort Pitt Foundry in Pittsburgh; the Scott Foundry in Reading, Pennsylvania; the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, New York; and the Cyrus Alger & Co in Boston. So, since the LeRoy cannons came from Boston, there is a pretty good chance they were cast at the Cyrus Alger foundry. Early in the summer of 1925, the Art Club in LeRoy asked permission from the Village to beautify Trigon Park. Permission was granted by the Park Commission, although the plans of theArt Club were not made public. Unannounced, one day, village employees were seen digging two large holes on either side of the cannons and they were rolled into their “graves.” The January 12, 1926, issue of the Batavia Daily News reported that the Sons of theAmerican Revolution wrote a resolution against the burial of the cannons. Apparently, there had been efforts to sell the two cannons for junk, but the expense was prohibitive. And so, for twenty years the cannons laid silently in the ground until World War II. LeRoy needed to make its quota for the scrap drive. As former Town Historian Irene Walters wrote: “At a Village meeting on May 12, 1942, Town Supervisor John E. Johnson appeared before the board with a request that the Village take action in digging up the two old cannons buried in Trigon Park so that the iron could be used to add to the salvage efforts of the county in the war effort. Consequently, the digging up of the cannons was authorized provided that the Town of LeRoy provide the necessary hoisting of same from the ground into trucks.” That posed quite a problem but eventually a thirty-four-ton shovel from De Witt Trucking Co. of Pavilion lifted the cannons out of their graves and off they went to Buffalo. An article in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle noted “ Once upon A Time - - The World Was At Peace – citizens of LeRoy decided to rid their village of an unpleasant and unattractive reminder of Civil War days by removing the two cannons that flanked the Soldiers Memorial located at front of the LeRoy High School... The attached photo-record of the recovery operations shows a patriotic effort that paid its own labor cost.” Well, that’s not quite the end of the story. There is disagreement as to the size of the cannons -- how many pounds, or how many tons. And that depends on the size of the cannons and since the cannons were melted down, there’s no way of knowing how big they really were or how much they really weighed. Anybody who wants to “weigh” in on this, feel free. The Buried Cannons
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