Street Wise in Fredonia
(The history of Fredonia’s earliest streets, which
were named after pioneers such as Barker,
Risley, Cushing, Berry, Seymour, Hart, Davis, Forbes, Newton, Glisan, Gillis,
Norton, Dunn, Howard, and Leverett)
By Douglas Shepard / Barker Museum Newsletter (Vol. 3,
No. 1, 2005)
In the 14 May 1959 issue of The Fredonia Censor, Miss Elizabeth Crocker discussed the
naming of Mechanic Street and touched on the later controversy over its
renaming, as well as that of Center Street. (The column was reprinted in Vol. I
of her pamphlet series, also titled Yesterdays, on pp. 5-6. There were
minor typographical changes in the later version as well as two spelling
changes. Her original “impliments” was corrected to “implements,” and “latter”
was changed, in error, to “later.” This suggests that anyone consulting one of
her columns would want to check both versions. In this case, the substance of
the original stayed the same.)
Although she does touch on
others in some of her columns, this was the only one devoted to one particular
street, although there are many interesting aspects to the stories of other
early streets in the Village.
For the 21 years before the
Village was incorporated, the location surveying and upkeep of all roads,
paths, lanes and alleys were done by the Town of Pomfret. Unfortunately, in the
Town records only the official designation was used and that was always a brief
description of where a road started, or ended, or what it passed by, not its
name as it was commonly used at the time.
A good example is the survey
done by Samuel Berry on 16 April 1822 of a road across or through
private property: “Survey of a private Road from the village of Fredonia on the
East side of the Creek down the same to a little below the House of Hezekiah Turner on the west side of the
creek. This Road…[runs] to the Eastwardly end of the Bridge that crosseth the
Creek near Mr. H. Turners thence…to
the public Road on the Westwardly side of the Creek.” The road’s measurements
begin “25 links North East of the North East corner of Capt. C. Burritt’s village lot.”
That northeast corner was the
intersection of the center line of Main Street with the new street being laid
out. The “Bridge that crosseth the Creek” near Mr. Turner’s is what we now call the Risley Street bridge. The “public Road on the Westwardly side of
the Creek: is today’s Chestnut Street. The survey itself was of the Mechanic
Street Miss Crocker wrote about:
today’s Forest Place.
It is impossible to imagine
that anyone intending to walk or ride along such a road used the cumbersome
surveyor’s formula of “the road that runs from….” Surely the locals had some
kind of shorthand, such as the Turner
Road for Chestnut Street and, perhaps, Burritt’s
Road or the Mechanic Road.
There are some small bits of
evidence to that effect. In an advertisement of 2 July 1827, J. Crane, Esq. of
Fredonia and S. Russell, Esq. of
Buffalo offered for sale a two-story house “corner of Cushing and Main Streets.” That is, East Main Street.. and Eagle Street
(where Zattu Cushing lived). Obviously, then, the surveyor might call it
“the road from Buffalo to Erie,” but the locals just said “the Main Street.” We
can imagine this was true of most if not all of the other streets in the
Village which finally were given their official names once the Village was
incorporated, and that was on 18 September
1830.
There were eight streets all
within the new Village’s limits, which were very different from today’s. The
Village bounds were roughly rectangular, with the east end about at Newton Street,
the west end near Chestnut Street, with Main Street center line. The long sides
of the “rectangle: were each 80 rods or 20 chains (for the mathematically
challenged, 1320 feet) from the Main Street center line. That means the
Village’s northern limit on Temple Street, was just past Terrace Street, the
southern limit on Water Street just
past the Liberty Street intersection.
Within those confined bounds,
the eight streets were: Main, Hamlet, Mechanic, Temple, Eagle, Water, Factory
and Lake.
We have seen that “Main” had
been in use for some years. “Hamlet” referred to the Cascade Hamlet on West
Main Street. The road had been roughly cut through by Joseph Skinner to give easy access for “the citizens of Bull’s Mills [Laona] to get to the mechanics
of the great center, the Hamlet.”
Therefore it would seem it made sense for the street to be named according to
the location it was designed to reach. However, the Cascade Hamlet was, by
September 1830, abandoned. It is
more likely that the road had been called “the Hamlet Road” for so long, the
name was maintained simply because of its familiarity.
“Mechanic,” the name given to
the street we call Forest Place, had been its nickname, according to an account
of its early history by Franklin Burritt
in the Fredonia Censor of 12 April 1899. In fact it is parts of Burritt’s account that Miss Crocker repeated in her 1959 column on the subject. Burritt explained that the Trustees
decided to make the nickname official, first, because there was a large foundry
and an accompanying blacksmith shop, both of which employed many “artisans and
craftsmen,” that is, mechanics. The second reason was that “two thirds of the
denizens of the street were mechanics.” He then listed a sampling of the names:
Harts, A. Barnaby, T.G. Abell, Wm. Tappan, Cyrus Grannis, P. Crosby,
W. Stevens and Jesse [i.e Joseph] Starr.
When Miss Crocker repeated Burritt’s
account she reversed the order, giving the impression that the primary reason
for the street’s name was the people who lived there in 1830. Probably her strong interest in local individuals and their
family histories caused her to see it that way, but Burritt’s sequence was the right one. For one thing, some of the
mechanics he lists as living on the street were not there in 1830, when the name was agreed on. For
example, Barnaby had died in 1829, Sennett didn’t join the foundry operation until late in 1831, and Starr only arrived in Fredonia
in 1840, so the workers at the
foundry must be given the credit for making the Mechanic Street nickname
official.
The next name to be
considered is “Temple.” This could have referred to a family of that name
living on the road at the time, or to a religious building. There is only a
single record of such a personal name, a “Mr.
Temple” who was paid $50 for supplying a yoke of oxen in the building of
the Academy in October 1821.
However, it’s clear “Temple” meant “church,” although it not clear why the
latter name wasn’t chosen. There is good evidence that, after the Baptist
Church building was erected in 1823,
the nickname, as Burritt called it,
was, in fact, “Chapel Street.” An advertisement of May 1841 for D.D. Franklin’s Cabinet
and Chair Shop: -- the ad was still running in December 1843 – describes the shop as on Chapel Street. It seems odd that
the most grandiose of the three possibilities was chosen, but at least it is
clear what the street name referred to.
The reason for the next name
is not so clear. What had been the Cushing
Road for a long time -- It was
referred to that way as late as the 24 September 1828 issue if the Censor --
suddenly became Eagle “Street.”
One reason for not continuing
with “Cushing” is that most of
Fredonia’s pioneers, such as Hezekiah
Barker, Zattu Cushing and Elijah Risley, were still alive. There
were not enough streets to honor all, so the decision was probably made to
avoid trouble by honoring none – for the time being. But why “Eagle”? Did it
refer, patriotically, to the American Eagle? If patriotism was the motivation,
Washington, Liberty, Union or Columbus seem to be more obvious choices. Perhaps
someone saw – or shot – a particularly fine eagle in the vicinity. We may never
know, but it has been Eagle Street ever since 1830.
The next one, “Water Street,”
is straightforward. This was a little stub of a street giving easy access to
one bank of Canadaway Creek (The Water Street bridge was not built until 1833.) As a convenient watering place
for horses and oxen, it probably was called Water Street from the beginning.
Near Water Street was the
next one, today’s Norton Place, then
called “Factory Street.” This was a very early access road, leading from the Cushing Road (Eagle Street) to a mill
on the bank of Canadaway Creek. It was probably not named Mill Street because,
in 1830, the mill was on West Main
Street at the bridge. (In fact, although “Factory Street” was still its
official name according to the Village Trustees’ Minutes of 18 June 1849, by the time the 1851 map of
Fredonia appeared, it had indeed become Mill Street, which it remained until 1919.) The only real oddity about
Factory Street has to do with the language, not the street. “Factory” is a
short form of “Manufactory,” a word formed from Latin meaning hand-made. Why
that was used for a building containing machinery is probably to be explained
only by those who understand the difference between flammable and inflammable,
or ravel and unravel.
We have now arrived at the
last of our 1830 Village streets, Lake
Street. That referred to the few feet of today’s Central Avenue then lying
within the Village bounds. Technically the name should have gone to either
Chestnut Street (but in 1830 outside
the Village limits) or Temple Street, since those had always been main roads to
Lake Erie. What we call Central Avenue had been surveyed in 1808 from Dunkirk Harbor, at the time
known as Strong’s Bay, but it was not used as a through road until the 1850s because parts of it were
virtually impassable. Apparently without any formal action, it was being called
Dunkirk Street by 1849 and by 1863. When Dunkirk was agitating to
name its street “Central Avenue,” the Censor
editorialized that Fredonia should do the same. There is no record of when the
change was made official, but the Censor
used “Central Avenue,” in an article of 14 October 1865 as though it were now the correct name. The Trustees must
have agreed because a Village survey of 28 May 1866 of Newton Street, and all later references, from that time to
this, as the old tales say, call it Central Avenue as well.
Of course, that is not the
end of the story. The Village bounds were increased twice more, and streets
were altered, added and had their names changed, sometimes in odd wondrous ways.
Spinning off of Miss Crocker’s
article entitled “Mechanic St. Named by
the Trustees” originally published in the Censor and republished in her Yesterdays,
our own historical research has concluded those eight streets were existent in
Fredonia in 1830, but many more were
soon on the way.
We should understand that
these eight streets were not created by the Village but, in a sense, inherited.
Until the Village was incorporated, all the thoroughfares were Town of Pomfret
roads, and each one was designed to lead from one fixed point to another. The
act of incorporation defined the outline of the new Village and the parts of
the roads within those new boundaries became our streets. It was not until two
years later that the first street created just for the Village appeared.
Canadaway Street, laid out on November 15,
1832.
The most significant fact
about the first street to be created by the Village was that it led nowhere;
there was as yet no Water Street bridge. Isaac
Saxton and Alanson Buckingham
had petitioned the Trustees to lay out the street through their property,
solely so that they could sell off building lots to prospective home owners. A
notable “first” in the history of the Village, but a practice that was to
become the norm.
Three years later on May 18, 1835 the next street was recorded as Barker Street. Since Hezekiah Barker had died on July 5, 1834, it would seem this was the first
opportunity to honor one of Fredonia’s pioneers who was safely departed, unless
it was named for Leverett Barker?
It is worth pointing out here
that there is almost no record of the deliberations that must have gone into
choosing each street’s name. Except for an extended article such as the one by Burritt or chance remarks in other
sources, we have no way of being sure what the namers had in mind. We are
forced to guess as with Barker Street.
On the same date as Barker Street, two
others were also added to the list, Nassau and Green. Green for a local family?
For local trees? Unfortunately, we don’t know.
For Nassau Street we are told
the source. In the April 12, 1899
article in the Censor in which Franklin Burritt objected to changing
Mechanic Street to Forest Place, he mentioned in passing, that Nassau Street
“had been suggested by the Risleys
in honor of a great historical personage and a street in New York City.” Nassau
Street in lower Manhattan was named in honor of Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange (1567-1625) who first freed the Netherlands from Spanish rule.
However that does not explain why either a short New York City street or a
Dutch prince was something a short Fredonia street should honor. Our Nassau
Street only ran as far as Barker Street.
For that matter, why the English chose to change Pye-Woman Lane, its name at
least until 1696, to honor a Dutch
prince is equally mysterious. Nevertheless, they did and the Risleys did. Where Nassau Street was to
run had been an alleyway from Main Street giving access to the rear of a large,
wooden hotel – in 1835 it was Abell’s hotel – where the trash bins,
outhouses and horse stables were located. No wonder when Nassau Street was
opened, the local wags referred to it as Nasty Street. Unfortunately, there
were other unpleasant aspects to the street yet to come, but that we will get
to soon enough.
In May 1837, the Village of Fredonia enlarged its bounds. The new
configuration was a square 1 ½ mile on each side with its center at the west
side of Barker Common. That meant
the eastern bounds along Main Street moved from today’s Newton Street out to Clinton
Street and the north bounds from
Terrace Street to today’s Cottage Street. What that meant was more roads within
the Village jurisdiction. So by March
1839, the Board of Trustees were
ready to name the roads and paths it had recently acquired: Ridge (later Seymour), Chautauque, Chesnut (it was
frequently spelled that way), Garden (the street from Mechanic to Temple, i.e.,
Risley), and Berry (where Samuel Berry’s
home stood).
In 1846 Ridge Street changed to Seymour
and in 1847 the Nassau Street
troubles began. The three Risley
brothers had built their packet seed business into the largest enterprise in
Fredonia at the time. To put things into perspective, in 1847 when each field worker in the Risley concern earned $6.00 a month, property taxes ranged from
$1.00 to $4.00 and up to $10.00 for those with homes and businesses. Charles Burritt the druggist, Franklin’s father, paid a respectable
$11.87 that year, and Henry Frisbee,
owner of the Censor $11.87. The Risleys paid a total if $71.01! Their
closest competitor was Leverett Barker for whose brick home (the Barker
Historical Museum) and tannery he paid $53.57. Clearly, the Risleys were very important. Another
sign of their standing in the community was having the architect John Jones design and build their three
Greek Revival mansions at the
northern edge of their seed gardens.
The three were spaced out
along Garden (now Risley Street); Elijah, Jr.’s near the Creek, William’s in the middle and Levi’s near Temple Street. It was William Risley who took the next step.
On April 7, 1847, he presented an
“Application” to the Village Trustees
proposing that Nassau Street be “extended across Barker Street to Garden Street.”
A two-man committee was appointed to go with a surveyor to look into the
matter. The committee consisted of Suel
H. Dickinson and Thomas Warren. Warren had married a Risley sister, Philena, in 1810 and, in
the 1840s, with a small seed company
of his own, had used the Risley Seed
Co. wagons to distribute his seeds country-wide. We could not call him entirely
disinterested, so it is not surprising that the committee returned at 7 PM that
same day with a report in favor of extending Nassau Street according to a
survey already completed.
The survey itself is a very
peculiar document. The center line of the proposed street began at Main Street
and ran northwest 1,160 feet to today’s Terrace Street. There it stopped
abruptly, made a right angle turn some 60 feet, left 97 feet, left again 60
feet, and then northwest on its original course some 1,115 feet to Garden Street.
The odd jog was to avoid running Nassau Street extension through a building
that happened to be standing in the way, a building owned by the other local
power, General Leverett Barker. So
the evening meeting concluded with instructions to the Clerk to “draw [up] a
notice & serve [it] on L. Barker tomorrow that the street is laid
according to the same [survey].”
In May 1847 Barker took his case to the Court of Common Pleas, claiming
that the Nassau Street extension crossed his land, which had been improved and
cultivated. The court decided in favor for Barker
and declared the Trustees’ action reversed and annulled. (At the same time, Barker had his own street, Terrace Street
surveyed, although it was not officially opened until August 1851.)
The Trustees – Thomas Warren was the one to make the
motion – agreed that no work was to be done on the stretch of road between
“Garden Street & the South line of Gen.
Barker’s Land” and that nothing was
to be paid to William Risley for
work on that section. Risley, for
his part, appealed the decision, lost his appeal and then requested and was
granted permission by the Board “to bring a
Writ of Certiorari in the name of the Corporation” provided he execute a
bond of $500 “to save and keep harmless the said President [Mayor] &
Trustees & their successors in office from all costs and expenses in the
prosecution and determination of said suit.” The Writ of Certiorari was to ask
a superior court to review the lower court’s decision. The Trustees had said
“you’re on your own” and Risley had
answered “I haven’t given up yet.”
There is no further record in
the Trustees’ Minutes of the outcome of all this, except that Nassau Street did
go through. Perhaps the issue became moot when Gen. Barker died on May 11,
1848. The next mention of the street, on April 5, 1851, is that its name was to be changed to Center Street.
That too raised a fuss,
according to Franklin Burritt.
I remember distinctly the clamor that was raised over
the changing of the name….It was a question for some time whether the name, Center, should stick or that of Nassau be restored….The questions were
pertinently asked. Why Center Street?
Center of what?
Of course, the answer, as Burritt knew perfectly well, was the
center of William Risley’s Greek
revival mansion standing midway between those of his two brothers. No longer
would one have to go down Mechanic or Temple streets and then in on Garden.
There was now a single, grand avenue going directly from Main Street to the
heart of the Risley enclave.
There is another set of
Village streets that came about through a lawsuit. Hezekiah Barker’s son Charles died intestate on July 7, 1840. The estate was probate, but a
dispute between some of the heirs caused the whole matter to end up in the
courts. Ultimately, William Barker
brought suit against his brother, Samuel
Barker, “and others.” The outcome was that three Commissioners in Partition
were appointed to settle the matter. They determined that Charles Barker’s property, a large rectangular parcel on the east
side of Central Avenue with a kind of blunt arrow shape at the south end,
should be surveyed into building lots and the lots auctioned off with the
proceeds divided among the heirs. The formal survey was dated October 18, 1852. It had taken twelve years to
settle the matter.
The lots along Central Avenue
were immediately accessible, but to reach into the rest of the land required
laying out some new streets. Therefore, Day
Street was to run from today’s Church Street northwest to Dunkirk Street
(Central Ave.), while Free Street (Lambert
Avenue) was laid from Temple northeast
to a corner, then north parallel to Central Avenue. Those two streets gave
access to the lots on the south and east. To do the same for interior lots,
another street was laid across the middle of the land dividing it roughly into
two halves, It was called Division Street, today’s Curtis Place.
Day, Division
and Free were officially admitted as public streets in November 1852. The fact that Day Street began
at Church Street calls for some explanation. The 1851 map of Fredonia shows Barker
Common with Day Street running
from East Main Street to Church, and Church Street from Day almost to Center Street. However both are outlined with dotted
lines meaning they were proposed streets, not yet officially accepted by the
Village, because the Village did not own the land. On April 18, 1825 Hezekiah Barker had finally
deeded the Common he had long promised to the Town of Pomfret. In November 1852, it still belonged to the Town, which
meant that Village residents, when walking along the paths they called Day Street and Church Street, were
legally walking on the edges of the Town Common. For the same reason the
Village’s Day Street as laid out in 1852 could only begin at the edge of
the Common and run down to Central Avenue.
It was not until some twenty
years later that a transfer was made. On May 6, 1878 M.M. Fenner Supervisor
of the Town of Pomfret appeared before the Board and stated that he did not
feel authorized to expend the sum usually ordered by the Board of Trustees for Care and Keeping of the Parks [the
two halves of the Common]. He therefore offered in behalf of the Town of
Pomfret to place the custody of the Parks in the hands of the Board of Trustees – until the Voters of said
Town at the next annual meeting shall have an opportunity to take action. The
offer was accepted, and on March 17,
1879. The following communication was ordered on file and the proposition
accepted.
Fredonia N.Y. March 17, 1879
To the President and Board of Trustees of the Village
of Fredonia.
Gentlemen:
The following is a correct copy of a resolution
adopted by the electors of the Town of Pomfret at noon of Tuesday February 18,
1879 in town Meeting assembled.
Resolved – That the Public Parks belonging to the Town
of Pomfret but located in the Village of Fredonia be placed in the custody of
the President and Board of Trustees of said
village.
I have the honor as present custodian of the public
property of the town, to tender you the custody of the public parks, in
accordance with this Resolution.
Respectfully yours
Milton M. Fenner
That is when Fredonia’s Day Street was finally allowed to begin
at Main Street.
Church Street had a similar
history that adds to our understanding of how Fredonia’s streets developed. Its
presence on the 1851 map makes clear
that there was de facto, a street
named “Church” long before it became official. The first Baptist meeting house
on the corner of Temple and Church streets was dedicated on December 4, 1823. Earlier that year the
Presbyterians had purchased the second floor of the Academy building on the
opposite corner of Temple Street. There can be no doubt where the “Church”
street name came from. The name for Free Street appears first in the survey of Charles Barker’s estate in 1852
and must be related to the furious debates then raging over the Fugitive Slave Act and all the other free vs. slave states issues. The same is
probably true for Liberty and Union streets, which appear, like Church and Day,
within dotted lines, as proposed streets on the 1851 map.
It seems odd that in a
self-consciously patriotic place as Fredonia there are so few “patriotic”
street names other than Washington Avenue
(1891). There was a Ludivici Street
established in February 1904. Some
speculate that this was the early Link Street, given the name Link in 1914, and others might have proof of a
different story. Also, there was Pulaski Street in 1947. Both apparently honoring foreigners of note, but otherwise no
Adams, Jefferson, Franklin or even Lincoln.
By far the most frequently
used source has been personal names, either to honor those who were gone or
commemorate the owners through whose lands the streets were laid. We have
already noted Berry, Seymour, Hart (for a while, then Davis,
then Hart again) Barker, Leverett, Day and Lambert. To these we could add Risley, Newton, Forbes, Glisan (the original name of the Newton Street leg at East Main Street),
Gillis, Clinton (originally Ball Street),
Cushing, Norton, Dunn, Howard, and many more.
There is one other class of
streets we should touch on before we close. That is Fredonia streets of record
that never existed. The compilers of certain kinds of reference books, for
example biographical directories such as Who’s Who or city directories, work
very hard gathering and verifying the accuracy of their listings. An
unscrupulous competitor could easily copy the whole thing – claiming to have
done the research himself – or abstract a group such as Doctors and Dentists of
Western New York to make a separate publication and an easy profit. To fight
this kind of piracy, compilers build in fake biographies and, more important for
us, fake streets.
Fredonia residents in 1972 were probably quite surprised to
find their Village streets included Dresden Avenue, which ran from Nellie Lane
south to Pasture Street. Or that Griffin Way reached from La Bonte Avenue to
McCormick Lane, and Pepper Road went from Nellie Lane, at least according to Manning’s Dunkirk and Fredonia Directory. By
the time of the 1979 Directory,
Nellie ran from Dresden to Hill Road, while Hill Road didn’t seem to run
anywhere. Griffin Way survived into 1980
as did Nellie, Pepper and Emily. In addition, Sand Hill Drive was added,
running from “Gansett easterly” although, according to this listing, Gansett
didn’t run anywhere either.
There are a multitude of ways
we can look at our Village streets, past, present and non-existent, but as we
have seen, the one consistent theme that links them all is that each has a
story to tell.
