lock 52 historical society 2016 annual appeal newsletter

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Lock 52 ChronicleThe Newsletter of the Lock 52 Historical Society

73 Pine Street, Port Byron, NY

Issue 2 Spring 2016

The objective of this Society shall be to create an awareness of, and preserve the history of the village of Port Byron and the town of Mentz

Our Annual Appeal To YouOr

Why Is There a Historical Society and Why Should I Support It?

Does it seem to you that a historical society seems old and out of place in a world of instant access? People no longer need to

write a letter and mail it to the Historian, Port Byron, NY to find answers to their genealogical or history questions. It s all

right there at your finger tips. So why do we even need a organization devoted to preserving the past? And why should I help

support such an organization?

I will admit that I enjoy the ease of using Old Fulton Postcards to search out history. In years gone by, I would spend hours

searching papers page by page. And I have a Ancestry.com account which has helped me fill in branches of the family tree and

make contacts with distant cousins. But as nice as these sites are, they are not able to help the researcher make the connec-

tions between their family and larger events that might have impacted why they lived the way they lived. At some point, every

researcher wants to visit the family home, and no Internet site can take you by the hand to help you make those historical con-nections. Thats what we can do. We help add context to your family story.

And no Internet site will collect the old family photos, the account books from businesses long gone, home movies, or three

dimensional artifacts. One of the arguments I hear is not to worry because private collectors will save all this history. I collect

cast iron frying pans and Coleman lanterns, but no one will ever see them unless I invite them to my house. The Society collects

all this stuff and we share it. There is something about being able to touch a artifact that your great grandparents may have

touched. I like to say we act as the communitys attic. And we can use these objects to help teach others about our local sto ries.

As an example of what we do, we have spent hundreds of dollars and many volunteer hours transferring and posting the Bruce

Carter home movies taken in the 1940s to You Tube. I dont know if anyone else would have done this, and it would have been

a shame if the movies were simply tossed in the garbage. (See page four for another example)

Speaking of You Tube, I really enjoy finding something new and sharing with everyone by way of YouTube, or Facebook or a

blog post. I enjoy the occasional comment. But social media isnt really all that social when you compare it to being in a ro om

full of your friends and neighbors, who are all watching the same movie and sharing the same history.

The Society is really interested in getting people to come and visit. We like it when people come to Port Byron to see the sites,

and when they ask us questions about local history. But we also like to see them eat lunch, shop, or fill the tank while they are

here. I hate to call the Society a tourism bureau, but in a sense, we are in the business of promoting history and our village so

that people will come to see it.

What Does Your Membership Do?

We receive some support from the Town and Village. We also make some money by way of our fund raisers; the spaghetti din-

ners and the other things we do like Dougs Fish Fry wagon visits and bake sales. And we get money from memberships and

some very kind and generous donations.

But your membership means more than money. When we apply for grants, one of the questions is How many people does

your organization help? and How many members do you have? Its really helps us to be able to say we have 100 members

instead of saying that we have 20 or 30. So your $10 dollar membership might just help us win a big multi dollar grant.

And I will happily point out that the two sites I mentioned before, Old Fulton Postcards and Ancestry, will both will ask you for

money to help support their operations. My Ancestry account is near to $200 a year! While I dont expect you to send in $200, I

would ask you to think about supporting the Society so we can continue with our mission of saving our local history. If you ever

wish to see what we have in our collection, or want to learn more about the Society, please feel free to ask for a tour.

Yours in History,

Mike Riley

PresidentLock 52 Historical Society


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2015 in Review

Programs- In May, we had a visit from Jim Brady who acted the role of Hiram Hotchkiss, a general store owner and

promoter of the use of peppermint oil. In June, Mr. Cosentino of Cosentino Florist told us about his familys history in the floral

industry and how the industry works today. In July, Pamela Vittorio from the Chittenango Landing Canal Boat Museum told us

about the role of women on the Erie Canal. In August, we held the second annual recognition of those who have reached their

90th year. In September Montezuma Historian Cheryl Longyear told us about the history of Howland Island, and we had a visit

from Johnny Appleseed in October. And in November, Joni and Dewey Lincoln told us about their trip to Zimbabwe.

Collections- We expanding our collection with a donation of an autograph book from 1822. This book was owned by

Delia Akin. The Akins were an early family who built a mill where the IR Warren mill building stands today. Somehow this boo k

found its way to San Francisco and a local person found it and saw that it had Port Byron written in it. So she offered to return it

home. This book will be scanned and copied, and then returned to the Akin family. We were contacted by a estate buyer who

found a photo collection showing the Octagon Cabins. The Octagon Cabins were tourist cabins, a type of early motel, that ex-

isted from 1935 to 1960. The photos were found in a house sale in the south tier region. The photos were purchased and do-

nated to the Society. Perhaps the most exciting news was the discovery of home movies made by Bruce Carter. These were

found in the old Masonic Lodge, and thankfully given to the Society. We are working to have them transferred to DVD so they

can be viewed. And thanks to the Mentz Highway crew, the old turbine that once powered Wilts Mill was removed from the

Riley driveway to the back yard of the Society house. We will use it to help tell the story of water powered mills on the Owasco

Outlet.

Building- We had the Cayuga County Sheriffs Community Services gang in the basement and they cleaned out all the

old left over plaster and lath, rotted wood and other trash. We also received a nice a nice donation from John Melenick from

Montezuma who drew up plans for a remodeled basement. It is our goal to make the basement into safe and secure storage forthe growing collection of artifacts.

Outreach- We were awarded a grant from the Cayuga Community Fund to help us build a new website. Our current

website was part of the Cayuga County Genweb and certainly has served us well, but it was time to move into our own full-

blown website. We launched the new site this past fall.

Other Happenings- We were contacted by the owner of 80 Pine Street, the large Greek revival house that sits up on

the hill. They wanted to donate the building to the Society. We quickly assembled a committee and had good fun breaking into

the building and going through it from top to bottom. We quickly learned that the old occupants were hoarders and the place is

full of stuff and garbage. And sadly, the building itself has been let go for so long and into a condition that was far beyond our

means to repair. We turned down the offer.

We learned that the old Frank Sperry house on the corner South and Pine Streets had been sold and we helped do

some explorations of the structure and its history. See the article below.

We have been watching the continued construction and development of the new Erie Canal Heritage Park along the

Thruway. This project will be complete in mid 2016.

And late in the year, Betty Smith passed away. Betty was 94, and will be remembered for her energetic volunteerism.

She was always ready to help sit at the house, she started the spaghetti dinner fund raisers, and she certainly will be remem-

bered for her great baking.. She was a past president of the Society.

The James Pine / Frank Sperry House

In 2015, we learned that the house known as the Brigham Young

House on the corner of Pine and South Streets, was purchased by

the family of the Mormon leader Brigham Young. Mr. Young lived

in Port Byron from about 1825 to 1829, and for a time, he lived inthis small building, which was owned by James Pine. Later in its

history, the building was owned by Frank Sperry (seen here) who

resisted offers to update the house with electricity and running

water. Thus the building is in a remarkable state of preservation,

although not quite 1820s preservation. As a building specialist

called it, a typical 1820s canal era house. Cheaply built and very

small. But it has stood for almost 200 years.

The family is making plans to make repairs and update the later

wing to accommodate overnight stays. Work should begin some-

time this year. We welcome them to the village.


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Calendar of EventsEver since the demise of the Shopping Guide, we have heard

people say they wished for a Community Calendar of events. So

to try to help fill this void, we have built in a calendar of events

as part of the new Society website. To access it, you dont need

Facebook or twitter or anything else other than a way to access

the web. We really encourage all the organizations and groups to

send us your events so we can add it and give people a valuable

planning resource. We also encourage event planners to check to

see who else might be doing something on the same day. We

have also listed school days off and other events that could im-

pact your events. Email events to;

[email protected]

Finding Us and Our New Website

Whether you are stumbling across us for the first time, or

you have heard about us, but are not quite sure what we

do, we have a couple ways for you to find out.

Our physical home is located at 73 Pine Street. We holdour programs, show the displays, and house our collection

there. During the warmer months, we do have regular open

hours, and we will open by appointment all times of the

year. Our house is heated, so visits are welcome anytime of

the year.

Our new website is at portbyronhistorical.org. Our goal for

the site is to make it as easy as possible to find useful infor-

mation about our Society, the town and the village. As we

grow and learn, we hope to expand what we have on the

site. If you have thoughts, please pass them along.

portbyronhistorical.org

Volunteering / Scout Projects /

Community Service

We always hear about the high school teen or the Scout

that is looking for a project to help them fill out their com-

munity service time requirement, after they have done

their work. We have a great many ways for people to help

us while we help them, and it isnt all dealing with dusty old

history books. We have construction projects, computerbased projects, gardening projects. We also have connec-

tions so that a teen thinking about going into the history

field can get some very practical experience while helping

us. We will never turn away a volunteer who wants to help.

2016The Year of the Basement

Our headquarters at 73 Pine is a 1850s one and a half story

house. If you have been there, you know it is small and a tad

cramped for space. We have a room for hosting programs, a

room for new and changing displays, a room dedicated to the

good folks that served in the armed forces, and a couple other

rooms with dedicated displays. Aside from a couple small rooms,

we have no room for our collection, and collecting stuff is whatwe do best. Over the past few years, we have been inching to-

ward a goal to make our basement into a safe and secure storage

space, and 2016 has to be the year to make it happen. It really

wont take much. We need a concrete floor poured, a boiler

moved, some sheet rock and electrical work done. It will not be a

public space, but it will be a good place to store and organize the

artifacts people donate to us.

If you know of anyone who can help, or know of a contractor, or

even a retired husband you want to get out of the house, drop

us an email. We can use the help.

Marshalls Store

We were very pleased that the Emerson

family sent along photos of Marshalls

Store this past year. We had been looking

for any photos of a showing the west side

of the village, and the family sent along

very nice collection of photos showing the

store and the people who ran it.

It is almost too easy to break up the time-

line of the village into eras. There was the

time before the canal when the village was

a place of mills; then came the 100 years of

the canal; then for a very brief time from

1920 to 1955, lets call it pre-Thruway, Port

Byron was a busy village on a cross state

highway. Marshalls Store was one of the small businesses that serviced not only the village, but the cross state traffic along

Route 31. (see the Octagon Cabins article) We can see glimpses of this traffic in the Bruce Carter movies taken during the

1940s. When the Thruway was built, Port Byron entered the last and perhaps present era, the Post Thruway period. That was

when the village and these businesses lost a major part of their business and we see a rapid change in the village. In 2015,

thanks to the good folks making donations, we made major gains in our understanding of this Post canal, Pre-Thruway era.


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Lock 52 Historical Society

73 Pine Street [email protected]

Port Byron, NY 13140 www.portbyronhistorical.org

Membership / Donations / Sponsors

If you have it this far, well congratulations. I hope we havemade the case well enough for you to consider supporting the

Society. We really do need and appreciate your past and con-

tinued support.

Heres the good part. The Lock 52 Historical Society is the NYS

Chartered historical organization serving the town of Mentz

and village of Port Byron. We are a recognized as a educational

organization, and as such, donations to the Society may be tax

deductable. (ask your accountant) So please, feel free to make

as many large donations as you wish.

Take note, this year we raised the yearly membership to

$10.00 for a single and $15.00 for families. Thats less than one

hours work for most folks, so we think it is fairly reasonable.And if you take a look at the website and like what you see,

you can help us maintain the site by sponsoring an ad for

$10.00 month or $50.00 for six months. You ad will appear on

the Calendar of Events and Things to See pages.

The Octagon CabinsA while back, we wrote a blog post about the Octagon

Cabins, the small tourist cabins made from old Roches-

ter, Syracuse and Eastern trolley stops. In 2015, the

Society received an email from an estate buyer in Har-

risburg saying he had recently purchased a collection

of photos showing the Octagon Cabins. The problem

was that except for the name of Thrush and a sign

showing the Octagon Cabins, there was no other iden-tifying information. He did what we all do these days,

he searched it on the Internet. In doing some research,

he found our post. He contacted us saying he had

some 30 images of the cabins and gas station. In short,

a deal was made and the photos came back home.

It was trilling to be able to see this collection. It is one

of the best collection of photos we have that deal with a single topic. And this collection of photos takes us back to a time when

the automobile was a relatively new thing for the American family and in their new vehicles they took to the roads in search for

adventure. Beginning in the 1920s, small business owners set up what was then called; tourist cabins, tourist courts, or tou rist

camps. These places were set up to accommodate people with their cars who might be looking for places to camp or stay

cheaply overnight. The local paper called the Octagon Cabins a colony of summer tourist cabins, and the Port Byron Camp.

The local business man who set up the cabins was Samuel Harnden, and he chose his spot well. Even in 1935, NY State Route 31was over two hundred miles long and one of three routes that ran east / west across central and western New York. The other

two were Routes 20 and 104. So it follows that people wishing to travel would take one of these three routes. In doing the re-

search on tourist camps, it was amazing to see the amount of travel taking place in spite of the Great Depression.

The life of the tourist camp was very short. After the Second World War, the Depression was over and people again had money.

When they stopped for the night, they wanted more luxury then a small roadside cabin could offer. Motels with air condition-

ing and TVs and bathrooms began to replace the tourist cabin. In the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, the development

of the interstate highway system built super highways that bypassed the small villages that were home to all the little overnight

stops. By the 1960s, the life of the cabin was over. And this seems to be when our little Octagon Cabins disappeared.

We like sharing our finds and donations, so we post photos to

our Facebook page. This kids look a lot better in color, so fly

over and check us out.

Dave Thomas donated this series showing the Port Byron

1976 Bicentennial Parade.

lock 52 historical society 2016 annual appeal newsletter

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