March 1993

The Children

of Edward and Martha Prentiss

by

Betty Smalley

As the children of Edward and Martha Prentiss grew up in Pulteney, they married and established households of their own. Rebecca, the eldest, married Benjamin Welles, son of Dr. Benjamin Welles of Wayne, in 1814, and had nine children. They lived next door to her brother John A. Prentiss who was the eldest son of Edward and Martha. He married Thankful Hotchkin and they had at least nine children. He had bought property from his father in 1837 and built a log cabin for his family. This property remained in the Prentiss family until 1896.

One of his sons, George Stanley Prentiss, born in 1843, enlisted in the 161st Infantry in August 1862. He was promoted to sergeant and then to 2nd lieutenant on January 1, 1865. George Stanley was severely wounded at Sabine Cross. Later his left hand was injured in a collision on the Mississippi River. He was discharged by a surgeon's certificate of disability on March 28, 1865, just a few months short of the full time of his three-year enlistment.

There is story that a Prentiss saw a house in Virginia during the war that he admired, and when he came home to Pulteney he had a house like it built. Supposedly that is the house that still stands on Brown Road in Pulteney, on the property John Prentiss bought from his parents, Edward and Martha. This soldier probably is the same George Prentiss whose name is on the deed in the 1880s. My parents purchased the property in 1910 and my brother and I spent much of our childhood there. It is still in our family.

The second son of Edward and Martha was William. He was born in 1802 and lived until 1875. He was a farmer and with his wife Fannie had seven children.

Harriet Prentiss married William E. Welles of Wayne in 1817. Another sister, Mary Ann, born in Massachusetts about 1810, before the family migration to Pulteney in 1813, never married. She was living in her brother William's home in 1875. She died in 1882.

Josiah Prentiss, the youngest son of Edward and Martha, was also born in Massachusetts in 1804 before the move to Pulteney. In 1834 he married Hannah Hotchkin, who was probably the sister of his brother John's wife Thankful. These girls were from Greene County and, perhaps, from the family of Edward Hotchkin from the same county. Josiah had the first foundry in Pulteney, where plow points and other necessary farm implements were made.

In those early years there was a breadth of land along Crooked Lake that was of little value for farming purposes and hardly worth the taxes. In later years much of it was planted to grapes.

Richard Sheffield, who had a tavern in Hammondsport, brought the first grape roots from William R. Prine of Long Island. Rev. W. W. Bostwick in Hammondsport was a gardener, and he propagated from these roots plants to supply people who wanted to establish grape arbors. William Hastings made a terrace garden with grapes and this suggested to Josiah Prentiss the idea of planting a vineyard. In 1836 he bought four grape roots from the Rev. Bostwick for $1 ($1 was worth more in 1836 than $10 would be worth in 1876).

Two of these were Isabella variety grapes, one was a Catawba, and one was a Sweetwater. They were planted around an 8 by 10 summer house. It was located about two miles from the lake and above the now established grape line. The Sweetwater was too tender for our winters and had to be protected. The others soon covered the summer house. The Catawba at Prentiss's farm was a shy grower and bearer, seldom maturing its fruit which lacked the sweetness of the lake Catawba.

As soon as cuttings were grown they were planted to produce roots to establish a vineyard which eventually covered 3 acres. They were placed in rows 14 feet apart. Stakes carried wooden trellises that were nine feet above ground. Some roots were produced for sale, and some were given away. Josiah originated a Prentiss grape which was green in color and was of good quality, but it went out of production because it was tender to cold and subject to mildew and rot.

Andrew Reisinger, a German vine dresser, set some grapes about that time on a knoll at the lower end of the Wagener Gully. In 1853 he had 2 acres. He grew the first red grapes in Pulteney and introduced vine trimming. He called his grapes Isabella and Catawbas which people consider to be late grapes, but they ripened for him and he made wine from them.

In 1856 Josiah Prentiss gathered and packed a ton of grapes in half barrel tubs. He shipped them from Bath to New York City where he soon followed them. They were stored in care of M. D. Stairen, Esq., a commissions dealer in farm produce. Mr. Prentiss found a fruit dealer who at first refused to put so many grapes on the market at once, but finally agreed to take three tubs daily. In a few days the 30 tubs of about 75 lbs. each were sold.

When Isaac Purdy moved to a farm in Pulteney in 1858 he wrote that there were grapes there called Isabellas and that Josiah Prentiss had more than an acre of them back from the lake. They were old vines when he saw them; he thought they were the same as the "Black Hamburg." Prentiss had a still and made grape brandy on a small scale. He had four establishments for making grape boxes; in 1861 his sons turned out between 150,000 and 200,000 boxes.

A man passing through in 1866 wrote, "At this time J. W. Prentiss, an artist of no mean order in landscape and portrait painting lived one mile below the village on the lake shore far removed from the outside world. This house was built by an eccentric New Yorker with plenty of money. He had selected the site, during a hunting and fishing excursion for a residence. He erected a comparatively splendid house, tired of it and sold to Mr. Prentiss."

According to an old map, this is the house on the left at the foot of Boyd Hill. My brother and I were born here; my parents owned this before they bought the Prentiss farm above Pulteney. In the front room door casings are pin heads driven in to mark our heights on our birthdays. Because the farm was a long and steep walk for my father to go each day to take care of his crops, we "camped out" at the farm during the busy summer season for a few years. Because we didn't stay there always, my parents furnished the house with furniture purchased for low prices at auctions. Now I prize those pieces. We did eventually move to the Prentiss house that had been copied from the house seen in Virginia.

(c) 1993, Betty Smalley

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