Fall 2001

About the Fall 2001 Issue

Note from the Editors

Roland Bentley introduces this issue and himself with a tribute to his first teacher, Lizzie Burns Stewart, in reminiscences about actual schoolday life. Roland is the fifth generation of his family to live on the property purchased by Thomas Barr on Beartown Road. Some people think the spelling of Beartown changed through pronunciation from Barrtown. Roland is retired from the School of Music of Ithaca College.

Sweet Bitterness, David Minor's story of Asa T. Soule's tireless promotion of Doyle's Hop Bitters with a baseball club and park and then a grand rowing race on Lake Chautauqua, is in this issue. David's regular contribution of his NYS/NYC Timeline with the years 1815 and 1816 also appears in this issue. David lives in Pittsford.

Chapter eight, The Final Year, from A Biography of John Magee by Gary Emerson includes several statements made by Magee as a delegate to the 1867 New York State Constitutional Convention expressing views on voting qualifications and on trade with Canada. They reveal Magee's political philosophy. Gary Emerson lives in Odessa.

Read Gerard Muhl's story of the railcar ferry service between Rochester and Cobourg, Canada, that began in 1907 with the launching of the ship Ontario No. 1. Passenger service started in 1909 and a second ferry, Ontario No. 2, was added in 1915. The ferries were in operation until 1950. Gerry Muhl's article on the circulation of foreign coins in the United States was in issue 119.

In another Backward Glance piece Richard Palmer writes of the general store, the center of supply and trade, and community in rural America from the early 1800s until the 1940s. Dick includes an 1817 news item on early storekeeper, John Meeker, who owned many stores and a large farm.

Another selection by Robert Koch from Orsamus Turner's History of the Holland Purchase begins on page 22. Bob Koch lives in Pittsford. His varied cultural broadcasts may be heard on WXXI-FM several times each week.

The first of a two-part report by Grace Mary Shults Fox on the rural school districts of the Town of Avoca from their beginning to the time of consolidation is in this issue. Mrs. Fox attended a one-room school and taught school from 1945 to 1980. She has been the Town of Avoca Historian since 1985 and has written books about Avoca history: The Sweet Vale of Avoca, A Bicentennial Tour of Historic Avoca, and Bus Accident Memorial, December 14, 1943. She lives with her husband on the farm that has been in her family since 1840.

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