The House Past Hackett Road

      Heading towards Palmyra on the old Plank Road, now called Route 21 in Manchester, just past Hackett Road and on the left, sits an old wood framed house fronted by pillars.  In the photograph above is Mary Lyons Ryan, a native of County Roscommon Ireland, standing on the front porch of that house, probably around 1910 given the style of her clothing.

Thomas Ryan c. 1915

     Mary was the wife of Thomas Ryan who was born in Walworth, New York in April of 1861 to Andrew Ryan and Bridget Hogan, both immigrants from Tipperary.  As a small boy, Thomas had actually lived for a few years in Manchester until his father Andrew purchased a farm in Perinton, New York.  That farm home still stands today, at the end of Ryan Road in that town.

     Thomas was a farmer by trade and worked the Plank Road farm for years, selling it in 1919.  In the1920 census of Manchester Village, Thomas can be found living at 29 North Main Street with Mary and their eighteen year old daughter Mildred who would be killed in a car accident just two years later.  Also in the household was Mary's fifty year old brother Edward Lyons.

     In his later years, Thomas worked as a janitor in the Lehigh Valley RR bunkhouse.  Mary passed away in 1936, and Thomas spent his final years living with his widowed daughter Marie

Mildred Ryan

Galbraith and her son John at the North Main house. Thomas died in October of 1940 and is buried in St. Rose's Catholic Cemetery in Shortsville next to Mary and Mildred.

Manchester and Mormonism

 

    

Jones Mill on Canandaigua Outlet, Shortsville, Town of Manchester

     One has to wonder how Mormonism became so identified with Palmyra?  To be sure Mormonism never caught on in Manchester-- in fact in 1833 my 5th great-grandfather Sylvester Worden along with Pardon Butts, Warden Reed, Hiram Smith, Alfred Stafford, James Gee, Abel Chase, A.H. Wentworth, Moses C. Smith, Joseph Fish and Horace Barnes signed the following statement:

     "We the undersigned being personally acquainted with the family of Joseph Smith, jun., with whom the celebrated 'golden bible' so called, originated state: 
That they were not only a lazy, indolent set of men, but also intemperate, and their word was not to be depended upon, and we are truly glad to dispense with their society"

      But although Joseph and his followers were not popular in Manchester, Mormonism had many ties here.  Hill Cumorah, where Joseph Smith claimed to have dug up the golden plates, was in fact located within the Town of Manchester; as was the residence of Joseph Smith himself.  He could often be found on the streets and shops of Manchester and Shortsville, even attending an occasional revival meeting at the Manchester Baptist church.

     Oliver Cowdrey, who assisted Smith in composing the Book of Mormon, taught in the Manchester schools at one time and the paper upon which the first edition of the book was published came from the Jones Mill located on Water Street in Shortsville, Town of Manchester.  The main connection to Palmyra was the bookstore of E. Grandin, who printed the Book of Mormon in 1830.  

     Wouldn't Grandfather and his contemporaries be surprised at how the Mormon religion thrived and grew?

Manchester's Hymnist

     The photo above from my private collection is of Mary Artemesia Lathbury.  Mary was born at what is now State Street in Manchester on August 20, 1841 to the Rev. John Lathbury, a Methodist minister and his wife Betsey Shepard Jones.  I scored this little hand colored tin type, labeled M. A. "Sathbury" on Ebay about 7 years ago in a search for Manchester items.  Having read every Manchester census line by line, (it's a small place), I knew there was never any family named "Sathbury" in residence here and the name was probably Lathbury. Sure enough, looking at the back of the photo, I found the seller had misread the old handwriting and turned the L in Lathbury into an S. It's what is known as a "gem", the image being only about an inch in size.  
     Two of Mary's brothers were also ministers, while she was a prolific writer of songs and hymns.  She was a gifted artist too, illustrating books, (some of her own authorship), and for a time teaching art and French at the Newbury Academy in Vermont.  In her time Mary was quite famous; a compilation of her illustrations can be seen on You Tube here.
     Mary passed away in 1913 at East Orange New Jersey, she never married, and left no descendants.

Manchester Trainmen

  
     The gentleman on the left is Philip Power Jr. who lived on Stafford Road, (yes, the Philip Power from the blog below) with him is Lawrence Warner, aka my Grandpa, who lived in the Village of Manchester.  Philip was Lawrence's maternal uncle.  The photo was taken around 1930, just before the advent of diesel engines.

The Farm On Stafford Road

     Traveling down Hackett Road in Manchester towards Macedon, the first road on the right is Stafford.  About a mile down Stafford on the right sits a horse farm.  The home on the property today is not the original building, that structure burned in 1928 and was probably quite a bit larger that the present house.  In 1898 the extensive farm property was owned by Lydia Clark, a widow who lived there with her unmarried son Eugene.  One August night that year, seventy four year old Lydia started downstairs in the dark and somehow lost her footing.  Eugene discovered her at bottom of the stairs in the morning, dead of a broken neck.  Also living in the Clark home in 1898 was the family of Philip Power who worked the farm on shares.  Along with Philip, who was an Irish immigrant from County Waterford, was his pregnant wife Mary from County Kerry and their five children.

     The Widow Clark's death was about to set in motion a chain of events that would reverberate through Ontario County courts for years to come, and provide an endless source of gossip for the residents of Manchester.  In addition to Eugene who inherited the farm, Lydia Clark had two other children, married daughters who lived locally.  Their anger upon learning that Eugene had deeded the farm to Mary Power, the sharecropper's wife, can only be imagined.  They sought to have Eugene declared incompetent at a hearing in Manchester Village in 1899, and the jury agreed that Eugene was unfit to manage his affairs.  Four months later however, that finding was dismissed.  Now began a battle royal.

     Mary Power contended Eugene had given her the property in return for her taking care of him as his mother had done, and that since the deed reserved life use to Eugene, he had lost nothing in the deal.  The sisters countered, "the influence of the Power family became such that Eugene would not speak to his relatives and was completely subservient to the will of Mrs. Power."  And so it went, back and forth with suits and counter-suits, decisions and appeals.  More about the court case here.

     By 1905, six long years after the first filing, the sisters had had enough and threw in the towel.  In the New York State Census of 1905 we see--

Philip Power       45    Ireland   head

Mary                    38   Ireland   

Nora L.                19   USA

Edmond               15    "

Emma                  12    "

Marie                   11    "

Liddie                    6    "

Philip Jr.                 5   "                              

George                   1   "   

Eugene Clark        54   "   boarder  

     Philip Power was listed as head of the household, Eugene as a boarder.  Eugene died at the farm in 1909.  His sister requested and received letters of administration in the $700 estate he left, clearly that did not include the real estate.  Even in this instance though,  the Power family would prevail, the letters were revoked when a will surfaced leaving all Eugene's property to Mary Power and naming her executor.

     The Power family owned the farm until 1978 when the last surviving son, Philip Jr. passed away.  Mary had died of bronchitis in 1927, the year before the fire, and Philip Sr. died in 1929.  His cause of death?  He fell down the stairs...

1934

This is Manchester in 1934.  Except for the middle brick building which burned and is now a parking lot, it looks amazingly the same.  Anyone who grew up here in the 1930's would easily recognize the place today, though later generations would wonder where Ike George's "drugstore" went.  The first building in the row, with the awnings, was Manion's Bar, while the third is today known as Timbercreek.