HISTORIAN S REPORT to the TOWN BOARD s2

HISTORIAN’S REPORT to the TOWN BOARD

JULY 20, 2010

Tues., July 27th to Sat., the 30th is the Ontario County Fair. David & Mary Barber have again agreed to set up a booth for the Town of Seneca. They are very creative people & always have interesting ideas. Look for our booth in the Grange building.

From the newsprint you are probably aware that the Washburn building in Stanley has changed hands. It is being renovated for a new life & purpose. For the first time I went thru the building last week. Yesterday I returned along with my grandson, Tyler Wolfe, as my cameraman to make a video of the upstairs portion of the building. It has a large ballroom/meeting hall & stage. Please, if you know of any events, lectures, etc that happened there let me know. I can find the details (hopefully) in old newspapers. There is, also, a smaller, but still good sized room that I suspect is where our Town Board met, beginning in 1890 to 1906. Rodney Lightfoote in his, “History of the Town of Seneca” refers to the area over Washburn’s Store as the Stanley Grange Hall. Anyone with information on whether the entire upstairs or just a portion of it was the Stanley Grange Hall, please, let me know. Another visit is in order to measure the size of the rooms.

Saturday I spent the morning with several other Ontario County Historians at the Phelps Historical Society. We gather quarterly to share information & for discussion. I am very grateful to be in the Town of Seneca after hearing from other historians about the atmosphere they work in. We talked about next year being the 150 anniversary of the Civil War & how to commemorate it. Feedback welcome!

I’ve been working on a request for information on a Cornelius Roberts from the early to mid 1800’s. He lived in Geneva, which at the time was still part of the Town of Seneca. He had the first mill there.

Jean Bub called & will be stopping in this afternoon to show me a painting of one of her ancestor’s homes in the Town of Seneca that will become a part of the Town’s Collection.

Jane Wolfe

Town Historian