Many times while doing research
on Cazenovia and surrounding towns, I have been told of houses still standing
that once were taverns. Having been asked by the owners to "see what
I can find" on the history of some of these houses, I became increasingly
aware how many of these "inns" never were.
Nearly every farm had its
tenants, and surely boarded an occasional traveler. Even in the earliest
days the Town had regulations which allowed and licensed only those taverns
which could actually meet the needs of the weary traveler.
At a meeting of the Town
Commissioners of Excise held in 1813 it was resolved that those wishing
to operate a tavern be "of good moral characters and of sufficient abilities
to keep an Inn or Tavern, and that they have accommodations to entertain
travelers, and that an Inn or Tavern is absolutely necessary at the place
where they reside (or propose to keep such Tavern) for the actual accommodations
of travelers..." In view of these regulations it can be seen that
not just anyone could open a tavern.
Location played the most
important part in operating a tavern. All of the identified taverns
in the town of Cazenovia and surrounding areas are found on or very near
the major roads of the time, or within the village or hamlets. The
least known of the taverns are those that are situated throughout the Township
of Cazenovia, and these will be the subject of this sketch.
Perhaps the earliest of
the taverns outside of the village was that operated by Benjamin Alvord.
Alvord lived just west of the Abell Corners, on the south side of Ballina
Road, as early as 1794. About 1800 the Ballina Road was opened by
the State as a "State Road" which brought people to Cazenovia before any
of the well known turnpikes. This tavern is said to have been where
Dr. Isaac Lyman first practiced medicine when he arrived in Cazenovia in
1799. It is not known how long Alvord operated the tavern, but he,
a veteran of the revolution, died in 1809 at the age of 70.
Near Alvord's, Isaiah Williams
kept a tavern for several years around 1812. Descriptions as to where
the tavern was located differ, so it is difficult to tell exactly where
it was. Henry Severence states that it was nearly opposite the tavern
of Benjamin Alvord which I have been able to locate near the Abell Corners,
and then he goes on to say that it was near the Dist. No. Nine school house.
These two locations are not far from each other and the tavern was perhaps
somewhere in between. Severence also writes of the squirrel hunts
that were organized at Williams' tavern "to exterminate these pests that
are (today - 1884) so assiduously protected by law."
In New Woodstock, on the
Hamilton and Skaneatles Turnpike, there were two taverns, both operated
by Smiths. The first tavern in New Woodstock was built some time
before 1803 by Jonathan Smith in the west part of the village and it "was
kept by him for many years". This is the house now known as the "Bell
Tavern"
David Smith, brother of
Jonathan, also had a tavern in New Woodstock, at the intersection of Main
Street and School Street. David built the hotel in 1817 or 1818 and
was proprietor until 1831, when he passed it on to his son Erastus and
brother-in-law Asa Merrill. They kept it for two years, and Jonathan
and Jerman Smith, brothers of Erastus, became proprietors.
After a few years Artemus
and Orrin S. Smith, two other brothers, operated the "New Woodstock Hotel"
together until Artemus died in 1858. Orrin continued on by himself
for a few years. In 1869 the hotel was run by John Q.A.Blakeslee
and Abram Burden, and in 1873 Chauncey J. Cook became proprietor, and ran
the establishment "for many years". It is not known how long the
hotel operated after this date.
As early as 1806 a tavern
was operated by Willard Abbott, also on the Hamilton & Skaneatles Turnpike,
now the Fabius Road, about 1 mile west of New Woodstock near the intersection
of Kiley Road. Abbott applied for a tavern license as late as 1814,
but it is known that he lived here until his death in 1831.
Solomon Merrick, who had
a saw and grist mill on Limestone Creek above Delphi Falls operated a tavern
in the hamlet of Union. 1812 is the earliest record of this inn,
and it is not clear how long Merrick was the proprietor. Later in
the century there was still a hotel here, operated by Levi Jones who is
found here between 1850 and 1869. The house that now stands on the
site is of later construction than that which would have been Merrick's,
but possibly it was used by Jones. Merrick's tavern may be the large
house, now much changed, that stands on the south side of the road just
east of Union. I have no proof of this, but this was Merrick property
and it is of sufficient proportions to have been a country tavern.
A tavern was operated on
the west side of Cazenovia Lake by Philemon Tuttle in the 1820s, but little
is known of this inn. Tradition says that it is the "Stebbins House"
which is situated just below the golf course, but this is not true.
Deed research has shown that Tuttle owned the land to the south of this
property, and his tavern stood where the house of Mrs. Marjorie Mather
stands (now 1999, Gary and Laurie Omans). The original structure
had burned in the early 20th century but the present building was built
upon its very foundations and in the same form. The characteristics
of this house, which is unusually large for a farm house, and is fairly
early, are very similar to other tavern structures, and like the suspected
Merrick tavern mentioned above is of a particular character. Just
north of this tavern was a toll gate for the Third Great Western or Cherry
Valley Turnpike.
Further along the Turnpike
is what is known today as the "Temperance House" which was not, as tradition
says, built in 1793. In all liklihood it ws built by 1812 by Cyrenus
Bartholomew.
Note:
add more stuff here.
Near Chittenango Falls,
between the intersections of Lincklaen Road and the Gorge Road, was the
"Traveler's Home" of Orrin Ransom. This establishment, known in 1869
under the management of James Brown, as the Chittenango Falls Hotel, most
likely owed it's existence to the Cazenovia and Chittenango Plank Road
which was opened in 1848. The plank road followed the present Rt. 13, but
continued down the gorge west of the falls.
REWRITE:
In researching
the inns I found several proprietors which I could not connect with any
known tavern in the Town of Cazenovia or otherwise did not address in this
paper. These men were Phillip Kibbe (apparently of Nelson), Jesse
Kilborn (Cazenovia village, perhaps near the Cazenovia Public Library),
Jonathan Mills (Fenner or Nelson?), George and Sylvester Salisbury (Fenner
or Nelson), Joseph Y. Cole (Palmer Hill), Cyrenus Bartholomew (Temperance
House), William Powers (unknown), Elijah Risley (1800 census at Johnson
House), and Allen Dryer Jr. (Park House, Cazenovia village). Some
of these were proprietors of taverns in the village, and it is possible
that some of these were located in the present Town of Fenner, which was
part of Cazenovia until 1823.
While doing the research
for this series, I searched through many records, and uncovered many interesting
bits of information. What had previously been known about nearly
all of these taverns could make scarcely more than a few sentences.
This was the case with the Cazenovia House. Upon completion of my
research I had four typewritten pages of notes, which unfortunately is
far more than can be included within the limits of this sketch. In
light of this, the section on the Cazenovia House will be greatly abbreviated.
Also, as this is being written
in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the building of the Lincklaen
House, I will not subject this historic hotel to such a fate, and therefore
will include a separate section devoted solely to the Lincklaen House.
When John Lincklaen laid
out the village of Cazenovia in 1793, he included a feature familiar to
many of the settlers he hoped to entice into the wilderness: a Public Square.
The Square, in the very heart of the village, was the center of activity.
Stores, shops and other businesses operated on all sides.
Throughout the early years
of the last century, there stood near the four corners of the Square, four
taverns. On the north east side, where now stands Smith's I.G.A.,
was the Cazenovia House, the longest lived of all the inns of Cazenovia.
In 1798 the land where the Cazenovia House stood was obtained by blacksmith
Hiram Roberts. The village accounts of 1802 and 1803 list Roberts
as a blacksmith and tavern keeper. How long Roberts had kept a tavern
previous to 1802, and how long he continued after this date is not known.
As early as 1806 the hotel was owned by Lemuel Kingsbury. In 1809
Kingsbury removed the old Roberts building and built the tavern known for
more than 140 years as the Cazenovia House.
Through the 150 plus years
that a hotel operated on this site more than twenty seven proprietors ran
the house. The longest that any host had stayed during the 1800s
was Simon C. Hitchcock for seven years. During this century, we find
Harry J. Williamson who ran the house for about twenty years. Other
proprietors over the years had been Jeremiah Whipple - first Sheriff of
Madison County, Martin Spear - later a well known tailor in the village,
Michael Moulter and E. Jewett both of whom later operated the Lincklaen
House, Perry Crandall - who was proprietor of the Stanton House for a time,
and of course Walter White who owned many fine restaurants throughout central
New York.
During the 1950s the hotel
went out of business, the contents were sold at auction, and the old tavern
demolished to make way for the grocery store that now disgraces the northeast
face of the Public Square.
On the southeast side of
the Public Square, on the site of the "Century House" stood the Madison
County Hotel. (see
my seperate page for a more revised history of the Madison County Hotel)
The site was occupied as early as 1797 by the home and blacksmith shop
of Elnathan Andrews, Cazenovia's first blacksmith, who had come here with
John Lincklaen in 1793.
The recorded or identified
proprietor was Eliphalet S. Jackson, in March 1811. Jackson had purchased
the lot from Eliakim Roberts in 1806, so he was presumably here earlier
than 1811.
Other proprietors include
William Hatch, Lemuel White, Timothy G. Chidsey, Salter & Giles Cleaveland,
John I. Gilchrist, and Ira Loomis. William Hatch hosted the first
visit of a living elephant in the village in 1813 and he was also the second
Sheriff of Madison County in 1810.
The hotel was purchased
in 1834 by the stock company that was to build the Lincklaen House, and
upon the opening of the new hotel in November 1836, the Madison County
Hotel was closed. The building, mainly the back wing, was then used
by the Masonic Lodge until their disbanding on December 24, 1838.
The building was later split apart and the salvageable sections were moved
off the site. The back wing, long occupied by Masons, was moved north,
it being the double house on the west side of Sullivan Street. The
house which stood just south of this, torn down in 1971 for the St. James
Church parking lot, was also a piece of the old hotel. A piece of
the east part of the front was placed behind the Lincklaen House, but this
burned in the Casa Nova fire in 1895. The western (main) part of
west front of the old tavern still stands today as the main part of Smith's
Funeral Home. Although the Funeral Home stands on the south side
of the Public Square as the tavern did, it is not on the site of the tavern.
Deed research has clearly shown that the tavern was where the present Century
House is located, and that the Funeral Home site was an entirely separate
parcel after about 1838.
Several doors west of the
Madison County Hotel, on the southwest corner of the Public Square, stood
the earliest and only remaining tavern building on the Square. No
one is exactly sure when this hotel was built, but Samuel Forman's store
accounts, preserved at Lorenzo, would indicate that the building was built
in 1796. This tavern known as the "Johnson House" was operated until
about 1809 by Ebenezer Johnson. The structure originally stood at
#34 Albany Street, and is said to have been moved in 1799 to the location
two doors west to #30, where it stands today. (for
a more complete and updated history, see my seperate page for the Johnson
House)
It was here that many of
the early Town meetings were held, and where the annual Fourth of July
celebrations took place, with a "formal dinner, with its toasts, speeches
and songs".
The house was owned by Johnson
until about 1814, when he sold to James Sherman of Rome, and moved from
Cazenovia. Sometime prior to 1810 Johnson had leased the hotel to
Jacob and Ralph Day. Ralph Day is found here for a short time only,
but Jacob continued until about 1813, when Daniel Day became the proprietor.
It is not know how or if these Days were related.
Daniel Day was the last
known host, and is found here as late as 1816. James Sherman, who
continued as a resident of Rome, owned the building until 1828, but information
has not been found indicating that he was an innkeeper, nor that the inn
was operated by any others after 1816.
Although this is one of
the best known of the taverns that operated within the town of Cazenovia,
great confusion surrounds the history of this structure. Today it
is known as the "Michael Day Tavern", but the author has yet to find a
single shred of evidence that would indicate that Michael Day ever operated
a tavern. All records found indicate that after coming to Cazenovia
with John Lincklaen in 1793 Michael Day worked as a brick layer and mason.
This confusion possibly stems from when the house was operated by Jacob,
Ralph and Daniel Day. The first reference to the old tavern as the
"Michael Day Tavern" appears in Monroe's Cazenovia, published in 1911.
Where the Presbyterian Church
Manse now stands was the hotel of Amos Parmelee. It was built by
Parmelee in 1813, on the site which was formerly occupied by the hardware
store of Alfred Hitchcock. How long this tavern operated is unknown,
as Parmelee is found here only until 1814, and no one else has been identified
as operating this tavern.
When the Manse was built
in 1870 the old hotel, long since a private residence, was removed from
the site and placed on the south side of Albany Street just west of the
Square. A newspaper account dated 1883 states that the old hotel
was being torn down, but discrepancies in the article and other facts do
not support this. What became of the building, or whether it was
ever actually moved from the church lot, is not known.
The site of the Oneida Savings
Bank was originally occupied the mercantile store of Eliakim Roberts, begun
in 1803. The first Roberts store was wooden, and this was replaced
by a brick building built about 1810. The building was later owned
by Jacob and Henry Ten Eyck, and occupied over the years by small businesses.
It is said that the store
building was converted into the "Lake House" in 1866, and kept by Bateman
Boardman. It is also said that Lanson Lake, for whom the institution
was named, was the first proprietor. Lake was a boarding house keeper
according to the 1850 census, and died in 1857, so it is possible that
the hotel was opened earlier than 1866. Another explanation for the
name Lake House may be that it got its name because of its excellent view
of the lake at the end of Albany Street. The Lake House was being
run by Ashley Pratt in 1869, and then by Perry Crandall, former keeper
of the Cazenovia House, in 1875.
In 1879 the Lake House was
purchased and entirely remodeled with fanciful verandas and a cupola by
Carl B. Stanton. The Stanton House, as it was then called, continued
into the twentieth century under the command of Stanton, who leased it
about 1885 to John Finch (Stanton & Finch were also proprietors of
the Lincklaen House around this time). Finch was succeeded by Edward
Parker, who ran the hotel for about a year, when Stanton again became proprietor
in 1894.
The hotel was known as the
Stanton House until about 1907, when it became known as the Park House.
The Park House (no connection with the Park House in the east part of the
village) continued for only a short time, and by 1910 the hotel was known
as the Lake View House, which for a time was kept by Donald Savage.
This Lake View House is not to be confused with the Lake View Hotel which
stood at the Lake View Camp Meeting Grounds, on Owera Point at the north
end of the lake. None of these hotels, the Park Houses, and the Lake
Views, were in operation at the same time so there was no confusion back
then as to which was which, but looking at them a hundred years later can
be somewhat confusing.
In the twentieth century
the building housed the Daley & Evans store, and the Victory Market.
By the 1930s the building had lost much of its decorative woodwork, verandas,
and its ornate cupola.
In 1966 the building was
occupied by Dwyer's Pharmacy, and in 1970 a spectacular fire burned the
building to the ground. A short time later, after filling in the
unusually deep cellar the Oneida Savings Bank was built upon the site.
The Lake View Hotel at the
head of the lake, mentioned above, was opened in 1873, and continued for
many years under the various managements of D.P. Dean, W.H. Baker, Byron
Richardson, H.S. Mather, and Carl B. Stanton (also of the Stanton House
and later the Lincklaen House). Those who came from afar to attend
the Methodist Camp Meetings during the 1870s and `80s stayed here.
Campers were brought to the grounds by several steamboats which stopped
at the Village Pier, West Shore Railroad Station, and other picnic groves
around the lake. In 1891 the hotel, while owned by T.D. Wilkin, burned
to the ground. Twenty years later the beautiful picnic grounds became
a part of the extensive estate of George Allen known as "Owera".
In the east end of the village,
where the Oneida and Third Great Western Turnpikes join, on the site of
the former P. & C. parking lot, stood the hotel known as the Park House.
When this hotel began is not known, but it is very early (JOTHAM CURTIS).
A Mr. Cook operated a tavern in 1838 and `39 somewhere in this part of
the village, but the location can not be ascertained. In 1846 the
Madison County Whig advertised that William G. Burr had refitted the well
known tavern in the east end of the village. Burr owned it for a
number of years and leased it out to others. Oliver Whipple passed
on proprietorship to Marsh & Allen in 1852, and in 1859 it was kept
by C. Vincent. According to village maps, Burr continued to live
in the first house east of the hotel until after 1859. By 1875 the
hotel was gone and the lot was vacant.
On the site of the Atwell
mill was a small and short lived inn known as the Grotto House, run by
Patrick Farley. It occupied part of the building that was built as
a distillery early in the 19th century by John Hearsey. It operated
for a short time in the late 1890s
The Burr Block, where the
Merchants Bank and Lodge are now, was converted to a hotel, known as the
"Cazenove Arms" in 1894. The hotel, remodeled under the direction
of Syracuse architect Archimedes Russell, had dining and sitting rooms
on the second floor, with dormitories on the third, and spacious verandas
on the sides towards Albany Street and the Public Square. How long
the Cazenove Arms operated is not known.
From the mid 1870s to the
First World War, Cazenovia was a summer home for many. The lake attracted
throngs of city folks seeking the cool waters and a touch of peace and
quiet. The serenity of the lake and surrounding countryside also
attracted the wealthy from far away cities.
The wealthy were able to
purchase lots in the center of the village or a large lot on the shore
of Cazenovia Lake, and here they built their own summer "cottages".
For the many the hotel at the Lake View Camp Meeting Grounds, the Stanton
House, the Cazenovia House, or the Lincklaen House in the village provided
safe haven for those who could not afford such luxuries or who would not
brave the elements by "roughing it" in a tent or a small shanty on the
lake shore.
The overflow from the established
public houses was taken in by residents of the village who, wishing to
supplement their income, rented out vacant rooms and served three meals
a day to their boarders.
With the growing number
of summer pilgrims, so the business of boarding grew. Throughout
the village boarding houses opened and gladly served those needing the
comforts of civilization. Much has been said, but little is been
written of the wonders of life in the summer boarding houses of Cazenovia.
Fortunately a most wonderful
description of this long past lifestyle is found in "What's Cooking in
Cazenovia?", published in 1960 by the Ladies of St. James Parish, Cazenovia,
and here I present it with apologies, as the author is unknown to me.