Jamestown
By Kathleen Crocker and Jane Currie
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About this ebook
Kathleen Crocker
Curious about the role played by their own ancestors in Chautauqua's history, Kathleen Crocker and Jane Currie have pooled their talents to create Chautauqua Institution, 1874-1974. As manager of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle for ten years, Crocker has lectured locally, eager to share her knowledge of Chautauqua's past. Currie, a professional photographer, has with discernment chronicled the Chautauqua community for nearly three decades. Their mutual passion for the area provides both the armchair traveler and the seasoned Chautauquan a fresh glimpse into this American utopia.
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Jamestown - Kathleen Crocker
Arnold.)
One
PIONEERS
Desirous of settling in a more temperate climate, a party of 29 people in canvas-covered wagons wended their way westward from Pittstown in Rensselaer County in eastern New York State bound for Tennessee. However, the families of William Sr., Jediah, Martin, Thomas, William Jr., and James Prendergast, along with William Bemus and others, were dissatisfied with their original destination.
Tennessee’s loss was western New York’s gain. En route, the travelers encountered William Peacock, the local land office clerk for the Holland Land Company, who encouraged them to settle in the Chautauqua Lake region, the paradise of the New World.
Shortly after William Bemus became the first settler in the town of Ellery in 1805, the Prendergast clan purchased 3,337 acres on the west side of Chautauqua Lake near Mayville that extended to the Chautauqua Assembly grounds. While searching for horses that had wandered from the family’s property, James Prendergast, one of 11 children, sighted his future home near the Chadakoin River, the outlet for Chautauqua Lake.
Awed by the potential of the waterpower and hill-covered hardwood forests, Prendergast immediately envisioned mills, factories and a transportation route conducive to the establishment of a lumbering and milling village. In 1811, upon his return from Pittstown with his bride, Mary, Prendergast was deeded 1,000 acres by his brother Martin. He purchased additional property and settled on the bank of the outlet with his wife. After his original home and sawmill were destroyed by fire, the Prendergasts relocated in the heart of the Rapids, so-named because of the outlet’s swift current.
According to historian Gilbert W. Hazeltine, James Prendergast found not only his horses but his fortune and fame,
adding, nobler men never settled a new country than those who subdued the wilderness at the rapids, and laid the foundations of all the blessings, social, civil and religious, which we, their children and successors, enjoy.
Lured by the area’s wealth of natural resources, Prendergast and other pioneers harnessed the swift stream’s waterpower to operate sawmills and gristmills and availed themselves of the forests for their lumbering enterprise, just as hunters and trappers took advantage of both for their livelihood.
By 1814, there were myriad pioneer shops and small businesses operating in the village itself and along the outlet to accommodate the community’s needs. These included flour mills, cabinet and chair factories, cooperages, blacksmith shops, carriage and wagon shops, and hat shops. Axes, brooms, mirrors, pianos, pails, tubs, sashes, and doors were also fabricated.
Banding together for their mutual protection and advancement, the pioneers began to develop a sense of community. According to Mayor Eleazer Green, the pioneers almost without exception, were well educated, of high character, and of excellent reputations in the communities whence they came. They were strong and vigorous physically and intellectually; they were industrious, persevering, determined. They came with a fixed purpose,—to transform the wilderness into a community of comfortable Christian homes for themselves and their posterity.
Although the Jamestown manufacturing community was in its infancy, it would soon become well known for its furniture industry, an outgrowth of lumbering.
James Prendergast’s gristmill and sawmill were two of the primary businesses in the Rapids. (Courtesy Sydney S. Baker.)
In 1810, shortly after he arrived from Pittstown with his wife, John Blowers built a log cabin near the outlet. The Blowers cabin, built under the direction of James Prendergast, was the first home in Jamestown, a historic marker site. The cabin became the nucleus of the small number of houses, mills, and shops in the Rapids region and housed one of the village’s first taverns. (Courtesy Sydney S. Baker.)
The distinctive Van Velsor’s triangle, mounted on the rooftop of the Allen Tavern at the corner of Main and Third Streets, summoned boarders to meals and served as a community fire bell. The Fenton Tavern, built in 1814, was one of the earliest gathering spots and, thus, a historic marker site, near the Keelboat Landing. Jacob Fenton, a Revolutionary War soldier and potter, relied on the patronage of keelboatmen, hunters, and fellow pioneers. (Courtesy Sydney S. Baker.)
Although they never lived in Jamestown, Mayville merchants Martin and Jediah Prendergast, brothers of Jamestown’s founder James, operated a small one-story frame store on the northwest corner of Main and First Streets, a historic marker site. According to this handwritten note found in Westfield resident Mattie Sullivan’s scrapbook, the store was opened by clerk Thomas Disher, Prendergast’s boarder, on November 9, 1813. Beaver, otter, deer, wolf, and musk skins brought into the store were shipped south on keelboats. Jamestown’s first store also sold dry goods, groceries, hardware, and as the note indicated, much ‘Mongahela’ whiskey . . . at $2 per gal.
to the early settlers. After James Prendergast’s nephew Thomas Bemus surveyed nearly 100 building lots in the new settlement in 1815, Disher drew a simple map of the uniform-sized 50-by 120-foot lots, all of which were owned by Judge Prendergast and sold for $50. The purchaser’s name was recorded on the map, and the only copy was kept in the Prendergast general store for nearly 40 years. (Courtesy Kathleen Crocker.)
This historic marker site, the location of James Prendergast’s log house, sawmill, and dam, is near the Jamestown Board of Public Utilities plant along the Chadakoin River, the birthplace of Jamestown’s lumbering industry. Following an 1812 fire, James Prendergast and William Forbes built a frame house to accommodate both their families, two of the first to reside within the village limits. (Courtesy Jane Currie.)
This bronze plaque, indicating another historic marker site, is affixed to a building at the corner of Main and Second Streets that has housed many banks throughout the years. As shown by the map in his brothers’ store, James Prendergast owned nearly all of the land in the village yet lived very simply in a small house on this site until his later years when he moved away from the city he founded. (Courtesy Jane Currie.)
In 1816, carpenter and joiner Royal Keyes (1795–1852) from Vermont constructed a two-story building for cabinetmaking on Main Street near Fourth Street, indicated by this plaque as a historic marker site. He later entered into a partnership with John C. and William Breed, who operated the first power-driven furniture manufacturing machinery in western New York. Ralph W. Taylor Jr. credited Keyes, the Breed Brothers and Phineas Palmiter [as] the pioneers of [Jamestown’s] furniture industry.
(Courtesy Jane Currie.)
Arriving in the Rapids from Rhode Island c. 1813, carpenter-joiner Phineas Palmiter was hired by James Prendergast because of his fine craftsmanship. In 1827, Palmiter built and operated the first family chair-making business in Jamestown. With his deft fingers, this bearded woodcarver symbolized the extraordinary craftsmen and artisans who brought acclaim to Jamestown