Canandaigua's colorful characters come alive

CANANDAIGUA — As our community grows it becomes significantly less personal. That is a natural outcome of population growth.

We simply cannot know or even have a passing familiarity with all of our neighbors. I am a case in point and so are you. I have lived in Canandaigua for 23 years and in Ontario County nearly all of my life, except for military service and college. This change in neighborliness means we lose sight of some of the “color” of our community.

Color in the past was exhibited by some of the curious members of the community. In my town growing up, my own great-grandfather was colorful in a sense. He was a notoriously bad driver and his sedan was battered from his numerous minor collisions. I believe the word was out that if you saw Ray Barden coming down the street you should give him a wide berth!

Other colorful folks included those who were less able to look out for themselves and so the community kept a watchful eye out and neighbors checked in on them if something seemed amiss. One young man had a prodigious ability to repair radios but suffered from some cognitive challenges and became a sort of community-wide son.

Yes, we had the town “tipplers” (look it up), the busy bodies and a bank manager who was noted for his ease and kindness. Yes, it was like living in Bedford Falls in “It's A Wonderful Life." The pilot whose bomber went down over Europe and was captured and imprisoned in a German stalag ran the hardware store. A Marine captain, who was decorated by Admiral Chester Nimitz for his gallantry on Iwo Jima, became our town's veterinarian.

Canandaigua has those stories too and so do Bristol and all of the other towns. I knew an old professional hunter in Bristol who was badly hurt in a loading dock accident, but who became locally famous for the hounds he trained. Doc Chappell was about as colorful as they came with his chewing tobacco, cursing and scruffy unshaven appearance. I bought a couple of dogs from him — one ran away and the other I sold back to Doc a few years later.

Before my time, before my grandparents' time, colorful people were just a normal part of the landscape. The demand to conform to society was much lower. People were familiar with all of their neighbors, usually downright convivial and often related, in a good way.

They were also private. Privacy mattered. Invasions on personal space and emotional space were unthinkable. Some questions were impertinent to ask. Good manners demanded a certain amount of “letting be.” These “colorful characters” were tolerated, embraced even, and not socially pummeled into conformity. We had other drawbacks and taboos, as humans will always have, but being “colorful” was not frowned upon. The pummeling today is to be expected as we share physical space. Not celebrated perhaps, but endured. Maybe this is why we pull the car into the garage, get out and go into the house without waving to the neighbor. We are looking for a measure of anonymity in our over communicated lives. Privacy is gained by avoidance.

Back in the day, as the saying goes, when Canandaigua was young, anyone could head west into burgeoning frontiers. Itinerant workers roamed the countryside selling wares like pins, tin pots, ointments, lightning rods and stories of the world beyond the woods. They carried news from farm to budding farm. They were often colorful themselves — living a gypsy life on the road from one place to another, only stopping their nomadic ways for bad weather or to replenish stocks.

There were also local day laborers. The honest truth is that these were often individuals who today might live in a group home environment, but when there was only the barest structure and certainly no infrastructure to society on the edge of civilization, families could hire a man for splitting rails who might not get other work or he might pick rocks from a field or dig a ditch to drain property. A girl might be let out for simple tasks like churning butter, hauling water, or other menial tasks. Was this abusive? It certainly had the ability to go there, but anecdotal evidence indicates abuse was likely to have been dealt with quickly. Before we point an accusatory finger at the past we have to look at our own foibles.

If anything, people were more likely to be kind then than they are today — they relied on each other. So people on the fringe of society had a role in society rather than being separated out and put in a box. Institutional treatment was still many decades away. And those who have less social pressure are more apt to develop their own idiosyncratic traits. You can see how it would have been easy to be more “colorful.”

Let's make the distinction between being colorful or eccentric and what passes for individuality today.

Those who suffer from illness or a challenge certainly receive more intervention, treatment and education today, that goes without saying. But our past had its benefits as well. Colorful personalities were not as likely to be squelched.

Here is the brief story of a couple of “colorful” men and the little we know about them but can infer from the scant information.

The Ontario Hermit

The first gentleman is actually outside of my official purview, but his story is so compelling in humor and pathos that I have to share it. This is the story of Ebenezar Horton, also known as the "Ontario Hermit."

Eb does not have any close living relations in our area as he was a bachelor. Why he was unmarried will explain itself shortly.

Eb came from Rhode Island to Ontario County in 1795 and settled in a cabin near Cedar Swamp in Farmington, close to County Road 28 north of state Route 96. Horton’s farm was not far from the farm of S.P. Gardiner on the 1852 map of Ontario County. It is unclear what challenge Horton faced but he was notably different from the run-of-the-mill farmer of our area and was colorful enough that his story was included in the "1876 History of Ontario County."

Several hundred people who had been children in the late 18th and early 19th centuries were still alive when the history was published and provided their memories to the story. Ebenezar stood out in local lore along with dozens of other noteworthy and colorful citizens chronicled in the book.

The story goes that as a boy he was easily excited and when he was invited to attend a sleigh-riding party he climbed up a tree and refused to come down. Since it was winter the issue was pretty serious. We can’t be sure who came up with this plan — likely it was other adolescents who were part of the proposed sleighing party — but they decided the best way to get Eb down was to cut the tree.

You can see things like this happen even today. Kids sometimes go for expedient solutions, but not necessarily the wise one. I am certainly guilty myself!

The tree was hacked down forthwith, but snagged on a neighboring tree — whereupon Horton clamored over into the uncut tree and re-lodged himself on a new branch. Frustrated, the kids promised to build a fire if he would come down so he could warm himself. Good to their word the fire was built and Eb holds up his end by jumping down. Of course he’s too high up and breaks some bones in the leap. Now this all happened in Rhode Island in the era of the American Revolution.

Here in Ontario County, Horton had a reputation of being the finest dancer in Farmington and perhaps beyond to Swifts Landing (Palmyra) or Manchester Landing — who knows, maybe even down south to Paddleford! All of these locations were within a few miles of Eb’s cabin on the edge of the swamp.

Ebenezar had moves to say the least, and he would show up at all of the country dances, husking bees and probably any social event where there was music (English country dancing is more like reels than line dancing). He was a hard worker and was recognized for his speed at chores like corn husking, perhaps to get to the party part of the gathering quicker!

It was said that when the fiddle came out he could “cut it down" — early American speak for bust a move. When music started and the catgut began to sing, the dance floor cleared so that Eb could showcase his moves, which he improvised with leaps, tumbling and somersaults in time to the fiddler's tune. He carried his own dance shoes (called slippers back then) to any frolic or gathering. He even attended a dance at age 80 at Cooper’s Tavern. He was applauded and entertained his neighbors to their joy and approval.

It's hard not conjure an image of him break-dancing or doing the moonwalk.

Eb had one other talent, or so he thought. He claimed he could predict the weather and when his forecast failed he attributed it to demonic intervention. I can recall TV weathermen trying similar retreats when bold predictions fell flat. His appearance was noteworthy as he sported a brilliant red coat. He was heard uttering his incantations to coerce the weather and it was said he drove fast before a storm — presumably with a team of horses as oxen on their best day are slower than molasses, as the saying goes.

He lived out a long life — alone in his cabin near the Cedar Swamp — mostly in quiet solitude. It is hard to say whether he liked his alone time or if it was the quasi self-imposed sentence of his intellect. Lacking details we can extrapolate good health since he was 90 years old when he passed in 1856. He appears to have been an accepted and welcomed if colorful member of the community.

Spoons for sale

The second, and for now, the last story of our colorful past is of a man named Eli Butler, who lived in Canandaigua just north of Cheshire.

Life in the first decade of settlement in Ontario County was spartan — frugal and absent a lot of the amenities of the day. From 1789 until 1822 all of the trade that came and went was done by overland freighting — by ox cart and later by horse teams. Horses require improved roads without stumps, fords, steep banks and marshes. Oxen were the four-wheel drive of the day.

The closest ports were on Lake Ontario and they weren’t even capable of providing dependable volume for shipping for a number of years. Schooner traffic grew but still required a 40-mile haul for places like Canandaigua, Bristol, Watkinstown (Naples), Bloomfield and Gorham.

In the early years goods were lugged down the Old Indian Trail from Albany (Routes 5 and 20), which became the Old State Road. Thus goods were scarce unless you could make them yourself. Everything from agricultural implements like drags to pins for sewing had to be improvised. It was a culture of wood, horn and iron. For the first years, iron had to be recycled and was only used for those tools that could not be fashioned from any other material.

There is no information about Eli’s personality. Perhaps he preferred isolation and was just a loner or suffered from depression or some other condition that challenged his life. He was a squatter in a cabin on Nott Road, just east of the farm of A.M. Nott. The "history" says his cabin was in the woods east of that farm. This leads me to believe it was on the west side of Route 21 south of Nott Road.

With goods hard to come by, itinerant peddlers traveled with tin pots and so forth for those who had some ready cash or perhaps something valuable to barter with.

It seems that Eli, like other hermits, eschewed farming (I often eschew things like lawn mowing or painting the house) and needed some cash to provide for his own needs.

Likely he also bartered. Well, Eli had acquired some spoon molds, which is an iron mold to pour pewter spoons. That was the advantage of pewter — it was malleable and gave the appearance of civility. Of course nothing was known about the fearsome damage that it could do to one's health.

Most people could not cover the cost of silver or silver plate. People often reserved pewter use for company and relied on large serving pieces and thus ingested a little lead as result of using it. Too, other health hazards probably did more immediate damage before the average person would have seen any long-term ill effects from the lead.

Women on the frontier struggled to bring civility into their homes. Trust me, we would today if we faced what they faced. So having a few nice pieces of flatware, glass windows, some crocks for storage and a good mantle clock were not trivial desires.

Eli found ready customers and would, according to the 1876 History, frequently melt down broken pewter trenchers to make new spoons.

I am fascinated by the idea of a man who lived in a cabin and roamed from farm to farm making spoons from damaged pewter. This just might have been a peaceful and welcomed life for Eil Butler. We’ll never know, but he certainly added color to his environment and made his mark on our history.

There are a few simple takeaways from these stories. People need room to be themselves and we should allow that. People haven’t changed much in over 200 years, and history is far more interesting than most imagine.

If you want to learn more about our colorful past, I suggest you buy a copy of the reprinted "1876 History of Ontario County," avail yourself of an online copy or barring that, use the one in your local library. Nearly all of our town libraries have a copy in their collection.

Leif HerrGesell is Canandaigua town historian.

This article originally appeared on MPNnow: Canandaigua's colorful characters come alive