For fathers: 19th century stories hold a truth about grandfathers

On Father’s Day, a truth: Dads often age up to become grandfathers, and grandparenting may be an easier gig.

Fathers sometimes have to be stern, lay down rules.

Grandfathers don’t have to obey the rules. Mostly they can just sit and tell their grandchildren stories which don’t even have to be true.

I know this from reading “Grandfather Stories” by Samuel Hopkins Adams, a collection of reminiscences published in 1955.

Adams, an astonishingly prolific writer who grew up in Rochester in the 1870s and 1880s, writes of his interactions with his grandfathers, especially his grandfather Myron Adams.

Taken together the stories open a wonderful window on 19th century life in Rochester. To a lesser degree they look at Auburn in Cayuga County, where Adams’ maternal grandfather, the Rev. Samuel Miles Hopkins, lived.

The writer liked Grandfather Hopkins better, but Grandfather Adams had lived a more adventuresome life and therefore had the better stories.

Grandfather Adams, who is often well-lubricated with Hop Bitters, a patent medicine that contained a fair amount of alcohol, could have made his stories up.

Or it could be that his grandson, a writer, stretches the truth as he reaches back in his own childhood. (My siblings often challenge my recollection of details from our youth. Whatever. I like my stories and I’m sticking with them.)

Samuel Hopkins Adams’ stories began appearing in the 1940s, many in the New Yorker magazine. He allows in one of the stories that “retrospect tends to be sentimental,” and he certainly sees the past through a rosy lens.

Regardless, he has a formula that works, a way of bringing history alive. It goes like this:

Young Sam Adams and his four cousins make a call on Grandfather Adams who lives on South Union Street in Rochester.

One of the children asks their grandfather a question. After some grumbling – he’s a grumpy guy – Gramps is off and running, time travelling back to Rochester’s early days and giving history lesson after history lesson.

If anything happened in western New York, Grandfather Adams just happened to be there.

There he was in the 1820s helping a slave escape along the Erie Canal.

There he was in 1827 playing baseball even before it was “invented” in Cooperstown.

There he was in the crowd when Sam Patch took his fatal (and, in Grandfather’s version, drunken) leap from above the High Falls in 1829.

There he was in 1832, surviving a plague (cholera) that swept through the state, the infection carried by the canal he loved.

Alas, there was Grandfather Adams a few decades later discouraging investment in George Eastman’s invention. “Never trust a cameraman,” Grandfather intoned, not the best advice as things turned out.

Young Samuel Adams spends part of his summers in Auburn, in the city and then on Owasco Lake where his grandparents have a summer home. They are friends with Harriet Tubman, who led so many slaves to freedom. Samuel meets her, admires her, tells her stories.

There are stories Adams doesn’t tell in this collection of stories. His parents, and his grandmothers, are pretty much bit players.

No, Adams stuck with his grandfathers, especially Grandfather Adams, a man who, like most grandfathers, had some stories to tell.

So, all you young fathers take heart. Should you move up in rank and become a grandfather, small children will sit at your feet and listen, actually listen, to whatever it is you have to say. What could be better than that?

Remarkable Rochesterians

For his many achievements, let’s add the name of this writer to the list of Remarkable Rochesterians.

Samuel Hopkins Adams (1871-1958): Best known in the early 1900s for a series of muckraking articles in Collier’s magazine that exposed the abuses of the patent medicine industry, the native of Dunkirk, Chautauqua County, grew up in Rochester and went to work for the New York Sun after graduating from Hamilton College in 1901. From there, he wrote for a variety of publications, and he also produced short stories, one of which was the basis of the movie “It Happened One Night,” as well as biographies and novels, some of those using a pseudonym. Later in his life, he wrote of the history of New York state in “Canal Town,” “Grandfather Stories” and other works.

Tag: From his home in Geneseo, Livingston County, retired senior editor Jim Memmott, writes Remarkable Rochester, who we were, who we are. He can be reached at jmemmott@gannett.com or write Box 274, Geneseo, NY 14454

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Rochester NY history as told by Samuel Hopkins Adams' grandfather