Have you ever found any odd-uments? That’s my new word (copyright!) for monuments that are surprising, quirky, or curious. The Finger Lakes, unsurprisingly given our history of social, religious, and technological experiment, has plenty of them.
In 1793 Charles Williamson founded Bath near the Conhocton River. His job was to sell 1.2 million acres of land between Seneca Lake and the Genesee River, but he also served in multiple public offices and engineered creation of Steuben County. So when Daughters of the American Revolution honored him in 1929 with a plaque on a large boulder in Pulteney Square, site of his original land clearing, it wasn’t really surprising. Not surprising except that while Mr. Williamson WAS in the American Revolution – he was on the other side. While the Scottish officer was in house arrest as a P.O.W. he married an American and gained U. S. citizenship… and eventually, recognition by the D.A.R.
The Pilgrims hadn’t even heard of the Mayflower when a Basque explorer remembered only as Pabos died on June 10, 1618, a long, long way from home. A burial plaque was found near today’s Victor almost three centuries later, and some fifty years after THAT, historian and newsman J. Sheldon Fisher decided that the man’s memory should be preserved. Sheldon told me that he’d always wanted to build a pyramid, so he rounded up some local Boy Scouts and together they did just that. The seven-foot monument still stands on Wagnum Road, near the grave – now over four centuries old – of the all-but-forgotten explorer.
Rochester’s huge Mount Hope Cemetery includes every faith, ethnicity, and time period in the city’s history. There are special sections for Civil War veterans, 19th-century unknowns, and firefighters. Not to mention a monument to that forgotten hero of long ago, the fireHORSE. By getting the fire company to the fires FAST they saved countless lives, often at risk to their own. They’re entitled to a little recognition.
On Main Street in Prattsburgh is a monument from the Knights of Cyprus “To Madame Sarah Bernhardt, the greatest actress in the world.” Her 19th-century “lyric fire and divine voice” were indeed unforgettable, but the Knights of Cyprus existed only in the imagination of of Charles Danford Bean, who created the monument to the Divine Sarah.
At a grave in Elmira’s Woodlawn Cemetery, a stone obelisk towers twelve feet tall. In nautical terms that’s exactly two fathoms or, as a leadsman testing depths on the Mississippi River would call out, “by the mark, twain!” Samuel Clemens lies here.
It looks like a micro-spaceship, coming in for a landing on Main Street in Lima. But it’s actually a tiny old-time spherical bank vault, commemorating that exciting day in 1915 when Livingston County suffered its first bank robbery. As we understand it the case is still unsolved, but we suppose that the reward offer has expired.
Western New York is apple country. On Boughton Road in East Bloomfield is an easy-to-miss stone with a plaque commemorating the birth of the Northern Spy, one of dozens of strains originating in New York.
“Believe It Or Not,” a Canisteo hillside on Greenwood Street has a living sign spelling out the town’s name with 217 white pine trees. When created back in 1933 it may have been a guide for aircraft, and Robert Ripley featured it in his “Believe it Or Not” newspaper cartoon. Such hillside features are uncommon east of the Mississippi, and even more uncommon for being formed with living trees.
No doubt there’s more! Do YOU know of any odd-uments?
Odd-uments!
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