The Chronicle-Express -- Consolidation, January 1, 1926, of the Yates County Chronicle (1824) and the Penn Yan Express (1866); the Rushville Chronicle (1905) and the Gorham New Age (1902)
The Yates County History Center’s volunteers have gleaned these entries for your enjoyment from their digitized newspapers. You can access them at the free site www.nyshistoricnewspapers.com. For more information about the YCHC, visit www.yatespast.org.
THE HAY MARKET — The scarcity of hay last year, resulting from a long and famishing drouth, would have indicated high prices and very little to be bought this spring in the market. The quantity brought to this place and sold during the last three weeks has therefore been truly marvelous. Two parties have been buying and pressing hay, one for the New York Market and one for a mining region in Pennsylvania. From three to four hundred tons have been bought here at prices ranging from $14 to $20 per ton. Much of this hay has been brought from Pulteney, and the largest share of it from western towns. It is thought they will, before they finish, have about 500 tons.
New Street Names? -- Watkins is renowned for streets with classical names, like Brutus, Leonidas, Epaminandos. and other celebrities of Greek and Roman history. The names are not altogether popular, and there is talk of changing them for better ones. No doubt better ones can be found. In Paris during the later years of the Empire, great changes and improvements were made, and many streets received new names. In selecting the new designations so far as possible the names of eminent citizens were taken, and this would seem to be a very proper method of perpetuating names worthy of such honor. In Penn Yan we have a few streets, the names of which are thus derived. There is Wagener street, also Lawrence, Sheppard, Benham, Jillett, and Brown streets, as well as Jacob street. Others might fitly be named in like manner.
FINES BY THE COURT — In the County Court and Court of Sessions, on Friday last, the following sentences were imposed: For breach, of the excise law, John Vandeventer, Dresden, $40, Hiram Shear, Milo Center, $40, William Sample, Starkey, $40, George N. Younge, Branchport, $25, William C. Knapp, Penn Yan, $75, William and John Benedict, Potter, $25 each. Hiram Shear was also sentenced to 15 days imprisonment for keeping a disorderly house. Judgment was suspended in the case of Frank Covert, convicted of a breach of the excise law. In the case of Mary Ann Griswold convicted after a second trial of keeping a disorderly house, sentence was suspended until next term of the Court. She was also fined $75 for unlawful sale of liquor, and a motion was made for a new trial.
STABLING — The barn attached to the Central House has been recently fitted up in good order, and is now ready for business. Stabling at moderate prices. An experienced groom in attendance. — Call and see.
Will Gen. Grant be re-elected to the Presidency? -- The present indications are that the answer to this enquiry is an emphatic NO. Then if not, why, is a pertinent question, and I will give briefly the reasons as they present themselves to my mental vision and daily observation. First — Our Republican system of Government is based on the principle of limited term of power and position, to the official servants of the people. This one idea, and cardinal fact stricken from our system, and the whole fabric is changed, and an aristocracy of official power and patronage at once becomes both possible and probable. Hence the constitution limits the term to four years, and makes no provision for re-election beyond the absence of a literal prohibition, and which has been construed into permission, and thus becomes a simple law of usage for designing and mercenary politicians to hang upon, and for official re-electionists, assuming that they are the only legal and legitimate representatives of both government and the people, to demand party subservience to. This was what Washington early foresaw and warned against.
New Oil Station in Penn Yan -- The Deyo Oil Co. Inc., of Texas, has erected a distributing station on Bush Park on the Pennsylvania Railroad, just off Clinton Street, Penn Yan. A hollow tile building 36x40 has been erected for an office and oil house. This is fully equipped with boiler, hot and cold water and suitable office furniture. There are two large 25,000 gallon tanks on substantial foundations outside. It takes six tank cars to fill these two large storage tanks. The gasoline is drawn out by an electric pump. This company are large distributors for Texas gasoline, kerosene and lubricating oils. They operate in many cities. They carry in stock at Penn Yan the famous Texaco straight run gasoline, tractor kerosene and everything in lubricating oils and greases in carload lots. Their tank trucks are painted red and are very attractive. Their equipment thoroughly indicates they are progressive. R. H. Deyo, president of the Deyo Oil Co. Inc., was here recently and said Penn Yan looked to him like a regular hustling little city, so he decided to add Penn Yan to their many other distributing points for Texas products. L. P. Jolley has been engaged as their local manager.
Guilty of Assault, Third Degree -- Joseph Costello and Lewis Serfine were sentenced to serve six months in the Monroe County Penitentiary last week by Justice of the Peace Randolph. They were found guilty of assaulting Charles Hamm on Sunday, April 9th. These young men have been implicated in other affairs of questionable merit.
Good Pictures at the Elmwood -- Those who were fortunate enough to witness the performance in pictures of Mark Twain’s immortal story, “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” which was shown at The Elmwood this week, will appreciate the efforts of the management of this theatre in securing for the public of Penn Yan the very best pictures obtainable. The program for the week of April 24 is made up of headliners, each individual picture being a gem in the collection. The program offered by Manager Morse for the week of May first is even more attractive, the week opening with a screen version of “The Three Musketeers,” featuring Douglas Fairbanks. This picture not only portrays in a most vivid way the romantic life of D’Artagnan, but all the critics of motion pictures agree that it is one of the most artistically produced films that has ever been offered to the public, and everyone in Penn Yan who enjoys a good picture should not fail to see it.
Guertha Pratt Home to be Electrified -- The Guertha Pratt Home has long been in need of electric lights, and the Board of Directors have now decided to try and raise money for their installation. Any offering for this purpose, however small — or large — will be gratefully received. Money may be paid to Mrs. Anna Denniston, 231 Main Street, or any other member of the Board.
Filled Milk Taboo -- Governor Miller has signed the measure prohibiting the manufacture or sale of filled milk in New York State. Filled milk is a product made of milk from which the butterfat has been removed. The chief product of New York State farmers in an industry valued at $200,000,000 annually is taken from milk and a cheap product produced in foreign countries with cheap labor is substituted. Instead of an active, health bearing food, butterfat, buyers of filled milk are given a neutral commodity, vegetable oil. Bogus milk, even if it does not injure health, cannot build it. For that reason it is a fraud—for it has the semblance of milk. The entire production of 40,000 cows lost a market because of the use of vegetable oils in filled milk. The menace would have increased rapidly, for a study of production of bogus milk by officials of the New York State Farm Bureau Federation shows it has increased about 600 percent, since 1914.
Deer Is One of 20 Pupils at Ferguson Corners School -- There are stories of deer that run with the dairy cattle and feed at the barnyard haystacks; deer that even become pets in a family home for a time, until size and disposition make them unwelcome, but from the Ferguson’s Corners school in Yates county comes the strangest tale of all. Regular attendant at this little one-room school, which has an enrollment of 19 pupils, is the full-grown doe, "Baby.” Baby is about a year old now and has adopted the four Dykeman children as her particular family. When they started to school last fall, she started, too. During the cold weather, when it was more comfortable inside than out, she became a regular attendant and has continued so far this spring.
A year ago a doe was killed by a car not far from the Dykeman home at Ferguson’s Corners and the next day as Mr. Dykeman and one of the children worked in a field they heard a crying and bleating in the woods. Investigating they found a tiny fawn trying to beat off a Beagle dog which was attacking it. Rescuing the fawn, they took the little deer to the kitchen and fed it milk. Later they returned it to the woods, but it wouldn’t stay. It became a regular member of the family, playing with the dogs, accepted by the cats, and loved by the children.
Under compulsion of hunger, it drank milk. It much preferred coffee and doughnuts from the family breakfast table, or bread and cookies. For regular rations it fed with the cattle in the barn, where it also spent the nights. Never confined in any way, for more than a year it has continued to stay at the Dykeman farm home.
For a few days, a deer at school seemed a strange and fascinating wonder to the children. Now it is routine. They go about their studies as if there were no strange animal about — and there isn’t. The children, themselves, decided that Baby might cut her legs by breaking the panes of a window when she reared up to look out, and one of the things they are most careful about now, is the placing of a chair in front of each window so she can stand on it and see outdoors. Housebroken, a trick she learned by herself, she is let in and out of the schoolroom whenever she asks, pawing at the door, by whatever child happens to be nearest.
“The deer has taught the children many habits of kindness, consideration, and neatness,” comments the teacher, Mrs. Lee Fake, who has been at the Ferguson’s Corners school for the past four years. “Rather than being a bother, I feel that she has been a good thing for the children.”
There is just one cloud that hangs heavy over the heads of the families at Ferguson’s Corners where the deer is so well known and loved. When deer season comes this fall, they feel sure she will be shot. That there is no open season on does won’t mean anything to SOME hunters, they declare from past experience. Baby is so gentle and unafraid that she would go up to anyone. Sometime, it won’t be a friend.
Pupils in the school this year are: Gilbert Scott, Beverly Newell, 1st grade; Robert Clark, Barbara Hey, David Dykeman, George Mashewske, second grade; Dan and Don Scott, twins, Allen Voak, David Heym, Janet Mikelsen, Margaret Mashewske, Raymond Dykeman, third grade; Mable Dykeman, Laura Nageldinger, George Oswald, Tom Jorgensen, Mary Ann Jorgensen, and Howard Dykeman, fourth grade.
Lakeside Club Is Renovated -- The Lakeside Country Club has had a facelifting job. Robert Hayden, club president, announced that a new year-round closed-in patio, enlarged kitchen facilities and the remodeling of the women’s locker room have been completed. Donald Jansen and Donald Stork, co-chairmen of a survey of club needs, reported that the facelifting job was one of the first of a long-range program. They urged members to purchase stock to enable “increase in facilities and activities” in the club. It was announced that the fish fry will be resumed starting Friday at 5 p.m.
Firestone Dealer Remodels Store, 10-Day Open House Set -- An American success story is the story of Robert Trombley, of Trombley Tire Service, who is having a grand opening of his recently remodeled facility at 143145 East Elm St., Penn Yan. The event will be for 10 days, starting Thursday, with some mighty fine door prizes and refreshments.
Fourteen years ago, 1958 to be exact, Mr. Trombley joined the Ralph Martin outlet of Firestone Tires. Prior to that, he had been manager of the Firestone Store in Geneva. Four years later he purchased the Martin operation. In 1964, he changed to the Goodyear Dealership. The facility on East Elm Street was once the Hurrin Motor Company, a Studebaker distributer.
A native of Port Leyden, Mr. Trombley was graduated from the Port Leyden High School and the State University of New York Champlain College, at Plattsburg. Mrs. Trombley, also a graduate of Port Leyden High School, is a graduate of Plattsburg State Teachers College. Since his coming to Penn Yan the annual sales volume has increased $500,000.
With the increase in business, Mr. Trombley has acquired the Old Sampson Theater for use as a warehouse, and has recently purchased a house at 140 East Elm St., which is to be demolished, and a parking lot built to accommodate 20 cars. On his present premises, Mr. Trombley has made extensive renovations, formulated after the Goodyear Concept (floor plan, color scheme, service).
FOR MAIL DELIVERY — Penn Yan Post Office has received five "jeeps" for village mailmen to use in delivering the mail. By using the jeep, parcel post delivery will also be a part of the postmen’s job.