Fit for a King - The Hugh Gragg House at 4486 N. Main Street Hemlock NY

A Historical review by Joy Lewis, the Richmond NY Historian.

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The Hugh Gragg Homestead

at 4486 N. Main St. in Hemlock NY.

Photo courtesy of Joy Lewis 2020.

Many of the families who arrived at Hemlock Lake in the early years of settlement came from Ontario County - from Richmond, which bordered Hemlock on the east, and from Canadice on the southern border.

Hugh Gragg, in 1824, was a man in his mid-thirties. Born in New Hampshire, he’d lived for some years in Richmond before purchasing a plot of several acres along Hemlock’s Main Street, spanning both sides of the road. On the seven-acre property that eventually became 4486 Main Street, he erected a log house and moved his family in.

Hugh’s wife Mary (Armstrong) was the mother of four (surviving) sons, ranging in age from thirteen-year-old Robert to eight-year-old Worlin. There would be two more boys (Hugh and Horace) and a daughter, Eliza, before Mary’s childbearing years were complete. Hugh died about 1840 and the property came to his son Adams. In his late twenties, Adams built a new house on the property (that which stands today) for his mother and younger siblings. He married a few years later and moved to his own farm at the south end of the village.

After Mary Gragg died, the sons dispersed to other family-owned properties in Hemlock and Livonia. Adams rented out his late mother’s home for some years. In 1850 the John Remington family lived there. John was nearly thirty, his wife Electa, two years older. They had three young children; Edward, Albro, and Ellen. The next year was born Wilfred and two years after that, Noble. When Noble was an infant the family moved away from Hemlock, settling first in Illinois, then eventually in Oregon (where John Remington died in 1900.)

The house changed hands from Adams Gragg to his younger brother Horace in 1852. Within the year Horace sold it to Elder Ira Justin. Pastor of the Richmond and Hemlock Baptist Churches, Rev. Justin was in his late sixties. He lived here with his wife Sarah and their spinster daughter, Mary. For six or seven years they also had living with them a houseful of grandchildren. Their daughter Sarah, twice married and twice widowed, was the mother of three children when she died in 1854: sixteen-year-old Mary Porter, Charles Mills, six, and his sister Sarah, five. These children came to live with their grandparents. Also living with Ira and Sarah at this time were daughter-in-law Elizabeth, widow of their son Joel, and her two young children, Mary, six, and Joel, three.

Ira and Sarah moved to a larger house in Hemlock about 1860, but continued to own this one. They rented it to the Calvin Shepard family for a few years. Both Calvin and his wife Mary were in their mid-twenties. They had two young boys, Charles and Willie. An elderly man, Cummings Hammond (who may have been Mary’s father) lived with them.

After Ira Justin died in the winter of 1864 his wife Sarah sold the property; the buyer was George King. Through seven decades and three generations the King family owned the house.

George King came to Hemlock from Canadice. His father, Joseph, was a veteran of the War of 1812 who settled along the shore of Hemlock Lake in the early 1830s in a dwelling known as the Half-Way House. George, a boy of seven, was the eldest son. He had an older sister and three younger siblings. Eventually there would be five more children born to Joseph King and his wife Catherine. For upwards of a decade Joseph and his family lived in their lakeside home, which also operated as a lodging house for transient laborers. Much later it came into the possession of sons George and John; they later sold it to Henry Wemett.

When George moved into the house on Hemlock’s Main Street, he was in his mid-thirties and married. His wife Permelia had given birth to a daughter and two sons; only the daughter, Florence, had survived infancy. For a couple of years George’s sister Kate Gardner and her husband Joseph lived in the house just next door to the north.

Florence King was sixteen when her baby brother Harry was born in the spring of 1871. Before he was ten, she was married. And right around that time the King family were not living in their home. The documentation is scanty, but what records do exist seem to suggest that Permelia was chronically ill. For some years George, his wife, and his son all lived with Florence and her husband Donald Hayward in the Hayward home. For about a decade - from 1880 to 1890 - the King house was rented to Alanson B. Hosford. He lived there with his wife Julia and their two young children Cora and Lorenzo.

An enterprising young man, A.B. was not yet forty; he had interests in a variety of enterprises in Hemlock. First, he operated a small grocery downtown. Then for a year or two he took a managerial role at the Metropolitan Hotel. In 1885 he took on the task of running the Half-Way House on the east shore of Hemlock Lake - the home where George King had grown up. In the thirty years since George and his brother John had sold it to Henry Wemett, the old place had changed hands several times. In May of 1885 it was purchased and refitted by George Fisher of Rochester. An article in the Livonia Gazette on May 29, 1885 detailed Hosford’s role in the venture:

“This old favorite place, which has so long been run down and neglected, is soon to be opened as a summer resort. For some time repairs and changes to buildings and grounds have been going on ... [The owner] has certainly succeeded in giving it a very attractive and home-like appearance. The place has been rented for the season to A. B. Hosford ... and he is now furnishing the house and getting ready to open it as a first-class summer boarding house for the accommodation of permanent and transient visitors. This place has always been noted for its many attractive features, and being, as its name implies, midway of the lake, both the head and the foot can be seen from it, affording a splendid view. The water is deeper and the trolling better than at any other point. The view from the balconies of the house never fails to call forth expressions of admiration. The barn accommodations are good, and there is a fine dock for steamers, a large gravel beach, good picnic grounds, shady grove, a good restaurant building, rustic seats, mineral spring, a romantic little glen with high banks covered with ferns and flowers, nice walks, etc. ... The formal opening day will be announced soon.”

Alanson’s venture did not prove as profitable as he would have liked and before long he was out of the hotel business. He moved away from Hemlock in 1889, going to Richmond Mills (Frost Hollow) where he bought a general store. For five years he served as Postmaster of Richmond Mills. He died about 1915, nearly twenty years after his wife.

George King moved back to his Hemlock home after the death of his wife Permelia. His son Harry had married Elizabeth (“Libbie”) Naracong and gone off to live in Wayland, where he worked as a stone mason. George stayed in the house alone until his death in 1896. For a few years afterward Harry rented the house to various tenants. Then his daughter Mildred - his only child - was born the year after his father died. She was nearing school age when the family moved from Wayland to Hemlock. (Libbie’s sister Ellen was Mrs. Orville Childs and lived just down the street a bit.)

Mildred grew up and her parents grew older. Starting in the early twenties Harry and Libbie traveled each year to Sarasota, Florida, where they spent the winter. In 1934, after both of her parents had died, Mildred sold the family home.

Ed Larned, whose family were long-time residents of Richmond, bought the house early in 1934 and moved in with his wife Arlyle and their four-year-old daughter Betty. Some of their neighbors were family members, for kinfolk connections run like silver threads through generations of Hemlock families.

Arlyle (Thurston) Larned was the granddaughter of George G. Thurston. The large farm that G. G. Thurston had owned decades earlier occupied an extensive swath in the center of Hemlock village. Arlyle’s sister Madelaine was married to Glenn Holmes, the owner of the old Thurston farm in the nineteen-twenties and thirties. Harold Larned, Ed’s brother, lived across the street from Ed and Arlyle. His wife Frances (Naracong) was Libbie King’s niece.

Ed’s obituary, from the Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester), appeared June 15, 1964, the day after his death: “Edward M. Larned, 59, of 4486 N. Main St., peace justice for the town of Livonia and a member of the Livonia Town Board for approximately nine years, died Sunday (June 14, 1964) in the Thompson Memorial Hospital in Canandaigua, following a long illness. Born Oct. 6, 1904 in the town of Richmond, he was the son of Wilson and Alberta Beach Larned. Survivors include his widow, Arlyle Thurston Larned; a daughter Betty A. Larned, both of Hemlock; two brothers, Liburn Larned of Honeoye Falls, and Harold.”