My Childhood Home - The George Knowles House at 4504 N. Main Street Hemlock NY

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

1

The George Knowles Homestead

at 4504 N. Main St. in Hemlock NY.

Photo courtesy of Joy Lewis 2019.

When George Thayer came to Hemlock in the early 1840s, he bought up hundreds of acres of property. Most of this was on the west side of Main Street, from Big Tree Road south to Adams Road. Bit by bit over a twenty-year span he sold off various parcels; almost all of the earliest deeds in that part of the village record a sale from George Thayer. The property at 4504 Main Street is no exception.

Donald McLeod bought the nearly-two-acre lot early in 1867 and sold it before the year was out, when he moved his family to Tennessee. In the autumn George Knowles of Clarendon bought Donald McLeod’s lot and the next year he built his family a little saltbox. The front room facing the street was rather spacious and furnished in the style of the time: maybe a horsehair settee and an ornate bookcase, a marble topped table and a frothy fern or two. Off the sitting room to the south were two tiny rooms and on the north was an enclosed staircase to the second floor. The kitchen was in the rear, with a single small window facing west. In the northwest corner were a soapstone sink and hand pump and in the corner opposite a wood-burning range. A roomy pantry was on the north side of the kitchen.

Upstairs over the sitting room was the front bedroom and corresponding to the little rooms below were two rooms above. A stuffy attic over the kitchen was tucked under the steeply sloping roof. The tidy little dwelling was enwrapped with narrow white-painted clapboards.

Though he came to Hemlock from Orleans County, George Knowles had deep familial roots in Livingston County. On his paternal side he was the grandson of Seth Knowles Sr., who came to western New York from Massachusetts in 1805. Seth’s first farm was on Route 20A atop the hill east of Livonia Center. (Much later this was known as “the Gibbs farm.” And in the twentieth century it was the home of Paul DiMartini, whose wife was Virginia Gibbs.) Seth picked up stakes, however, only two years later and moved his family to Springwater, where he was remembered by historian Byron Waite as “the first settler in that area.”

Married three times, Seth Knowles Sr. was the father of fifteen children. His son Seth Jr. (George’s father) was the eldest surviving son. Seth Jr. trained as a stone mason and became quite proficient at his work. He married in Springwater Margaret Welch, a daughter of early settler Peter Welch. Seth and Margaret made their home on his father’s first farm — on the hill east of Livonia Center. Here nine children were born; George was number seven. They stayed in Livonia for a quarter of a century before moving to Orleans County.

George was seventeen in 1838 when he went with his parents and some of his siblings to live in Clarendon. He assisted his father and his uncle in several masonry jobs in Clarendon, including the grist mill, the Universalist Church, and the schoolhouse.

He was twenty-seven when he married seventeen-year-old Julia Stone in 1849. For more than a decade they were childless. For a time they provided a home for a pair of orphaned siblings, Charles and Sarah. Then at long last, in the spring of 1861, their daughter was born. Nell was to be their only offspring.

George’s cousin was Henry Wemett, a long-time resident of Hemlock and an innovative entrepreneur. Henry’s mother Betsey and George’s mother Margaret were sisters, daughters of Peter Welch of Canadice. The two men formed the partnership of Wemett & Knowles. Jointly they owned a steam-powered sawmill set up on a small lot downtown on the shores of the mill pond. It was a profitable business venture.

Wemett & Knowles were a savvy pair of investors. In the summer of 1874 the steamboat Seth Green was launched upon the waters of Hemlock Lake, under the command of Clark Morehouse. Three years later Henry and George secured the steamboat for themselves and for the next two summers operated her on the lake, alternating between them captain’s duty. Then in the spring of 1879 they hired Samuel Hingston of Buffalo to build for them the Corabelle. She was a winsome craft, forty-five feet long and ten-and-a-half feet in the beam. In July Wemett & Knowles launched their steamboat on Hemlock Lake where she ferried passengers throughout the summer season.

When George built his little house his daughter Nell was seven years old. She was in her late teens when her father enlarged the house, more than doubling its size by adding several rooms to the north side. In the front was a spacious parlor with large windows on the north and east walls. Beyond that was another good-sized room, the sitting room, and back of that a smaller room tacked on the rear giving egress to the outdoors. Known simply as “the back room” it was most likely used for storage, laundry, and odds and ends. A simple porch was added to the front, joining the two halves. But George never finished siding or painting the new half of the house, leaving it to become quite weather-beaten.

Inside, a door was broken through the wall at the bottom of the staircase. A couple of steps were added angling into the new parlor. At the top of the stairs a small landing was put in, with a single step on each side. The upstairs of the new addition had three rooms: two large ones - front and middle - and a smaller one at the back of the house. The carriage barn at the end of the drive was also built at this time.

The Knowleses were a well-to-do family, yet Julia and Nell were quite unprepared for events in the spring of 1880. The Livonia Gazette of May 21 reported, “George Knowles died suddenly at his residence on Saturday at 2:00 after an illness of a few days.”

His wife and daughter remained in the house. Nell taught school at District Number Four, where she’d attended herself as a youngster. To make ends meet, Julia sold a few strips of her land to the neighbor on the south side, and she took in tenants. For some years after George’s death the family of John Hoppough rented one half of Julia’s house.

In 1880 John was nearly thirty, a clerk in a downtown store. His wife Maggie (whose father was reputed to be a cousin of Sir Walter Scott) was the same age; they had two young sons, Parker and Willie; both the boys were ill with scarlet fever that summer and both recovered. Over the next seven years three daughters were born to John and Maggie: Lin, Vivian, and one who died and whose name has not been remembered. Little Vivvie was not quite five when her father died. Maggie took the children and moved in with her parents, John and Ann Scott, who lived closer to downtown.

John and Maggie’s elder son, Willie, was two years old when his parents came to Hemlock from Canadice. He lived all the rest of his life in Hemlock. He grew up, married, and fathered several children. One of his sons, Gordon, would have Bill, born in 1938. Bill and his wife Beverly (Benham) bought the house at 4508, next door to 4504, in 1967.

When Julia Knowles’ daughter Nell married in 1885 she and her husband Orren VanZandt moved into the house two doors down (4516). Pretty soon they became the parents of a little girl. Ruthie, however, did not live to reach her second birthday. In 1890 another daughter arrived to bless their home - Edna. Nell VanZandt died in 1896; she was thirty-five. Within a few years Orren remarried and around 1910 moved away from Hemlock.

Julia, at this time, lived in her house alone. In 1915 she transferred ownership to her granddaughter Edna. Julia died three years later and the house sat empty for a spell. Edna, who was by now married to Wells Purcell of Canadice, did not live in the house, but rented it to various tenants.

There was a steady turnover of families coming and going in the years between 1920 and 1940. Only in the census years are we given a glimpse of who occupied the house during the time that Edna owned it. At times there were two families sharing the house. At other times a single family lived there, as in 1930 when the George Paradise family were occupants. He was in his early forties, working at “odd jobs” to make a living. He and his wife Mae had three children, Olive, Carol, and Edwin, and cared for their niece, four-year-old Evelyn. Within a year or two this family was followed by another, then another.

It was in the mid-thirties, under the care of Edna Purcell, that the house received its coat of gray asphalt shingles, covering the worn exterior and unifying the two halves. Electricity was installed at about this time, and the old pantry was remodeled as a bathroom.

In 1935 the house was fully rented. Elmer Close and his wife Alma were in their late twenties, with a newborn daughter, Laura; they lived in one side. On the other side of the house was Ray Colegrove, a single man barely twenty-one. Within a year or two Ray married and his wife Marian came to live with him. Both men were truck drivers employed by a local “beverage distributor.” These two families still lived here when the 1940 Census was tallied.

Just a year or two later, when one of the families moved on, Mrs. Lena Powell rented one half of the house. In the 1920s she and her husband George had owned the house at 4516 (what had earlier been the Orren VanZandt home). Then they moved to Rochester where George died, and Mrs. Powell decided to return to Hemlock. A few months later the other half of the house became empty and John Thorpe moved his family in. He and his wife Frances were in their late twenties, parents of two daughters; Shirley was nearly six, Carol five years younger. (When Shirley grew up she married Paul Marshall. In 1964 she was appointed Hemlock Postmistress, a post she held for more than a quarter century.)

Edna VanZandt Purcell, granddaughter of the man who built the house, sold it to William Burmeister in the summer of 1949. Mr. Burmeister set up a trailer in the back yard and rented both halves of the house. He also set up a Quonset Hut at the rear of the property, presumably for storage. (The U.S. Navy during World War II were the first builders of this type of versatile structure, manufacturing hundreds at Quonset Point on a Naval base in Rhode Island. How Mr. Burmeister came into possession of one is a question still unanswered.)

The house suffered under his tenure, for he did not expend much effort on maintenance. Fortunately his ownership of the house was short, for he sold it less than ten years later. In September of 1958 my parents, Carl and Evelyn Smith, bought the house and we moved in by the first of October.

On A Personal Note

I was almost six years old when we moved to this house and this is where I was married from nearly thirteen years later. It was number 43 North Main Street at the time, but in the sixties was rechristened as number 4504.

When we first came there our family lived in the south half of the house. I was the oldest, followed by my sister Wendy, a year younger, then brother Rob, two years younger than Wendy. Shortly after our arrival, the north half was rented to Fran and Les Peck and their daughters, Jackie and Sue. Both my mother and Fran were pregnant. In April my brother Larry was born and in June Fran’s baby Cindy arrived. We grew up with Jackie, Sue, and Cindy as supplementary siblings. Mom and Dad grew as close to Fran and Les as they were to their many siblings. It is a friendship between our families that endures to this day.

Wendy and I shared the front bedroom upstairs. Lying in bed waiting for sleep to come I came to recognize footsteps. Les, who had survived polio as a youngster, limped haltingly on the stairs. Sue’s step was quick and light, Jackie’s slower and more dignified - as befitted one already in high school. Though, there was one evening when Wendy and I heard a commotion beyond our closed door as Jackie raced up the stairs barely ahead of Les’ stumbling footfalls. Words of frenzy accompanied the stampede.

Our parents slept in a little room downstairs, so about the only time we heard Mom’s footsteps on the stairs was when she was coming to tuck us into bed in the evening: a comforting beat of steady treads. Of course, there were those rare times when we’d been caught jumping on the bed or running amuck between the bedrooms. Her steam-powered tramping was not so welcome on those occasions.

Our house when we first moved in was badly in need of some Tender Loving Care. I remember the roof leaked. And the dingy soapstone sink in a dark corner of the kitchen was unnerving to my sister and me. When the tap was opened, the pipes shuddered and groaned at such a pitch that we covered our ears and left the room. At first we didn’t have a central source of heat, but got through several winters with kerosene stoves in the living room and kitchen. The old pantry on the north side of the kitchen was the only bathroom, which we shared with the other half of the house.

On the south side of our living room was a small room that had two doorways. It had used to be two tiny rooms, but at some time the dividing wall had been removed. This is where Mom and Dad had their bedroom. And where Larry slept for most of his first year until he was promoted to the upstairs to share a room with Rob - the back bedroom, corresponding to Mom and Dad’s room downstairs.

Outside, the lawn was expansive though rather untidy. Just beyond the kitchen door was an overgrown white lilac bush. In the side lawn grew a gone-wild rose bush with deep-red blossoms, very fragrant. Along the front of the house a thick row of lily of the valley appeared every spring. And on the north side of the front lawn was an enormous poplar tree, with branches arcing into the neighbor’s yard. We didn’t play in the front yard so much - Mom was afraid of the busy Main Street - but our backyard was a paradise.

Behind the house were three or four elm trees (which all had to come down the first year we lived there), a couple of walnut trees, and a Quonset Hut, which we kids soon converted into a playhouse. There were two (no longer used) outhouses, one for each side of the house. The one on the north side was rather dilapidated. Dad took it down, but the one on the south side he let stand - another mini-playhouse. At the very back of the property was planted a generous patch of jonquils. Every spring we rejoiced to see the emerald shoots emerge (sometimes through a lingering cover of snow) followed by the oh, so lovely white and yellow bells.

Besides the Quonset Hut and the old outhouse, the only other outbuilding was the carriage house, what we called the garage. This was cavernous and dark, snuggled up so close to the neighbor’s garage that there was only a narrow tunnel separating the two providing a perfect spot to avoid detection when playing hide and seek. We were pretty much forbidden to play in the garage as Dad had a lawnmower repair business that he operated in addition to his job as a mechanic at a car dealership in Rochester.

Forbidden we may have been, but that did not keep us out, it just made us sneaky. One summer day about a year after we moved in Wendy and I discovered a treasure chest in the upstairs of the garage. Way in the back under the eaves, rusty and adorned with cobwebs sat an old steamer trunk filled with interesting items. There were three or four old fashioned dresses, made of black silk and lace, encrusted with beads. The hats of an era long gone fascinated us. We pulled out yellowed hankies and soft kid gloves and a pair of high button shoes. At the bottom we found two brightly-colored beaded purses with silver clasps and chains - one for each of us. We had no inkling then who might have left the trunk. Now, I wonder if it had belonged to Julia Knowles.

During the first two years we lived there dozens of fixes were accomplished. We got a new roof up top and a new furnace down below. Dad converted part of the back room on the rental side of the house into a bathroom and the entire septic system was revamped. He got rid of the old kitchen sink and repaired the plumbing. Then a chunk of the kitchen’s west wall was knocked out and a large new window installed. Under the window he put in a new porcelain sink complete with cabinet and a double drain board. It was not until I was in high school that Dad replaced the old shingled siding with wide new clapboards. It made a real difference to the look of the house.

I could fill a book with my memories of living here, as those years encompass nearly my entire childhood. But, I’ll endeavor to keep it short. In the summer of 1960 my family moved to Mesa, Arizona, where we lived for eight months and where my sister Katy was born. Then we were back in Hemlock by the following April. I was in third grade and Wendy in first. Fran and Les and their three girls still lived in the other half of our house.

By the time my sister Shelly was born in March of 1963 the Peck family had moved to another house just up the road and we were using the entire house ourselves. Dad took out the rental kitchen and made it into a playroom for us. The old back room on that side became the laundry room. What had been our living room - the front room on the south side - was now our dining room, and we moved our living room furniture across to fill the front room on the north side. Mom and Dad’s old bedroom downstairs was remade into Dad’s office and we all slept upstairs, including Dad’s sister Esther who lived with us for about a year after our Granny died.

There was another death that touched our family deeply during the time I lived there. It was the summer of 1970 - August 7 to be exact, my parents’ nineteenth wedding anniversary. I had just graduated from high school a few months earlier and was starting that morning my first day of real work. I’d been hired as a copy writer at the Genesee Valley Pennysaver in Avon. As I ate breakfast, Mom puttered around the kitchen feeding Katy and Shelly. Dad drove away as usual, headed for his job in the city. My boyfriend and I had made plans to treat Mom and Dad to a dinner out that evening and to also celebrate my first day on the job.

I was still spooning up cornflakes when Dad’s car pulled into the drive. We could not imagine what might have brought him home! Driving north on 15A as he’d neared Lima he noticed he was one or two cars behind Les, a rather common occurrence since Dad and Les left for work at about the same time every morning and took the same road as far as Lima. Without warning the unthinkable unfolded right before Dad’s eyes! A speeding southbound car veered out of its lane and hit Les’ car head-on. Traffic in both directions came to a halt. Dad’s heart nearly stopped as well when he realized Les had not survived the crash.

Dad stayed on the scene until emergency vehicles arrived, then turned his car around and came home. He and Mom conferred; then he left again to go to work. As I was about to depart, Wendy was roused from her bed to take over in the kitchen, and Mom left to go to Fran’s.