Luman Roberts Homestead at 4581 N. Main St. in Hemlock NY

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The Luman Roberts Homestead

at 4581 N. Main St. in Hemlock NY.

Photo courtesy of Joy Lewis 2020.

Luman Roberts and his family came to Hemlock in 1846. He bought two parcels of land, one on the west side of Main Street (4574) and one on the east side. On the north end of the eastern lot he built his home (4575). On the south side (this property) he built a cooper shop. Charles Stroud was the first cooper to work here. He came from Canandaigua in 1848 with his brother David and stayed only a few years.

The Roberts property — house and cooper shop — were sold to Luther Lyon in 1855. On this property Luther, a successful lumberman, established a lumber yard and let the cooper shop to George Glazier. Sometime before 1860, when Luther and his family moved to West Bloomfield, George bought the cooperage and for upwards of a decade operated the business.

In the spring of 1865 George Glazier sold the cooperage to Marcus Hoppough. It was Mr. Hoppough who dismantled the old shop and built a small dwelling house on the property. He owned the house next door (4593) where he lived, as well as the flour mill and sawmill downtown, the mill pond, and several hundred acres of farmland on Clay Street. For the next forty years whenever the mill properties changed hands, the whole bundle of land, water, mills, and houses was sold as a package deal. This little house was rented for about three decades to the trustees of Hemlock Baptist Church to be used as their parsonage.

The house, as one small part of the mill properties, was sold in 1870 to William R. Utley, who acted on behalf of the Rochester Waterworks. It was sold again in 1886 to Buel D. Woodruff, and then to Buel’s son Edward in 1907. For most of those years it served as the home of the Baptist minister.

Probably the first family to live here was that of Rev. Lucien Stowell. Called to the pastorate following the long tenure of Ira Justin, Rev. Stowell and his wife Loretta were the parents of three daughters and a son: Mary, age eleven; John, nine; Martha, seven; and Nellie, age four. He’d been living in Hemlock only a few months when, in July 1863, he was required to register for Lincoln’s draft. He was not, however, called to war. When Rev. Stowell left in October 1866, Rev. James Mallory and his family moved in. They stayed two years and after him came Rev. von Puttkamer.

Albert Alexander Leopold von Puttkamer in the winter of 1807 was born into a noble Prussian family known for their pietism. As a young man he served in the Prussian Army, a soldier in the Kaiser’s private guard. His niece Johanna, daughter of his brother Heinrich, would grow up to marry Otto von Bismarck, the first German Chancellor (1871-1890).

Shortly before his thirtieth birthday Alexander emigrated to America where he settled in Lawrence County New York. Seeking a Christian fellowship he embraced the tenants of the Baptist faith. The next few years were spent delivering materials for the American Tract Society and lecturing under the auspices of the American Baptist Publication Society. He married Caroline Scoville in 1843 and they settled in Buffalo. There he founded the first German Baptist Church in the city in 1848.

The next decade took him from Albany, where he founded another German Baptist Church, to Wisconsin, where he founded several more churches. During the Civil War he served as chaplain of a New York regiment. Afterward, he pastored a succession of English-speaking churches throughout New York State. In April 1869 he and Caroline settled into the pastorate of the Hemlock church; he was sixty-two years old. He stayed in Hemlock five years before retiring to Erie County.

Rev. Puttkamer’s term of service was followed by the ministry of George M. Slaysman. Born in Pennsylvania in 1822, the reverend was the founder of the First Baptist Church of York, Pennsylvania. Over the course of his half-century of Christian endeavor, he would return several times to serve at York. But in 1874 he was called to the Hemlock church and remained for eleven years. Living in his household were his wife Mary, her sister Ann Divan, and the women’s mother Evalina Divan.

Pastor Raymond came in May 1883 and stayed until the fall of 1886. For the next eighteen months the church was without a minister, and presumably this house stood empty. Mr. Curtiss, church clerk, served in the interim.

Rev. Frank Blowers was installed as pastor in February 1888. He was twenty-nine years old and unmarried. For two years he was in Hemlock. Next came the six-month term of Rev. Thorne. When he left in December 1890, Rev. J. M. Bates came. He’d served the Baptist Church in Dansville for the past five years, where he was well-liked and remembered. The Dansville Express reported on June 25, 1891 that Reverend Bates and his wife Jessie “are nicely settled [at Hemlock] and are doing good work in the charge over which they preside.”

Merritt J. Winchester, native of Vermont, took over the pastorate in June 1892 and stayed nearly two years. He was a bachelor in his mid-twenties. Three more pastors came and went in the next four years before Rev. Blowers returned to Hemlock in the summer of 1897. He was now married — to Emily Hughes — and the father of a little boy and a little girl: Milnor and Edith. Ruth was born in their first year at Hemlock and their last child, Frankie, arrived in 1899. Teen-aged Alice Wemett, daughter of Emmeretta and Orsamus, lived with the family to help care for the children. And they managed to squeeze in a boarder, Mead Whitney, a telegrapher for the railroad.

Rev. Blowers was probably the last Baptist minister to live here, for the new parsonage was built in the early years of the twentieth century and after his tenure the house was sold again.

In 1907 Edward Woodruff bought from his father the flour mill and all the lands and dwellings that had been associated with the mills since Marcus Hoppough’s original acquisition. He lived in the miller’s house (next door on the south) and rented out this property.

Augustine Pennock, a railroad conductor, lived here for more than five years, from before 1910 to after 1915, with his wife Mynonette and her mother Octavia Zurhoush. In 1920 the house gave shelter to the Hemlock School principal Clinton T. Sears and his bride Maude (Wheeler). They both taught at the school. Although Mr. Sears was not at Hemlock long, in his distinguished career he would preside over half-a-dozen schools throughout upstate New York.

After Edward Woodruff died in the summer of 1923, the house stood empty for a few years.

A notice appeared in the August 27, 1926, issue of the Livonia Gazette: “Mrs. Anna Bush has bought the Woodruff house, known as the Mill house, and is making quite extensive repairs.” Followed by this about two weeks later: “Mrs. Anna Bush has moved into her new home.”

Anna (Henry) Bush was sixty years old, the granddaughter of Ezekiel Wright, and a widow for the past thirteen years. The year 1913 had been a particularly trying one for her, as her mother had died in March that year and her husband two months later. The year had ended, however, with joyous news: the birth of Anna’s first grandchild. Lois Gibbs, daughter of Anna’s eldest daughter Phebe, was born in mid-October.

Phebe Bush had married her sweetheart, Huxley Gibbs, on June 22, 1912. Reports of the “lovely ceremony” appeared in area newspapers. The young Gibbs family lived in Canadice on Huxley’s farm. Phebe was a school teacher, as were her mother and her younger sister Ruth.

Anna Bush had lived much of her life in Canadice. After her husband died, she taught school at Leicester for a season and then in Palmyra. Around 1923 she came back to the Canadice/Hemlock area, for by then her daughter’s marriage was in trouble. Phebe and Huxley separated; he stayed on the farm and Phebe took refuge with her mother. Some years earlier the old Block Schoolhouse at the top of the hill in Hemlock had been decommissioned and remodeled to make a double house. Dr. Raymond Mills lived and had his office in one side and Anna and Phebe rented the other half. Phebe’s ten-year-old daughter Lois lived with Clara Barnard in her home on Hemlock’s Main Street (4537). Clara, who had recently been widowed, was the mother-in-law of Phebe’s sister Ruth (Bush) Barnard.

Anna and Phebe were teachers — Anna in one of Richmond’s district schools and Phebe at a Livonia school. Apparently Mrs. Bush was able to drive, for the Livonia Gazette noted on August 7, 1925, “Mrs. Anna Bush has a new Ford sedan,” which she used to commute to her school on the hill between Hemlock and Honeoye. Howard Barnard, born in 1917, attended this school from a young age. He remembered, “Our teacher was Mrs. Bush. There was a little rostrum higher than the rest of the floor across the west end of the school. The teacher had her desk up on it and there were curtains that could be pulled across. At Christmas, we had a little program with recitations and a tree at night. Lamps and lanterns were used for light.” The Livonia Gazette took notice of the Christmas 1925 celebration at the Toad Hill School: “Mrs. Anna Bush’s school held their Christmas exercises last Wednesday and jolly old Saint Nicholas unloaded a Christmas tree. Great credit should be given to both teacher and pupils for the excellent program.”

In the summer of 1926 Anna and Phebe moved to their new house on Hemlock’s Main Street. Anna was active in the Hemlock Grange, and both mother and daughter were members of the local WCTU chapter. The family attended the Methodist Church where Anna taught a children’s Sunday School class. In 1931, the year granddaughter Lois graduated from Hemlock High, Anna completed her final year of teaching. She died November 8, 1933 at age sixty-seven.

Phebe bought her mother’s house and lived there alone. She now worked closer to home, teaching first, second, and third grades at Hemlock School. A little more than three years after her mother’s death, Phebe learned of her husband’s demise. On the afternoon of Tuesday, February 2, 1937, Clair Proctor, hired man on the Huxley Gibbs farm, returned to the house where he found his employer dead in the kitchen. Huxley had propped a shotgun butt on the floor, pointed the barrel at his head, and used a stove poker to engage the trigger. The Ontario County Sheriff determined the death to be suicide.

Phebe lived another four decades, many of those years continuing to teach at Hemlock School. In the mid-thirties she was the librarian for the Hemlock branch of the Livonia Public Library, whose books were on display in a room at Hemlock School.

Sue (Harvey) Henry, who was in the first grade in 1946, remembered Mrs. Gibbs: “The first grade room was the first one on the right. Later it was the Kindergarten room [and today is in use as the History Room]. She was very stern and the kids were afraid of her. She had this long pointer and used it to touch the letter cards high up on the wall. When she called on a kid to name the letter, he or she might be so scared that they couldn’t answer. I was always afraid of her and so glad to be out of her classroom.”

On July 8, 1976, four days after the nation’s Bicentennial Celebration, Phebe Gibbs died. There are those in Hemlock today, and beyond, who recall her dedication — and her long pointer.