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If you would like a lawn sign to show support for the Occupy Rochester, NY movement, send an email to CapnJack@ScenicRochester.com" with your name, address, phone number (for confirmation only), and a good time for us to come out and post the signs.

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History Corner

The following is a letter by Edwin Scrantom written in 1873 and placed in the corner stone of the old Rochester City Hall on May 28th of that year. The letter was placed in a copper box which was retrieved in 1999, and read at his grave site in Mount Hope Cemetery on Sept. 28, 2000 by then Mayor Bill Johnson. This is a must read for anyone interested in Rochester history.

To the Mayor of Rochester, that will be, when the corner stone of the City Hall that is laid to-day, will be opened, in the twentieth century:

Honorable sir:--I feel a desire to be introduced to you and feel some embarrassment in doing it, because I must be the author of my own letter of introduction, for I remember while I am writing it here and now, that you are among the unborn great of American citizens, and that when you read this, I shall long have been a citizen of that clime and country to which all the hosts of earth are constantly voyaging, but from which 'no traveller returns.' . . .

Well, sir, if you are a little perplexed at this letter of introduction and say, 'Who in the world can this be that speaks to me both in time, and from beyond time, and before my time?' I refer you to the documents in the historical society of Rochester . . . where you will find that in the early part of the nineteenth century, I was in the midst of the great city of which you are now mayor, and I was then also, strange to tell, in the midst of the unbroken forest -- and where you see now that ancient and venerable pile of buildings, known for over a century as 'Powers's block,' I resided with my father in a solitary log house. At that time remnants of the American Indians were our only neighbors, as you will find by history, and also that long since every tribe of them all have passed away.

My youth was spent here in the forest; my manhood was among its streets in the busy marts of trade. My three score years and ten are, while I write this, in the midst of an elegant city of 70,000 people and over -- a Flour city of the Genesee -- a Flower city also in the midst of nurseries and fruit fields of hundreds of acres, and a city of manufactures and of extensive trade. . . .

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Go you to that noble cataract of the Genesee, which I first saw in May, 1812; there, in that early day the Indians who left on the coming of civilisation, went with Hotbread, their chief, and bade the cataract and their hunting grounds around it a last view, and followed the deer towards the Rocky mountains. They were then 'like the mighty oak with a worm at the root -- dying out.'

The boulevard Ontario, built in the latter part of the nineteenth century to Charlotte, doubtless in your day will be the 'Champs Elysses' of Paris, or the Hyde Park in London. That locality, the finest, most stirring, business-like and beautiful ward of the city you now preside over, when I saw it first was an arena for wild beasts; and its inlets and the mouth of the Genesee were but a habitation of bull-frogs.

If you fish in Irondequoit bay, lined on all sides with splendid summer residences, with their towers and balconies that overlook the land and lake, and with their terraced gardens and vineyards and their wealth of flowers that burden the atmosphere with perfume and glory, recollect that I fished there so long ago that one fisherman, and a poor fellow at that, owned all the domain and the water there, and hoped, in vain, that in his lifetime he could sell it all for a farm.

But time is relentless, and goes on forever with its obliteration, and lest you should fail to search out who it is that addresses you, go to your beautiful Mt. Hope, where so many hopes wait to spring to fruition. Look for me there! In the table-land just below the observatory you will find me resting in hope beside one of the sweetest and most loving companions that a good God ever sent to bless a home and household, and between us there is an iron dog, sitting with his head and eyes watching the setting sun; and in his mouth he holds a metal tablet on which is inscribed:

'Watching the sun set -- waiting for the sun rise.

' Lest the tooth of time may have obliterated it, I write it here; and if you think, when you arrive at our graves, that we have been sleeping in a long night, recollect that the 'voice of the archangel and the trump of God shall be heard, and the dead shall hear His voice and come forth.' . . .

But I trust we shall both find the 'sweet fields beyond the swelling flood that are dressed in living green' -- and will you bring this letter with you there and ask for the writer. I shall be most happy to make, there, your acquaintance, and shall want to hear all about my beloved home, my earthly city of Rochester!

Under all circumstances, I am yours, Edwin Scrantom.

 





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