'Round
the Towns
Grave
robbers strike Groveland
Deputy
rescued from fiery death
South
towns devastated by flash flooding
Supervisors
appoint new public defender
Route
63 closed for mine construction
Department-less
Ossian sees epidemic of fires
Murder-suicide
in Conesus
County
celebrates millennium
Grave
robbers strike Groveland
Sometime
between May 10 and June 11, grave robbers struck the historic
Williamsburg Cemetery in the Town of Groveland. The graves of
Capt. Samuel Adams Lee, a U.S. Navy officer who died in 1882,
and of Major Fitzhugh Birney, a U.S. Army officer who died in
1864, were dug out to a depth of four-or-more feet.
It was speculated
that the robbers were seeking military artifacts from the graves.
In the process of digging up Capt. Lee's grave, his headstone
was toppled.
Both officers had been prominent personages of their
day. Birney was Assistant Adjutant General of the Second Division
of the Army of the Potomac. His father James Birney had been a
Liberal (abolitionist) Party candidate for U.S. president in 1838
and 1842. Capt. Lee was related to the Confederate General Lee
and had endured a painful amputation during the Civil War, which
had left him a morphine addict.
Historians condemned modern media
formsthe Internet and TV programswith providing the robbers
with information and encouragement. A detailed description of
Williamsburg Cemetery is on the Internet and recent TV programs
touted the value of Civil War artifacts.
Curiously, the robbing
of the grave of Civil War General Elisha Marshall in Rochester's
Mt. Hope Cemetery took place within days of the Williamsburg robberies.
Rochester police attributed the Marshall robbery to Satanic cult
activity, but Livingston County Sheriff's investigators discounted
Satanism as a motive for the Williamsburg robberies.
The robbers
have never been caught and bought to justice.
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Deputy
rescued from fiery death
On
the evening of June 11, Livingston County Sheriff's Deputy Bradley
Schneider was headed westbound on Routes 5 & 20 towards I-390,
where the report of an erratic driver had been received. Near
Oak Openings Road, the squad car went out of control, leaving
the highway and striking a tree. As Deputy Schneider was struggling
to crawl out the broken back window of the twisted car, the engine
caught fire.
Perry resident James Otis was eastbound on 5 & 20,
on his way work in Canandaigua. He ran over some debris from the
wrecked squad car and decided to turn back and see what he had
hit. Otis drove back and parked at the roadsideand only then
did he see the squad car and flamesand hear Deputy Schneider
call for assistance. ÒI gave him some help getting out and walking
back to the tailgate of my pickup, where we waited for the ambulance,Ó
Otis related.
Meanwhile, the fire in the engine spread rapidly,
engulfing the entire vehicle, turning it into an unrecognizable
melted skeleton of metal.
Otis' heroic rescue was subsequently
recognized by Livingston County Sheriff John Yorkin an immediate
press release and in a later ceremony.
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South
towns devastated by flash flooding
The
Livingston County towns of Ossian and Portage were struck by an
intense but very localized rainstorm on August 9, causing flash
flooding and major erosion damage. Over just a three hour period
small brooks became raging torrents, while the Keshequa swelled
in volume beyond anyone's living memory.
The stage for the flooding
was apparently set four days earlier, on August 5, when an earlier
intense rainstorm hit, saturating the soil so that runoff from
the even more intense storm of August 9 could not be soaked up.
Numerous culverts were washed out. Sections of highway were washed
away. Keshequa Creek widened its channel. Logs in the Jay Lumber
Company yard in Hunt's Hollow were washed downstream. Bear Lake
was washed out above Mudville. Portage Supervisor Ivan Davis suffered
severe basement flooding at Grizzly Meat Processing.
Federal
emergency management inspectors toured the damage site several
days after the flooding. Both Ossian and Portage have qualified
for federal assistance to cover costs of ameliorating the worst
damage to public property. Private property owners who suffered
damage can qualify for special low interest federal loans.
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Supervisors
appoint new public defender
The
most politically controversial item at the county level in 2000
was the Board of Supervisors' rejection of incumbent Public Defender
John Putney in favor of an inexperienced newcomer, Marcea Clark.
Impetus for the change was an upgrading of the defender's position
from half-time to full-time status.
Putney, who is a Republican
state committeeman, who advised creation of the public defender
position ten years ago, who has been a practicing attorney for
18 years and who had served as the county public defender for
the past six years, was incensed by Clark's appointment to the
job.
Clark was willing to accept a salary of $60,000. Putney
had been serving as half-time P.D. at $45,000 and asked for $75,000
to do the job full time. Supervisors' Public Safety Committee
Chairman Joe Daley indicated that salary was not the chief factor
in the committee's recommendation. More significant, Daley said,
was Putney's unwillingness to give up his private practice in
lieu of the full time appointment, while Clark, in contrast, was
willing to surrender all her outside duties. Daley also commended
Clark's administrative abilities.
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Route
63 closed for mine construction
In
June American Rock Salt and C.P. Ward contractors made a radical
proposal to fully close down Route 63 at Hampton Corners for several
weeks while work was underway to widen the highway to accommodate
the mine entries and exits.
The proposed detour would put Route
63's heavy semi-truck traffic through the villages of Mt. Morris
and Leicester, but the contractor claimed the job would be accomplished
much more safely and swiftly if the highway could be fully closed.
While regional DOT officials were very skeptical of the proposal,
support for the mine was forthcoming at both the local village-town-county
level and at the Albany level.
But another negative for the proposal
was that a county highway which might have been used for alternate
eastern detouring was also scheduled for reconstruction during
the summer.
DOT permission was finally given to close Route 63
in front of the mine on July 24. The contractor, for his part,
promised to maintain provisions for passage of emergency vehicles
at any time during the closure, and to have the highway opened
by early September, so school bus traffic would not be affected.
The mine provided funding for extra shift Mt. Morris police officers,
who were made available to enforce truck safety standards and
direct traffic during the next six weeks, as Route 36 endured
the predictable onslaught of trucks and cars. In Leicester, Sheriff
John York prominently displayed his Ôspeed reading robot.'
C.P.
Ward made good with its promise. Route 63 was fully reopened to
traffic on September 2.
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Department-less
Ossian sees epidemic of fires
Ossian,
whose town board eliminated the volunteer Ossian Fire Department
in 1996 in the aftermath of an embezzlement scandle, experienced
some major fire property losses in 2000.
In each of the fires,
the contracted Dansville and Canaseraga fire departments, with
assisting mutual aid, made conscientious efforts to swiftly respond,
but there was always the unanswered question as to whether the
structures could have been saved by Ossian firefighters, if the
department still existed.
In January nine dogs perished when
a four bay truck garage located one mile from the former Ossian
fire station burned to the ground. On June 13 a barn at the Bonner
farm was destroyed by fire caused by youngsters playing with a
lighter. The Bonner loss, including the structure, equipment and
hay, was tallied at $260,000.
On June 24 a 50 by 175 foot barn
on Philip Saunders' Sugar Creek farm burned down. Estimated losses
were $200,000.
Ossian's final fire of 2000 took place on December
11 when a two story wood frame house, in use as a hunting lodge,
burned to the ground.
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Murder-suicide
in Conesus
On
the morning of May 12, the Conesus community was shocked to learn
Walter Frear and Nancy Green, residents of 6993 Kellerman Road,
were dead. Police discovered the bodies of both on the front lawn.
Police subsequently learned that Frear had called his brother
in a distraught state of mind and informed him that he had just
shot and killed Greenand that he planned to turn the gun upon
himself.
Frear had resided at the address since the 1960s; Green
for a shorter time. Both were about 60 years of age.
It was the
second murder-suicide in Conesus in a decade. On July 21, 1993,
Rickey Green Park was the scene of the murder of Kathy Barber,
age 37, by her husband Theodore Barber, age 41. Theodore then
turned the gun on himself. Two of the three Barber children were
witness to the incident.
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County
celebrates millennium
In
recognition of the once-every-thousand-year event, Livingston
County government organized a grand millennium celebration party.
The September 16 event drew a large crowd to the Livingston County
Campus in Mt. Morris.
The event featured musical performances
all day long on two stages, lots of games and activities for kids,
tours of the WPA murals and paintings in the campus buildings,
an economic development tent where many local businesses provided
information about themselves, an antique car display, a skate
boarding exhibition, free bags of rock salt courtesy of the new
American mine, free pretzels and drinking water, numerous other
information booths for local agencies and groupsand a grand finale
parade.
Also in conjunction with the millennium, the county sponsored
a lecture series and the publication of Bill Cook's ÔHistory of
Livingston County.'
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