Pioneers Out of Pultneyville: Schooner Days DCCLIX (759)

by C. H. J. Snider

How Nelson's Namesake Came to Build the Sophia Which Went Down So Suddenly

PULTNEYVILLE, in the lee of Appleboom Point, is the pleasantest old port on Lake Ontario. It is as old as our Port Credit, for the French were there in 1685. Within 25 miles of Rochester and 125 miles of Toronto, it has escaped alike the grim commercialization of some once beautiful natural havens, and that complete neglect and abandonment which has befallen others. It has no harborage now but a creek mouth, no piers, port lights, warehouses or elevators or apple storage as it once had. But it has a lively yacht club, good fellowship, the amenities of life, happy homes, and an atmosphere of friendly well being like the scent of balm-of-gilead. That is what makes it so pleasant.

Long ago steamers called here daily. Schooners too, loaded fruit and grain and tallow, or unloaded lumber and cedar posts from Canada or iron from Bear Creek up the shore or trees from Rochester nurseries for the surrounding orchards.

Pultneyville was a great apple shipping place in the fall, apples being piled high in barrels on the wharves or teamed hither in bulk for boxing and shipping, dried apples, canned apples, green apples, cider apples.

Moreover, Pultneyville sailors left the port in the spring in the twenty schooners and fewer steamers built here, or to join others in other ports, to trade down the St. Lawrence or as far as Chicago, the uttermost part of the earth in the new golden grain-growing west. They would be away for months, in vessels owned all over the Great Lakes, to return for Joe Gazley's annual Sailors' Ball on Christmas Eve and the country festivities of a "York State" winter.

One family, the Roys, sent its captain sons on whaling voyages to the Arctic and Pacific. They would go by train to New York and steamer to San Francisco, to join their ships, and be away three years, and come back with pockets full of money, or the title deeds to California farms, or patent papers for harpoon guns or improved timberheads. And they might bring home brides wearing bustles, or samples of the new invention, the velocipede, just as the fancy took the jolly whalemen.

As told before, a dummy lighthouse marks the turn of the lake road, with an anchor and stone cathead on top of it, and on one side a list of the port's old schooner captains and their vessels. The first name on it is that of Samuel Throop, master of the schooner Farmer, 1810, and of the schooner Nancy, 1811. Twenty-six names follow Capt. Samuel Throop's on the bronze plaque—two more Throops, two Hollings, three Todds, and Snows, Coles, Ponds, Woods, Morleys, Palmers, Brewers, Tomlinsons, Roys, Burtisses, Ledyards, Fairbanks, Sheffields, Leavers, Smiths and Pallisters. These were the sailing families of Pultneyville last century. Descendants still inhabit the port, and some still follow the sea. Capt. Burcroff, sailor son of Clarence R. Burcroff, secretary of the Pultneyville Yacht Club, has been in command of steamers to Europe during the war and since, and is eagerly expected home any time soon for a sail in the family sloop yacht Scud. Scud is 42 years old now and is as anxious to get Capt. Burcroff back at her helm as he is desirous of being there.

SAMUEL THROOP — the name, variously spelled, is Scottish and pronounced Troup—came to Pultneyville, N.Y., in 1806, with his father-in-law, Jeremiah Selby.

Samuel was one of several sons of Benjamin Throop who settled in Palmyra — three miles away by stage coach — five years before. The Throops had earlier migrated from Connecticut to Manchester, N.Y. Samuel, born in 1779, had been a salt water voyager to South America, to the Pacific in a whaling voyage, and perhaps to China, before coming to Lake Ontario. He married Ruth Selby in 1805. They had three children, Horatio, Washington and Rachel.

They were sweethearts throughout their married life, for to this day there is in Pultneyville a quaint little coffer of raffia-like inlay, with a panel in front showing "R" and "S" joined by a heart, and the date below "1814." It was Samuel's gift to Ruth after nine years of matrimony. The box seems to be Chinese work, although Samuel's China voyaging was over long before the date. The initials may mean Ruth and Samuel, or they may stand for Ruth Selby.

In 1810 Samuel sailed a small schooner of 30 tons, called the. Farmer, of Pultneyville, which could carry a thousand bushels of grain. She was driven ashore while loading, which would indicate that wharves were yet to be built at this new port at the mouth of Salmon Creek. In the early days much loading was done by ferrying the cargo out to the vessel. In the winter of 1811 he built another wee ship at Pultneyville, possibly the first to be launched there. He called her Nancy. His younger brother Benjamin had married Nancy Gardner in Boston in 1796. Perhaps there was a little Nancy, a niece, to commemorate.

Or perhaps the older brother wished to do honor to his sister-in-law herself. Samuel did not marry for nine years after his brother's wedding.

It was tragic that after sailing ten thousand miles of salt water Samuel Throop was drowned in fresh, in his 40th year. In 1819 in the fall he was going into Great Sodus Bay in a gale of wind with this Nancy, when a mighty sea washed him overboard.

His eldest boy was then twelve. Horatio Nelson he had been christened, and he was a credit to the great admiral whose name he bore. He took over the helm of the little family if unable to take his father's place at the helm of the ship. Handy with tools, and helped by the advice of an old ship carpenter, he built a small boat during the winter and sold her. Next winter he built another, for himself. Still small, but large enough to be rigged with sails, and to carry a ton of freight. In those days of dirt roads and no railways as much freighting as possible was done by water.

Next year, he made a deal. He traded the sailboat for enough timber to build a small coaster. When he got her finished he had no trouble in selling her. He was now 16. He spent a season with Russell Cole, that veteran of the War of 1812, who escaped by swimming from the British in their Pultneyville attack and lived to be a noted shipwright.

Cole had owned and sailed the schooner Caroline in 1814. He and his young partner began building canal boats at Rochester for the new Erie Canal. In August, '24, young Throop went to "an island on the Canada side of the lake" for timber for a real vessel he had decided to build for himself. The island may have been Timber Island, off Point Traverse, or the Main Duck, twelve miles farther east. At this time it was supposed to be preserved for the Indians of Alnwick, but they made little use of it, and there was much complaint of American poachers coming to cut timber on it, especially the natural crooks of tamarack and cedar, used for ships' knees and timbers.

Horatio got what he went after and brought it back to Pultneyville. Next September, 1826, after a year's work, he launched his fourth and most ambitious craft since he began building, and the first schooner for himself.

This was the Sophia, from whose wreck, next year, he swam ashore with nothing left in the world but his shirt and trousers — and the cabin door. Horatio's further adventures might be those of one whose surname was Alger. An indication of them will be given next week. His sister Rachel married Capt. Holling, and became a grandmother of Dr. Henry E. Lawrence, an eminent physicist. To him we are indebted for assistance in the genealogical exploration here attempted.

ONE OF THESE LEAVES SAVED A LIFE

Fenced by century-old relics, DR. HENRY E. LAWRENCE, Professor Emeritus of Physics in the University of Rochester and lecturer in Cornell, helps Schooner Days to an understanding of Pultneyville old times. Dr. Lawrence sailed before the mast himself, and some of his forecastle experiences will be told later. On his knee is the inlaid coffer Samuel Throop gave his wife, Ruth Selby. The doors he holds are painted apple green, with neat lancetheaded hinge straps of hand-hammered iron. Each is inscribed in ink in a firm round hand that wrote seventy years ago:

1. "This door was an aid in my swimming from the little schooner SOPHIA which vessel went to the bottom loaded with corn four to five miles below and off Big Sodus Aug. 22nd 1827.

"The miles swum as near as I can judge from time to time and appearances were about four miles with a heavy sea from the northwest."

HORATIO N.THROOP.

"These two doors and the tiller are the only relics I have of the little schooner SOPHIA.

II. "This door" (the other or starboard side one apparently) "was one of the cabin companionway doors of the little schooner SOPHIA which suddenly went to the bottom 4 to 5 miles below and off Big Sodus Bay loaded with corn Aug. 22nd, 1827. The exact mate or other half of the door was made available as a buoyant aid to the undersigned in his swim from the sunken vessel to the shore landing at East Bay at its junction with the bluff on the west side of said bay. This door drifted ashore with the wind and was picked up below the spot where I landed." HORATIO N. THROOP.