Category: Businesses
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When I first began speaking with Lisa Kleman about our respective family histories and their mutual experience as immigrants in Rochester, I was struck by how similar the story of Kleman’s immigrant ancestor was to my own. Both Kleman and I are present-day representatives of the family lines of two determined German men, who came…
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An unsung but prevalent industry in Rochester’s history was, believe it or not, the mass production of pipe cleaners. Yes, those fuzzy pieces of wire that kindergarteners make crafts out of. The oft-repeated wisdom on Rochesterian pipe cleaners is that John Harry Stedman and business partner Charles Angel patented the fuzzy pipe cleaner, a patent…
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Content warning: this entry contains references to killing birds. If it helps, nobody manages it very effectively. It was the spring of the year 1900, and a strange new bird had been spotted flitting around the streets of Rochester. The unfamiliar avian was black and shiny, whistling a merry tune, and perching atop streetcar wires.…
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Sign of the STEAMING tea-kettle. The word caught my eye. “Steaming”. Did the tea kettle actually steam? I had to know more. Why, you ask? If you’re a regular reader, I admonish you; you should know better than to ask me why I need to know more. That’s what this is all about. If this…
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There are views of Rochester NY that our ancestors took for granted. Peering from atop some long-lost building or since-dismantled bridge. The balcony of the Elwood building, the catwalk structures clinging to the sides of the Main Street Bridge, places where now only a talented drone-pilot could take a shot. Imagine yourself on an iron…
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Content Warning: This post regards manslaughter; historical sources are shared that get somewhat grisly in places. It’s Halloween, what can I say? Read at your own discretion. Our scene opens on the dusty urban corner of Market and Front Streets, in the 1870s. In a squat brick building, a small hotel and saloon is being…
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Time moves ever forward at an inexorable pace. Long before the internet, long before the atomic clock and even a bit before the quartz clock, these mechanical marvels ticked away the seconds through the sheer wizardry of cogs and sprockets. Standing proudly on pedestals beside the street, or clinging to the corners of great banking…