Overgrown historic horse troughs in Cazenovia planted with flowers

By Janis Barth

Contributing writer

As a way of giving back to the community for 40 years of support, members of the Lorenzo Driving Competition have cleaned three overgrown historic horse troughs around Cazenovia and planted them with flowers.

“They were hidden and abandoned,” said Weese Sullivan Moore, who serves on the show committee. The troughs — located along East Lake Road and the No. 9 Road, and tucked into the back of the Lorenzo State Historic Site — were scarcely visible behind the dense thatch of weeds that had grown up over the years. Now, each is surrounded by a neatly-clipped fringe of green and brimming with pink impatiens.

“They are so beautiful, and a huge part of Cazenovia’s history,” Sullivan Moore said. The oldest of the restored troughs is dated 1866, a reminder of the days when transportation meant four hooves and a whip, instead of four wheels and a gas pedal.

The vision for the project belongs to Judy Sears, a member of the LDC board of directors. Sears was determined to restore the troughs as part of the Ruby Jubilee celebration marking the 40th Lorenzo Driving Competition on July 16 and 17.

Last week she, Sullivan Moore and Gordon Moore worked for hours with weed whackers and trimmers and then returned with flowers — donated by LDC, the Lorenzo mansion and Sullivan Moore — for a final flourish.

“Hopefully the deer won’t eat them all,” Sullivan Moore said.

Most of the Cazenovia horse troughs were placed by members of the founding Ledyard family, said town historian Russell Grills, including two that were trimmed and planted by Sears and Sullivan Moore.

The first, on No. 9 Road, south of the village, is inscribed with an LL cypher for Ledyard Lincklaen — he was born Lincklaen Ledyard but had his name legally reversed when he inherited the Lorenzo mansion — and still stands on its original location opposite an early brick farmhouse. The second originally stood beside the old Cherry Valley Turnpike. When it was removed, it was stored near a barn on the western edge of the mansion grounds.

The newly-planted trough on East Lake Road is clearly inscribed with 1907, the year it was built, and is also in its original location. Grills said it was placed there by a summer resident, who had the concrete trough built near the entrance to his home.

The earliest of the horse troughs was placed on the east side of the Cazenovia and Chittenango Plank Road — now Route 13 — below Chittenango Falls. It’s engraved “1850” and “JDL” for Jonathan Denise Ledyard, the brother-in-law and adopted son of John Lincklaen, Cazenovia’s founder. When the road was improved in the 1920s, the trough was moved to Jonathan’s home, “The Meadows,” on Rippleton Road. It remains there today, Grills said, between the garden entrance and the stable/carriage house.

Perhaps the best known of the Ledyard horse troughs is the one that was located near the junction of Routes 20 and 92, and inscribed with the LL cypher and the date 1862. It was eventually moved to the back of the formal garden at Lorenzo, and is among the many treasures of the jewelbox mansion grounds.