Question: Crepe paper streamers and artificial flowers festooned the bower set up in the sanctuary of Baldwinsville’s First United Methodist Church for this June 1915 re-enactment of a wedding that had taken place in New York City 52 years earlier. Do you know whose wedding it was? Do you recognize any of the performers above?
Last week’s answer: Thanks again to Tony Christopher for his Sketches of Yesterday articles that appeared in the Messenger from 1960 to 1975. The information for this History Mystery came from the article “They Moved Them in the Old Days.”
According to the article, the late Mayor Raymond McCarthy told Tony that the house now located at 27 Elizabeth St. was moved there in 1906. He is quoted as telling about Windsor Morris asking his father if he would like to put a house on his newly purchased lot on the new extension of Elizabeth Street. Morris Machine Works had just bought the property between the plant and Tannery Creek and wanted to dispose of the house that sat there. Mr. Morris was paid $100 for it. The mover Jerry Reels charged $150 for the move, which was done by putting it up on rollers and drawing it to the new site with a horse and winch.
Also according to the article, the dwelling, of Scandinavian architecture, was built years before by the owner of the tannery that stood at the creek. Both the house and the industry fronted on Canal Street (East Genesee). The current dwelling on the site of the tannery is the Sunoco station at the corner of East Genesee Street and Albert Palmer Lane.
Contact Editor Sarah Hall at [email protected] or leave a message at 434-8889 ext. 310 with your guess by 5 p.m. Friday (please leave the information in the message; we are not generally able to return calls regarding History Mystery responses). If you are the first person to correctly identify an element in the photo before the deadline, your name and guess will appear in next week’s Messenger, along with another History Mystery feature. History Mystery is a joint project of the Museum at the Shacksboro Schoolhouse and the Baldwinsville Public Library.
