• HOME
  • Visit
    • Virtual Tour And Stills
  • Learn & Research
    • A Brief History of the Town of Greece, New York
    • Designated Town Landmarks
    • Thomas W. Boyde Jr Resarch Project
    • Living in Greece
    • Historic Newspapers
    • Historic Photographs
    • GHS Program Archives
    • The Corinthian Newsletter Archives
    • Supervisors of Greece New York
  • 200 Years
    • Bicentennial Snapshots
    • The Making of “Pioneer Families of the Town of Greece
    • Pioneer Families Publications
  • Gift Shop
    • Our Bicentennial Items Shop
    • My account
      • Orders
  • Join Us
    • Warren C. Crandell Memorial Scholarship
      • Warren C. Crandell Memorial Scholarship APPLICATION
  • About Us
    • Annual Reports
    • By-Laws of The Greece Historical Society
Skip to content

Greece Historical Society and Museum

"Discover Greece, New York's Past, Preserve its Future."

Bicentennial Snapshot # 27: “The Cooper” Tom Toal

September 20, 2022January 27, 2025 by Pat Worboys and Maureen Whalen


This week in our bicentennial snapshot for September 20th, 2022 we explore Thomas F Toal a cooperage owner, a barber, and a worker from Kodak who grew up on the Parma Greece border.

Topics Covered in this snapshot

  • Thomas F Toal
  • Carrie L Frisbee
  • What is a Cooper? And What is a Cooper nowadays
    • Tools that a cooper uses
    • Wine Barrel sizes
    • Brewery Barrels
  • H. C. Phelps Connection with Tom Toal
  • Tom Toal and His other Trade
  • Tom’s Connection with Doctor Abdiel Bliss Carpenter

Thomas F Toal Bio

Thomas F. Toal was born on August 26, 1866, and grew up in Parma, Monroe County, New York. He was a cooper before going to work at George Eastman’s Kodak where he worked for 12 years and then retired back to the North Greece/Parma area to be back in the country. He died in 1948 and was laid to rest in Our Mother of Sorrows Cemetery at the corner of Latta Road and Mount Read Blvd.

Carrie L. Frisbee

Carrie L. Frisbee was born in 1864 in North Greece, Monroe County, New York she is a niece of Edward Frisbee the owner of the land that was leased to District School # 7 on the family land, the school was located on the north side of Frisbee Road, and east of North Greece Road. (Attach a Map of the location here). Carrie L. (Frisbee) Toal died on 1 January 1957 and she was laid to rest next to her husband Thomas F. Toal in Our Mother of Sorrows Cemetery at the corner of Latta Road and Mount Read Blvd.

Left Carrie L. Frisbee | Right Thomas F Toal
Left Carrie L. Frisbee | Right Thomas F Toal
This is a map of District 7 from the 1872 Map of Greece, New York you can see all the land that is owned by the Frisbee family

What is a Cooperage? What is it nowadays?

According to Wikipedia: A cooper is a person trained to make wooden casks, barrels, vats, buckets, tubs, troughs, and other similar containers from timber staves that were usually heated or steamed to make them pliable. Journeymen coopers also traditionally made wooden implements, such as rakes and wooden-bladed shovels. In addition to wood, other materials, such as iron, were used in the manufacturing process. The profession is the origin of the surname Cooper.  A Cooperage was responsible for making the barrels that were used to store foods, wines, whiskeys, and other drinks or other items that needed to be preserved compared to canning or vacuum sealing or bottling of fruits, vegetables, and drinks in glass jars.  A cooperage would make different size barrels depending on what was going in the barrel. Some of these barrels had gunpowder in the barrel, or maybe pickles, flour, crackers, dried beans, wheat, apples, corn, carrots, or other fruits and vegetables. Some were just used to hold umbrellas, tools, and other items to keep them organized.

Some of the barrels that Tom Toal made ended up in New York City to a buyer who either was for a big farm or a business in New York City that shipped products over to Europe and other places that wanted fresh goods from America in the late 19th century to the early 20th century.  Depending on what the barrel was going to be used for the cooper would choose the right type of wood the most common wood was oak it depends on where in the world it was made. Modern wooden barrels for wine-making are made of French common oak (Quercus robur), white oak (Quercus petraea), American white oak (Quercus alba), and more exotic Mizunara Oak. All typically have standard sizes. Recently Oregon Oak (Quercus Garryana) has been used. The links next to each type of oak will take you to the Wikipedia page on each of the different oaks.

Cooper Tools

Here is a picture of the tools that a Cooperage would use to make the barrels.

cooper's tools from Pinterest
cooper’s tools from Pinterest

Below is a picture of the different size barrels that a cooperage would make the smallest for dry goods would be a Rundlet which was 1/14 tun, the next size up would be a Barrel at 1/8 tun, and the next size up after a barrel is a Tierce at 1/6 tun, the next size after a Tierce is a Hogshead at 1/4 tun, followed by a Puncheon, Tertian at 1/3 tun, then a Pipe, Butt at 1/2 tun, finally the biggest barrel would be a Tun. But for liquids, there would be a gallon-size barrel that held one gallon of liquid.

Types of barrels revolutionarywarjournal.com
Types of barrels revolutionarywarjournal.com

Below are two charts from Wikipedia that explains the English Wine and Brews barrel storage and amounts:

Wine Cask Chart

gallonrundletbarreltiercehogsheadpuncheon, tertianpipe, butttun
1tun
12pipes, butts
11 1/23puncheon, tertian
11 1/324hogshead
11 1/2236tierce
11 1/222 2/348barrel
11 3/42 1/33 1/24 2/3714rundlet
11831 1/2426384126252gallons (wine)
3.78564.14119.24158.99238.48317.97476.96953.92litres
11526 1/43552 1/270105210gallons (imperial)
4.54668.19119.3159.1238.7318.2477.3954.7litres
English wine cask units

Brewery casks

English brewery cask units[4]
gallon firkin kilderkin barrel hogshead   Year designated
        1 hogsheads  
1 1+1⁄2 barrels
1 2 3 kilderkins
1 2 4 6 firkins
1 8 16 32 48 ale gallons (1454)
= 4.621 L = 36.97 L = 73.94 L = 147.9 L = 221.8 L
1 9 18 36 54 beer gallons
= 4.621 L = 41.59 L = 83.18 L = 166.4 L = 249.5 L
1 8+1⁄2 17 34 51 ale gallons 1688
= 4.621 L = 39.28 L = 78.56 L = 157.1 L = 235.7 L
1 9 18 36 54 ale gallons 1803
= 4.621 L = 41.59 L = 83.18 L = 166.4 L = 249.5 L
1 9 18 36 54 Imperial gallons 1824
= 4.546 L = 40.91 L = 81.83 L = 163.7 L = 245.5 L

H. C. Phelps Connection with Tom Toal

When Tom Toal was 21 years old, he went to work for H. C. Phelps making barrels; some were used in H.C. Phelps’s General store or sold from Phelps’s Store. This is where Tom learned the trade of making barrels to be used for different types of goods. Within a few years of working for H. C. Phelps, Tom started his own cooper business making barrels and selling them. While Tom ran his own cooperage he had customers from local farms, general stores, breweries, wineries, and other businesses that needed barrels to store items in. In 1972 Frank Toal was interviewed and explained his dad’s cooperage and shared some of the stories with us, below are a few quotes from Frank Toal.

Phelps general store Latta and North Greece Roads sketch William Aeberli 1970 GHS
Phelps general store Latta and North Greece Roads sketch William Aeberli 1970 GHS

” … my Dad began making barrels in early, August. He bought his staves in the rough and once a year an agent from New York City came up to take the order for staves, ‘hoops and headings.”

“They were shipped out to North Greece in box cars on the old Hojack Line. We’d go down to the station with racks up on the hay wagons and load the supplies.”

“Dad’s business was spread clear down to the lake and over to the Parma town line.  He even had a warehouse down at Braddock Bay…In those days the whole section was apple orchards and Dad would ride his bicycle all around the countryside and take orders from the farmers or collect his money—he never learned to drive a car!”

The most interesting thing that Frank said during the interview was that his dad never learned to drive a car.

Larkin Hotel William Aeberli Greece Post 1971 October 14
Larkin Hotel William Aeberli, Greece Post 1971 October 14

Tom Toal and His other Trade

One of Tom’s other trades was being a barber; Tom was one of those men who believed in hard work and hardly allowed himself to have an idle moment, so he took up being the village barber. He worked two nights a week in a second-floor room at the Larkin Hotel charging the proverbial two bits (25 cents) for a shave and a haircut.

Tom’s Connection with Doctor Abdiel Bliss Carpenter

After 18 years as a cooper, Tom bought the old Conway land and became a farmer. His farm was next door to Dr. Abdiel Bliss Carpenter. Years before, when he was a lad in his teens, he would do odd jobs for the old doctor.  The Doctor’s beautiful house and estate made a lasting impression on Toal. But you won’t believe this but after twelve years of city living, he decided to move back to the country but not to any house but the estate of Doctor Abdiel Bliss Carpenter and lived there the rest of his life.

Carpenter House sketch by Wm. Aeberli Greece Post 1972 February 17
Carpenter House sketch by Wm. Aeberli Greece Post 1972 February 17
mail
Pat Worboys
Technology Coordinator/ Chief Technology Officer |  + posts Bio

Pat Worboys is one of the two Co-Director of the Greece Historical Society's Information Technology Committee. Pat is the Producer of the Bicentennial Snapshots series. Pat holds two degrees one in Information Technology (A.A.S) and the second one is in Interactive Media Design (Web Design) (A.A.S.).

  • Pat Worboys
    https://greecehistoricalsociety.org/author/pat_worboys/
    How to Watch the Sunday Bridge Talk On YouTube
  • Pat Worboys
    https://greecehistoricalsociety.org/author/pat_worboys/
    Annual Membership Meeting for the 2025 Operating Year
  • Pat Worboys
    https://greecehistoricalsociety.org/author/pat_worboys/
    A Brief History of Wegmans by Gary Harris
  • Pat Worboys
    https://greecehistoricalsociety.org/author/pat_worboys/
    Roc The DAY! 2024 With Greece Historical Society
Maureen Whalen
+ posts Bio

Researcher, writer, narrator, and a retired librarian and local historian who worked at the Charlotte Branch Library, Author of A History of the Seneca Park Zoo, and Co-Author of the following books Winning the Vote in Greece, Our Town in World War II. She is the Narrator to all the Bicentennial Snapshots.

  • Maureen Whalen
    #molongui-disabled-link
    The Fight Against Polio
  • Maureen Whalen
    #molongui-disabled-link
    Ralph Francis: Black Activist and Abolitionist
  • Maureen Whalen
    #molongui-disabled-link
    Bicentennial Snapshot No. 54: Gone, but Not Forgotten
  • Maureen Whalen
    #molongui-disabled-link
    Bicentennial Snapshot No. 53: Buckman’s Dairy

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Click to share on Nextdoor (Opens in new window) Nextdoor

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Posted in Bicentennial SnapshotsTagged Bicentennial-SnapShot, Cooper Tools, Doctor Abdiel Bliss Carpenter, Edward Frisbee, George Eastman, Greece, Greece Historical Society, HoJack, Maureen Whalen, New York, North Greece, Our Mother of Sorrows, Parma, Pioneer Families, Thomas F Toal

The mission of the Greece Historical Society is to discover, research, and preserve the history of the Town of Greece and to share that history with its residents and the local community through public programs, publications, museum exhibits, and accessibility to its archives and artifacts.

If you like to learn more about the Town of Greece’s history, consider Subscribing to the YouTube Channel Greece, New York History YouTube Channel and when you get there don't forget to subscribe and click that bell 🔔, and you will be notified when new content come out from the Greece Historical Society, about the Town of Greece and its past so future generations can understand how the town has taken us on multiple journeys.

Useful Links

  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact Us in Writing

Archives

Facebookyoutubeflickr
The Greece Historical Society - (585) 225-7221

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

You can find out more about which cookies we are using or switch them off in .

 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d
      Greece Historical Society and Museum
      Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
      Privacy Overview

      This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

      Strictly Necessary Cookies

      Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

      If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.

      Post navigation

      ← Bicentennial Snapshot # 26 – Doctor Abdiel Bliss Carpenter
      GHS AWARDED FOR EXCELLENCE IN PROMOTING LOCAL HISTORY →