Bicentennial Snapshot No. 51: Some Notable Women of Greece

This week as the country marks the beginning of National Women’s History Month, we will introduce you to some notable Greece women.

Throughout the year we’ve told you stories about places, events, and people of the town of Greece. Some of the most elusive to pursue are the stories of Greece women who lived and contributed to the town, state, or country. Before the 20th century, most women usually were written off only when they married or died.

First let us salute all the pioneer women, such as Mehitable Hincher, who helped settle the town and raised their children, and helped their spouses. Imagine what it was like for Mehitable to be the first European woman to live in the town with no others for miles around. On the banks of the Genesee river, she raised her eight children and prospered with her husband. As did many other women whose names and stories are lost to history.

Descendants of William and Mehitable Hincher, circa 1890s
Descendants of William and Mehitable Hincher, circa 1890s

Elizabeth Baker

Painting attributed to Robert Peckam, circa 1843
Painting attributed to Robert Peckam, circa 1843

There’s little documentation for Elizabeth Baker. She was born in 1813 in East Haddam, Middlesex County, Connecticut, the daughter of Josiah Jewett Baker and Alice Fox Baker. She was living in Greece circa 1840, but where or with whom is uncertain. Up until this time, there were only custom tailors in Rochester but, she opened a shop on Front Street in Rochester selling ready-to-wear children’s clothes. The boys’ trousers cost 25 cents. She was the very first clothing manufacturer in the city, a city that was on the brink of becoming a center of clothing manufacturing in the country.

Circa 1843, Meyer Greentree came to Rochester. He was one of only five Jewish people residing in Rochester at the time and he has been designated by some as the father of the Rochester Jewish community. He first worked for lace dealer Sigmund Rosenberg also on Front Street. Meyer became acquainted with Elizabeth Baker and they married in 1844. It was quite unusual for the time for a Jewish man and a Gentile woman to marry. After their marriage and the birth of their first child, Meyer took over the Front street business and “converted the place to a pants shop, and thereby began Rochester’s famed men’s clothing industry.”

Artist’s imaging of Mire Greentree, 1984, by Dick Lubey from 4 Score & 4 Rochester Portrait
Artist’s imaging of Mire Greentree, 1984, by Dick Lubey from 4 Score & 4 Rochester Portraits
Ad for Greentree & Wile, in the 1861 Rochester City Directory
Ad for Greentree & Wile, in the 1861 Rochester City Directory

Meyer Greentree is rightly called the Father of Rochester’s clothing industry, and though she is seldom mentioned, one would also have to say that Elizabeth Baker is the mother of Rochester’s clothing industry.

Sarah Cole Truesdale

On November 5, 1872, hoping to generate a legal case to take to the Supreme Court, Susan B. Anthony and 14 other women including her sister Mary voted in the presidential election. However, to stave off the possibility that this case could go all the way to the Supreme Court, the women were charged with misdemeanors, not felonies.

Susan B. Anthony from Rochester Public Library History and Genealogy Division
Susan B. Anthony from Rochester Public Library History and Genealogy Division
2022 Pioneer Families Program, May 10, 2022 Slide 37
Sarah Cole Truesdale’s home on Madison Street, from our Program UP CLOSE WITH TWO GREECE PIONEER FAMILIES recorded May 10, 2022

One of the other women who went with her was Sarah Cole Truesdale. She lived next door to the Anthonys on Madison Street. Sarah Cole was from a pioneer Greece family, growing up in Hoosick, that is South Greece. Her husband George Truesdale was from another long-time Greece family. In the snapshot, you can hear Deborah Cole Meyers, a volunteer at the Greece Historical Society describes when she discover an ancestor was friends with Susan B Anothy.

On May 22, 1873, Order of Indictment was issued for Sarah Cole Truesdale.
On May 22, 1873, Order of Indictment was issued for Sarah Cole Truesdale.

On May 22, 1873, Sarah appeared before Millard P. Fillmore, son of the thirteenth President of the United States who you may recall was from Buffalo. This is a copy of her indictment for the crime of voting for a representative of the United States Congress 29th congressional district “without having a legal right to vote in the said election district, the said Sarah Truesdale being then and there a person of the female sex.”

The court form only accounted for men voting illegally. Notice here that the clerk had to insert an “s” before “he” in this sentence.

Sarah Cole Truesdale's Bail release conditions
Sarah Cole Truesdale’s Bail release conditions

Sarah was released on four hundred dollars bail. This is a copy of her recognizance contract. However, the government decided to try only Susan B. Anthony. The case was widely followed in the press all over the country and helped to focus the women’s rights movement specifically on suffrage. Let’s now consider Greece’s most famous suffragist.

Jean Brooks Greenleaf

Jean Brooks Greenleaf was born on October 1, 1831, in Bernardston, Massachusetts. She married Halbert S. Greenleaf, a lock manufacturer (Yale and Greenleaf and later Sargent and Greenleaf here in Rochester) in 1852. In 1867 they moved to Rochester.”

Halbert S. Greenleaf, from William Farley Peck, Semi-centennial History of the City of Rochester, 1884.
Halbert S. Greenleaf, from William Farley Peck, Semi-centennial History of the City of Rochester, 1884.

Halbert S. Greenleaf, a Democrat, also served two terms in the House of Representatives, 1883 to 1885 and 1891 to 1893.

The Greenleafs lived at 64 North Goodman Street but also spent the summer months at their home and farm in Greece—what is today all the land around Lakeshore Country Club. At that time the street was called Fleming Road; today it is Greenleaf Road.

Close up of the1902 Plat Map zoomed in on Halbert S Greenleaf Property in Greece, N.Y., by J. M. Lathrop and Roger H. Pidgeom
Close up of the 1902 Plat Map zoomed in on Halbert S Greenleaf Property in Greece, N.Y., by J. M. Lathrop and Roger H. Pidgeom
Picture of Jean Brooks Greenleaf in A Woman of the Century by Frances Willard and ‎Mary Ashton Livermore
Picture of Jean Brooks Greenleaf in A Woman of the Century by Frances Willard and ‎Mary Ashton Livermore published in 1893

From 1887-1890 Jean Brooks Greenleaf was president of the Rochester Political Equality Club. From 1890-1896 she was president of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association. During her administration, New York became the best-organized state in the Union.” For the women of Greece, on September 15, 1892, the Charlotte Political Equality Club was organized at her summer farm and home.

Jean’s talents were dedicated to the cause in the years immediately before and after the New York State Constitutional Convention in 1894. Woman Suffrage was the burning question of that Convention. She chaired The Constitutional Amendment Campaign as President of the New York Woman Suffrage Association. She worked very closely with Susan B. Anthony.

Jean Brooks Greenleaf, Constitutional Amendment Com., calling card, from the Rochester Regional Library Council
Jean Brooks Greenleaf, Constitutional Amendment Com., calling card, from the Rochester Regional Library Council
Jean Brooks Greenleaf with Susan B. Anthony at her summer home in Greece, from the Rochester Regional Library Council
Jean Brooks Greenleaf with Susan B. Anthony at her summer home in Greece, from the Rochester Regional Library Council

Although their campaign to change the New York State constitution was not successful, Jean Brooks Greenleaf did live long enough to see women win the vote in New York State in November 1917, but not long enough to actually exercise that right. She died on March 2, 1918, at the age of 86.

In 2018, the Greece Historical Society secured a grant from the William C. Pomeroy foundation and with the permission of the Lakeshore Country Club erected a historical marker on the site of her former Greece home and farm.

Greenleaf Home Historical Marker Sign (2018), photo by Bill Sauers
Greenleaf Home Historical Marker Sign (2018), photo by Bill Sauers

Emma Pollard Greer

Emma Pollard Greer from H. Dwight Bliss
Emma Pollard Greer from H. Dwight Bliss

Emma Pollard Greer was a charter member of the Charlotte Political Equality Club. Emma lived all of her life in the little white house at the corner of Lake and Pollard Avenues where she was born on December 12, 1855, the seventh and last child, and only daughter, of Henry Pollard and Martha Moxon. The Moxon family was one of the earliest settlers in Greece arriving in 1825. Henry, her father, was born in England and came to Charlotte in 1836. He was the village blacksmith.

In 1882 Emma began her 22-year teaching career, first in the Charlotte grammar school and then, beginning in 1897, as one of 8 faculty members at the high school.

Charlotte High School foreground with the grammar school behind it from the Office of the Town Historian
Charlotte High School foreground with the grammar school behind it from the Office of the Town Historian
Emma Pollard Greer presenting scrapbooks to Charlotte High School courtesy of Marie Poinan
Emma Pollard Greer presenting scrapbooks to Charlotte High School courtesy of Marie Poinan

At the time of her death at 88 in 1944, Emma was the oldest native of Charlotte. She was the village’s historian. She wrote about the town of Greece and Charlotte for both the Democrat & Chronicle and Times-Union newspapers. In 1933 she contributed “Home Builders of Old Charlotte” to Volume 2 of the Centennial History of Rochester published by the Rochester Historical Society. At the age of 75, she completed the manuscript for her History of Charlotte and gave two copies to the Rochester Public Library. It was published in full in 1999. It is due to Emma’s diligent history-keeping that so much is known about the early history of the village and the town of Greece. One woman she wrote about was Julia Roberts.

When they hear the name Julia Roberts, those who are familiar with the history of the Charlotte blast furnace (1868-1927), do not think of the beautiful, talented actress, rather they think pig iron. Julia Pollay Roberts’ husband, Henry C. Roberts, took the reins of the iron manufacturing company in 1879, saving it from collapsing.

Stereopticon view of blast furnace, circa 1888
Stereopticon view of blast furnace, circa 1888
Postcard of blast furnace, circa 1910, from eBay
Postcard of blast furnace, circa 1910, from eBay

Henry’s many business interests required him to take frequent trips and it was Julia who managed the iron works plant in his absence. Charlotte historian Emma Pollard Greer wrote of her: “She must have been one of the earliest women iron masters in the United States.” After Henry’s death in 1885, Julia became head of the company, successfully keeping it “one of the most complete and best-equipped furnaces in the country.” Again quoting Emma Pollard Greer, “Mrs. Roberts had an unusual grasp of business for the women of her period.”

Unfortunately, the financial panic of 1893 and the ensuing depression forced Julia to shut down the operation. It was resurrected and leased to other companies, with Julia retaining some financial rights until 1902. The blast furnace finally went out of business in 1927.

Blast furnace, 1918, from GHS
Blast furnace, 1918, from GHS
4215 Lake Avenue, 2022, photo by Bill Sauers
4215 Lake Avenue, 2022, photo by Bill Sauers

After the property was sold to the city of Rochester in 1929, Julia who had lived at 4752 Lake Avenue near the blast furnace (where the Port of Rochester Marina is today), moved to this house at 4215 Lake Avenue. Julia Roberts died in 1938 at the age of 90 and is buried in Mt. Hope Cemetery.

You can check out the Program Marie Poinan did on the Charlotte Blast Furnace in our Program Archives

Laura Justine Bonesteel A/K/A Jessie Bonstelle

Rear from Left to Right Ada, Georgia, Ida,
Front left to right Mary Lillian, Jessie Bonstelle

The only photo of Five of the Six Bonsteel sisters, Not in the picture is Annie Laurie Bonesteel, she was the only daughter who did not make it past a year old, and this photo is in the Benedict collection at The Greece Historical Society.

Laura Justine Bonesteel (1871-1932), called Jesse, was born in the town of Greece in 1871, the youngest of eleven children and one of six girls. Her parents were Joseph F. Bonesteel and Helen Norton. She was stagestruck at the age of 2 as a singer and was featured on a national tour by the age of 7. By her teens, she had leading roles in productions from the Schubert Company and pursued a career as an actress. And her paternal grandfather Heinrich “Henry” Bonsteel who ran The Bonesteel Tavern at Frankfort at High Falls at the site where the Flat Iron Cafe is located today at the intersection of Lake Ave, Lyell Ave, Smith St, and State St you can read more about Henry Bonsteel from the blog LOCAL HISTORY ROCS! by ROCHESTER PUBLIC LIBRARY/LOCAL HISTORY & GENEALOGY DIVISION titled A Genealogy of Place Pt. 3:  From Frankfort Institute to Flat Iron Café. Laura Justine Bonsteel’s siblings are listed below by year of birth, two of her siblings Henry Joseph and Annie Laurie did not make it past one year old, and Frederick Henry did not make it more than 3 years old. Henry, Annie, and Federick might have passed away as a result of any of the following childhood illnesses and diseases at the time which could have been the fourth cholera pandemic, smallpox outbreaks, yellow fever, and/or some other disease from the 1850s. Thanks to Jo Ann Ward Synder who is currently working on the Pioneer Families of Greece Volume II which is in the process of being worked on right now has provided the updates on the genealogy of the Bonsteel family here and below is the complete list of the children of Joseph Frederick Bonsteel and Helen Norton.

  • Sons of Joseph Frederick Bonesteel and Helen Norton in order of year of Birth
    • Henry Joseph Bonsteel (1854–1857) – Cause of death unknown,
    • Joseph Bonsteel
    • Frederick Henry Bonesteel (1864-1865) Died from Dysentery (intestinal infection, diarrhea),
    • Charles Suggett Bonesteel (1866-1929),
    • Harry Francis Bonesteele (1869-1934)
  • Daughters of Joseph F. Bonesteel and Helen Norton in order of year of Birth
    • Georgia F. Bonesteel Raynsford (1856-1937),
    • Mary Lillian Bonesteel Tiffany (1858-1932),
    • Twins Ada Lucelle Luella Bonesteel Benedict (1860-1943) and Ida Estelle Bonesteel Webster (1860-1931),
    • Annie Laurie Bonesteel (1867-1868) passed away from Marasmus- in today’s world Failure to Thrive,
    • Laura Justine Bonesteel (1871-1932).

    A printer’s error changed her professional name to Jesse Bonestelle. She starred in a number of productions, but her acting talent was limited. She found more success as a manager, producer, and acting coach.

    According to the book Images of America series: Rochester: Labor and Leisure, written by Donovan A. Shilling, it was the Frederick Cook Opera House that made the mistake on the theaters’ marquee and in the playbill, she decided to change the last name from Bonsteel to the last name Bonstelle and Bonstelle had a more romantic-sounding name to it. The Cook Opera House in Rochester is no more but you can read more about its history at LOCAL HISTORY ROCS! blog by ROCHESTER PUBLIC LIBRARY LOCAL HISTORY & GENEALOGY DIVISION titled The Play’s The Thing: A History of Cook’s Opera House, Part One and The Play’s The Thing: A Brief History of Cook’s Opera House, Part Two

    Jesse Bonestelle from the Library of Congress
    Cover of Theatre Magazine, October 1928
     Temple Beth-El (1902) — Beth-El's first temple, in central Detroit, southeastern Michigan.
    Temple Beth-El (1902) — Beth-El’s first temple, in central Detroit, southeastern Michigan. – Attribution: Andrew Jameson at English Wikipedia

    After running her own stock companies in Rochester, Syracuse, and Northampton, Massachusetts, she moved to Detroit, where she leased the Garrick Theatre and mounted plays there until 1910; in 1923 she was back in New York City managing the Harlem Opera Theatre.

    In 1924, Eugene Sloman purchased the Temple Beth El for $500,000 (about $6.7 million in 2009, when adjusted for inflation) for Jessie Bonstelle, the former synagogue got a new life as a home for the arts. Bonstelle had conducted a company at the Garrick Theatre for 15 years before finding a permanent home with the former Temple Beth El. Bonstelle was featured in a series of articles in McCall’s in 1929, giving advice to aspiring actresses.

    The Temple Beth El was reconfigured by Architect C. Howard Crane into the Bonstelle Playhouse. In 1930 there was letterhead that was showing it was the Detroit Civic Theatre, the first civic theatre in America.

    “Here she continued to produce plays and encourage young performers. Broadway producers respected her acumen and skill, often asking her to try out new plays for them.”

    Rochester Public Library Local History and Genealogy Division
    Katherine Cornell in The Age of Innocence, 1928

    She had a brilliant knack for spotting acting talent and among her clients was Katherine Cornell

    Melvyn Douglas,

    Melvyn Douglas gives Greta Garbo a kiss in Ninotchka, 1939
    Frank Morgan as the wizard in The Wizard of Oz, 1939

    Frank Morgan,

    And William Powell.

    William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man, 1936
    Katherine Cornell as Jo in Little Women, 1919.

    Jesse’s greatest achievement as a producer was persuading the family of Louisa May Alcott to sell her the rights to Little Women and she produced the first stage adaptation of this beloved story, taking it to Broadway and London.

    Laura Justine Bonesteel passed away on October 14, 1932, at the age of 60 from a heart attack in Detriot, Michigan, and was laid to rest at Mount Hope Cemetary in Rochester, New York. And in 1936 a memorial Tree was planted in her honor a copy of the photo can be seen in the Wayne College library digital archives. Also to note in a post about the Bonstelle Theatre on HistoricDetroit.org there was an article written in Detriot Discovery magazine in 1974 by Mary McHenry that Jessie Bonstelle’s ghost haunts the theater, ” Her Soul was the theater, now the theater is her soul”. Wayne State University had numerous students that have gone on to star in some good movies like Ernie Hudson from Ghostbusters Movies, and Mary Jean Tomlin aka Lily Tomlin who starred on The Merv Griffin Show, and later appeared on the Garry Moore Show. You can read more about the Bonstelle Theatre from Histroic Detroit as well as the Garrick Theatre from Historic Detroit to understand its history. A little update as of August 3, 2023, on the Bonstelle Theatre when I stopped in and explored the tintype studio and started to talk about tintypes and film and I brought up the Bonstelle Theatre in downtown Detriot and one of the two volunteers at Greenfield Village heard that was some talk about salting the ground around the Theatre because of how her spirit or other spirits are haunting the space but when I was going by the facility heading home on August 8, 2023, it looks like they are prepping some work to be done on the building most likely is the building is getting ready for demolition.

    Some Honorable Mentions

    Blanche Stuart Scott

    Blanche Stuart Scott grew up on Mount Read Blvd and became a famous female pilot, an Automobile Adventurer, Actress, and a museum curator. Blanche Stuart Scott, America’s first female pilot, was born in 1885 on her grandparents’ farm in Greece located on the north side of Lexington Ave where GM’s Delphi Plant is now located, the south side was in Gates. Reading from her unpublished autobiography during a recorded interview, she said.

    “My name is Blanche Stuart Scott and I come from a pioneer family, a Rochester pioneer family, who came to Rochester in eighteen hundred and ten. And settled out on what was then the old Scott Road and is now Mt Read Blvd.”

    Blanche Stuart Scott

    Kara Lynn Massey

    Kara Lynn Massey (born February 16, 1985), was a Greece Athena grad that went on to star in some big Broadway productions and is known professionally as Kara Lindsay, is an American stage actress and singer, best known for her roles as Katherine Plumber in Newsies (2012) and Glinda in Wicked (2014, 2016, 2018, 2019).

    Kara Lindsay - IMDb
    Kara Lindsay (Kara Lynn Massey)

    Thank you for joining us today. Next week we look at the Greece Performing Arts Society.

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    Bicentennial Snapshot No. 47: Childhood diseases

    Today we will look back at some of the illnesses and diseases that affected the lives of many children.

    Mother Newell and her eight children, Our Mother of Sorrows Cemetery, 2021, photo by Joe Vitello
    Mother Newell and her eight children, Our Mother of Sorrows Cemetery, 2021, photo by Joe Vitello

    When we conduct walking tours of local cemeteries, we get asked about all the small tombstones. Yes, they usually indicate the grave of a child. Here in Our Mother of Sorrows Cemetery are the graves of eight Newell children: Anna, Edward, George, another George, Hattie, Henry, Julia, and Willard.

    The child mortality rate in the United States, for children under the age of five, was 462.9 deaths per thousand births in 1800. This means that for every thousand babies born in 1800, over 46 percent did not make it to their fifth birthday. Over the course of the next 220 years, this number has dropped drastically, and the rate has dropped to its lowest point ever in 2020 where it is just seven deaths per thousand births. Although the child mortality rate has decreased greatly over this 220-year period, there were two occasions where it increased; in the 1870s, as a result of the fourth cholera pandemic, smallpox outbreaks, and yellow fever, and in the late 1910s, due to the Spanish Flu pandemic. source: UN DESA; World Population Prospects 2019, Online Edition

    Child mortality rate (under five years old) in the United States, from 1800 to 2020
    Child mortality rate (under five years old) in the United States, from 1800 to 2020
    Each five-year increment is from January 1 of the previous 5-year marker to December 31, of the 5-year marker.

    Most of the Newell children lived less than a year, one died at the age of three, and the longest surviving child died at the age of 12. In the United States during the 1850s and ‘60s, 42% of children died before the age of five. There were numerous communicable diseases prevalent in the 19th century. These included smallpox, diphtheria, measles, meningitis, scarlet fever, and whooping cough. Cholera infantum was also common.

    Mother with a sick child
    Mother with a sick child

    One historian wrote: “Up until the 1930s, infant mortality, especially in the cities during the summers, was ferocious. Infant susceptibility to a variety of respiratory and gastrointestinal disorders was exacerbated by poor sanitation, overcrowded tenements, contaminated milk supplies, and lack of refrigeration.” Cholera infantum was a gastrointestinal disease of infants and children. “Various strategies were devised to remove infants from danger during the hottest months.” One strategy was tent hospitals. One was set up in the Town of Greece along Lake Ontario on Beach Ave where Waterview Heights Rehabilitation and Nursing Center and some parts of where Lakeshore Country Club holes 16 and 17 were used as walking paths before the country club was formed in 1932 on the Greenleaf Estate.

    Believing that the pure air and salubrious effects of breezes off Lake Ontario could benefit the health of sickly children, Dr. Edward Mott Moore established the Infants Summer Hospital circa 1885 on land

    Dr. Edward Mott Moore
    Dr. Edward Mott Moore
    Halbert S. Greenleaf from Semi-centennial History of the City of Rochester by William Farley Peck
    Halbert S. Greenleaf from Semi-centennial History of the City of Rochester by William Farley Peck

    …donated by Halbert S. Greenleaf. Greenleaf and his wife, Jean Brooks Greenleaf, had a summer residence on the property that extended from Latta Road to Beach Avenue. It was also the largest stock farm in Monroe County.

    Plat book of Monroe County, New York. Plate 24 [map].

    The land was situated on a bluff overlooking Lake Ontario just west of the village of Charlotte. The tent hospital was on today’s Beach Avenue. The Greenleaf’s Summer property was 167 acres. His neighbors were the Flemings, the Lings, Mrs. G.C. Latta, J.G. Martie, David Tennison, Orin Hoxey, and the McManus.

    Close-up of Halbert S. Greenleaf Property from the 1902 Plat Map
    Postcard of Infants Summer Hospital from Rochester Public Library’s History and Genealogy Division

    They first erected tents to house sick children. Ample accommodations were provided for mothers who expected to stay with their children. There were no charges for any service or care.

    By 1888, some permanent buildings had been erected.

    Postcard of Infants Summer Hospital from Rochester Public Library’s History and Genealogy Division
    Kitchen and dining hall of Infants Summer Hospital, 1930, from Rochester Public Library’s History and Genealogy Division

    Once milk began to be pasteurized there were fewer cases of cholera infantum and children suffering from cardiac conditions or orthopedic injuries needing a lengthy recuperation were admitted here for care.

    The Map to the right is the 1932 Plate Map of the City of Rochester which shows the Greenleaf Property subdivided at the Clarence S. Lunt Property.

    rpm00588, 11/10/04, 11:39 AM, 8C, 6864×10148 (592+665), 138%, Copy 4 stops w, 1/40 s, R107.3, G86.5, B107.8

    This 1935 Plat Map shows a better close-up of the Infants Summer Hospital listed on the map.

    In 1929 the name was changed to Convalescent Children’s Hospital. It operated at the Beach Avenue address until 1960. Today the building is Waterview Heights Rehabilitation and Nursing Center.

    Convalescent Children’s Hospital, 1949, from Rochester Public Library’s History and Genealogy Division
    Convalescent Children’s Hospital, 1949, from Rochester Public Library’s History and Genealogy Division
    Ad for Scott’s emulsion, 1880, from the British Library

    Another challenging disease for doctors was diphtheria,

    What is Diphtheria?

    The definition of diphtheria according to the Oxford Dictionary is an acute, highly contagious bacterial disease, causing inflammation of the mucous membranes, formation of a false membrane in the throat that hinders breathing and swallowing, and can cause potentially fatal heart and nerve damage by a bacterial toxin in the blood.  It is now rare in developed countries because of immunization.

    Since the disease was so contagious people were quarantined for a range of 12 days to several weeks. Emma Pollard Greer writes in her History of Charlotte that an outbreak in the summer of 1881 delayed the opening of school in the fall.

    Quarantine Poster early 20th century, from the National Library of Medicine of the National Institute for Health

    In 1913, a boy in the Brown family of West Greece was stricken; his older brother was a teacher at the Brick School, District School No. 10 on Lake Avenue. That school was shut down in the hopes of stopping the spread of what was also called “the choking disease.” You can learn more about this district school in Bicentennial Snapshot # 43

    A native of a small town in Illinois, Dr. George Sanders settled in Greece after serving in World War I. He would maintain a practice in Greece for almost 50 years, serving as the Town health officer as well from 1920 to 1944, and as the school district’s physician from 1960-1968.

    You can read the digitized copy of his autobiography here on our site

    Dr. George Sanders from the Office of the Town Historian
    Dr. George Sanders from the Office of the Town Historian
    Rowe-Hillman-Sanders House, 2672 Ridge Road West (no longer standing), from GHS

    His home and office were on Ridge Road in a beautiful old house.

    In his reminiscences, Dr. Sanders describes his campaigns to keep children in Greece safe from the communicable diseases that so often took the lives of children at an early age—smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, and diphtheria. Using horses who were immune to it, an anti-toxin was developed to inoculate children against diphtheria.

    Dr. George Sanders inoculating a child against diphtheria, Greece Press, April 24, 1947
    Dr. George Sanders, 1920, from GHS

    Dr. Sanders wrote: “The year before I arrived in Greece the last case of smallpox occurred. Vaccinations had been started and with everyone vaccinated today the disease has disappeared, but diphtheria was a dreaded disease; I got in on the first diphtheria anti-toxin treatments.”

    Headline from Democrat and Chronicle, April 28, 1926

    “The groundbreaking campaigns against diphtheria in the 1920s and ’30s evolved into a universal program of infant vaccination in the United States. A DTP vaccine, created in the 1940s, combined diphtheria and tetanus toxoids with an inactivated version of the bacteria that causes whooping cough (pertussis).”

    Polio Outbreak

    Between 1945 and 1955, those earlier diseases were supplanted by another that struck terror in the hearts of parents—polio. Polio (short for poliomyelitis, once called infantile paralysis), is used to strike thousands of children in the United States each year. According to one historian: “By mid-century, polio had become the nation’s most feared disease. And with good reason. It hit without warning. It killed some victims and marked others for life, leaving behind vivid reminders for all to see: wheelchairs, crutches, leg braces, and deformed limbs. In 1921, it paralyzed 39-year-old Franklin Delano Roosevelt, robust and athletic, with a long pedigree and a cherished family name. If a man like Roosevelt could be stricken, then no one was immune.” Look at this picture of him attending the Mother of Sorrow’s Church centennial celebration on June 8, 1930, we may not know what was to the right of him in the picture but look at how the Governor left hand is gripping the right arm of his secretary Guernsey T. Cross, a certain way, so that FDR could stand up for this picture, in the back of him he may have some sort of device to help him stand up because of the state of paralysis from polio but because this was a photo for the Public we do not have the full picture to the right of the governor in this picture.

    Distinguished guests at the centennial celebration, June 8, 1930, from the Rochester Times Union, June 9, 1930 (from left: Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt; Guernsey T. Cross, governor’s secretary; Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt; State Senator Frederick J. Slater, chairman of centennial committee.)
    March of Dimes poster from the Museum of Health Care
    1957 March of Dimes Poster from the March of Dimes Foundation

    In 1945, there were 12 Grecians suffering from polio. More than half the men, women, and children attacked by polio recovered with no enduring effects 29 percent were left with a slight residual paralysis, 18 percent remained handicapped, and three percent died. It was most fatal to children under the age of 10.

    Polio was one of the costliest diseases known to medicine. Some Insurance Companies set up insurance policies for people with Polio to be able to cover the costs of Polio treatments and medical bills related to pay for care if someone had Polio, yet today the same insurance companies no longer will set up coverage to pay for treatments for Cancer, HIV/AIDS, COVID-19 related health issues or other diseases because they are now at the whims of shareholders and Wall Street over the policyholders.

    Ad from Greece insurance agency in the Greece Press, September 25, 1952
    A child receiving physical therapy for Polio from the CDC

    Treatment of the disease in its acute stage required constant skilled nursing, extensive physical therapies, and frequently expensive equipment. That care and treatment often extended for months afterward.

    “During the epidemics of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, some patients with serious breathing problems were placed in an “iron lung,” a cylindrical chamber that surrounded a patient’s body from the neck down, which used rhythmic alterations in air pressure to force air in and out of the individual’s lungs.” In 1950, realizing that their iron lung machine was better off in a hospital setting, the Barnard Fire Department donated it to Strong Memorial Hospital. We will get to Barnard Fire Department in Snapshot # 50. And in 2020 at least one company at least in the state of Kansas started to make a modern-day version of the Iron Lung to help build them because of the short supply of ventilators in the country because of COVID-19. As of this post currently, there are at least 2 people left living using Iron Lungs in the United States.

    Iron lung/via Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress/Public Domain
    Collection folder to put dimes in from Yale Medicine

    Every January for more than 10 years, the women of Greece participated in the campaign to raise money to find a vaccine to prevent polio. The campaign culminated in the Mothers March, a night when everyone was asked to leave their porch lights on and the mothers went from door to door in their neighborhoods soliciting donations. Every home in the town was canvassed. In 1952 almost 2,000 mothers participated. It was an all-out effort joined by many others in the community to contribute to the campaign to fund research for a vaccine.

    Every year the Men’s Brotherhood of Bethany Presbyterian Church held a dance; two of the organizers were polio survivors. There were collection boxes in all the schools. The Paddy Hill Players put on a benefit show.

    Greece Press January 27, 1949
    Greece Press, May 13, 1954

    And every year they hoped for an effective vaccine. That hope was realized in 1955; The Jonas Salk vaccine was first to be approved that year; it was made from completely inactivated polio viruses and injected into the body. The oral vaccine developed by Albert Sabin was made from weakened polio viruses. It was introduced in 1963. A kindergarten class in a Greece school was a testing site for the Salk vaccine; the children were given two shots over a two-week period in May 1954. They were part of the largest human experiment in history. Although recently in the news, still, because of the polio vaccine, cases in the United States are very rare now.

    Thank you for joining us today, next week we look at Gordan A. Howe

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