The Pierce Family - Chapter 2

100 Years of the Pierce Family

by Harold Pierce

Sidney Record - Enterprise, February 1954

[In 1878] The population was estimated to be between three and four hundred.  Less than half as many buildings on main street as there are now, and they were small ones of wooden construction.  There was a store or two and a few houses on Grand street.  River street was quite solidly built from Main street to what is now the four-family apartment house directly across the street from the Episcopal Church.  This place was the Weir farm and was the outskirts of Sidney Plains.  Less than a half-dozen houses on Bridge street, including the old toll house where toll fee was paid to cross the old bridge then located at the foot of Bridge street.  The toll house was in charge of the Hyatt family.  Several other houses scattered here and there.  That was the Sidney Plains [Delaware Co., NY] of 1878 when my dad moved in.

 

There was no place for my father to open his cobbler's shop, so Mr. Weller let him use the back room of his drug store, a building that many of us remember that stood where the vacant lot now is on Main street, between the C.H. Lander's furniture and undertaking and Fairbank's drug store.

 

My father was not yet married, and of course needed boarding and lodging.  He was sent to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Tabor, who lived at what is now No. 15 Bridge street, in the house now occupied by Nathalie Wanzer and Bessie Talcott.  He obtained board and room at the Tabor home at $2.00 per week.  Mr. and Mrs. Tabor were the grandparents of Mrs. Glen Fical who now lives, and has lived for many years, at 17 Division street at the corner of Clinton street.

 

A few months later my father concluded that Sidney Plains was the place to do business.  He went back to North Sanford and on Dec. 5th, 1878, he married Susan Owen.  He brought his bride to Sidney Plains and they went housekeeping in a farm house that is now No. 33 Delaware avenue, and now occupied by Jacob Schroh and family.  Not over ten buildings were on that side of the railroad tracks, none of which were within nearly a half mile of where the bride and groom moved in.  The nearest neighbor was a farmer who lived near the present state police barracks, and that was where they bought their milk--two cents a quart, three quarts for five cents, bring your own pail.  As we know, that side of the railroad tracks is now the biggest half of the village.

 

Between the cobbler shop near the north end of Main street, and the home where they had gone housekeeping there were no buildings to obscure the view.  It was open sight between shop and home.  My father often worked after dark. There was only a footpath through the hay fields and pasture land between shop and home.  My mother would put a light on the door steps to guide my father home.  Sidney Plains did not have any street light 76 years ago.

 

Three years later, 1881, they moved into a house that is now No. 14 Grand street.  Here the first-born arrived, my sister Bessie Owen Pierce.  She died at the age of ten.  The Grand street house was two-family, the Pierces down stairs and the upstairs occupied by Mr. and Mrs. John Waterman.

 

One day in 1882, Mrs. Waterman says to my mother "There is a man coming here to start a newspaper and he is the man that's coming down the road now."  As he passed the house my mother saw for the first time the Honorable Arthur Bird, late Vice Consul to the island of Haiti, under the administration of Rutherford B. Hayes, and editor of the soon-to-be Sidney Record.

 

At about this time my father was recovering from a serious sickness that had kept him in bed for several weeks. A few days after my mother's first sight of Mr. Bird there came a knock at the door.  My mother answered it and it was Mr. Bird with a newspaper in his hand.  He said:  "I understand there is a man here who is convalescing from a long and serious illness.  I want him to be the first to read the Sidney Record," and he handed the paper to her.  He was invited in and the patient was sitting up in bed.  There Arthur Bird and Billy Pierce shook hands, the beginning of a very devoted Friendship that lasted until death parted them 46 years later.

 

In 1883 the second born arrived, my brother Weller Ephriam Pierce.  You can readily see that he was named after Mr. Weller.  He died December 8th, 1949, age 66, in Oneonta where he had lived for 31 years.

 

After four years my father wanted to get out of the back room of the drug store, and factory-made shoes were coming into existence which would be the death blow to shoe cobblers.  He bought the land of Eugene Griggs and built the block that is now No. 44 Main street and now occupied by Sidney Mang, Insurance and Real Estate.  Land and building cost him $1,800.  He stocked it with factory-made shoes.  His cobbling days were over.  He occupied this until his retirement in 1923.

 

In 1885 Mr. Weller abandoned the old drug store and built and occupied the block at the corner of Main and Liberty streets, and now being conducted by his successor Berton Fairbanks.

 

In the 1880s my father wrote a letter to the Righy Rev. William Croswell Doane, Bishop of the Albany diocese of the Episcopal Church.  In that letter he stated that he believed there were enough Episcopalians in Sidney Plains to organize and support a church.

 

To be continued.