Town of Wellsville Related Articles

[from one of Jeannette Drake’s scrapbooks at Dyke Street Museum] - Wellsville Daily Reporter article, March 1955 

The story of relocating a beautiful home to another spot and make room for the J.J. Newberry building in 1955.........Story material and pictures from research of Jane Pinney, President of Thelma Rogers Genealogical & Historical Society-Wellsville, NY 

McCarty Landmark Gone, First In Old-Timers Lore;

Moving Big Job

Gone is the McCarty residence [NE corner Main and Fassett St] landmark. [handwritten at bottom of article-“built by a Mr. Wood before 1861”]

            Piece-by-piece its gone to its new hillside spot on the Lee estate property [8 Cummings Circle] acquired by Ralph Searle Jr.

            “Moving week” has been in progress some time – really two weeks in the make-ready and big haul. But by Monday “Chub” Baldwin had the first of the two sections into which the main section was cut, on his heavy duty wheel trucks. And it was out to the curb by nightfall. Then on Tuesday, it was in the street inched down off the curb and headed east on East Fassett Street by afternoon.

            One could follow progress from there to on to press time – and probably find the second section launched for the trip. But its no “play-by-play” version we can tarry for. The main thing is the McCarty house is gone as folks knew it – and a sight such as none of the old-timers can recall brought to view.

            Conrad Arnold [Conrad D. Arnold 1874-1961], who all know as knowing most old things, says he never can recall when the residence was not on Main street. When a boy, a store building occupied as a drug store, stood at the corner. This went its way long, long ago and the house with its large lawn to the south is as people have remembered it through the years.

Above, Much earlier view of the corner and Macken Home.  Viewing unpaved Main Street leads us to believe this photo dates prior to 1901.  (-photo from postcard printed in Pennysaver, 1960s).

            Mr. Arnold recalled that in days gone by it was the home of James Macken, who occupied the building to the rear now used as an electrical shop, as his office. “Most of the big things which went on in Wellsville back 60 to 70 years ago [1890’s] were hatched in that “office,” he said. “That was when James Thornton, Harry Breckenridge and John McEwen were the town sparkplugs, along with “Jim Macken.”

            There’s tricks to every trade – and moving houses has become one with a lot of them. It’s a long cry from the old days when, with horses and jacks, they were skidded slowly along the street. Tractors take over in bigger ways.

            Well, this Dr. McCarty residence moving put a new one in “Chub” Baldwin’s book of tricks. The Erie Railroad crossing had one big obstacle – a $1,000 cost to raise or remove the wires to permit the house roof to pass beneath. So the mover put his old rip-saw, band-saw or whatyamacallit to work, and slashed right along the roof ridge. Then, like an accordion, one section was laid down, with the other laid down atop it. This brought the height down to where it would pass beneath wires. They will be pulled together later on.

            And we could go on that way – about the storied tales of the old house and the “unstoried” tale of getting out from under a $1,000 wire charge (a jolt a volt, so to speak).

                But we have to stop somewhere – and so venture the final bit that this week will see the story just about “finale” for the old Macken-McCarty house on Main Street.

(Below is a 2003 Photo taken of the home by Jane Pinney)