Ellicottville Serendipity

Old embossed medicine bottle

"Glenn N. Alexander, Pharmacist, Ellicottville, NY"

Hanover Town Historian Vince Martonis wrote an article in 2022 for the Greater Buffalo Bottle Collectors Association (GBBCA) newsletter about a series of events regarding an old whiskey bottle from Ellicottville. These events ended up bringing him full circle to a connection with an old friend who has since passed.

Some years prior, Mr. Martonis told me about the bottle which had a label indicating it was filled with rye whiskey from M.E. Dinneen of Ellicottville that I wound up purchasing from a local antique market. I ended up bringing it to Bryan Scharf at Ellicottville Distillery and we hatched a plan to have a reproduction bottled and labeled to commemorate the town’s bicentennial in 2020. In contacting me for further details about how that all came about, I mentioned Bryan’s last name to Mr. Martonis. He wondered if Bryan was related to his friend Don Scharf, a former fellow member of the GBBCA. Sure enough, he discovered Bryan was Don’s grandson which he found to be quite a serendipitous circumstance. But in my world of historical research, there always seems to be more to the story.

An original Dinneen whiskey bottle from a family member's collection

One of two reproduction labels done for the town of Ellicottville's bicentennial in 2020.

At the extended invitation of Mr. Martonis, I attended a vintage book and paper show held in Mayville, NY in 2022. Upon arrival, I immediately sat down at one of the first tables to peruse a box of cabinet and cdv photograph cards of which I collect for references to my ongoing project on nineteenth-century Cattaraugus County photographers. I purchased a few of those as well as a small bag of some of the most darling valentine paper ephemera die-cut pieces.

The dealer also had hundreds of postcards for sale very nicely organized by city, town or county. I found a section for Ellicottville. There might have been ten or so and I walked away with six of them to complete my purchase. One in particular was a colorized RPPC (Real Photo Post Card) entitled “Main Street, Ellicottville, NY” showing the old Catholic church fully centered at the end of the street and to the left, a brick building with signage showing it was called the Hotel Kinzie. This postcard, unused, was published by G.N. Alexander of Ellicottville according to the back.

Though it has no postmark, one can date it based on two factors: the location of the Catholic church and the hotel’s name. The Catholic church was originally built about where the Red Apple gas station is now across from Tops Market grocery store. In photos of the time period it appears to be centered on Washington (sometimes called Main Street). When it burned at that location a second time in 1909, the Catholic church was then rebuilt at its present location on Jefferson Street. In research completed in May 2017, Charles R. "Bob" Pettit wrote about the brick building which was completed in November 1890 to replace the three-story wood frame "Crawford House" hotel that burned in May of that year. This brick building of course remains on the northwest corner of the public square and east of the old county clerk's office (built in 1853 and now housing the Ellicottville museum), though it has changed hands and names over the years. Pettit wrote that sometime between the years 1900 and 1905, the hotel building was renamed Hotel Kinzie after having been sold to John C. McKinzie. By 1920, the name had changed again from "McKinzie" to "Ellicott." Later folks would also remember it being called Hotel Lincoln at one time. 

As I sat down to catalog my purchases that evening, I decided to research the name G.N. Alexander to see what else I could discover. It turns out that Glenn N. Alexander was a druggist and owned a drug store in Ellicottville from about 1898 to 1911. Born in Franklinville, NY in 1869, he married Gertrude R. Jessup who survived him. Their daughter Floris (1901-1971) married William C. Murphy.

Fultonhistory.com shows many newspaper advertisements for G.N. Alexander, druggist, in Ellicottville in the early 1900s. H.B. Drown was another druggist in the area. Both names were sometimes listed under an advertisement for one medicine or another but they appear to have been proprietors of two different stores. These early drugstore ads often included testimony from individuals praising the cures from a particular tonic or pill.

One testimonial from July 16, 1902 caught my eye: Mrs. V. Clark, described as a well-known dressmaker on Monroe Street said she got a box of Dr. A.W. Chase’s Nerve Pills for her little boy of twelve years old. She said “sluggishness” gave way to brightness and “general strength returned.” Evidence, she saw, of “a good nerve and general tonic powder in the part of the medicine.”

This information was interesting in and of itself, but I continued further in my quest for additional data on these good people of Ellicottville. Mrs. V. Clark, it turns out, was born Ella C. Evans and married Virgil Clark. Both the 1900 and 1910 census confirm that she was indeed a dressmaker in Ellicottville. Her husband was listed as a day laborer doing odd jobs in 1910. Their son Burnell must have continued in his brightness and general strength for he, at the age of 22 in 1910, was working as a laborer in a shoe last factory. The family lived on Washington Street.

The first part of serendipity for me is the coincidence that Ella and her husband are buried in Sugartown Cemetery. It happens that one of the previous owners of my house is also buried there. I have bumped into other historical neighbors in research and work I’ve done that have also felt serendipitous in nature. I have written before about the story of the tombstone of little George Bryant and earlier connections I made to his sister Amanda also buried in Sugartown. Back in the day, Amanda lived in a house down the road somewhat catty-corner from mine as the crow flies.

Glenn Alexander appears to have had a downturn in fortune and a notice of bankruptcy was mentioned in a Jamestown newspaper in 1911. The family moved out to California where Glenn died in 1928, but Mrs. Alexander returned to the area shortly thereafter and lived in Ellicottville until her death in 1962.

A newspaper article I found for that year really twists the story all around for me in my historical research. The front page of the Ellicottville Post for May 30, 1962 shows a photograph with the heading, “Monroe Street Circa 1900” with further details about the photograph. The digital .pdf version online renders the photo hardly visible at all but showed the unpaved street with its boardwalks that could just be seen in the lower right-hand corner. "Wait," I thought to myself. "Where have I seen a photograph like that before?"

From none other than Vince Martonis! Not too long ago, I obtained a number of cabinet card photographs and other material pertinent to Ellicottville from him. Included among the items was a black and white 5x7 copy of the very same photograph! Most fascinating to me was the fact that in addition to other details about the businesses on the street, the article identified the “two gentlemen passing Glenn Alexander’s Drug Store” as Justice of the Peace Alec Bird and L.B. Nichols, who operated an insurance business on the second floor of the same building. The article went on to say that the “lady crossing the street has still not been identified…” The lady in question in the photograph is holding an umbrella and heading toward the drugstore. Wouldn’t it be something if I ever found out this lady was Ella Clark, taking a break from her dressmaking on Monroe and heading over to see about purchasing a tonic for her sluggish son? It wouldn't surprise me in the least; that's how serendipity works!