#torreyny

By Jonathan Monfiletto

Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. William Anthony wasn’t born in Yates County, and he isn’t buried here either. It seems the only time he set foot on Yates County soil was for a month-long stint picking grapes in Jerusalem in the fall of 1899; his wife was from Guyanoga, and his son settled in the Dresden area as an adult. Otherwise, Sgt. Anthony had no connections here.

However, the memory of Sgt. Maj. Anthony and the story of his heroic deed continue to live on in Yates County – whether modern-day residents realize it – in the name of a road bearing his surname. Anthony Road, which runs from Route 14 southward into the village of Dresden, honors the man who played the role of a tragic hero in the story of the Spanish American War.

While recent findings suggest the explosion aboard the USS Maine was caused by a spontaneous fire in the coal bunker, in 1898 fingers pointed toward the ship being blown up by a mine set by Spanish forces. What isn’t under dispute is, first, that the incident led directly to the Spanish American War and, second, that it was then-Pvt. Bill Anthony who sounded the alarm to the ship’s commander about the explosion.

According to an article in the Penn Yan Democrat of February 17, 1933, Anthony was acting as orderly to Navy Cpt. Charles Sigsbee, the Maine’s commander, on February 15, 1898. The ship was anchored in the harbor of Havana, Cuba, “and all was peaceful when the deafening, rending blast rocked the vessel,” the newspaper stated, at approximately 9:40 p.m. Eastern time.

According to historian John Creamer, it was an oppressively warm and humid evening. The Maine had been sent to Cuba on a goodwill visit to protect American citizens and interests on the island nation, while tensions between the United States and Spain – which controlled Cuba at the time – reached a boiling point after building up for years. The Maine’s presence was meant to encourage Americans and Cubans and challenge the Spanish.

Creamer described Anthony’s experience that evening this way: “Private Bill took a long stroll on deck to postpone retiring to his steaming hammock below. There was no air conditioning then – in fact, the Maine was the first US Navy vessel to have electric lights. It was just as well for Bill that he dawdled, for at exactly 9:40 p.m. he and a number of others, on board the Maine and elsewhere around the harbor, saw a sheet of orange flame envelop the bow of the battleship. The explosion that followed was so tremendous that an eyewitness on another ship said that the Maine was lifted nearly out of the water by its force. … In the aftermath of the explosion, Private Bill realized that he had to get a message to Captain Sigsbee. He ran to the captain’s cabin in the dark. … The captain, not unaware that something had happened to the ship (he said later that he thought they were being fired upon by nearby Spanish guns), emerged from his cabin just as Private Bill arrived. In the darkness, the two men collided. … Private Bill backed off, apologized, saluted, and spoke the words that would put him into the history books.”

Those words, according to the Democrat, were: “I have the honor, sir, to report the Maine has been blown up and is sinking.” Sigsbee commended Anthony’s action in the captain’s record of the event, as transcribed in the Democrat: “The special feature in the case of this service performed by Private Anthony is that on an occasion when man’s instinct would lead him to seek safety outside the ship, he started into the superstructure and toward the cabin, irrespective of the danger. The action was a noble one and I feel it an honor to call his conduct to the attention of the recommendator that he be made a sergeant.”

Indeed, Anthony was promoted to sergeant and then, rather quickly, to sergeant major. According to Creamer, Anthony – 44 years old at the time – had served in the Marine Corps for 28 years. It is unclear what he did in the military prior to February 1898 – his service predates the Civil War – and why he remained a private for 28 years. Creamer notes promotions came slowly in those days – but apparently rapidly in the face of heroic acts – and there wasn’t much opportunity for a private to distinguish himself.

The disaster aboard the Maine killed 260 of the 328 crew members; indeed, only 16 were left uninjured. Though Anthony was listed among these 16, he received splinters in his face and through his hand when a lifeboat disintegrated in the explosion. He managed to climb into one of the remaining boats and row about the ship – in a hail of shrapnel and exploding ammunition – to look for survivors.

With no ship to serve on, Anthony subsequently was transferred to guard duty at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and given the highest enlisted rank in the Marine Corps. Anthony retired from the Marine Corps shortly after, in June 1898. Entitled to retirement pay after nearly 30 years of military service, Anthony – out of what the Democrat described as “character modesty” and fear “that the application might reflect on his superior officer who had helped him to get his rapid promotion,” Anthony declined the benefit and left the Marine Corps with no job and nothing but his name and reputation as a national hero.

Someone was looking to cash in on Anthony’s 15 minutes of fame, however, and a group of promoters convinced the Marine to take part in a play about the recently concluded Spanish American War, titled “The Red, White, and Blue.” Anthony’s role consisted of his appearing on stage in his Marine Corps uniform and reciting, “Remember the Maine!” to thunderous applause from the audience. However, the production closed quickly, as people were not ready to view a reenactment of a war they had just witnessed.

So, Anthony was once again out of work. In the interim, he got married to Adella Blancet, of Guyanoga, in October 1898. Adella had written to the national hero to seek his autograph; though he had received many such letters, for some reason Adella’s letter stood out and he wrote back to her. They soon wed and then had a son, William Jr., born in July 1898.

Following the grape harvest in the fall of 1899, Anthony left Adella and William Jr. in Guyanoga and traveled back to New York City to try to find work. He wasn’t willing to pull strings with his reputation and mention his struggle, and he lacked marketable skills outside of his military service.

On November 24, 1899, Anthony was sitting on a bench in Central Park when two police officers noticed him acting strangely with agitated behavior but also recognized who he was. Suddenly, Anthony pulled a small glass bottle out of his pocket and swallowed the contents. The officers attempted to help him, but he told them he didn’t want to be saved. Sure enough, Anthony died within an hour from an overdose of cocaine extract.

While the national hero was mourned following his shocking death, his name and reputation were quickly forgotten. Adella stayed in Yates County, and William Jr. grew up there. The son of the national hero married, became a successful farmer and vineyardist, served as Torrey town supervisor, and lived on the road that bears his family name.

In December 1942, the Navy remembered Anthony by launching the USS Anthony, a destroyer named in honor of the hero from the Maine. William Jr.’s daughters – Alice, a freshman at Keuka College, and Frances, a student at Penn Yan Academy – christened the ship bearing their grandfather’s name. In World War II, the destroyer saw action against the Japanese in the Philippines.

Interestingly, while William Jr. is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Dresden – not too far from where Anthony Road enters the village – Anthony is buried in The Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn. Yates County continues to remember this non-resident who became a national hero.

By Jonathan Monfiletto

It is ironic that the town of Torrey holds within its boundaries the site of the first permanent European settlement in present-day Yates County – started when the followers of the Public Universal Friend landed on the western shore of Seneca Lake at what is now known as Perry Point – yet the town of Torrey itself was the last of the nine towns in Yates County to be formally established as its own town.

Or, at least, I would make that statement, and yes, I realize I already have, if it weren’t for the fact that others have already made the same observation – notable among them former Yates County Historian Frances Dumas and longtime Torrey historian Betty Smalley. Formed from parts of the towns of Benton and Milo with the village of Dresden as its centerpiece, Torrey was incorporated as a town in 1851 even though it was first settled close to 75 years before that.

It all started in 1788, according to Smalley, when a committee of Thomas Hathaway, James Parker, William Potter, and Benedict Robinson – all prominent followers of the Public Universal Friend – purchased 14,000 acres on the western side of Seneca Lake from New York State, after visiting the Kashong area (located in the modern day town of Benton) a year or two before. That August, a group of 25 of the Friend’s followers returned to the area and – exploring the Keuka Lake outlet and coming across a waterfall – decided to settle there, about one mile south of present-day Dresden.

That first year, the settlers cleared the forest and planted 12 acres of wheat. The following year, they built a mill powered by the falls. In 1790, the Friend themself arrived in the area; with more and more followers coming and building homes, the census for that year showed 80 families and 260 people in the Friend’s settlement. After starting out in a log home, the Friend lived in a frame house in a site called City Hill; similarly, as Dumas notes, the Friend’s followers largely lived in log homes around City Hill, in the southern half of present-day Torrey. Their settlement was the largest at that time in the Genesee Country, and the Friend and their followers were the first group to settle western New York.

Those not members of the Friends also settled in the area after 1790. They set up homes both in the northern half of the present-day town and among the Friends south of the outlet.

The settlement continued to grow, with a trading post near present-day Dresden where the Friends traded grain and fruit with the Seneca in the area. And the area kept growing, with the establishment of the hamlet of Hopeton, just north of the outlet and about a half-mile inland just west of Dresden, in the early 1800s and the construction of more and more mills along the outlet. Hopeton faded away, however, and Dresden gained in prominence, particularly when the Crooked Lake Canal – with Dresden resting at the boundary of Seneca Lake and the outlet that served as the canal’s route – opened in 1833. Mills, warehouses, boatyards, and dry docks sprang up at Dresden with this canal-traffic prosperity.

Dresden became the grain market for the surrounding country, and the village included stores, a saw mill, a carriage shop, a plaster mill, two hotels, a brewery, and a distillery. Dresden also became a regular landing place for canal boats and steamboats later on. The area now known as Torrey had even been the site of the first road in Yates County, when a road was built from Smith’s Mill to the landing on Seneca Lake in 1792 – soon called Norris’ Landing after storekeeper Eliphalet Norris and now called Perry Point.

Despite these developments, however, the area held no official township but was split between the towns of Benton and Milo. In his 1873 “History and Directory of Yates County,” Stafford C. Cleveland recounts how Torrey came to be formed out of these two older towns – two of the five original towns of Yates County when the county was established from Ontario County in 1823. The motive for incorporating a new town, Cleveland states, was to increase the importance of Dresden as a social and municipal center and place the people of the community into their own political and civil association rather than the two larger towns to which they belonged. A notice in the September 24, 1851 edition of the Dundee Record set forth that an application would be made to the Yates County Board of Supervisors for the creation of a new town. The notice was signed by 12 residents of Benton and 12 residents of Milo.

On November 12, George W. Simmons appeared before the Board in favor of the new town while Benedict W. Franklin appeared in opposition. When a vote was taken, the proposition was defeated; however, when another vote was taken later that evening, only one supervisor opposed it. The new town was named after Henry Torrey, of Potter, who was the chairman of the board; it is this honor, according to Cleveland, that swayed the board’s vote and convinced the supervisors to favor a new town.

A week later, the November 19, 1851 edition of the Dundee Record celebrated the creation of the new town. The newspaper report noted the Supervisors, upon the adjournment of the meeting, traveled from Penn Yan to Dresden, “where they were cordially received by the citizens, and a grand christening and burning of tar barrels took place,” along with a supper at the Eagle Hotel where toasts were made and the Dresden Bass Band performed.

The newspaper report also pointed to the practical necessity for a new town, stating many Benton residents had to travel nine or 10 miles (a lengthy distance in horse-and-buggy days) for town meetings and town business in Benton Centre. Thus, many residents lodged “well founded complaints” that the interests of those who lived on the east side of town were neglected in favor of those on the west side. The creation of a new town, then, was a matter of convenience for the county and an act of justice for residents along the lake. And it was not a political movement, as residents of opposing political leanings came together to work toward achieving the objective of a new town.