Craft Masonry in Ontario, Seneca and Yates Counties, New York

“To be Indian: the life of Iroquois-Seneca Arthur Caswell Parker, “ by Joy Porter

http://books.google.com/books?id=TvY3D4dSxq8C&pg=PT183&dq=%22John+Hodge+lodge+no.+815%22&cd=5#v=onepage&q=%22John%20Hodge%20lodge%20no.%20815%22&f=false

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Parker

Arthur Caswell Parker (April 5, 1881 – January 1, 1955) was an archaeologist, historian, folklorist, museologist and noted authority on American Indian culture. He was director of the Rochester Museum of Arts and Sciences from 1924 to 1945, and an honorary trustee of the NY State Historical Association. Arthur C. Parker was born on the Cattaraugus Reservation in western New York, the son of Frederick Ely Parker, a Seneca Iroquois, and Geneva Griswold, a woman of Scottish and English descent, who taught school on the reservation.

Arthur's Iroquois name was Gawaso Wanneh (meaning "Big Snowsnake"). His grandfather, Nicholas H. Parker, was an influential Seneca leader, whose brother, Ely S. Parker, was a Brigadier General and secretary to Ulysses S. Grant during the Civil War, and later the first Indian Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Arthur lived on Nicholas Parker’s farm and was strongly influenced by him. He was also influenced by both the Seneca culture and the Christian missionary culture of his mother’s family. Although his family was Christian, he was also exposed to followers of Seneca prophet Handsome Lake, who was resurrecting traditional Seneca religion.

He started his formal education on the reservation, but in 1892, his family moved to White Plains, NY, where he entered public school at around age 11 and graduated from high school in 1897. Before going on to college, he spent considerable time at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and befriended Frederick W. Putnam, its temporary curator of anthropology and a professor of anthropology at Harvard, who along with other anthropologists encouraged Arthur to study anthropology.

However, Parker followed the wishes of his grandfather, and attended Dickinson Seminary in Williamsport, PA, from 1900 to 1903. But left before graduating and became a reporter for the New York Sun. He was also an apprentice to archaeologist Mark Harrington (1882-1971), digging at sites in New York State, and volunteered at the Museum of Natural History in his spare time.

In 1904, Parker was given a two-year position as collector cultural data on the New York Iroquois. Then in 1906, he took a position as the first archaeologist at the New York State Museum. In 1911 he, along with Charles A. Eastman and others founded the Society of American Indians to help educate the public about Native Americans. From 1915 to 1920, he was the editor of the society’s American Indian Magazine.

In 1925 he became director of the Rochester Museum of Arts and Sciences where he developed the museum holdings and its research in anthropology, natural history, geology, biology, history and industry of the Genesee Region, and the WPA funded Indian Arts Project. In 1935, he was elected the first President of the Society for American Archaeology. Since 1998, the Society for American Archaeology has annually awarded the Arthur C. Parker Scholarship, which provides funds to Native Americans for training in archaeological methods.

In 1944, Parker helped found the National Congress of American Indians, and became very active in Indian affairs after his retirement from the Rochester museum in 1946. After his retirement he moved to Nunda-wah-oh, where he felt his ancestors had lived, overlooking Canandaigue Lake in Naples, NY. He died there on New Years Day, 1955, aged 73.

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He was a member of John Hodge Lodge No. 815 and Masters’ Lodge No. 5, Albany, where he was also the historian of Temple Chapter No. 5, RAM. On 13 Sep 1918 he was made on Honorary Member, 33^o, of the AASR, NMJ.

See also one of many of his books, “The life of General Ely S. Parker: last grand sachem of the Iroquois,” by Arthur C. Parker, 1919. 346 pages, at: http://books.google.com/books?id=Do8MAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22Arthur+Caswell+Parker%22&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s

See also: “Rochester History,” Vol. XVII, No. 3, July 1955, for their interesting20 page monograph on Bro. Parker, at http://www.rochester.lib.ny.us/~rochhist/v17_1955/v17i3.pdf

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George H. Stempel

http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ny/county/ontario/family/stempelfam.htm

EX-Steamboat Head has 89th Birthday   (printed in 1951)

Naples, NY- George H. STEMPEL who resides at Stemples Landing, West shore of Canandaigua Lake, quietly observed his 89th birthday Feb 23. He was born Feb. 24,1862, in Germany and came to the United States at an early age. For many years he was a steamboat Captain on Canandaigua Lake. He also devoted many years to fruit growing. He is the oldest member of John Hodge Lodge, F&AM in Naples.

CANANDAIGUA, NY, Thursday, February 21,1952 

GEORGE H STEMPEL, 90 on Saturday; No One Knows the Lake Better 

Party Planned in his honor Saturday Night in Naples 

Naples, NY-  George STEMPEL, who has known Canandaigua lake intimately for 70 years, will be 90 Saturday, February 24 and some of his Naples friends are giving him a party in the evening at the Naples Hotel. Richard HAWKES of the Hiram Maxfield Bank is planning the party and about 45 will be on hand. Festivities will get underway at 6:30 PM. There will be some brief speeches, some special music and greetings from friends from all parts of the area.

It's hard to believe that Captain STEMPEL captained the old Ogarita and Onnalinda on the Lake-is 90. He's vigorous, wiry and exceptionally keen of mind. The other day he slipped on an icy walk and took what he termed a "nasty fall" but there were no ill effects.

This is the first winter in years that the STEMPLES have not spent the winter at "home"...  Stemple's Landing, below Cook's Point on the West shore. Captain STEMPEL with his two sisters, Miss Julia STEMPEL and Mrs. Mary GRIESA, moved to Naples in November for the winter months but they plan to go back as soon as the weather breaks a little.

The STEMPLES came to the Lake in the late 1860's. John STEMPLE, Captain STEMPEL's father, brought his family from Wachenheim in Bavaria. Like so many of the German families who came into Ontario County in those years immediately after the Civil War. John STEMPLE was interested in grapes and had much to do with the rich development of the grape industry in the Naples area.

The side-wheeler Ogarita, built in 1889 for the Canandaigua Lake Steam Navigation Company and equipped with the engine from the Canandaidua, was Captain STEMPEL's first vessel. Like most of the area lake boats of that period it was designed by Alonzo SPRINGSTEAD, Marine architect, of Geneva, NY. "It had the best whistle of any boat on the Lake," the Captain recalls. "My engineer, Bill COUSE, swiped it off the pump house up at Canandaigua." His first year on the Orgarita he served as both pilot and captain, but after that the line hired special pilots.

"There were 70 stops along the lake", he says," and some of them, like Pine Bank, were tricky. We started trips as soon as the ice was out of the lake. We'd leave Woodville at 7 in the morning, get to Canandaigua at 9:30, get back to Woodville for dinner, leave there at 1 and leave Canandaigua at 5 again." In addition to the regular schedule there were special picnic excursions on Sundays and special moonlight cruises on summer evenings. At Christmas time each year Canandaigua's merchants made up a subscription fund to provide shoppers free transportation from down the Lake for the week before the holiday. . .

The Oragrita survived a period of ruinous competition with the People's Line's of Genundewah, known as the 'GEE WIZ', which burned at the Woodville dock in 1894. But in 1917 the Oragrita suffered a similar fate. George STEMPEL remembers the night well.

"I was staying up at the Hotel, and the rest of the boys were spending the night in the cottages at Woodville, First thing I knew I heard Fred Shay yelling and ran out. The fire had a good start and we cut her loose. She drifted all the way over to Sunnyside, went aground and burnt out." After that Captain STEMPEL served regularly on the Onnalinda, largest of all the Canandaigua Lake Steamers, which had been launched in 1888. She was 142 feet long and carried about 600 passengers safely. Once she is said to have carried a thousand. During the grape harvest, Captain STEMPEL recalls, she'd carry "70 odd tons" of grapes to be loaded directly onto cars on the Pennsylvania Spur at the Canandaigua dock.

The coming of the automobile tolled the death knell of the old steamers. The days of the boat commuters ended. Special Excursions were not enough to keep the line going. The Onnalinda was docked for the last time, later to be dismantled, scrapped and her hull hauled out into the lake and sunk.

George STEMPEL had started out with his father working for the family of Dr. George COOK, who founded the noted sanitarium in Canandaigua, Brigham Hall. His daughter, Antionette, married Thomas HAWKES, Rochester banker, who was one of the early steamboat commuters. His son, George H HAWKES , also a Rochester banker, continued to keep the family summer place at Cook's Point, and George STEMPEL became full overseer, caretaker and general factotum.

A steamboat side-wheeler of the era

The above boat plied Cayuga Lake from around 1869 until she burned in 1907.