A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Rochester’s Wild Animal Farm and asked if anyone had any additional information. As luck would have it, two people responded. The first was an email from Bill Chamberlain.
He remembered as a child walking through a stretch of woods along Mary’s Pond Rd. It would have extended from the area of Donald Church’s home at 531 Mary’s Pond Rd. to Lawrence Roy’s house at 555. This would have been in the 50’s and by his recollection there were a few small, round cages. At this time the “Farm” area was owned by Pearly Merry and/or his father. Merry had a cranberry bog at the rear of the property and Bill remembered that Merry sold cranberries to his grandfather’s business.
The background story grew more interesting and reached farther back in time when I received a phone call from Donald George. As I’m sure you remember that Donald’s family moved to what had been the animal farm when he was a child in the 1940’s. He said the Wild Animal Farm which was open and active in the 1930’s consisted of 52 acres that bordered a swamp at the rear of the property. George’s mother purchased 5 acres for their house.
When they first moved in there were multiple cages being dismantled and removed. Four mostly intact ones that had been stripped of their contents were left behind. Donald remembered playing with them and said one was a bear cage (so I got my bear, if not the lions and tigers).
There was also a small building which contained a couple of stalls for small 4-footed animals, maybe Shetland ponies or goats. His sisters liked to play house in them and later they were used as a chicken coop.
When the animal farm was active, local school classes went there on field trips. Both George Church and Maurice Fuller remembered going on such a trip, but they no longer remembered what they saw there. A cement slab and the remains of picnic tables led Donald to assume there had been some kind of candy or ice cream stand.
Donald George said that the sign Barbara Besse remembered would not have been on Mary’s Pond Rd. The only sign was a painted board 100 ft down the dirt road that led to the entrance and Bill Chamberlain’s “cranberry bog” didn’t exist until after the property was sold and the swamp was converted into a bog. He also said that there are records in Town Hall that show the property was the site of a short-lived silver fox farm.
At the end of our phone call, Mr. George expressed regrets that when he was younger and there were people around with solid memories of the animal farm, he wasn’t interested in the history. Later, as he got older, he became interested, but the people he could have asked were gone.
That’s a wakeup call for all of us to make sure that family photos have names and dates. Also, anyone still lucky enough to have living grandparents or great grand parents should take the time to listen to their stories or ask them about the past. After all, as we tell the 3rd graders when the Historical Commission visits them each year, “history” is a story. It’s his story, her story and the story of all of us.
By Connie Eshbach