"Over There" and Over Here. Richard MacAlpine

Chronicle: “Time Has Come To Act - The time has come to act in regard to Mexico. There is no longer the slightest semblance of reason for waiting. The die is cast and we must move swiftly. The territory of the United States has been invaded, our citizens have been murdered in cold blood and every one of our rights have been trampled upon. It matters not whether this is the work of bandits or of the trained troops of another government, it must be punished, and swiftly. If we do not bring these murderers to bay, we will stand pilloried in the eyes of the world as miserable cowards - and we are not cowards.” With outrage like that across the country, President Wilson called on General John Pershing to mount a punitive expedition in pursuit of Villa and his men. Pershing’s expedition crossed the border and invaded northern Mexico. There was a Penn Yan man in Pershing’s army, Lieutenant John Conklin, and local papers followed him through letters written home to his parents. Although skirmishes involving the American army ended that summer, our troops were still on patrol in northern Mexico until a diplomatic settlement was reached in early 1917.

      Going into the last two months of 1916, people locally were confidant that the war in Europe would not affect the United States. Although German U-Boats had sunk American ships through 1915 and into the early part of 1916, President Wilson, in an attempt to protect our neutrality, protested to the German Kaiser and threatened to break off diplomatic relations. The Kaiser, fearing American entrance into the war, signed what became known as the Sussex Pledge which suspended unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic. There was a general feeling that the Atlantic and Pacific oceans were enough to protect us from foreign wars. There were reminders, however, that the President was following a policy of “Preparedness,” with small increases in the size of our army and navy. The papers reported an occasional troop train going through Penn Yan on the way to training camps. With all that, Wilson ran for re-election in 1916 on the slogan “He Kept Us Out of War.” He had a formidable opponent, popular New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes.

      The election went as one would expect for Yates County. Hughes, the Republican, beat Wilson 2954 to 1661 in the county but he carried his home state of New York. Wilson, however, racked up a solid victory in the Electoral College, 277 to 254, and won a second term. Democrats celebrated by holding a torchlight victory parade through downtown Penn Yan election night. Miserable weather from a snowstorm the night before kept numbers down, but it was a hearty celebration nonetheless. The parade included the Penn Yan Band, a large American flag, an Uncle Sam in costume, and several automobiles including two filled with suffragettes. Local suffrage leaders had been present at the polling places to hand out leaflets to male voters. It reminded them that Yates was the first county in New York to finish a suffrage enrollment of women - 3000 women in the county signed up. It also reminded male voters that a statewide women’s suffrage amendment would be on the ballot in November of 1917.

      The big story locally was the opening that fall of Merrill Beach’s Rolling Palace on Champlin Avenue in Penn Yan. Beach was the Ford dealer in town and had big plans for his huge building. He planned to have it used at times as a showplace for his cars and trucks - It could hold fifty of them. It could be used for concerts and community events - holding as many as two thousand people. It would be used for roller skating and had what was billed as “one of the best basket ball courts in this section of the country.” That was especially exciting to the community, because Penn Yan had one of the great town basket ball (two words in those days!) teams in the state, the Penn Yan Imperials who changed their name to Beach’s Imperials. They played in the Palace every Friday evening through the winter. When they beat Geneva in the first game 37-16, the Penn Yan Democrat called them “the most formidable array of basket ball players ever seen here.” On the last Friday of the year, they played a barnstorming team of college players from Chicago. The Imperials beat them 36-14. The Democrat reported: “The visitors looked for easy pickings in Penn Yan because of its being such a small place, but they soon discovered what an awful mistake they had made.”

      In one of the last issues of the Yates County Chronicle in 1916, it was announced that the W.H. Long Post of the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R. - Civil War veterans) disbanded. With over a hundred members at one time, the membership had dwindled to nine. The paper reported: “Some of the historically valuable effects of the disbanded post including the uniform and arms of William H. Long, for whom the post was named, and several documents it is proposed to place in the historical room of the Penn Yan Public Library.” It was a sign of the times. As the number of veterans of one major war was rapidly declining, we were only four months away from entering the Great War in Europe and creating an entirely new group of wartime veterans.

      Odds and Ends From November/December 1916

      This was the first year since 1835 that there were no steamboats on Keuka Lake. The three large boats working the lake (Penn Yan, City of Elmira, City of Rochester) all had gasoline engines.

      There was a major outbreak of infantile paralysis (polio) across western New York. Although there were no cases in Yates, nearby counties reported cases. In September, the Democrat reported: “While we have no intention of creating a feeling of uneasiness, it is suggested that children visiting the Yates County Fair next week be kept away from the merry-go-round and other amusement features brought here from outside. These attractions may have been in some infected territory.”

      

      Merrill Beach sold his Rolling Palace to Penn Yan Boats in 1921. It burned down two years later.

      The Yates County History Center has in its collection the artifacts that were donated to the Library at the end of 1916 by the W.H. Long Post of the G.A.R.

      Moving pictures were shown regularly in both the Cornwell Opera House on Main Street and the Sampson Theater on Jacob Street (East Elm.) In December, the Sampson Theater showed D.W. Griffith’s epic two-hour silent drama The Birth of a Nation, until Gone With the Wind in 1939, the highest grossing film in film history.

      There was some impact locally of the war in Europe. Agricultural prices were the highest since the Civil War and there was a severe shortage of coal going into the winter of 1916-17. There was fear that the price of gasoline might reach 40¢ a gallon. (It was at 20¢ a gallon.)

      Charles Sprague, who murdered his neighbor on Bluff Point in 1911 ran out of appeals and became the last person electrocuted in Auburn Prison.

      “Booze raids” by local and state law enforcement were common. Yates County had been completely dry (by local option) since 1909.

      Author Leon Lewis’ horse barn, the talk of the town when it was built just after the Civil War, was moved from behind his home on Liberty Street in Penn Yan, across Keuka Street and became the convent for St. Michael’s church.

      Yates County’s Frank Schofield, then a Captain in the Navy, was taken off sea duty, assigned to the Chief of Naval Operations in Washington and put in charge of a planning team to develop tactics to be used against German U-Boats in the Atlantic.

      1917

      January/February 1917 - The Lull Before the Storm

      “The announcement by Germany of a new policy in the conduct of her submarine warfare is practically a challenge to the government of the United States to protect its citizens on the high seas. The situation appears to be fraught with more danger than at any time since the beginning of the European war.”

      —- Penn Yan Democrat, February 2, 1917

      The firm belief that the United States would stay out of the European war