As with many county seats around the country, Yates County has an impressive, historic courthouse located in a beautiful park. County residents over the years have taken great pride in that. Part of what makes the setting impressive is the Soldiers and Sailors Monument that was formally dedicated on Memorial Day 1908.
The idea for a monument honoring Yates County soldiers who served in the Union cause during the Civil War was first introduced in 1890 by the Women’s Relief Corps of Penn Yan, the auxiliary of the two local G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic) posts. They wanted future generations to know that more than 2,100 Yates County men (over 10 percent of the total county population) served in the War of the Rebellion. They hoped for a large monument in the park, but their fundraising campaign only succeeded in raising $600. Consequently, they started thinking of just a plaque at the courthouse or perhaps a smaller monument in the cemetery. The idea was bandied about until finally in February of 1907 the GAR posts formed a committee to take over the project. The committee included four county legislators, businessmen and other community members. Among the “others” was Frank Danes, the courthouse janitor, a GAR member and survivor of Andersonville during the war.
As was the fashion throughout the country for these monuments, it was decided to acquire two surplus war cannons to flank the monument. Danes had a nephew, Lieutenant Commander Frank H. Schofield of the Navy, who happened to be on shore duty assigned to the Bureau of Ordnance in Washington, D.C. Danes wrote to his nephew:
“Dear Frank, I guess you will get tired of my writing to you for the reason that I am always asking you to do something. Our committee thought the guns you marked were too large and it would be almost impossible for us to handle them as there is no one here that has any rig for that kind of business. We thought those light 12 pound Howitzers at the Washington Yard would do us. We have decided on a monument. It is to be 53 feet high and 14 feet square at the base. Write me what you think about them and if they are mounted; I take it they are for it says complete. We would like some projectiles, enough to make a mound of cannon balls. I don’t think it would make much difference about the size. Frank, if there is anything you can give us any information on without compromising yourself, we would be glad to have it. Yours as ever, Uncle Frank.”
What the committee wanted were the standard field pieces used by the Army during the war, each of them weighing about 800 pounds. Schofield only had access to what they had in surplus and was able to acquire 9-inch Dahlgren naval cannons, each weighing about 8,000 pounds.
Twenty-year-old Ralph Peckins of Benton was in the Navy assigned to the USS Indiana, stationed at the Navy Yard in Philadelphia. In early September 1907, he had a letter in the Penn Yan Democrat: “On August 23rd, the battleship Indiana sent a working party consisting of ten men and myself as petty officer in charge, down to the navy yard where the old wooden man-o-war, Saratoga, laid tugging lazily at her moorings. After boarding her, the working party was at once set to work releasing two old 9-inch cannon (‘old war horses’ as we called them) and hoisting them over the side onto the deck, but our work had only begun, for it was harder placing them on the flat car than taking them off the ship. Imagine us tugging away like Trojans on those ‘old war horses’ when there was a 40-ton crane over our heads. I don’t blame the government for working us like that, for if they used the crane it might wear out all the sooner. But you can imagine my surprise when I found out they were for the Penn Yan soldiers and sailors monument. If I had my say, I’d send about two score more cannons to Penn Yan to fortify the court house park.”
In addition to the two cannons, the committee was sent 224 cannonballs, each weighing 70 pounds. It all arrived around the time the above letter was published. The base of the monument was in place by then. There had been a ceremony on Memorial Day 1907, which included the laying of the cornerstone. In it were placed the names of the 2,109 county men who served during the war, rosters of all county veterans organizations including women’s auxiliaries, an American Flag, lists of county and village officials, copies of local newspapers and a copy of Wolcott’s Military History. The cornerstone alone weighed about six tons.
It was hoped that the monument’s shaft would be delivered in time for a complete dedication ceremony in late September. However, a piece of the stone had been spoiled by workers at the granite works in Barre, Vt. so the dedication was delayed until Memorial Day 1908. On that day, with what was described as one of the largest crowds ever to gather in Yates County, the main speaker was Captain John F. Randolph. Randolph was a private in the 126th NY Infantry who rose through the ranks. In his speech, he paid special homage to the Keuka Rifles, the first company to leave Yates County for the war in May 1861. In a moving part of the speech, he asked the crowd to imagine the 2,109 from the county marching past on Main Street. He “called out” several whom he knew personally: “There goes that rollicking dare-devil of a soldier, Garrett Ayres of Himrod of the 147th New York. It was not his to die the befitting death of a soldier, amid the rattle of musketry and clash of arms, but first to suffer a thousand deaths in a starving rebel prison pen.”
The monument cost $6,000 — financed by county taxpayers and private donations.
World War II
Fast forward three decades to 1938. With Hitler’s armies marching into Austria and Czechoslovakia, Italian armies on the march in Africa and the Japanese advancing into the Chinese mainland, world events brought renewed determination to the American peace movement to stay out of any future war (which some saw as inevitable). A local movement began to remove the old cannons from the park. Those sentiments were reflected by letters to the editor of the Chronicle Express.
This from retired Penn Yan businessman Theodore Hamlin in June of 1938: ”We approve of the suggestion to remove the cannon and balls from the Court House park. In addition to their being unsightly, they represent war instead of peace. They are also objectionable as they detract from the beauty of the soldier and sailors monument, a very fine artistic one and a credit to Penn Yan and Yates County.”
This from Louise Elsworth around the same time: “Last week a reminder was printed in the Chronicle-Express that just 30 years ago the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in the Court House park was unveiled. Would it not be a fitting time to restore the park to its attractive appearance at that time by removing the cannon, afterwards placed there, which detracts so greatly from the dignity of the monument? These are a great eyesore to all of us who pass the park, which means all of us going through the village as well as to those of us living here who see the park daily. A more important consideration, however, is to remove from the children’s background these grim reminders of conflict which will not be eradicated from the world until we stop bringing up the rising generation on the barbaric instruments of warfare.”
The peace movement continued to grow as Europe was plunged into war by Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939. The sentiment to remove the old cannons grew stronger as France fell to the Nazis in 1940 and the German air force attempted to bring Britain to its knees. However, those days of Charles Lindbergh, the America First Committee and “peace at any cost” yielded abruptly after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. People forgot about the cannons in the Courthouse Park, but not for long.
One result of the rapid mobilization for war during 1942 was increased demand by the armaments industry for scrap metal. As part of the campaign called the National Emergency Scrap Metal Harvest, each state was given a quota that was broken down for each county. Yates County’s quota was 850 tons, to be collected by Nov. 15. A letter to the editor of the Chronicle Express published in early October 1942: “The only war that meets my approval is a war of defense and we surely have reached that now! How can our city fathers better show their patriotism than by acceding to the urgent call from our government to give every bit of metal that can be spared to melt into armaments for defense of our loved country from slavery? When a neighboring city offers its enclosure of an iron fence about a public park to be used in defense of the Constitution handed down to us by our godly forefathers and of which we are so justly proud, shall we not imitate their example by removing from our otherwise pretty park the ugly implements of warfare — the cannons and balls that have so long disfigured it?”
This time the sentiment expressed in the letter reflected the feeling of most county residents and the county Legislature released the cannons and cannonballs to be added to the drive. On Oct. 15, the Chronicle Express reported: “A good start on Yates County’s quota of 850 tons of scrap metal to be collected the first week of November was made Saturday and the first of this week when the two Civil War naval cannons in the county court house park, Penn Yan, weighing 8,060 and 8,180 pounds respectively, were cut by a torch and loaded on a truck along with 8,690 pounds of cannon balls which for years formed the two display piles in the park near the cannon.”
The two guns that flank the Civil War monument these days are World War II era 57 mm anti-tank guns that were made in 1942. They were donated to the county in the late 1940s by Rodney Pierce of Pierce Trucking, the forerunner of Penn Yan Express. It seems that rubber tires were still in short supply right after the war. Pierce acquired the two Army surplus anti-tank guns, removed the tires and donated the guns to replace the old Civil War cannons.
This is one of more than 140 stories that MacAlpine has researched and written for “Yates Past,” the bimonthly publication of the Yates County History Center.
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