George Shearman homestead plot: 1819
he Shearman brothers moved back into Penn Yan from Benton early enough for George's son George Jr. to have been born there in 1818. The boy in his old age told interviewers that the house he was born in was near the corner of Main and Jacob (now East Elm) Streets.
However, the first actual deed to Shearman was from Jonathan Bordwell and his wife Polly, through Bordwell's assignee, the lawyer Thomas Nevins. This was to a quarter-acre lot contracted but never deeded to Jared Munger and Lester Buckingham, who intended to build a store there. This was on 1 March 1819, and makes reference to the lot (where 125 and 121 Main stand now) being abutted on the south and east by land already sold by Bordwell to Shearman. On the north was John Dorman.
A few days later, on 11 March, Bordwell deeded a much larger piece to Shearman, 154 feet wide on Main Street, described as beginning at the southwest corner of George Shearman's garden, which must have been on the Munger & Buckingham parcel; and soon afterward, another parcel to the south. Shearman then owned the whole of Bordwell's homestead, which stretched all the way from what is now 125 Main to 101, a distance of nearly 300 feet.
Cleveland quotes the village-old-timers, who told him that the Dorman homestead lay north of the old Yates County Bank lot (131 Main); to his immediate south was Jonathan Bordwell's garden, residence, shop and tannery (he made shoes and other leather items in the shop); and then to the south of this was the lot where Dorman built his log cabin in about 1795, on land given to him by David Wagener, and that this last stretched from the Tunnicliff corner (25 Main) to the Outlet. Thus East Elm Street was surveyed (in 1802) between Bordwell and Dorman, taking a little (about 25 feet) from each.
Shearman sold off his homestead in 1829, just over 2 acres (the middle one of the three parcels he bought from Jonathan Bordwell), to Stephen Herrick of New York City, for $11,000 (a fortune at that time). This land held Shearman's house and barn, the first of which Herrick incorporated into the American Hotel. Shearman's store was near the south end of the homestead proper. The whole piece was 85 feet on Main Street.
This parcel, usually known as the American Hotel property, was sold in 1831 to William T. Cuyler, and by him to John J. Wise in 1842. He reserved some of this for himself, and in 1844 the reservations were formalized by a deed. Cuyler kept a parcel 32 feet wide where he built two stores. The remaining parcel, on which the American Hotel stood, passed through several hands through the years before 1857, when the great hotel burned to the ground. The brick walls of Eli Sheldon's old store stopped the fire from moving north, as did the brick walls of 103 to the south. Everything else in between disappeared in a single night.
It was James Brackett who owned the hotel at the time of the disaster. He may have had some idea of rebuilding, because it was more than five years before he sold the property, to Charles V. Bush. The exception was a lane that ran to the rear from Main Street between 119 and 121 to accomodate Alfred Tuell's livery barns. This passage persisted for many years, and is shown on early photographs of the Cornwell Opera House as an opening under the north edge of the building, high and wide enough for coaches to pass.
William T. Cuyler's parcel had passed to other hands by the 1860s, but in 1864 Bush bought that piece as well, and built Bush's Hall, later the Cornwell Opera House. Except for a strip of about 10 feet in width on the south that Bush sold to Stephen Raymond, the whole frontage of the American Hotel and Cuyler's two stores was now in a single building nearly 76 feet wide.
Above: The area in yellow shows the parcel that Stephen Herrick sold to William T. Cuyler in 1831. At one time, Shearman owned the parcels to the north that are now 121 and 125 Main Street; and those to the south all the way to East Elm (then Jacob) Street.
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Sometime prior to 1818, George Shearman bought this part of Jonathan Bordwell's homestead, later acquiring the rest of it. The parcel with his house and barn was the last sold, in 1829, to Stephen Herrick.
