The Jones lot: 1818
oseph Jones was a very well-known resident of Penn Yan, born in Pennsylvania and resident here in the first decade of the 19th century. His first residence was about three miles downstream from Penn Yan near the Outlet and the Friends' Mill located there. His residence in Penn Yan was upstreet, where 225 Main Street is today. Jones made his living as a surveyor, and many of his surveys are recorded in the various records of town roads; but he was also a hatter, and had a store on Elm Street for many years. Before that, however, he owned at least two fairly large tracts on the east side of Main Street, each a chain (66 feet) wide, stretching from the south bounds of George Shearman's homestead to the north bounds of the Dorman heirs, which is to say the old Bordwell homestead less the American Hotel lot.
The more southerly of these was sold to Jones by Shearman in 1824, and afterward conveyed to Eben Smith in an unrecorded deed, covering the ground where Smith some time later built 101 and 103 Main Street. It also included half the land used in 1802 to put Jacob (now East Elm) Street through. This parcel is more thoroughly discussed on the page for the Smith store lots.
The more northerly of the two plots was sold to Jones in the same year by two men who had acquired it from a chain of owners begun in 1818 by a sale from Abraham Wagener to Scofield Seeley. This would have covered the ground where 111, 109, 107 and 105 now stand. Jones sold the north part, 36 feet wide, in 1829 to James Harris and Samuel Stephens, which is the modern 109 and 111 Main. The latter is now part of the same building as the Cornwell Opera House. The parcel has always been an independent store, never a storefront of the main building.
The chain from Wagener to Jones is pretty clear. Scofield Seeley bought the entire 66-foot-wide tract from Wagener in 1818, and Seeley sold a half interest the same year to Israel R. Brown, who turned it around more or less immediately to Abraham H. Bennett. Bennett founded Penn Yan's first newspaper in that year, the Penn-Yan Herald, which soon afterwards became the Democrat, published weekly for another 130 years until 1948, when its rabidly right-wing views were too much even for staunch Penn Yan Republicans (whose paper was the Chronicle) to stomach.
Seeley sold the remaining half interest in 1819 to George D. and Samuel Stewart, newly arrived in the place, but they only held on to it for another year, for in 1820 they sold it back to Seeley. So it was in 1824 when Bennett and Seeley sold their parcel, still 66 feet wide, to Joseph Jones. The parcel may have still been vacant when Jones sold 36 feet of it in 1829 to Harris and Stevens, as it is they who built a two-front store at the northern end of the lot. The two men split the property in 1831, Harris getting the northern half of the store, 18 feet wide. Stevens got the south half, which would have been where 109 is now. There are known to have been other occupants, as they are mentioned in deeds when the north half of the store was conveyed. But it fell into the hands of Eben Smith, again in an unrecorded deed, before 1835, when he sold the site of 109 and 107 to Israel F. Terrill and Anson C. Gillett.
The site of 105 Main was sold by Smith in 1848 to Edward Jacobus.
Above: The lot shaded in yellow is the more northerly of two lots 66 feet wide on Main Street bought by Joseph Jones in 1824.
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