Today, it is just a place name—an unincorporated hamlet within the towns of Gates and Chili in Monroe County. But in its day, Coldwater (or Cold Water, as it was sometimes known) was a residential, business and transportation hub with an official U.S. Post Office address and a regular stop on the New York Central main line.
Donald G. Ioannone, a decades-long Gates resident and business owner, and John M. Robortella, past editor of the Gates-Chili News and local-history writer, have collaborated on a new book entitled Coldwater: An Eclectic History of the Hamlet, released by Finger Lakes Historical Press, Canandaigua, New York.
Published in soft cover with 188 pages and more than 150 archival photographs, the book begins with the impact of the railroad on the hamlet, followed by the arrival of a group of German Catholics who first established a school and then Holy Ghost parish.
“A traditional downtown and Main Street never formed in Gates,” said Ioannone. “The boundaries originally extended east into present-day Rochester. The hamlet of Coldwater – named, they say, for the readily available cold water for steam locomotives – with its railroad depot and post office, quickly filled the downtown void when the first railroad train passed through Gates on May 11, 1837.
“The railroad changed everything for Coldwater and the town of Gates,” he said. Coldwater then became the home to hundreds of German Catholics who began to leave the central city and purchase land in today’s suburban Monroe County towns.
“Interestingly, a German Catholic church in Coldwater was not their first priority,” said Robortella. “Instead, they constructed a school on an acre of land donated in 1865 by William and Euphemia Vogel on the east side of Coldwater Road.
“Without a parish, the Catholic school was considered a mission station until Holy Ghost Church was officially founded on July 3, 1876,” said Robortella.
Ioannone and Robortella drew upon a number of town and county histories which were augmented with interviews, documents and photographs from the descendants of Coldwater’s pioneer families, many of whom still reside in the area and others who are now living throughout the United States.
“Baseball was a huge pastime for players and spectators,” said Ioannone. “We were fortunate to have received what so far is the only known photograph of a game in the 1920s at Knoepfler Field at the corner of present-day Coldwater Road and Cherry Road. Afterward, the games then moved to the better known Russer Field in the 1950s, which was one of the few lighted stadiums in Monroe County at the time.”
In addition to material on the railroad, Holy Ghost Church, baseball, fire protection, and people and places, the book includes chapters on Joseph Harris (1828–1892), founder of the Harris Seeds Company on Buffalo Road; Joseph Entress (1904–1985), founder of the Coldwater Lumber Company; Jay Widener (“The Coldwater Clouter”) and his son Peter, the only father and son to have been inducted together in the Rochester Boxing Hall of Fame; and the peddler Frogleg George, who supplied Rochester restaurants and hotels with frog legs (the chicken wings of their day) in the 1890s and early 1900s.
The book includes a memoir from the Rev. Thomas F. Nellis, who served as associate pastor of Holy Ghost Church from 1972 to 1976 and as pastor from 2004 to 2010. His tenure provided him with a unique, decades-long perspective of the parish within the hamlet of Coldwater. He retired in 2010.
The book also includes a chapter on Father Alphonsus Trabold. He grew up in Coldwater as Roger Trabold, was ordained a Catholic priest, taught for decades at St. Bonaventure University, and was a real, honest-to-goodness exorcist, according to Ioannone and Robortella.
“We have an extensive chapter on the life of Father Alphonsus with information from his family in Florida and from the archives at St. Bonaventure University,” they said. “He taught a class on “Religion and the Paranormal” and also served as a consultant on a number of paranormal cases including the events that inspired the 1979 movie The Amityville Horror. We have a 1978 account of his work with a family in Hinsdale, New York. The local press at the time wrote the headline “Three Years of Ungodly Terror.”
Also published is the 1828 handwritten survey of present-day Wegman Road in Gates, named for Christina Wegman and her family who operated dairy farms on what became Wegman Road. Christina is the third great aunt of Danny Wegman, chief executive officer of Wegmans Food Markets with headquarters on Brooks Avenue in Gates.
“Until we began working on this book, we never realized the Wegman Road family connection to the Wegmans food stores,” said Robortella. “Don and I are grateful to Kenneth Beaman of North Chili, and to Linda Thompson of Manassas, Virginia, who both have done extensive genealogy research on the Wegman family and graciously shared their materials for the book.”
They also noted that Mr. Beaman, whose family arrived in Gates circa 1811, shared his decades-long research on the many families of the Coldwater for the book.
There is only one press run of 250 copies of the book. It is available for $32.95 plus tax and shipping. To order, contact Don Ioannone at 647-9276 or via e-mail at dongi@frontiernet.net; or John Robortella at 393-0541 or via e-mail atjrobortella@rochester.rr.com.
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