The Old Barber House

This article was scraped from Rochester Subway. This is a blog about Rochester history and urbanism has not been published since 2017. The current owners are now publishing link spam which made me want to preserve this history.. The original article was published February 11, 2013 and can be found here.

   John Failings Barber settled in the area of Portage, NY during the pioneer days. He struggled with tragedy and hardship and eventually became a prosperous farmer and banker. He built this home--which he called, "Chestnut Place"--on the corner of     Short Tract and Oakland roads

. Before I continue, please be advised, this house is on posted private property.

Emily Stauring

is a photographer from Arkport, NY. She took most of these photos while out for a drive with a friend...

   I asked Emily how she found the place, and what she knew of its history. She says:    Apparently the first people who built it all died of illness, then the next family had a bunch of people pass away, and apparently the latest person who bought it to fix it up had a bunch of plywood fall on one of the contractors and kill him. Now, this is just what I have heard and you know how rumors are! I talked to a lady who used to live in it and was haunted by an old lady she said. It was actually a house that college kids used to party in, and a friend of mine remembered where it was. Three levels--definitely a mansion--apparently it used to have a curved staircase and awesome old fireplaces and a piano, but people have stolen pretty much everything in it. It absolutely had an eerie haunted feeling to it. But I couldn't resist!

   In 1819, John Barber's mother died. He was just 9 years old at the time. His father brought him and his siblings to     Portage

from     Canajoharie, NY

. When John's father died in 1827, John was left with 3 younger brothers and a sister to care for - which he did.

   John saw to it that his brothers and sister received educations. He worked hard clearing land with an ox and bull plow which his father had made. In 1835 was able to buy 50 acres of his own land. In the winter he lumbered and rafted timber to Rochester on the Genesee when the river could be run during the spring. He is known to have walked home from Rochester.

   The photo above was taken by our friends Chris and Luke (of the     Burnt Over District

blog). This looks like an opening for a missing staircase.

   According to a local newspaper article from 1884, Mr. Barber became a very successful business man and banker, although he also continued farming.

   Sometime after 1872, Nathaniel Alward, John's brother-in-law, started to build this house on the site of an earlier one. For some reason Alward decided to go back to Cayuga County (where he had come from). John purchased and completed the house himself. He called it "Chestnut Place" because of the many chestnut trees there.

   Robert Gath and his family were the last to live here. Robert wrote this description of it: "Fifteen rooms, a half mile of halls, 9 closets, one fireplace of black marble and two of oak. The doors are curly maple and winding staircase cherry. The wall paper in the the upstairs rooms in the original paper." He said the marble bathroom is gone.

   John Barber's granddaughter Ethel, her husband Arthur Yates Bennett, and their daughter Dorothy, were the last family members to live in the house. They moved to     Alden, NY

in 1920.

   This is the earliest known photo of the old Barber House, taken in 1960 by Roy Gath. On February 23, Joan Schumaker, who has been working on collecting information about the Barber house, will be giving a talk at the Mt. Morris Dam on John Barber. See the     Nunda Historical Society's website

for more information.

UPDATE:    The article previously stated that "John Barber's granddaughter Ethel, her husband Arthur Yates Bennett, and their daughter Dorothy, were the last people to live in the house." In fact, they were the last family members to live in the house. Robert Gath and his family were actually the last people to live here. A few reader's correctly pointed this out.

Thanks to:

Luke & Chris (     exploringtheburnedoverdistrict.wordpress.com

) for the photo of the staircase opening, and for tipping me off to this fascinating story.

Emily Stauring. You can see more of Emily's photos (and buy prints) from her March 2011 trip     here

.

Tom Cook and the     Nunda Historical Society

for the 1960's photo and all the great information.