Silver where? Silver there!
By Jonathan Monfiletto
So, that's where we put the silverware!
In April 1990, Wesley Ryder was retiring as Penn Yan village utilities manager after 37 years on the job. Apparently, as a retirement gift to himself, he wanted to know the contents of an old, unused village safe that was stored in his office closet in the village building at 4 Maiden Lane. Either he had never been curious about it before or finally decided to clean out his office as he prepared to retire.
What locksmith George Wright found in the safe – with Ryder and assistant Carl Stuck looking on – solved, at least in part, a 125-year-old mystery. In the safe, the three men discovered 61 silver spoons and a watch stolen from the home of Dr. William Oliver at the corner of Main and Chapel streets (now the Yates County History Center's Oliver House Museum).
According to an April 4, 1990 article in the Finger Lakes Times, the three men discovered a cardboard box containing 25 small souvenir spoons wrapped in pink cloth, 36 silver spoons, a beaded necklace, and a key-wound Swiss watch inscribed W. Oliver. Several of the silver spoons are engraved with Oliver family initials – Oliver, O, MJO, JPO – as well as other markings – PS, MJP, E. Jones.
The article states the souvenir spoons were collected by the Oliver family during their travels around Europe – Gibraltar, Pisa, Dublin, and Rome – though our director, Tricia Noel, asserts it was a later generation of the Oliver family that traveled around the world. Their well-known travels, of course, are part of the reason we named this blog Oliver's Travels, but that's another story for another day.
The Yates Scrapbook feature in the February 18, 1982 Chronicle-Express includes an article from then-Village Historian Catherine Spencer that reprints a June 18, 1919 article by Theodore Hamlin that recounts the 1865 double burglary at his family's home and the Oliver home. At the time, the Myron Hamlin residence was just a block away from the Dr. William Oliver residence in the modern-day parsonage of the United Methodist Church.
Unfortunately, as much as I appreciate Theodore Hamlin's detailed account, I have been unable to find a contemporary account of the burglaries in our digitized newspaper collection. The closest item I could find is an April 14, 1864 (so Hamlin was off by a year) item signed by Myron Hamlin and Dr. Oliver, a mea culpa of sorts. In a paragraph, the men acknowledge a Mr. W.D. Capron had been suspected of having knowledge of the “recently committed” burglary (so we can assume the incident took place in the prior weeks or months) but assert they believe he had nothing to do with the stolen silverware.
In Theodore Hamlin's account, the incident occurred “one dark and rainy Saturday night … before street lamps were in use to any extent.” Though “we” (and it isn't clear exactly who “we” is) had been sleeping at the Hamlin family store, “we” stayed at home that night because of two sick family members. The “we” lay down on the sofa “at the north end of the room” (the living room?), remaining clothed and removing only coat and boots. A dim light was left burning in the other end of the room, and a small revolver and a key to the store were in a pocket of the coat.
Around 1 a.m., Hamlin wrote, “we” woke up quietly and felt something was wrong, laying still and looking backward. The top of a man's head was seen as he stood in the doorway opening into the pantry, just at the head of the sofa. He was searching the coat, and when “we” sat up the burglar dropped the coat and quickly disappeared. “We” grabbed the coat, secured the revolver, and jumped through the door (an inside the door, presumably) after the burglar. An open window was discovered, and a revolver shot was taken out the window. “We” found all the silver gone and a kitchen door left open for a quick getaway.
At the Oliver home, according to Hamlin, the family spent the evening in the sitting room when they heard “an unusual slight noise” in the kitchen and laughed it off as nothing important. Later, it was supposed the burglar walked in and hid himself in a closet off the kitchen until the family went to sleep. Around midnight, Mrs. Oliver heard a faint rattle of silver in the pantry and sent her husband to take a look. He reached the kitchen just in time to see a man disappearing out the window and notice all the silver gone. A pocket knife stuck in the casing to hold up the lower sash was the only clue left behind.
Henry N. Wagener, the Yates County Sheriff at the time, stated the knife had a smell of fish and suspected it belonged to a “public character” who handled fish and had a bad reputation, but the sheriff could not prove the man owned the knife. Later, a “well-known citizen” walking through the street carried a hand bag that appeared to contain the stolen silver. However, when the sheriff tracked the man down and demanded to see the bag, he found only piano tuning equipment.
Until 1990, neither the silver nor the burglar was discovered. The only trace of evidence was one teaspoon found between the plank sidewalk and front fence of the D.W. Adams residence, presumably accidentally dropped by the burglar.
According to Spencer, the silverware may have been turned in to village police after the burglary when the police occupied what became Ryder's office. The police likely put the stolen goods in the safe but left it behind when the police station moved to Basin Street in the mid-1930s. In 1990, then-Police Chief Raymond Stewart photographed the silverware and stored it in a safe deposit box in the local Chase Lincoln First Bank branch office.
However, Stewart declined to further prosecute the crime 125 years after the fact, remarking to the Finger Lakes Times, “I would imagine the thief has met his maker somewhere.”
