Welcome to the home page of the Town of Potter Historical Society.  For many years I have collected as much as I have had room to store.  Now it is time to share and provide a means for others to do the same.  So with a facebook page and a website, off we go........

  Please spread the word to others.  The Rushville History Group sets a fine example of how and what to collect.  They have a bit on Potter as some of the village is within the town of Potter.  In the mean time start thinking of what you can provide.  With computers, scanners, email and all the technology now available please set out some time to search for and donate artifacts that others would appreciate. 

Wilson Simmons

1112 Mothersell Rd.

Middlesex, NY 14507

585-554-6768

   Warfield’s Corners

   In many of the old newspapers there used to be many individuals who wrote there own column for their own locality.  I have tried to revive that in the Yates County Gazette, so far with no willing participants.  In those columns there is so much local history that would otherwise be long forgotten.  Every scrap of that information is valuable for people looking for family history or information on the old days in Potter.   In the mean time I am trying to piece together all the information I have on some of these places and save it for others.

   Up until the automobile made travel to Canandaigua and Penn Yan a ten minute trip these hamlets were the hub of the community, complete with stores, post offices, blacksmith shops, shoe shops, barbers and much more.  It certainly would be nice to see some of that back again.  The old Country Store, the many churches and the small town days are long gone.    

   The old Potter from about 1790 to the 1830‘s was an inhospitable dark woods, with the indian paths that eventually became most of today’s roads.  The earliest road was likely Schuman’s path that led from the area of East Swamp Road towards Canandaigua. Previous to the settlement of Potter Center in about 1832 with Finch’s Tavern, there were only small settlements with few houses.  Nettle Valley, Warfield’s Corners, the double log tavern belonging to a “Bingham” then Alben Darby just north of Potter Center, Voak and Yatesville.  Each place was settled surrounding a tavern, sawmill or a church. 

     Half way between Rushville and Potter Center on what is now State Rt. 247 there was a hamlet of about eight to ten houses and a public house or tavern.  That hamlet was called Warfield’s Corners. Other hamlets in the township of Potter were Coles Corners, East Potter, Friend, and a few more that I will note later.  Warfield’s Corners, was named after the early settler, Lindsey Warfield (9/24/1794 - 9/11/1864 ).  In 1798, Mr. Warfield came to the town of Potter when it was then called the town of Augusta.   He settled on a farm then owned by Benjamin Watkins, but finally settled on what was known as the Faurot farm in the Warfield neighborhood.   To be specific Warfield’s Corners was the intersection of the current State Rt. 247 and the Ward Simmons Rd. and Dunton Rd. intersection. 

   Per Stafford C. Cleveland’s History of Yates County, some of the early settlers in the Warfield neighborhood were a Mr. Wesson from New England, William Foster and Abraham Florence.  Cleveland states that they lived in “the present boundaries of Middlesex.”  Which would put some of those dwellings on Dunton Rd. past the current boundary line for the town of Potter, near Bagley Road.  

  The only trace of any early settlement in the Warfield’s Corners neighborhood today is the Pendleton barn on the corner of State Rt. 247 and Ward Simmons Road, a few sporadic covered up water wells and a house foundation in the wooded corner lot.  The Warfield house burned sometime around 1930.  Per an old newspaper artical the Warfield barn was said to have been built in 1898, referencing the dimensions as 39’ x 60’, of which it is.  It was built after the time of Lindsey D. Warfield (1824-1887), a son of Lindsey Warfield.  Someone in the Warfield family must have lived in the house for quite a few years because the area was called Warfield’s Corners up until the 1970’s by many of the older generation.  The family that lived in the house when it burned made use of the center section of the barn for quite some time, but must have moved to another location.  No other house has sat there since it burned. 

  To the south and on the north side of the road there was several references to a tavern that stood for some time that also was used as a stage coach stop.  That building does not appear in the 1876 Yates County Atlas so it must have been used from about 1825 - 1870 or so.  Several references in the old town of Potter Clerk’s minutes state that at times the town meetings were held at Warfield’s Tavern.   For many years there were household items such as dish fragments, iron tools, bricks and pottery pieces found during planting season.  Somewhere in Wyman scrap books there is an article that states that the tavern burned.

   The name of Warfield in Potter seems long gone, but there was a time when Lindsey Warfield had a hamlet and a four corners named after him.  He was a veteran of the war of 1812 and so he should be remembered.

Wilson Simmons

Potter, NY