Memphis, New York

Jordan Historical Society, Jordan, NY

Memphis, New York

Lumber, Coal, and Hay on the Erie Canal.

by

Low bridge, ev’rybody down!

Low bridge, we’re coming to a town.

You’ll always know your neighbor

And you’ll always know your pal

If ya ever navigated on the Erie Canal.

— Thomas Allen

"I used to do business with a lumber company in Collierville.” I’m speaking with Paul Anthony of Memphis Hardwood Lumber. This being Memphis, New York, one has to put the conversation on hold now and then as the trains pass by, horns blasting. “Craig Lumber. They import hardwood. I drove there one time to see some wood that they had. They had such a good price on it.” Another train flies by and we pause, taking in the bucolic scene around his home and business.

Then Anthony goes on: “Funny story: I cannot tell you how many times over the years I’ve gotten phone calls from people with a strong Southern accent, asking, ‘Where are you in Memphis? We’ve been looking all over for you!’ And I say, ‘You’re in Tennessee, right? Well, you’re about 23 hours away. We’re in Memphis, New York.’”

Anthony relishes the absurdity, but sometimes the confusion creates real headaches. “I had a truckload of lumber one time, picked up at the docks in New Jersey, that was supposed to be here by a certain time, and the truck didn’t show up. I get a phone call from the trucking company saying, ‘Our truck is in Memphis, Tennessee. The driver was so upset that he quit and left the truck there.’ He had driven it all the way to Tennessee, not even looking at the waybill that said Memphis, New York, 13112. Just pfft, off he went!”

Even so, the similarities between the two Memphi make such confusion understandable. Though the New York hamlet is small (far smaller than the population estimate of 1,850 for the entire ZIP code), it too has a long history as a port-of-call. A historical marker notes that it was traditionally regarded as the halfway point on the Old Erie Canal, “179 miles from Buffalo and 183 miles from Albany.” As such, its size belied the cosmopolitan connections it offered. For nearly a century, this hamlet sat on one of the largest commercial and transportation arteries in the world.

The name “Memphis,” then, was perhaps an obvious choice. First called “Canal Town,” shortened to “Canton,” or even simply “Canal,” the village needed another name more in harmony with the New York State postal system. Around 1860, it was dubbed Memphis for no particular (documented) reason, and it stuck. It’s a good name for a river town and, under any of its monikers, the place was always defined by the canal that ran through it.

Operating from 1825 to 1918, the Erie Canal marked a radical change in relations between coastal ports and America’s interior. As author Carol Sheriff writes, “That one could now savor fresh oysters so far from the sea symbolized the single greatest triumph of the Erie Canal: It compressed distance and time in ways that had previously seemed impossible.” But the canal brought more than fresh oysters to Memphis. In many ways, the tiny port partook of the same wild frontier spirit that animated the old Beale Street.

We can almost hear the trio led by fiddler Josh Clark, captured by a traveling photographer. “Josh is rendering Rural Opera,” reads the annotation. “He never needs no notes.”

The men who worked the canal were a roguish bunch, belying the serene domesticity that characterizes Memphis today. In Moby-Dick, Herman Melville wrote of “the brigandish guise which the Canaller so proudly sports; his slouched and gaily ribboned hat between his grand features. A terror to the smiling innocence of the villages through which he floats; his swarthy visage and bold swagger are not unshunned in cities.”

The historical society in the nearby town of Jordan holds countless images of such swarthy visages. From their archives emerge such characters as “Patsy Fitzgerald of Memphis, N.Y., boss of the Memphis gang,” who was well-off enough to sit for a photographic portrait in neighboring Syracuse. We can almost hear the trio led by fiddler Josh Clark, captured by a traveling photographer. “Josh is rendering Rural Opera,” reads the annotation. “He never needs no notes.” We can nearly smell the cigar that Whiskey Dick Skinner clenches in his jaw.

Thanks to the dedication of locals like Susan Young and John Nevin, who oversee the Jordan Historical Society, much of Memphis’ early history is well preserved. From tranquil middle-class homes, to the raucous festivities of the 1876 Centennial on the Fourth of July, to the above swarthy characters, faces from the canal’s heyday spring eerily to life. In one portrait, the aptly named Willard Young is especially striking, the youth of his face contrasting sharply with his ragged clothes.

Many of the workers were indeed youngsters. Sheriff notes that since many barge captains “treated their employees more like animals than like sons, it is not surprising that these children felt little respect for the middle classes.” Their drinking and vandalism were especially shocking in small towns like Memphis. “One might expect to find thugs and prostitutes in crowded port cities,” Sheriff writes, “but the country’s interior … was supposed to be more pure.”

Nonetheless, the denizens of the Erie Canal were the bread and butter of the little port. In one local history, attributed to Mrs. Anthony Christopher, we learn that in 1836, “Memphis had three stores, two taverns and fifteen dwellings, three hotels, and many other businesses. There were a number of saw mills and grist mills throughout the town.” There was also a blacksmith shop, owned by the Nagleys. By 1884, one of them registered with the U.S. Patent Office: “Be it known that I, Charles Nagley, of Memphis, in the county of Onondaga, in the State of New York, have invented new and useful Improvements in Tobacco Plant Cutters.”

And at the heart of the town was the lumberyard. Now, under Paul Anthony’s watch, many of the nineteenth-century buildings remain. “Back in the day, when the canal was operational, it was a thriving little community. A trolley ran on the other side of the canal,” Anthony tells me. “And I believe this is probably one of the oldest continuously operated lumberyards in central New York. It’s been here since the canal was in operation back in the 1800s. It was operated by two brothers, Lou and Guy Crouse, and originally had lumber, feed, and coal. Which was typical of a lumberyard in a small town like this. It had everything. There were bins with gravel, sand, stone, and coal by the ton. And they weighed out grain with this scale.”

Pointing out various bits of archaic equipment around the Memphis Hardwood compound, Anthony clearly takes some pride in the history that lives on here. Much of it was simply strewn about when he bought the place in the early 1970s. In one outbuilding are ledgers dating back over a century, including a thousand-dollar order from the Tennessee Flooring Company in Nashville, dated September 25, 1912. Just behind the building are remnants of the old canal walls, and then a stretch of the canal itself.

Nowadays, where the canal has not been filled in, it lives on as the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor. The crown of this heritage zone is the Erie Canalway Trail for hikers and cyclists, along which one can walk or bike for nearly the entire stretch between Albany and Buffalo. In Memphis, a small parking lot marks the entrance to the stonedust trail, which meanders along the overgrown waterway. Trains, which first ran to Memphis in 1851, still run parallel to the water, a stone’s throw from the trail. Just as in Tennessee, residents of this Memphis are well acquainted with waiting on the freight cars to pass by.

Five miles away in Camillus, where Anthony grew up, the canal days are honored with more than a plaque or a trail. The town’s Erie Canal Park features a museum modeled on the old general store by the water, guided boat tours, and a reconstructed aqueduct. And just a short drive away, one can spend hours at the Erie Canal Museum in downtown Syracuse.

As in many small towns, including others named Memphis, “amateur” historians play a key role as guardians of the local memory, with motivations ranging from the civic to the personal. As I was photographing the buildings of Memphis Hardwood, Jonathan Crocker from across the street introduced himself. Although he lives in Houston, this little town is dear to his heart. Since his mother and father passed away, he and two of his siblings manage his mother’s childhood home there, making what renovations they can and ensuring that the acreage is kept up. The house, built in 1850, is a museum piece in itself, with its original rough-hewn cabinetry and hand-crafted details. Beyond that, Crocker’s mother had a passion for history and collected photographs and articles, many of which now reside at the Jordan Historical Society. For many Memphians, it’s all between neighbors.

“Jon probably told you his grandfather, his mom’s father, worked here at the lumberyard,” says Paul Anthony. “He was a teamster, driving a wagon to deliver coal.” But, though the hamlet has prospered compared to much of small-town America, it has lost some of the familiarity between residents. “There are younger people moving in, no question about it,” says Anthony. “Now, I don’t know hardly anybody that lives around here. A few people. Some of these houses have been sold a few times. It’s always been a place where housing is pretty reasonable. Some friends of ours bought a house here recently, fixed it up, and just sold it for $250,000. That’s a lot of money in this town. When I moved here in the ’70s, it was like Appalachia around here.” Indeed, the prosperity brought by people who work in nearby Syracuse has brought historical preservation of a different sort. The old Episcopal Church is now a well-maintained private residence, and the former Baptist Church is for sale.

The lumberyard itself has evolved as well. “Our business is strictly hardwood lumber,” Anthony explains. “We don’t sell 2-by-4s or framing lumber like we used to. I did when I first bought the place. But now it’s all very high-end, specialty stuff, imported woods and things like that.” With echoes of Memphis, Tennessee, some of his regular customers are luthiers and drum-makers.

The relative prosperity of Memphis has helped maintain the appreciation of history there, in its own way, and that personal touch hasn’t entirely left the area. Over in Jordan, a young neighbor of John Nevin’s, Lynn Fall, grew up to work as an administrator for Syracuse University, and now helps Nevin find and manage materials for the local historical society. The Jordan Bramley Library houses their museum.

“I’m not important; I just have a key to the museum. They say I’m a historian. Well, it’s only because I’ve lived here longer than anybody else that has an interest in anything.” — John Nevin

“This is the biggest thing we’ve got here,” Nevin says, pointing to a chunk of wood with an iron ball ensconced in it. “When Lincoln’s funeral train, with his body, went through here so people could pay their respects, they fired off a cannon. And the idiots put a live round in the cannon. Not just a bang, a live ball. I think the guys were probably loaded. They fired it as Lincoln went by — he almost got shot twice! That is the cannonball. It lodged in a tree.”

Nevin remains humble about his role in preserving the area’s historical legacy. “I’m not important; I just have a key to the museum. They say I’m a historian. Well, it’s only because I’ve lived here longer than anybody else that has an interest in anything.” Yet Nevin, who was born and raised in Jordan, has good reason to be passionate about Memphis. As we drive there from the museum, through the hamlets of Peru and California, he gestures out the window. “This is how I used to walk to Memphis, before I had a car. It kind of runs along the old canal.”

“Why would you walk all that way?” A walk of five miles like that would take just under two hours.

“Because my wife lived there!” he exclaims. “She went to a two-room school house in Memphis, until eighth grade, and then they matriculated up to Jordan. And that’s when she joined my class. We sat alphabetically, so she sat in front of me. Joan Morey. We had desks that still had inkwells, and I used to dip her braids in the ink.” He grows a little wistful as we approach the house where his wife-to-be grew up, the scene of their courtship. “That was my father-in-law’s shop. He did a lot of work in that little shack there. He was a welder and an excellent machinist.”

Later, he asks slyly if I’d like to see a picture of Memphis.

“Uh, okay …,” I say.

At that, Nevin produces a four-photo frame containing shots of an adorable infant.

“These were taken in Memphis?” I ask.

“No, this is Memphis,” Nevin says proudly. “That’s my great-granddaughter’s name.” And so — in such personal gestures — the places, the names, and the memories flow on.

Editor's Note: This is the third of an occasional series of articles that explore other towns across the United States that share the same name as our hometown.