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 Site of the Foote Home - Jamestown, New York Posted by:  Szuchie
N 42° 05.780 W 079° 14.194
17T E 645825 N 4661976
Site of Elial Todd Foote's home in Jamestown, New York.
Waymark Code: WM37CP
Location: New York, United States
Date Posted: 02/22/2008
Views: 40
At this location, visitors will find a New York State Historical Marker detailing this location as the site of the Foote Homestead in Jamestown, New York. According to the marker:
Site of the Foote Home
Built in 1823 by Elial Todd Foote, physician, legislator, jurist, historian, who settled in Jamestown in 1815.
State Education Department 1935
History if no Link:
According to the City of Jamestown:
One of the most influential early settlers in Jamestown was Dr. Elial Todd Foote who came in 1815 as the community’s first physician, but who also became chief judge of Chautauqua County, state assemblyman, sheriff, bank founder and president, druggists, postmaster, pioneer land developer. One of his most important contributions grew out of his activities as Jamestown’s first and perhaps foremost historian. Andrew Young, in his History of Chautauqua County, published in 1875, drew much of his information from Foote’s vast historical material.
Born in Greenfield, Massachusetts on May 1, 1796, he came with his family to Sherburne, New York at the age of two years. There he attended schools and Oxford Academy and studied medicine by reading and attending lectures in New York City. He was licensed in 1815-1816.
He came to Jamestown in 1815 and a few years later, 1823, built a house on land later occupied by Jamestown Union School and Collegiate Institute and Jamestown High School.
He made a trip to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to the home of Paul Busti, general agent for the Holland Land Company, from whom he purchased 350 acres, now most of eastern Jamestown, at $2.50 an acre. According to legend, on that visit he received a twig from a willow tree on the Busti estate to use as a riding whip. When he returned to Jamestown, he casually placed the whip in the dirt and it took root. This was the historic willow tree in front of Jamestown High School, sung about in the JHS Alma Mater and penned in poems and other articles.
Dr. Foote gave land for building churches – First Methodist, Swedish Methodist, First Congregational, and First Baptist.
His contributions include: assistant count judge, 1817; judge of the Court of Common Pleas; county judge, 1824 – 1844; sheriff, 1820; Jamestown Postmaster, 1829. He served in the state assembly for several terms beginning in 1819. He founded the Chautauque County Bank in 1831 and was its first president. He was elected president of the board of trustees of the Jamestown Academy in 1836, an organizer of the first Masonic Lodge, Mt, Moriah, involve in construction of the Barcelona lighthouse and in a proposed steamboat route from Buffalo to Erie. He encouraged industrial development on his Jamestown lands and donated land for church buildings.
Judge Foote convinced the Board of Supervisors to change the spelling of Chautauque to Chautauqua in 1859.
He died in 1877 in New Haven, Connecticut. His funeral was held at the First Congregational Church in Jamestown and he was buried in Lakeview Cemetery, where a brown stone pillar centers the plot. It was the first monument in the cemetery.
Link to the Homestead: Not listed
Additional Parking or Point of Interest: Not Listed
Structure Type: Not listed
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Visit Instructions:
A clear picture of the Homestead, Marker or Plaque taken by you. And if you like a picture of you and GPS at the marker.
No Copyrighted images please.
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