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var str = 'Geo. Davis, Billiard Hall';
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var str = 'Number 42 on the Burleigh map, it\'s not clear whether Davis (1860-1947) ever was successful in starting up his billiard hall--and the attendant liquor license likely for its operation. It\'s more certain that, by May 1894, he and Charles Bundy had opened a variety store whose advertisement appears here. But then on 13 November of that year a fire started in the basement of their building, eventually destroying the structure and most others along the west side of State Street. The Caledonia \"Advertiser\" held that its cause was arson--like the earlier one in 1891--and Davis found it necessary, two weeks later, to offer a $100 reward \"for any information or proof of the author of the report in circulation that I set fire to the store...or had any guilty knowledge of the fact before the fire\" (Caledonia Advertiser 6 Dec. 1894).
The facts of this case are murky; the fire could have been accidental (wood structures were susceptible to fires), or it could have been arson. Davis and Bundy lost $1,000 in stock to the fire, and were fully insured. Someone was insinuating that Davis was to blame. But there are at least two other possibilities. The first could have been a radical temperance advocate who saw the concentration of saloons on State Street as moral depravity--Caledonia was sharply divided on the issue of alcohol--and an announcement of Davis & Bundy\'s soon-to-open store mentioned that “Liquors of no description will be kept\" in stock (12 April 1894).
The second suspect would have had racial motivations; after all, the fire occurred two years before the U.S. Supreme Court\'s \"Plessy v. Ferguson\" ruling that enshrined Jim Crow as the law of the land. As an African American, Davis himself experienced a number of suspicious incidents during his life that made it into the newspaper. Shortly after purchasing the farm of Jane Cameron in 1904, a “span of young horses valued at $300” broke out of his property, wandered onto railroad tracks, and were killed by an Erie train. “Hard luck,” reported the newspaper (Caledonia \"Advertiser\" 14 Sept. 1904). In 1906, Davis was reported driving a “handsome light wagon” in a “natty blue uniform” for Iroquois Portland Cement Company. “A man in livery is quite a sight in Caledonia,\" the author marveled (Caledonia \"Advertiser\" 1 Aug. 1906).
In 1901 Davis and Maurice Johnson were returning, in a horse-drawn buggy, from work in Garbutt at night when they were rammed--it seems deliberately--by a car of drunken men: “They accused Davis of ‘being in the middle of the road,’ a fact he did not attempt to deny” (Caledonia \"Era\" 13 Oct 1909). All of this suggests that Davis\' life in Caledonia was complex. He still was involved in a State St. business as of 1910, although now in partnership of \"nine colored men\" with Davis as manager. “The new firm,\" predicted the newspaper, \"ought to control the bulk of the trade of colored families of which there are many in this village and in Mumford and the surrounding districts\" (Caledonia \"Era\" 5 Oct. 1910).';
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var str = 'Courtesy of Tom Tryniski / Fulton History';
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var str = 'Caledonia Advertiser';
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var str = '1894-05-03';
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var str = 'Cooper, Ken';
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var str = 'jpeg, 321 KB';
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var str = 'Chas. P. Bundy, Tonsorial Artist';
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var str = 'Number 44 on the Burleigh map, in plain language this was a barber shop that had been operating since 1885. Prior to that, Bundy had worked in the shop of his brother Thomas while attending school. By the time of the map\'s publication, Charles was about to be married to Delilah Sellers, the woman with whom he would have two sons: James Samuel and Benjamin Franklin.
Charles P. Bundy (1861-1896) probably followed his brother from Virginia to Caledonia for economic opportunity. Thomas, impressed into military service by the Confederacy, was captured by Union forces and then served Lieutenant-Colonel Francis E. Pierce of the 108th New York Volunteer Infantry. Thomas followed the regiment to Western New York and eventually made a life as a barber before his tragic death in 1885, after which Charles ran his own shop.
Bundy was active in other business endeavors--a grocery partnership with George Davis (who was married to his sister), and this advertisement for fresh oysters (presumably arranged via his contacts in Maryland and Virginia). Sadly, just a week later Bundy had died from longstanding health problems that had severely limited his activities. ';
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var str = '1896-12-17';
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