GENEVA IN 1900: The baby in the snowbank
Beginning Feb. 28, 1900, snow fell for 63 hours without stopping in our region, breaking all records in Rochester. Geneva was entirely cut off from outside communication, and the weight of the snow caused roofs to collapse.
By March 17, Canandaigua Lake was frozen to a depth of 8 inches.
Three days prior, at 8 o’clock on a freezing cold night in Canandaigua, three railroad workers, walking on the frozen street near the station, heard a baby’s cry from one of the snowbanks in the vacant lot behind Paul Fuller’s saloon. They were shocked to discover a 3-week-old boy wrapped in blankets and nestled in a basket with a bottle of milk.
One of them took the infant to the police station. Chief of Police Beeman, according to the Geneva Daily Times, went to the railroad station “to find, if possible, some clue leading to the detection of the person guilty of the cowardly crime.”
Sadie Pollard was at the station arranging to send a trunk to Geneva. Witnesses said she had arrived on an earlier train and was seen carrying a baby to the Masseth boarding house near Fuller’s saloon. Miss Proseus, who worked at the boarding house, gave the woman milk for the baby. Chief of Police Beeman arrested Sadie, who admitted that she left the baby in the........
© Finger Lakes Times
