Three events in history would lead Daniel Penfield to move to an uninhabited wilderness to build a life for himself and his family. Upon visiting this area in western New York in the late 18th century, Penfield saw a very unique opportunity along a creek that was the perfect size and demeanor to successfully create a milling industry and build a town out of a swampland that was referred to by Cornelius Treat, an early resident of the town of Mendon, on a tour he made of the area on 1795 with James Wadsworth, a land surveyor. He remarked, "We spent four days exploring the land...After our examination was finished, Mr. Wadsworth was so disgusted with the land that he said he would not take it as a gift, for it was worth nothing, and we made our way home."

The area's first historic event was Shay's Rebellion. After the American Revolution ended in 1783, a severe economic depression followed, especially to the farmers of western Massachusetts and eastern New York. With farmers unable to pay debts and with the high taxes now being charged by the newly established government, the farmers revolted. The rebellion started at the end of 1786 and continued into the early part of 1787. During that time, Penfield ran a dry goods store in Hillsdale. During the rebellion, his store was burned by an angry mob of farmers. After the rebellion ended, Penfield gave up his interests in dry goods and moved to New York City, where he became a merchant and a land owner.

The second historic event, the Phelps and Gorham Purchase of 1790, introduced Daniel Penfield to the lands of western New York. This purchase opened up expansion into the western part of the state. During the American Revolution, Penfield served under Oliver Phelps (first judge of Ontario County). When Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham (president of the Continental Congress) made their purchase of all of western New York lands, Penfield was one of the witnesses on the deed of sale. In 1795, he made the trip to the western part of the state to survey for land. In recognizing the potential of the Irondequoit Creek, he quickly purchased Township 13, Range 4, from Jonathan Fassett, who originally purchased it from Phelps and Gorham in the early 1790s. Later, c. 1801, Penfield hired John Strowger to build and run the first flour mill on the creek.

The third historic event to lead Penfield to the town that would one day take his name was the Jeffersonian Embargo of 1807. This embargo ceased all exports from New York City on all goods shipped overseas and into Canada. Penfield was in the merchant trade, and this severely affected his business. For the next few years, he struggled in the midst of the embargo and finally decided to give up his interests in New York City as a merchant and landowner in the Hudson Valley. He gathered up his family and moved c. 1810-1811 to western New York, where a burgeoning township was being developed. The opportunity along the creek would no doubt make Penfield one of the largest and most successful milling towns in western New York during the fist half of the 19th century.

Five things everyone should know about Penfield:

#1 SGOH-SA-IS-THAT (meaning is explained on an old metal NY State historical marker located along the mill ruins and falls of the creek in Linear Park - now Penfield's unofficial fishing hole.)
It is a Seneca Indian term that becomes Daniel Penfield's secret ingredient. Found only in the Township 13, Range 4 of the Phelps Gorham survey lands, it becomes the main reason Penfield purchases the land in 1795, develops the mill sites on Irondequoit Creek to create valued products, stores, land sales office; ultimately, the anatomy of an attractive settlement community. Functioning settlements became the key ingredient to sell land, and Daniel Penfield, by 1815, had the most attractive integrated community in what is now Monroe County.

#2 World's best dolomite - nature's ancient gift
It's Penfield's bedrock, 150 feet thick, lying from 20 feet to 2 feet under our soil, edging ever close to the surface going north toward Ridge Road. This 400+ million year old, very hard form of limestone formed under a shallow marine sea like to Gulf of Mexico, finally revealed by Ice Age glaciers. Gem quality crystals, valued world's best by collectors, come from the Penfield quarry. Since 1920, when nationwide demand by automobile owners for paved roads spiked, Penfield's easy access to Dolomite was the key ingredient for many forms of road surfacing and concrete mixes. Both quarry and dredge operations thrive here today, and the excess ground water in the excavations keeps two 18-hole golf courses green. Where our Irondequoit Creek flows over the Dolomite strata it creates SGOH-SA-IS-THAT!

#3 1840 Birth and divorce - North Penfield becomes Webster
This oddball family feud was decided by the New York State Legislature in March 1840. By a narrow vote of Penfield residents - 499 to 475 in favor of North Penfield carving itself into the new township of Webster. Suddenly Penfield lost 48% of its land and population, including the Lake Ontario shoreline. Webster immediately formed its own government and officials. Local historians ever since have claimed ignorance for the lack of records indicating the salient reasons for the divorce. Our mission is to find such documents.

#4 Calvin Owens Diaries - Window into 19th Century Penfield
He came to Penfield via Canandaigua in 1815, a 16 year old skilled carpenter, in the post 1812 war boom, and became a valued tradesman for the Rich-Lincoln Mill enterprises on Irondequoit Creek, upstream from rival Daniel Penfield's mill complex at SGOH-SA-IS-THAT. He built his own house and put his signature on many buildings about Monroe County. The old Methodist Church building north of the Four Corners was his design, completed in 1846. In 1854, he settled his family for 7 children into the now landmark brick home on the southwest side of Penfield's Four Corners and commenced detailed diary entries until his death in 1883. How fortunate that the Owen heirs preserved these documents that shared valuable and particular insight (however frankly opinionated) into wheelings, dealings, and feelings of Penfield's social activities. The entries encompass commentary on pioneer life after the Revolutionary War to losing a son in the Civil War. Contemporary movements of temperance, abolition, suffrage, medical practice, and local politics abound. The Local History Room, under guidance of Kathy Kanauer plan to publish a 200+ page hardbound edition of Owen's diaries for Penfield's Bicentennial year in 2010.

#5 Anatomy of an attractive settlement
Daniel Penfield was a shrewd observer of business practices, and when his Revolutionary War boss, Oliver Phelps, got the first contract to sell the Genesee Country lands in 1789 (in all, 96,000 square miles from Seneca Lake to Lake Erie) he assisted from his wealthy merchant offices on the Port of New York City in official document, title and deed work as well as small scale land swaps and holdings of the Phelps-Gorham parcels. Generally, the bevy of unanticipated pitfalls attracting settlers to occupy land parcels became financially a spectacular failure. Penfield crafted a blueprint of financial success from all the hardship failures; to find the single best mill site in all the Genesee Country, buy the township and the water rights in 1795. The mill building sequence was first the sawmill, then the grist mill, an ashery, a distillery, a store and surveyed land sales office, finally a church or two and a tavern. Settlers clearing the land could pay off their mortgage with wheat brought to the grist mill, and engage in a ready made community. Penfield accomplished all this by 1806, directing head agent William McKinstry in their annual planning meetings each winter without his ever setting foot here until 1811.

Penfield - a great place to hunt and fish, but you would not want to live there
Although food resources were aplenty in the township of 27 square miles, there was negative reaction by public health standards for over 11,000 years of Native Americans, from primitive hunter gatherers to the sophisticated Iroquois Confederacy, to set up a permanent village site here. Why? The landscape was dominated by fever-producing, insect-swarmed, stagnant hardwood swamps that initially discouraged early land buying and clearing pioneer farmers after the Revolutionary War. The key asset that turned around the Town's fortunes (to this day) is the flow of Irondequoit Creek over Dolomite bedrock, creating booming mills of the 19th century, and quarrying Dolomite for 20th century road paving. Our community grew up around the combination.

When the last continental ice sheet finally gave up its icy grip on western New York lands around 12,500 years ago, hardy family bands of human hunter gatherers moved north into the spruce forests that grew quickly in the muddy gravel left by the glacier's melt water. They sought to kill the largest mammals roaming-mastodons, bears, elk, musk ox, and deer-while battling competition from mountain lions and wolves. We can date the extreme likelihood that man's first footprints in Penfield date to 11,300 years ago, as recently radio carbon dated mastodon kills were unearthed in Avon and Bloomfield. Complete butchered skeletons are now on display at Rochester Museum and Science Center.

Penfield became a thick hardwood forest with stagnant, poorly drained pockets of water that formed swamps filled with insects and malaria. As the human occupiers slowly advanced their culture, Penfield was a desired place to hunt game and set up fish camps on the shores of Irondequoit Bay, but NOT to live in. It held true to form for the final group of Native Americans. The Iroquois Confederacy (1050 AD to first European contact 1609) found the best soils and flowing fresh waters to locate their strong holds along the east to west belt from Albany to Avon.

After nearly 200 years of colonial encroachment by Dutch, French, and English traders the true value of Penfield to settle in was finally realized by our founder Daniel Penfield, a shrewd and prudent New York City merchant. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, setting up water-powered mills became the critical first step to start a settled community in the wilderness. Where Irondequoit Creek tumbled over the exposed Dolomite rock strata (SGOH-SA-IS-THAT), Penfield bought this township and the water rights, and developed the first best mill site complex (1800) in all of the 97,000 square miles of Genesee Country land up for sale.

Penfield's natural gifts-exposed Dolomite bedrock combining with modest flow of Irondequoit Creek and the dawn of the Industrial Revolution-at last created a cutting-edge pioneer community second to none in 1815.