PILGRIMPORT

Submitted by Richard Palmer

Mary Simpson Smart, a lady of 92, (2009) living in the cobblestone
house in Pilgrimport, states:

"The hamlet at the first crossroads east of Lyons, where
the eastern branch of Pilgrimport Road becomes Lock Berlin Road, was
never big enough to serve as a destination for immigrants, although
it once contained a dozen buildings. The name is derived from a
religious sect called the Pilgrims, who met at this crossroads for
Sunday services -- as well as at other sites, such as Pilgrim's
Landing in Palmyra.

" Interestingly, it seems that Bishop's Road, leading up to the
big white Bishop farmhouse, once crossed this earliest Erie Canal
over a bridge which was hump-backed, to allow boats to pass beneath it."

Also, she said:

" Many owners of wetlands cut willow withes annually, for
enterprising individual basket makers who sold their work from their
farmhouses. I remember going with my mother to buy baskets at such a
home in South Sodus -- and of course Peter Durer and his wife had a
willow camp just east of Lyons where he brought workers from
Liverpool each year to live for a few weeks in the dead of winter
cutting and steaming the bark from the surrounding swamp. "