There and Back Again: Jay Silverheels’ Rochester Connection, Pt. 1

Cal Ripken Jr., Cab Calloway, Louise Brooks….There is no shortage of celebrities that hold some kind of connection to Rochester. A somewhat lesser discussed famous figure with ties to the Flower City is Jay Silverheels, the Mohawk actor and activist best known for playing Tonto on The Lone Ranger television series.

^{Jay Silverheels a.k.a.Harold J. Smith. From: Democrat & Chronicle, October 18, 1964}

Silverheels was born Harold Jay Smith on the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve in Ontario, Canada in 1912. His father, Captain Alexander G.E. Smith, was the most decorated Mohawk soldier in WWI and his grandfather was a Mohawk Chief.

Young Harry’s athletic abilities became apparent at an early age and he played a variety of sports while attending Brantford Collegiate in Ontario before heading to Toronto to play lacrosse at the age of 18, then moving to Buffalo with his family.

_{^{The Six Nations Reserve lies in southeastern Ontario in between Caledonia and Brantford. From: CBC News.}}

Smith would play box lacrosse for a number of amateur and professional teams over the course of the 1930s, landing on the Rochester Iroquois squad at least three times that decade.[1]

The lineup from his sophomore stint with the Iroquois in 1933 included his brothers Don, “Porky,” and team Captain “Beef” Smith. One of the fastest players in the league, Harry allegedly earned the nickname “Silverheels” from running shoes he’d worn in his youth. (The sneakers in question were white, but since Smith was Mohawk, the name “Whiteheels” didn’t seem appropriate).

^{Harry “Silverheels” Smith played in the Rover position with the Rochester Iroquois. From: Democrat & Chronicle, February 28,1933.}

Smith left the Iroquois in 1934 and for the next three years, played with teams on both sides of the border. It was common at the time for Indigenous players from Ontario to head stateside when the Canadian lacrosse season came to a close.

Consequently, Smith made many appearances at the Main Street Armory, the home of local box lacrosse in the 1930s.

^{A lacrosse program from November 1935, when Smith was playing for the Akron Indians. From: the Collection of the Rochester Public Library’s Local History & Genealogy Division.}

^{Harry Smith’s name listed in the program’s scorecard. From: the Collection of the Rochester Public Library’s Local History & Genealogy Division.}

During that decade, Smith also began training as an amateur boxer at his local YMCA in Buffalo, making his debut as a welterweight in 1934 and winning the Eastern Seaboard Golden Gloves Championship in 1937.

^{The multitalented Smith. From: Democrat & Chronicle, April 17, 1938.}

The following year, Coach Harry Green, seeking to bolster the Rochester Iroquois’ chances, brokered a deal to re-sign the star player, who helped the team score a number of wins that season. Smith recollected to a D&C reporter in 1957, “I used to have a lot of fun in those days. I surely did like Rochester.”

^{Rochester Iroquois Smith (second from right), battling members of the Brampton Excelsiors in 1938. From: Democrat & Chronicle, February 19, 1938.}

Smith’s time with the Iroquois was again short-lived. In 1939, lacrosse promoters in California offered him the opportunity to tour the West Coast with a team of all Native American players. Such teams were in great demand at the time and allegedly outdrew hockey and basketball in some cities.

Not long after he made his California debut, a comedian named Joe E. Brown spotted the handsome athlete at an exhibition match in Hollywood, and suggested that Smith try his hand at acting.

Following this fateful encounter, Harry Jay Smith the athlete became Jay Silverheels the actor. The next post in this series will detail Smith’s second career and how he renewed his connection to Rochester while living in Hollywood.

-Emily Morry

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[1] Though a number of Democrat & Chronicle articles published after 1950 maintain that Smith not only played lacrosse in Rochester, but also attended high school here in the 1930s, I uncovered no evidence to support this claim. By all accounts, Smith attended Brantford Collegiate in Canada and was past high school age when he was in Rochester.

A Genealogy of Place: Frequently Asked Questions for Home Research, Part Two

Part one of this series looked at how to track the ownership and occupancy of a house using directories going back to 1892. How does one research houses built before this year? A good place to start is with the library’s collection of plat maps.

What is a plat map?: A map of given neighborhoods within a city or town. The map delineates different property lots, providing outlines of structures and clues as to the building materials. The map also indicates the lot size, boundary locations, nearby streets, schools, churches, etc… Larger lots are often marked with the names of the owners. Comparing plat maps from different years gives one a sense of how an area developed over time. The following maps detail the same neighborhood 22 years apart:

^{The neighborhood of Driving Park Avenue and what is now Dewey Avenue (then the Boulevard) featuring the Rochester Driving Park. From: City of Rochester Plat Map, 1888.}

^{The same neighbourhood in 1910 after the Rochester Driving Park was turned into a residential tract. From: City of Rochester Plat Map, 1910.}

What years were plat maps published?: Civil engineers create plat maps and submit them to the City when properties are planned and approved, and new structures are built. Separate collections of these plat maps were therefore published when major developments were submitted and completed. The Local History & Genealogy Division has City of Rochester plat maps for the years 1875, 1888, 1900, 1910, 1918, 1926, and 1935. For plats older than 1875, contact the Rochester City Maps and Surveys Office, in City Hall (30 Church Street), Room 225B.  

Does the library have similarly detailed maps that were published *after* 1935?: The Local History & Genealogy Division has a collection of Sanborn maps, which were created to help fire insurance companies assess their liability in urban areas. The Sanborn volumes were published at various times between 1911 and 1955. Unlike earlier plats, which published new volumes as neighborhoods changed, updated versions of Sanborn maps simply provided paste overlays to record changes to buildings and streets. A sample page from the 1911 Sanborn map follows:

^{Portion of a Sanborn map of a “congested district of Rochester, N.Y.” circa 1911. Photo by: Christopher Brennan, 2022.}

Are there indexes to the plat and Sanborn maps? Yes. Check with library staff to locate these indexes.

What about maps of the towns? There are a limited number of plat maps in the division for suburban communities. The oldest is the 1902 map of Monroe County. The Sanborn maps include many of the suburban towns but are not exhaustive. Other plat maps exist for Pittsford (1924), Irondequoit and Brighton (1959), and Greece and Gates (1963). The Local History & Genealogy Division does not have plat maps printed after 1963. The division also has various maps of Monroe County from the nineteenth century, and while some feature the names of area property owners, they do not include the same level of detail as the plat maps.

Are there other resources other than maps to be consulted?: Yes!

1.Digitized newspapers. Searching an address in a digitized newspaper collection can turn up advertisements that involve the property or reporting of events that provide clues to ownership (e.g., burglaries, fires, etc…).

The library subscribes to the ProQuest Historical Newspapers: U.S. Northeast Collection, which includes the Democrat and Chronicle. City of Rochester residents can access the database here: https://roccitylibrary.org/division/local-history-genealogy/#databases and then enter the barcode on their library card and last name. Though remote access is not available for town residents, patrons can access the database in the library.

^{Sample article from Proquest Historical Newspapers, Northeast Collection: Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, November 5, 1949.}

One free resource that imposes no such limitation is Fulton History. The owner of the site has digitized New York State newspapers, including many Rochester-area publications, from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

2. Land records. A useful resource outside the library, is the Monroe County Clerk’s Office (39 West Main Street, Room 105). The County Clerk’s Office maintains land records for the city and towns dating back to 1822. To find the deeds, which provide the details about land transfers, there are two sets of indexes, the Grantee Index and the Grantor Index.

The Grantee Index can be thought of as the “Buyer’s Index.” Once you’ve found a property owner’s name in the city or suburban directories, you can check the Grantee Index to determine exactly when the owner purchased it. The index will specify the buyer’s and seller’s names, as well as the volume and page number of the deed book in which the transaction is recorded. The Clerk’s staff will help you use the index and find the appropriate deed book on microfilm. The deed will record all parties to the transaction, the date thereof, the price for which it was sold, and the extent and boundaries of the property.

The Grantor Index can be thought of as the “Seller’s Index.” Should you want to know when a given owner sold a property, the index will help find the record. Like the Grantee Index, it will specify the seller, the buyer, and the volume and page number of the deed book. Retrieving the deed book and looking on the relevant page will take you to the property deed, which records all the information noted above. Going back and forth through the grantor and grantee indexes, and obtaining the right deeds, will provide a detailed chain of ownership for your historic home.

– Christopher Brennan