I write this month of another more or less famous Weedsport resident, Mr. Orrin W. Burritt. I quote extensively from the Saturday afternoon, Feb. 15, 1893 edition of the Post Express. Burritt was born in 1827 and died in 1898.

“No one in town has done more to build up and improve this place! He has ever been solicitous for the welfare of the village and zealous in all matters of public improvement, in which direction he has done his duty as a good citizen. Burritt is one of the leading hardware merchants of Weedsport and is among its most influential and prosperous citizens. He is a gentleman of many excellent qualities and is highly deserving of all the kind words spoken regarding his enthusiasm and enterprise.

“He is originally from Roxbury, Conn. and learned the hardware business in New Milford and Bridgeport. After moving to Weedsport as a young man, he went into the dry goods and hardware business. He was of an inventive turn of mind and developed several excellent devices for the application of metal roofing, for which there is a great demand.”

Besides the Burritt Hardware and Machine Shop, he was also connected as a partner with the dry goods operation of Donovan, Palmer & Co. and was also a partner in the Burrill Medicine Co. in the manufacture of several popular patent medicines. Another of his enterprises was the real estate market in the village.

In an 18-month period, he erected on the site of the old Stickle Hotel, which was destroyed by fire in the great fire of 1871, several “fireproof” buildings, which were faced inside and out with sheet steel. Some of you may remember the three “tin city” houses on South Seneca Street between the theater and the Presbyterian Church. These houses represented some of O.W.'s effort to fireproof frame buildings. The Burritt Opera House stood where Zimmer's Theatre and bowling alleys would later stand.

Although the opera house was proclaimed to be fireproof, the fire that destroyed it in the late 1930s would prove once again that nothing is fireproof! Also housed in the block was a photographic studio, a cigar factory, a medical truss factory (if you don't know what a medical truss is, it'll not be a topic for discussion here), a music store and the post office.

Many of his inventions and tools live on. Available often on eBay are his post drills and roof crimpers, and less often the beautifully crafted vises and hand drills made by his Weedsport Drill Company. We have many of his tools in the museum and we even have the foundry pattern for the post drill, in case we want to go into the manufacturing business.

Burritt was president (mayor) of the village two terms and sat on the Village Board of Trustees for many years. He also served nine years on the school board and was Secretary of the Weedsport Rural Cemetery Association for an amazing 30 years and then served 12 years thereafter as its treasurer. One of the private mausoleums in the cemetery is the Burritt family resting place, and it was designed and built by O.W. The Post Express concludes the article on O.W. by noting that he is the “personification of the true American citizen.”

Still seen today are the Burritt family mansions on Van Buren Street, and the name lives on in the form of Burritt's Cafe, which operates in the old Burritt Machine Shop building.

Denny Randall is president of the Old Brutus Historical Society in Weedsport