We received an email inquiry from former resident Dale MeComber, who had a question about the Mintline school. This was one of the many one-room school houses that dotted the land prior to school centralization in 1938. Dale’s Aunt Hilda Mecomber once taught school in the late 1920s and he was wondering where is was located. The 1875 and 1904 maps were not very helpful. A search of the newspaper led me to believe that today’s Berger Road was once called the Mintline Road and that Mintline would have been near the Mentz and Montezuma town line. So I sent the question to Cheryl Longyear, who serves as the Montezuma Town historian and vice-president of the Old Mentz Heritage Center. Here is her answer.
The Mintline school was in Montezuma and is the only one-room school house in the town that remains intact. (School #7 on the map) The building is located on Denman Road today. I currently live on the same road named for my grandfather, Jessie Denman, on farmland that has remained in the family since the mid-1800s. Jessie was one of the principals at the school and my father, Charlie, used to walk to school and start the wood-burning stove fire before the teacher and other students arrived during the cold winter months. In the early 1920s, our neighbor, Lucille Purser Hitchcock, walked to the school where she attended with several students from the surrounding farms. Lucille’s father, Tom Purser, was also involved with managing the school. When the area schools centralized, Lucille rode the trolley to school from Denman Road to Port Byron.
From the 1904 New Century Atlas of Cayuga County.
Growing up, my parents often mentioned family names of the area now found archived in local newspaper articles. I always had assumed Mintline was an area extending from Fox Ridge to the borderline between Montezuma and Mentz known as Maiden Lane Road and near the corner where the school was located.
Students of the Mintline School in the early 1900s.
Dale’s question led me to further research the exact location and the unknown origin of the Mintline name. Reports found in early local news articles often referred to “Mintline News,” but the exact defined location and why it was called Mintline remained mysterious. An article from the Port Byron Chronicle mentioned the early history of Mentz that included Throop and Montezuma. There were two subdivisions known as the Mintline Settlement northeast of the village and Mentz Church on the southeast end. By tracing family names mentioned in news articles in the Port Byron Chronicle, I determined Mintline included a wide area of several roads today known on Maiden Lane, Denman, Wilsey, East Loop, and crossing the borderline into the town of Mentz at Maiden Lane, High Bridge and Berger Roads.
Then came the discovery of another article that revealed an early 1800s pioneering family, the Mintlines, settling in the area between Montezuma and Mentz. A 1879 article in the Auburn Daily Newspaper noted a story about an area near Port Byron called the Mintline Settlement. Daniel Mintline settled in the area on April 11, 1805, after traveling by oxen and cart from Canajoharie. Travel was so rough that he often needed to clear the way by cutting down trees and removing brush. It’s believed he cleared and settled on land at the north end of Wilsey Road. The Mintlines and their fellow settlers used to draw their harvested wheat clear to Albany, getting paid only seventy-five cents a bushel. Using these funds they would return with supplies pulled by the oxen in their loaded cart back home. Daniel and his wife are buried in a small family cemetery named for the Buckingham family just east of their homestead located in the middle of a field surrounded by pine trees.