07 Houston Tavern Marker

Houston Tavern

7089 Ridge Road (Route 104), south side, viewer facing __?

Originally placed: October 1934

By: State Department of Education, through the agency of Monroe Chapter of D.A.R.

According to local historian Helen Hastings, “this house with the two-story porch and interesting fan and side light doorways, one above the other, is supposed to have been built about 1825. It stands on the south side of the Ridge Road about a mile east of Garland.

In the year 1821, or soon after, Isaac Houston, from Hanover, New Hampshire, came to the town of Clarkson and took this land. He seems to have bought out other pioneers who came still earlier. He was soon operating a tannery in Dog Hollow, just east of the house. He was also a lumber dealer.

In 1824 he married Polly Avery Adams, a neighbor who had come from Vermont, and after this house was built they began tavern-keeping. Their tavern became very popular and horses were changed here. Isaac and Polly had seven daughters.

The eldest daughter died young. The others all married into families prominent in this locality.

Isaac Houston was elected supervisor of the town of Clarkson in 1845 and 1846. His busy life was terminated suddenly in 1852.

Travel on the Ridge Road after the middle of the century had fallen off but Polly Houston applied for a temperance license and continued to entertain the public as opportunity offered.

She lived on in the old house many years and her daughter Marry who had married Andrew J. Gallup, lived in the cottage with the Christmas trees just west of the old tavern. After Mrs. Houston’s death at an advanced age this daughter and son-in-law moved into the old house and it became known as the Gallup Farm.

Present owner, Harold Lemke.”

Helen Hastings, et.al., Old Houses of Monroe County (Brockport: Privately Printed, 1946), 16. https://dspace.sunyconnect.suny.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/65098bb8-ca65-4ded-80af-eb3290bb5096/content