My Genealogy Hound

S. M. SKIDMORE, a well-known grower of small fruits, was born in Charlotte, two miles from Sinclairville, Chautauqua county, July 22, 1831, and is a son of Ira and Lydia S. (Mann) Skidmore.

Luther M. Skidmore (grandfather) moved to Otsego county, this State, settling in Morris, where he owned a store, and a half interest in a cotton factory. He was married and had three sons: Wolcot, who was a clothier, and came to Forestville, this county, and kept a hotel, afterward dying in Toledo, Ohio; Ira (father), and Russell, who died while young. The maternal grandfather of S. M. Skidmore, Samuel Mann, moved to Otsego county, where he was a carpenter and joiner. About 1838 he came to this county and settled at Laona, where he continued working at his trade. He was married and had four children, one son and three daughters: Olive, married William Johnson; Lydia S. (mother), married Ira Skidmore. Samuel Mann died in 1860, aged about eighty years. Ira Skidmore (father) was born in Morris, Otsego county, this State, in 1796. While a young man he came to Chautauqua county, settling in Charlotte, where he bought a farm of one hundred acres. Ten years later he sold that farm and moved to Sheridan, where he bought another farm, remained on it a year, then sold it and bought still another of one hundred acres, which is now within the corporation of Dunkirk, this county. He was a Mason until the William Morgan trouble, in 1826, when he left them. Ira Skidmore married Lydia S. Mann, in 1823, and by this union had eight children, six sons and two daughters, seven of whom reached maturity: Martha F., married to Samuel Tolles, a lumber dealer and oil operator, who lives in Dunkirk; Thomas J., a contractor and coal dealer, who married Marion Johnson, and lives at Lily Dale; S. S.; Frances D., married to Stephen Veasey, a locomotive engineer, who lives at Hornellsville, Steuben county; Henry H., was assistant freight agent of the W. N. Y. & E. R. R., and now lives at Corry, Pennsylvania, married Martha Eaton, now dead; George E., died in infancy; Oscar W., a locomotive engineer, who married Sarah Keyes and lives in Thornton, Illinois; and Charles W., a locomotive engineer, who died on the Erie railroad at Dayton, this State; married Mary Le Roy. The father of these children died when sixty-eight years old, and the mother died in 1850, aged forty-seven years. Both are buried in Laona.

S. M. Skidmore was educated in the common schools at Fredonia and the academic department at Dunkirk. After leaving school he learned the trade of a tinsmith with Hart & Lester, serving three years, after which he worked at this vocation until 1857, when he entered into partnership with M. J. Bellous in the hardware business, in Dunkirk, the firm name being Bellous & Skidmore. He continued in this firm one year and then sold out to R. L. Carey, accepting the position of foreman in their large shop, which he held five years. In 1863 he went in partnership with J. B. Gardner, dealing in field, garden and flower seeds, at Fredonia. Here he remained twenty years, and then, in 1883 they closed up the business. In addition to the seed business he had also engaged in growing small fruits, grapes, berries, etc., and now devotes his entire attention to the raising of small fruits, having eleven acres devoted to their cultivation.

S. M. Skidmore was married in January, 1853 to Annette Hewitt, daughter of Cyrus and Lucia Hewitt, of Fredonia, the father being a carpenter and joiner. By this union there were two children, a son and a daughter: Nellie H. and Henry H., the latter being a locomotive engineer, married to Emma Beaver, of Huntington, Indiana, where he lives. The mother of these children died in 1868, and in 1870 Mr. Skidmore married Alice Roberts, a daughter of Deacon Eli and Julia (Sheldon) Roberts, of Fredonia, by whom he has one daughter, Maude A., who resides with her parents. His second wife dying in 1882, in 1884 he married Hattie J. Safford, a daughter of Justus and Charlotte (Chairman) Satford, of Fredonia.