from Olean Times Herald, unknown date; transcribed by Ron Taylor
"Ghost Stories Rise from Wellsville's Pink House"
by Susan A. Goetschius, Times Herald Staff
WELLSVILLE-- Wellsville's Pink House, located on the corner of W. State St. and Brooklyn
Ave., is a local landmark that can truly be called "legendary".
The Victorian mansion, which derives it's name from a specially formulated pink
pain that its builder brought from Italy because it was never supposed to fade, has figured in several ghost stories, most of them variations of a suicide death actually connected with the
early days of the house.
Two past Wellsville men, Paul M. Davie and Charles Engelder, were apparently intrigued by the stories, and their
variations, and began comparing them with what is believed to be the "original"--the poem "Pauline," written by Hanford Lennox Gordon.
The late Mr.
Davie, owner of Davie's Store in Wellsville, prepared a condensation of the second part of the poem, supposedly related by a soldier to his captain as he lay dying in the battlefield at
Gettysburg.
Prefacing his condensation of the poem, Mr. Davie noted that "according to close friends of the family, this poem gives the true story
of the circumstances leading up to the death by suicide of Frances Farnum on the night before she was to have been married to Mr. E. B. Hall, the builder of the Pink House in Wellsville."
He explained that Frances Farnum was youngest of four daughters of Edward J. Farnum, who resided in what is now the apartment house on the corner of W. State
St. and Harder Place.
According to Mr. Davie's research, Frances' sisters were Louise, who married Alfred Brown; Antoinette, who married Mr. Hall
after the death of her sister; and Sylvania, who was crippled.
ANTOINETTE was the mother of Fannie Hall, who married J. Milton Carpenter.
Their daughter, Mrs. Norman Woelfel, is the current owner of the mansion.
Despite the fact that the names in the poem are Paul and Pauline, Mr.
Davie said that the true names should be Frances Farnum, and Hanford Gordon, a native of Wellsville who resided on Highland Avenue.
The poem
describes how the youth met the girl, Pauline, at the village school. The two became friends, stealing away to the woods to do their schoolwork together. When his widowed and
ill mother died, Pauline comforted Paul, pledging her love for him.
Paul, resolved to escape from his "humble" beginnings, decided to become a
lawyer, studying with a relative in a "distant city in the East."
Before he left, however, he called on Pauline for the first time in her home.
Her father caught them in each other's arms, and chastised them both. He called Paul a "beggar" which heightened his resolve to become a successful lawyer.
Paul was away for four years, studying law, and the two corresponded regularly for a time, then letters from Pauline ceased. Finally he received one telling him that
they must "forgive while we forget;" that her's was a "girlish fancy." She added, "We outgrow such childish follies in our later years. Now I have pondered well and made an
end. I cannot wed myself to want, and curse my life-long, because a girlish freak of folly made a promise. So, farewell."
PAUL,
received a letter from a friend about six months later, telling him that Pauline is engaged to be wed to E. B. Hall, a friend of her father's and 20 years her senior.
Unable to concentrate on his studies after hearing that, Paul returned to Wellsville for a vacation, confirming the rumor and learning that the wedding day
is near at hand. He made several attempts to see her, but Pauline rarely left her house except in the company of her father.
The day before
the wedding, however, he met her on the street, and pretended that he did not remember her name.
That night, as he slept, he dreamed that he saw
her "in the silent night leaning o'ver misty waters dark and deep; A moan-- a splash of waters -- and O Christ -- Her agonized face upturned -- imploring hands stretched out toward
me, and a wailing cry -- "Paul, O Paul."'
He awoke to hear the news that Pauline had drowned herself during the night.
Later that morning, he received a letter from Pauline, bidding him farewell. Included in her letter was a forged letter, supposedly from him to her telling her that he
had found a new love.
Realizing that her father had apparently sent forged letters to each of them to sever the ties, Paul went to see Pauline's
father, who begged his forgiveness.
Mr. Engelder, who until the time of his death was superintendent of the village's water and light department,
found a version of the same tale in "Things That Go Bump In The Night" by Louis C. Jones.
Mr. Jones recounts what he calls the "Pauline" version,
noting that after her death the Pink House shows signs of being haunted-- the feeling that a woman had just left the library, with "Sonnets of the Portuguese" found face down on the sofa;
hearing, during the night, the piano playing pieces which Pauline enjoyed and the scent of her perfume lingering in the rooms.
Another version,
which Mr. Jones termed the growing "oral tradition" in the Wellsville area, says that Mr. Hall married Antoinette, not realizing that Frances also loved him until she drowned herself in
the millpond near the Farnum home. There are no ghosts in this version.
Mr. Jones found that 30 miles from Wellsville, another story is told,
one that says that the older sister had her trousseau all made, waiting for her wedding day, when her intended bridegroom eloped with her younger sister.
The heartbroken jilted sister drowned herself in the swimming pool, then returned to haunt first the grounds and then the Pink House itself. She appeared before the
couple dragging her wet hair across their faces as they lay in bed.
From the archives at Cornell University came a version told by Mrs. Edward W.
Wilson, which also has the man eloping with the sister of the intended bride.
The couple then had a daughter, who, when she was two years old,
began wandering alone in the moonlight. One night the ghost of her drowned aunt appeared before her, and led her into the fountain in the garden, where she drowned.
Her grandfather, father of the sisters, and in this version, builder of the Pink House, sent the rest of the family away from Wellsville. He died
shortly afterwards.
Several years later, the family returned with another two-year-old daughter. The ghost appeared before her, also, the
second night after the family returned to the Pink House. Her father, who was maintaining a vigil in the room, lit a candle and the ghost left. After that, a light was left
burning in the child's room.
That version of the tale said that the child, even after she grew up, kept a ligh burning in her room all night long.
Research by Mr. Engelder shows that Edward Judson Farnum, father of the sisters in the stories, was born in Uxbridge, Mass, March 16, 1809. He worked
as a clerk in Rochester for a time, marrying Lucy L. Goff in February, 1829.
They bought a farm near Bath, where Mr. Farnum also worked as a
surveyor. The family moved to Wellsville in 1847.
The couple had seven children, two of who died in infancy. The children who did live
to maturity included Frances, who committed suicide in 1857; Antoinette, who married Mr. Edwin B. Hall; Louise, who married Alfred S. Brown; Sylvania Allen and William Carlton, who
remained a bachelor.
The builder of the Pink House, Mr. Hall, was native of Fairfield, Conn., who came to Wellsville in 1852. In 1857 he
built a store in the Union Block, but that building was destroyed by fire in 1867. After that building was leveled, Mr. Hall, a druggist who also operated the first soda fountain in
Wellsville, built the brick structure that was known as Hall's Drug Store until two years ago when the last owner, Paul Ryan, sold the business.
Mrs. Woelfel, the current owner of the Pink House, sold the building, which has now been converted into the Vineyard Restaurant. (In 2007 Beef Haus Restaurant; rt).
