Submitted Photo Vince Martonis is pictured with his award-winning Pettit’s American Eye Salve Company display in Rochester.

Dr. James Pettit’s American Eye Salve Company of Fredonia was featured as one of the 10 historical displays at Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester on April 16. The antiques show was hosted by the Genesee Valley Bottle Collectors Association.

Vince Martonis, Hanover Historian, set up an attractive Pettit’s display and won both the People’s Choice Award and the Best of Show Award for his detailed and informative display of Pettit’s history.

The display was composed of a variety of Pettit’s medicines in bottles and tins, scarce trade cards, rare posters, and other forms of 19th century advertising. Every item was supported by explanatory information, including a general history of the Pettit’s company.

Dr. Pettit of Fredonia and his son Eber of Versailles and later Fredonia made and sold a variety of medicines from the 1830s into the 1880s. While in Versailles, Eber partnered in a Botanic Mills business with Darwin R. Barker, who later married Eber’s daughter. The four Howard brothers — Clarence, Frank, Edward, and Lewis — expanded their watch and jewelry business in Fredonia by purchasing the Pettit’s medicine line in 1876 and keeping Eber on staff to create more medicines. In 1885, the year Eber died, they sold their Independent Watch Company business because the medicines were selling so well. In 1888, they moved the company to Buffalo.

The best-selling medicine was American Eye Salve, very likely the longest selling patent medicine in the United States with a history stretching from 1807 into the 1980s. Bremer’s Pharmacy of Fredonia was still selling it in the late 1980s. Other medicines sold were Canker Balsam, American Cough Cure, Blood Purifier, Hop Compound, Eye Water, Pile Salve, Tablets, and Worm Honey. Some of those continued into the 1900s.

Fredonia history buffs know that James and Eber were also station agents on the Underground Railroad when James lived in Cordova outside Fredonia and Eber lived in Versailles. Eber documented this history in his 1879 book “Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad.”

A little known story is that Richard Sears bought watches from the Howards, sold them successfully, bought some more, opened a watch company in Minnesota, and soon partnered with Alvah Roebuck to form the Sears and Roebuck Company.

Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, who had relatives in Fredonia, invested money in the watch company. They honored him with the Twain name on one of the watch movements. He first came to Fredonia in 1870 to speak at the Normal School and later made other visits. Charles Webster of Fredonia, his in-law, managed some of Twain’s businesses. Twain’s last visit to Fredonia was in 1881 when he visited the watch company.

So the quaint village of Fredonia has a history which links together a medicine business, a watch company, the Underground Railroad, Sears and Roebuck, and Mark Twain. All of this was incorporated into the display that Martonis put together, demonstrating that the village of Fredonia has been a very significant part of some very important local and national history.