Published: January 03, 2008 01:34 pm      

MEDINA: Hidden 1918 newspaper connects resident with grandfather at Shirt Factory Cafe

First came the historic find. Then it was a series of events and conversations that connected the dots.

Steeped in history, like a fine aged wine, the Shirt Factory Cafe has a lot of local history, most notably being the former Newell’s Shirt Factory. But there is no history like that of tearing out a portion of a wall to find hidden in the depths an old newspaper with the signature of a man whose only surviving granddaughter would, within a short time, be sitting in the cafe two floors below.

In mid-December, cafe owner Andrew Meier decided he had a little time and would work on the upstairs of the building. Tearing down lath and plaster, he discovered a folded edition of the Rochester Chronicle from June 1, 1918. A signature bearing the name AWJ Grant 32°, June 8, 1918, was scrawled atop the page’s right corner.

“I was upstairs. There’s this old window that was boarded up many, many years ago,” Meier said. After breaking away some of the plaster, Meier found the paper, folded perfectly and nailed to a stud in the wall, he said. “I’ve discovered a lot of things ... never anything that was really intentionally left there.”

Excitedly, he began ushering employees upstairs two at a time to show them what he’d discovered.

Approximately one hour after the find, Debby Grant Keller and a friend were sitting in the Gathering Room discussing a group photo Keller had given the young owner a couple weeks before. The image included her grandfather, Alexander William James Grant, who once worked at Newell’s.

“I was talking to my friend, Arlene (Reese) ... we sat here and we never sit here,” Keller said, referring to the couch in front of the warm fireplace.

Then, as if by chance, Keller overheard employee Frank Ferri talking. Thinking he was talking to her, Keller asked him what it was he had said. Ferri told her, no, he was talking to a co-worker who was putting items in the cooler under the counter about this old newspaper Meier had found and he began explaining the find to Keller.

Keller said she was going back to her seat and “I just turned my head and said, ‘Who signed it?’”

“I just wish you could have seen her face when I told her, ‘Isn’t it ironic and the guy signed his name’,” Ferri said, saying Keller paled when she heard the name and explained that AWJ Grant was her grandfather.

“I’m just coming unglued because I feel this great connection with this man I never knew. He died a year before I was born,” Keller said.

The pieces began falling into place; Keller needed to see the newspaper because she would know for sure if she saw the penmanship. Ferri called Meier, saying “You’re not going to believe this,” he said. After Keller brought documents to the cafe and compared the signatures she had with the one on the paper, everything was confirmed. The signatures matched and history came to life.

A member of the fraternal order of Free and Accepted Masons, the degree sign next to Grant’s name signifies the stage of personal development he had attained at that point in his life. It wasn’t until Keller brought copies of her grandfather’s documents, including a Scottish Rite card with the same symbol, to the cafe that they understood what the number meant.

“We were very amazed that all the pieces fell into place as quickly as it did. It could have been years before we found out. I don’t even know how you would track that,” Ferri said. “I have no reason to understand why I all of a sudden started talking to Trish (Laszewski) about the newspaper.”

“For me to just start this conversation ... it was him, I swear it was him. He was guiding us along,” Ferri said of Grant.

For Keller, it seems the family heritage is left in time capsules — she and her sister left them in homes they had growing up, her cousins did it, their children leave them and so on. None of them knew the others were leaving their own histories behind in secret places for future generations to discover, she said. Least of all did they know AWJ Grant had left behind his own legacy to be discovered nearly 100 years later, in the building he once worked in, that his granddaughter would frequent for coffee and meals.

“This is something that kind of bridges the gap between the histories (of the building),” Meier said.

While the 90-year-old edition of the Rochester Chronicle remains securely tacked in its haven between two walls, Meier wants others to have the opportunity to see the living history. His plans are to cut the stud with the paper still intact and shadowbox it, to put on display with other artifacts from Grant’s life, and leave a photograph of the find in its place upstairs.

“I think it’s irony at its best,” Meier said of the recent discoveries. “I’m demolishing a wall upstairs, find this time capsule, while the only surviving lineal granddaughter is downstairs.”

“It’s as if the stars aligned. It all came together in that moment,” Keller said.

Contact reporter Miranda Vagg at 798-1400, ext. 2225.