Program

NYS Historic

Subject

House, People

Location

43 Genesee St, Warsaw, NY 14569, USA

Lat/Long

42.741168, -78.13125

Grant Recipient

Warsaw Historical Society and The Gates House Museum

John A. McElwain (1794-1875) was born in Massachusetts, and according to Andrew W. Young’s 1869 History of the Town of Warsaw, New York, relocated to Warsaw, New York in 1817. By the 1830s, McElwain owned a stagecoach line from Warsaw to Batavia. In 1836, the line would leave Warsaw on Tuesdays and Saturdays at 6 A.M. and return that the same day.

McElwain served as Sheriff of Genesee County in 1832 and as a New York State Senator from 1852 to 1853. While serving in the senate, McElwain aided in the passage of an act that allowed academy and common schools to combine into Union Free Schools Districts and for the election of boards of education to oversee them. According to his obituary published in the Western New Yorker, McElwain served on the Warsaw School District Board for nearly twenty years.

In 1843, McElwain built a public house and livery stable on the corner of North Main and Genesee Streets in Warsaw. Advertisements for the McElwain House running in issues of the Wyoming County Mirror during the year 1845 specifically targeted “Drovers and Teamsters,” noting that attached to the public house was a pasture where “horses and cattle may be put for any length of time.” Advertisements for McElwain’s Livery Stable from 1853 to 1855 state that for one shilling a carriage from would pick travelers up from the Warsaw train station and carry them anywhere in Warsaw.

Around 1856, he had sold his livery stable and by 1869 had retired from active business. McElwain passed away on March 2, 1875, and is buried in Warsaw Cemetery.