LEE HOME OLDEST IN BARRE

John Leigh (Lee) came from London, England to Ipswich near Boston around 1634. In 1814 John Lee’s great, great, grandson also named John came to Batavia. He bought land on Lot #47, Range 2 which is now known as Lee Road. It was the first sale of land between Benton’s Corners and Millville.

John Lee was appointed a judge of the Court of Common Pleas and when the Town of Barre was set off from Genesee County, he was allowed to nae it for his native Barre Massachusetts. Six years later Orleans County was set off from Genesee.

Between 1814-1816 his two sons Charles and Ora Lee built a log house. In 1816, Jude Lee and his thirteen members of his family lived in the log house. He opened a post office knows as Lee Settlement.

Jude Lee died in 1823, and the farm was divided between Charles and Ora. Charles’s share was the east side and his son William and his daughter Mrs. Mary Wheedon inherits it from him. Mrs. Weedon founded and donated the Lee Wheedon Library in Medina. The west half of the farm went to Ora and descended to his son Ora II and then or Ora III. The log house was replaced by a frame structure and that in turn to the present house.

Ora Lee graduated from Cornell University in 1906. He worked four years in Washington for the U.S.D.A. He returned to the home farm which he operated for fifty years until his retirement. Mr. Lee served on the Town Board of Barre for twenty years. He has two daughters, Mrs. Betty Bourgent of Wester and Mrs. Dorothy Bennett of Genesee.