Samuel Hallett was born into a large family in Canisteo in 1827. He must have been a young man with great ambition and confidence and full of the enterprising drive of the frontier people.

At Alfred University he met Ann Elizabeth McDowell from Wayne, New York. They were married in 1848, when he had graduated from the Albany State Normal School. Some reports say that they taught school for several years. He also clerked for John B. Mitchell, Ann Eliza’s uncle, who ran a store in Wayne. John Mitchell had other business interests, and young Sam became his confidential secretary acquiring business acumen from his employer.

In 1851 with his wife’s brother, Francis Marion McDowell, he got into the lumbering business in the Canisteo valley around Adrian. They prospered. The next year they set up a bank in Hornellsville and soon a branch in Bath. He even visited Europe at this time to promote the Hocking Valley Railroad. Sam Hallett must have been a person with great persuasive ability to convince people of the soundness, or at least the profitability, of new ventures.

He paused in 1854 when he was only 29 years old and had built for his family a plantation-size SUMMER HOME AT WAYNE. Hallett’s new construction was added to an already existing house. The property there had been owned by John B. Mitchell as early, maybe, as 1815.

This handsome new house became the symbol of Hallett’s rapid success. In addition to his impressive house, Hallett had great ideas for Wayne including a girl’s seminary and a railroad. Wayne had been his wife’s home and the place where he began his business career.

 

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