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The estate has been owned since 2013 by Chet Manchester and Anne Sutherland Early, who purchased it for $595,000. It was known as the MacKenzie-Childs estate because Richard and Victoria MacKenzie-Childs began the home décor business of the same name there in 1983. Over the years, the estate "gradually became a work of art," according to a summary written by the current owners.

"As their ceramics collection grew into a boundary-stretching design business, the home was a canvas for their creations, a theatrical set for their imaginations," Manchester and Early wrote.

MacKenzie-Childs eventually moved to its current headquarters on Route 90 north of the village of Aurora. In 2001, the business went bankrupt and was sold to local magnate Pleasant Rowland, who later sold it to an investment company. Richard and Victoria MacKenzie-Childs left the estate shortly after the sale, though their daughter and son-in-law briefly lived there and rented out its rooms.

By the time Manchester and Early moved in, the estate was "a shadow of its former glory," they said. They renamed it The Evermore as they completed extensive work there over the last eight years. Along with fixing leaky roofs, rotted wood and broken furnaces, they installed a new vertical wind turbine designed by Kohilo Wind, of Skaneateles Falls, to make the estate more sustainable.

Manchester, a former president of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, and Early, his wife, used the estate as a home and "a place of spiritual respite," they said. In 2015, they also began renting rooms in the farmhouse and carriage house through Airbnb and word of mouth. The Evermore's new owner could earn "a steady stream of income" by continuing rentals, DeRosa noted.

The 4,280-square-foot farmhouse on the estate has seven bedrooms, four full baths and two half-baths on three floors, while the 2,300-square-foot carriage house has three bedrooms and two full baths on three floors, a gym and a sauna. There is also a cottage with a half-bath, and private access to a 1-acre lot with 71 feet of shoreline along Cayuga Lake, including a dock and a cabana. 

The majority of furnishings and décor on the property, much of it collected by the MacKenzie-Childses, could be available for an additional cost, DeRosa told Ë®¹ûÅÉAV.

Manchester and Early said they are selling the estate because their children, who lived there through college, are now elsewhere, with grandchildren on the way. 

"We are so grateful for the privilege of living here and being stewards of such an extraordinary place," they said in their summary. "This home is a living entity, filled with birdsong, fragrant with gardens, dripping with blossoms in the spring and fruit in the fall, stunning at night with bright stars and comets set against black skies, and a sweet flock of hens giving us fresh eggs daily."

The estate attracted national attention when the MacKenzie-Childses listed it for sale, and DeRosa expects that to happen again. 

He told Ë®¹ûÅÉAV he has received inquires about the estate from around the world, and also expects offers to exceed the $1.8 million price. Two-hour showings will be available to prospective buyers able to provide proof they can afford the purchase beginning Friday, April 29. For more information, visit or call DeRosa at (315) 406-7355.

"Someone will be purchasing an experience unlike any other," he said. "There is no predicting what the property will end up selling at."

APD Capt. Kyle Platt said the investigation is ongoing and that while he could confirm Klino's and Burns' charges were related to Bryleigh's "untimely death," he couldn't talk about specifics related to the case at this point.

"It's one of those delicate situations, because (on) one side, we got to do the right thing for this 17-year-old girl that's now deceased, but at the same time, trying to protect the family," he said.

The charges against Klino and Burns could be elevated as the investigation continues, Platt said. Detectives consulted with the Cayuga County District Attorney's Office in deciding to file the endangerment charges at this point in the probe.

Bryleigh suffered from , a neurological disorder that affects a person's ability to walk, talk, eat and breathe. She was bedridden at the time of her death, according to records filed in the cases with Auburn City Court.

The court records included statements from Auburn Community Hospital staff who said Bryleigh was brought to the hospital by ambulance for cardiac arrest on Feb. 25 and was pronounced dead after attempts to resuscitate her were unsuccessful.

In preparing Bryleigh's body for transfer to the morgue, a nurse manager discovered that the girl had numerous bedsores on her body. In addition, pins and screws from an early childhood injury procedure were "protruding through the skin from the left buttock area," court records said. An ACH doctor confirmed the observations and APD was contacted.

In the criminal complaint filed with the court, APD Detective Adam Rivers said Jennifer Klino was aware of Bryleigh's condition "but made no attempt to provide medical treatment."

Regarding Burns, the criminal complaint said he admitted that a baby monitor that was supposed to be used to help supervise Bryleigh was not working at the time of her cardiac arrest because the couple forgot to change its battery.

J. Justin Woods, Burns' attorney, told Ë®¹ûÅÉAV Wednesday that he couldn't say anything about the case except that Burns denies the allegations against him and is "looking forward to his day in court and for the truth to come out."

Eric Smith, the attorney representing Klino, could not be reached for comment.

According to Bryleigh Klino's submitted by her family in early March, she was a student at Auburn High School at the time of her death.

"Even though Bryleigh lived with some disabilities, she didn't let that stop her from enjoying life," the obituary said. "She especially loved to travel and listen to various country music songs. Bryleigh's most favorite thing to do was watch 'Spongebob Squarepants.' Just about everything she owned was Spongebob. Her smile was infectious, and the love she had for her family is unmatched."

Jennifer Klino and Burns both pleaded not guilty at a city court arraignment held April 21 and were released on their own recognizance. They are due back in court for a pre-trial hearing on June 8.

Once personnel arrived, it took less than five minutes for the AFD to extricate the two occupants from the vehicle. Auburn City Ambulance transported both people to Auburn Community Hospital for minor injuries, DiFabio said. The Auburn Police Department were also present at the scene.

DiFabio attributed the occupants' minor injuries' to the fact that they were wearing seat belts.

"It looked worse than it was," he said of the scene.

APD could not be immediately reached for information about what caused the accident.

A block of North Seneca Street, which is also state Route 34, was closed between East Brutus and Franklin streets for several hours while firefighters worked to extinguish the blaze and prevent it from spreading to neighboring properties. No injuries were reported.

The fire forced both businesses in the building to close, said Dennis Klotz, who owns the outdoors shop with his wife, Rose. He said the window and glass store is where the blaze started, and that space sustained the heaviest damage. The Riverside Outdoors side of the building was damaged mostly by smoke and water.

Because fire got into the building's rafters, however, the building has been condemned pending further structural evaluation, Klotz said.

The Klotzes opened their business, which sells and services firearms and ammunition, a little more than a year ago. Dennis Klotz is hopeful that the space can be salvaged and he can re-open there, but said he'll relocate if needed.

"We'll figure it out," he said. "We'll be back."

Firefighters and investigators were still on the scene as of about 5 p.m. A cause had not yet been determined, James said, and crews were continually putting out hot spots in the building's insulation.

James said firefighters encountered heavy smoke and flames concentrated in the front portion of the building where the window and glass shop is located. Based on that, crews made an interior attack on the fire to contain its spread.

"They did a great job and got a real good hit on it," James said, noting that action prevented the flames from spreading to the firearms shop, with its ammunition inventory, across the hallway.

James characterized the overall damage to the building as "substantial," and confirmed that no one can currently occupy it.

"It's going to be a while rehabbing the whole structure," he said.

Fire departments assisting at the scene came from Jordan, Port Byron, Sennett, Owasco and Auburn, James said, with Throop and Elbridge firefighters on standby.

He is described as being about 170 pounds, 5 feet, 6 inches tall with black hair and brown eyes, and anyone with information is asked to call 911.

Hilliard, with an address at the time of of 4258 Route 38A, Moravia, was sentenced July 11, 2017, in Cayuga County Court to three years in prison and 10 years of post-release supervision for having sex with a 13-year-old girl; violating his status as a registered sex offender by failing to disclose a Facebook account; and assaulting another inmate while being held in the Cayuga County Jail.

He had been arrested in November 2016 after the Cayuga County Sheriff's Office received a child sex abuse complaint in the town of Summerhill, and deputies learned that he was a level 2 sex offender at the time and also had a social media account that he did not report to authorities. 

He was on the sex offender registry for a June 2003 conviction of third-degree rape for having sex with another 13-year-old girl. Hilliard, 24 at the time, was sentenced to one year in the county jail.

Following his most recent conviction, Hilliard's sex offender status was escalated to Level 3, the highest risk for re-offending, and he was sent to prison. He was released from Great Meadow Correctional Facility under parole supervision on Jan. 13 with a maximum post-release supervision expiration of Dec. 1, 2029.

Joining the Lakers for the spring 2021 season and continuing through the fall, Spaulding set several program and section records in the pool.

Among them: the Section III record in the 100 free, and Class C section records in the 50 free, 200 free, 500 free and 100 butterfly. She was also a member of the Lakers' record-setting relays in the 200 free and 400 free. 

Spaulding began competitive swimming at 6 years old and swam with several local club programs, including the Syracuse Chargers and Skaneateles Lightning (she currently competes with the Cato-Meridian Otters). Her loyalty to club programs remained, even as she reached high school, as she opted against competing with the latter.

When COVID-19 arrived in early 2020, pool access became limited. Spaulding actually spent most of her junior year, the 2020-21 academic year, living in Florida. 

When her family returned to Skaneateles prior to the spring 2021 season, the best avenue to a pool was through the Lakers' varsity team. 

"It was a really good option to get some races in and some practices in with (coach Jill King)," Spaulding said. "I figured after coming back from Florida, I thought it'd be good to face competition at the high school level."

Spaulding admits it took a few weeks to acclimate to high school swimming's schedule, which she could have meets multiple times a week opposed to every couple weekends with club. 

Her results, though, showed little adjustment was needed. Last April, only three meets into her varsity career, Spaulding set Lakers records in the 50 free and 100 fly.

Little changed when Spaulding returned for her senior season. By season's end, she owned Section III's best or second-best time in all four freestyle distances (50 yards, 100 yards, 200 yards and 500 yards), and the second-best time in the 100 butterfly. 

She also saved her best for last. At the Section III Class C championships Nov. 5 at Nottingham, Spaulding set the section record in the 50 freestyle with a mark of 23.26 seconds.

Her performance there guided Skaneateles to its third straight Class C section title, which the Lakers won by nearly 200 points over runner-up Lowville.

"It was really exciting, especially because everyone got to contribute to scoring points at that meet," Spaulding said. "Even the eighth-graders on the team, we got to see them post their post times."

Spaulding had two weeks to prepare for the New York state championships at Ithaca College, and with that time a decision needed to be made. 

The Lakers qualified for the 200 free relay, which Spaulding was a member of, so her participation there was never a question. Throughout the season, she also reached the requisite qualifying marks in several individual events. but rules dictate swimmers can compete in a maximum of two individual events per meet. 

A freestyling sprinter at heart, Spaulding elected for the two shortest events: the 50 and 100 frees. 

"Those were two events I was seeded fairly highly in the state, and I thought I had a good chance to make the finals and possibly score points for the team," she said. 

The decision paid off. Spaulding placed fourth in the state in the 50 free (23.62 seconds) and sixth in the 100 free (51.76 seconds). 

A record-setter in New York, Spaulding will next try her hand in pools down south. In October she committed to swim at the University of Miami, where she plans to continue with her sprinting events but could also explore longer distances. 

In the meantime, she'll be hard at work preparing for the next level. 

"Right now I'm swimming Monday through Friday, twice a day on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and also lifting twice a week," Spaulding said. "I really only get Sundays as a break, but it's good preparation for what it's going to be like when I finally get to campus."

The Blue Devils knew little recent success when Alyssa Cole joined the varsity team in 2020-21 as a junior. She was only a first-grader the last time Cato-Meridian had a winner and was well aware of the team's decade-long struggle. 

She even endured a little herself, as the Blue Devils went 3-5 in her first year on varsity. 

For her second season, Cole was determined to change the narrative. Providing an athletic net presence, Cole led Cato-Meridian to a 10-8 record and sectional appearance while leading the OHSL Patriot League in kills (184) during the regular season.

"We knew from the beginning that we were going to be a good team and we could contend for sectionals," Cole said. "(We knew) that we were gonna go farther than we had in the past 10 years of Cato volleyball."

Cole's love for volleyball stems from backyard competition with her family. She was inspired by her mother Tammy, who is a former volleyball player and would share stories about her love for the sport. 

Cole joined Cato-Meridian's modified program as a seventh grader, but admits her skills weren't evident early. It wasn't until her freshman and sophomore year when things took a major positive turn. 

"When I was a little bit younger, I'd get frustrated with my skill level not being as good as some other girls," Cole said. "Working my way up was a huge goal for me. I wanted to get better and try harder. Throughout the summer, especially during the COVID year, I was really getting into setting up stuff at home. I had a net, I had a ball and I'd just play for hours to try and get better."

According to Blue Devils coach Sharon Nihoff, Cole's major development came between her junior and senior year. Cato-Meridian had an opening at middle hitter and the opportunity was there for Cole to thrive. 

"Alyssa knew that she had big shoes to fill with the graduation of last year's middle hitter," Nihoff said. "Her desire, dedication, and leadership skills made a big impact on Cato-Meridian qualifying for sectionals. The improvement from her junior year to senior year was immeasurable."

Cole's impact mimicked the Blue Devils' success early in the season. She posted at least 10 kills in five of the first eight matches as Cato-Meridian started 5-3. 

Late in the season she was at her best, particularly in a mid-October meeting with division rival Bishop Ludden. Both teams entered the match with winning records and the result would likely impact sectional seeding. 

It couldn't have started any worse. The Blue Devils dropped the first set 25-12. 

The team rebounded and after four sets the match was tied. In the winner-take-all fifth, Cato-Meridian won by three points. 

In the win, Cole posted a season-high 21 kills along with a near-season-high 14 digs.

"In the end you never really remember who scored the last point, but you can remember the way you felt. I felt that intensity and love for the sport," Cole said. "That was a high-stakes game. I'm the type of player that has to get mad to get into the game ... and feel like I'm in a war right now to defeat the other team. 

"Obviously you can't do that by yourself. You need to have your whole army behind you. That was one of my favorite games this season. Everyone had the same mindset that we needed to win this."

Cato-Meridian added one more victory, a sweep over the Syracuse Institute of Technology, and earned the second seed in Section III's Class D fall tournament. 

After a first-round bye, the Blue Devils were defeated by Living Word Academy in the semifinals. 

Following the conclusion of her senior volleyball season, Cole competes in track and field for the remainder of the year. During indoor season, Cole became a league champion in the 55m hurdles and was a member of the Blue Devils' sectional-winning 800m relay team. 

At the completion of outdoor track in the spring, Cole will move on to SUNY Delhi where she hopes to catch on with the volleyball or track teams.

She won't soon forget, though, being part of Cato-Meridian's trend-breaking volleyball season. 

"It was great to know I finished out my senior year with such an accomplishment," Cole said. "Being the first team in 11 years to make sectionals, that's crazy for the program to pick up like that. I hope the seniors next year have the opportunity to go further than us."

Allnutt and a passenger on his motorcycle, Lorraine Allnutt, 59, were injured. Gary Allnutt was taken by Auburn Ambulance to Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse with a hand injury, while Lorraine Allnutt was transported by helicopter by LifeNet 7-12 as a precaution, police said. Information about their conditions was not available on Monday.

White was not injured. Auburn Fire Department also assisted at the scene.

No charges or tickets were issued by APD as of Monday morning, and the investigation was continuing, police said.

By the middle of the century, however, most of those people were gone. Seemingly every trace of them followed, even the humble shacks they called home. New Guinea quietly disappeared.

Since then, interest in the settlement has also been quiet — until recently.

From to the first major film about Auburn's own Harriet Tubman, Black history has been receiving  in recent years. It was against this backdrop that the city of Auburn, in March, heard a proposal to build a parking lot on land where New Guinea once stood. One resident objected for that reason, leading the state to recommend a historic review.

Meanwhile, the Cayuga County Historian's Office is conducting its own review. After seeing the settlement's name pop up repeatedly over the last few years, research assistant Jessica Armstrong decided to dive into New Guinea in hopes that more can be known about the historic area and its people. Ruth Bradley, the county's historian, called the research "groundbreaking."

"It's never been done before, this deep a dive," Bradley told Ë®¹ûÅÉAV at her Court Street office on April 8. "(Because) a lot of historians only cared about people of privilege, 'important people,' bankers and lawyers. It's only been over the last 30 or 40 years that the history of working people, marginalized people, Black people and women has even been prioritized."

The foundation of Armstrong's research is documents like maps, deeds and census records. They confirm a few basic facts about New Guinea, she told Ë®¹ûÅÉAV. Geographically, the settlement covered both sides of Osborne Street, then called Mechanic Street, for the 1,000 feet between its blind curve at the bottom of the hill and its intersection with Elizabeth Street.

The only map bearing the settlement's name, drawn in 1837,  "New Guinea: Negro Settlement" in that spot. Nine black squares appear to represent homes there.

One of those homes once belonged to Harry and Kate Freeman. Spouses and former slaves, they are widely believed to be founders of New Guinea. The settlement likely takes its name from where they were enslaved, the  of the West African coast. They arrived in the wilderness that would become Auburn in 1793 accompanying its founder, Col. John Hardenbergh.

The first document that seems to place the Freemans in New Guinea is the 1820 census, where Harry's name is listed next to fellow Black families the Fields and Smiths, suggesting they were neighbors. They were joined in the 1830 census by Demun and Brown. It is deduced that the settlement was where the families lived together, as their addresses were not logged.

Like the date, other details of New Guinea's founding by the Freemans are uncertain. According to a 2004 research paper about the settlement by Seward House Museum intern Shawn Connery, folklore the Freemans were given their land along the Owasco River by Hardenbergh, who died in 1806. But no documentation of such a land deal has surfaced.

There is also uncertainty about the nature of the relationship between the Freemans and Hardenbergh.

Harry and Kate have traditionally been considered slaves of the Revolutionary War veteran. But a recent book, "God's Free-Man, An American Tale of Perseverance" by their descendant Ted Freeman, argues they instead were indentured servants paying off a travel debt from England. Any record of them as "slaves," he wrote, was part of a ruse with Hardenbergh for their protection.

What's more certain about Harry and Kate Freeman is their place at the center of not only New Guinea, but Auburn.

Though situated on the southeast border of the young village, the settlement and its first family were vital to the development of that village into a city in 1848. They invested in real estate, "God's Free-Man" explains, both in New Guinea and elsewhere in Auburn. Armstrong discovered mention of a "tenement house of Harry Freeman" on Garden Street in 1825.

Ted Freeman's book additionally credits his ancestors with finding work for the free Black people and escaped slaves who settled in New Guinea.

Jobs included manual labor at stone, flour and paper mills, and domestic help like gardeners and servants. As work took place on the Ontario and Genesee Turnpike, the Freemans supplied much of the payroll in local quarries. They had businesses of their own as well, like a food cart they brought to construction sites, and laundry and latrine cleaning services at hotels.

"They had really the first employment agency, I'd be bold enough to say, in the United States," Ted Freeman told Ë®¹ûÅÉAV. "Wherever the need was, you would find Harry and Kate there."

Their efforts to build a community weren't limited to employment. At New Guinea, "God's Free-Man" claims, Harry and Kate organized sentry networks to alert Black residents when slave catchers were near and intimidate them into leaving the settlement alone. The Freemans wanted to create opportunity, and they knew that meant protection as much as paying jobs.

That opportunity, Ted Freeman posits, is what first inspired Tubman to live in Auburn after escaping slavery herself and leading hundreds more to freedom via the Underground Railroad. 

"Harry had built an oasis for African Americans that provided a glimpse of freedom," he wrote. "Every day more people were coming to find safety, comfort, and, hopefully, 'Peace.'"

The Freeman name would continue to be associated with New Guinea, Auburn and the Underground Railroad through Harry and Kate's son Morgan Lewis, or Luke. A popular barber inside the American Hotel on Genesee Street, he harbored escaped slaves for almost 30 years beginning around 1834, according to an article in The Auburn Daily Advertiser after he died in April 1863.

Luke Freeman "most emphatically conquered the prejudices existing against his race," the Advertiser wrote, and so his funeral resembled those of "the most respectable white citizens." It saw multiple white clergy speak and 14 carriages proceed to the North Street Cemetery, where he was buried alongside his ancestors in a "most solemn and imposing scene of the times."

Bradley feels that scene tells another important story about New Guinea — and the demographic shift that took place as it disappeared.

"Black people were integrated into this community in ways that later on maybe they weren't," she said. "Because they were here earlier than the other waves of immigrants, they were able to establish buying property and having stable jobs. This is before the waves of the Irish and the Polish and everybody else showed up, and probably squeezed them out of where they were."

The member of the next generation of Freemans most known to history is William Freeman, grandson of Harry and Kate.

In 1846, he was found guilty of murdering four members of the Van Nest family in Fleming despite the first use of the insanity defense in a U.S. court by his attorney, William H. Seward. A beating by an Auburn Prison guard, Seward argued, inflicted a severe brain injury on his client while he was an inmate. William Freeman died of tuberculosis shortly after being sentenced to hang.

Earl Conrad's 1956 book about the case, "Mr. Seward for the Defense," contains "the most complete description" of New Guinea, Connery wrote. A mob frog-marches the captured suspect through the settlement, which Connery paraphrased as "a rugged dirt road winding its way among the trampled weeds and grass that made up the yards of about a dozen one- and two-room shacks."

That passage in the book also names Hiram and Deborah DuPuy, Adam Grey, Mary Newark and Laura Willard as some of the Black residents of New Guinea in the 1840s.

Connery added more names from that decade's census in Francis DeBoise, Catherine Johnson and William Turner. Names produced by Armstrong's census and deed research include Betsy Smith, Samuel and Rachel Kennard, Thomas Venoe, Elijah Rose, Mary Ann Counter and Joseph Wilber. Their occupations are unknown, as the census didn't record them until 1850.

"It seems like most of the settlers came closer to 1850 than 1830," Armstrong said. "It's nice to be able to put together names and, hopefully, with more research in the future, a biography."

The demographic shift from those Black names to mostly white ones took place as the decades passed and, more specifically, ownership of New Guinea's properties changed hands.

Much of the riverside was acquired in 1827 by Henry Polhemus, director of the Auburn & Owasco Canal Co., a partnership with Seward and his father-in-law, Judge Elijah Miller. Polhemus then sold the land to the company in 1835, Armstrong said. He and his partners sought to use the shallow tributary and Owasco Lake to link the new Erie Canal to the village of Moravia.

After the company failed to do that, some of its properties were acquired by Seward's son William H. Seward Jr. The properties on the other side of Mechanic Street, meanwhile, were owned by Daniel Cock. There were about a dozen on the Owasco River side, Armstrong said, and about eight on the other. In his book, Ted Freeman tallied more than 30 buildings in the settlement.

Along with the shacks Conrad described, the settlement had a mill on the residence of Peter Drinkwine and a grocery store at Mechanic and Elizabeth streets run by Isaac Woodruff, both white. Drinkwine came to Auburn from Canada in 1821. Woodruff, who came to Auburn from Connecticut in 1847, was known as "the mayor of New Guinea," according to his 1890 obituary.

Well before Woodruff died, however, the settlement had all but disappeared. White residents, looking to live closer to the new factories near the river where they worked, gradually replaced both the Black residents and their homes during the middle of the century, Connery wrote. New Guinea, he declared, "seemed to have lived and died with the Freemans."

The area's development continued with the construction of a new bridge taking Lizette Street over the Owasco River in 1874.

The people of New Guinea used a wooden plank bridge, known as "the Seward bridge," that connected to Mechanic Street at its blind curve. The new, iron bridge connected to the street further south, near Elizabeth. Around 1910, the street itself was renamed after Auburn's renowned Osborne family, and in 1954, the deteriorating iron bridge was replaced by one over Lake Street.

Nothing about the neighborhood today would suggest it was one of the first Black settlements in upstate New York.

But at least one Auburnian wants to change that.

When the city's planning board reviewed a proposal to build a parking lot at 118 Osborne St. on March 1, resident Leroy Leubner took the podium. Having lived on the street with his family for several years starting in 1974, he's long been familiar with New Guinea. If any history of the settlement remains it shouldn't be paved over, he told the board, it should be preserved.

To that end, Leubner asked the planning board to arrange a review of the property by the state Historic Preservation Office. In response, attorney Sam Giacona — representing the parking lot's developer, O'Toole's Tavern owner John "Jack" Voorhees — said the office would be contacted. The board tabled its vote on the proposal until the review is completed.

A representative of the Historic Preservation Office confirmed to Ë®¹ûÅÉAV it was contacted March 21, and recommended that Voorhees commission a Phase IA Literature Search and Sensitivity Assessment. If that finds areas of "no or minimal ground disturbance," the office would request Phase IB archaeological testing to search for any physical traces of New Guinea.

Neither Voorhees nor Giacona could be reached by Ë®¹ûÅÉAV for comment on the status of the review. The parking lot was conceived amid disputes between Voorhees and neighbors about the behavior of O'Toole's patrons, and its 24 spaces would be available to them and tenants of nearby apartments he owns. The property, now vacant, was previously a gas station.

Whatever the review finds, Leubner told Ë®¹ûÅÉAV, he would like to see the city reject Voorhees' proposal regardless.

He has asked the city to instead buy the property and build a park there as part of its plans to redevelop Osborne Street. Rep. John Katko last summer requested $4.4 million in federal funding for the project, which would include safety upgrades to the street, replaced sidewalks and new pedestrian crossings, and possibly widening of the street and improvements to its blind curve.

A city park on the vacant property would provide a "beautiful view" of the nearby mill pond, Leubner said. It could also preserve what he claims, lying inches under the overgrown surface, are the remains of the brick and limestone street that led to the second Lizette Street bridge. A historic marker at the park could tell that story — and the story of New Guinea.

"Harry and Kate Freeman were as much founders of Auburn as John Hardenbergh. They were part of the Underground Railroad before the Underground Railroad, taking care of free Black people," Leubner said. "There's so much history right here. I think, personally, it would be a very noble cause, with the park as the centerpiece. We should honor the people who actually built Auburn."

"It's awesome to defend our title," Panthers coach Bill DeAngelis said. "The whole outlook of team has changed since then, but they make it look easy. It's a really great feeling."

Two players that were members of that 2019 team — Sadie White and Nikki Namisniak — each played pivotal roles in the latest win. 

In her five plate appearances, Namisniak doubled three times and walked the other two. She finished with eight RBIs, a total boosted by a bases-clearing two-bagger in the sixth inning that provided the Panthers some valuable insurance. 

"When she comes up with runners on base, I sort've relax coaching third base because I know she's gonna put the ball somewhere," DeAngelis said. 

White, Port Byron’s lead-off hitter, went 4-for-4 and scored four times.

The spark to the Panthers' bats, White was forced to leave the game with an injury in the fifth inning and Port Byron was forced to turn to an unexpected source of offense.

After some lineup shifting, freshman Jenna Jump was called upon in the fifth frame with the Panthers behind 9-6. In the first varsity action of her career and facing Wolves ace Hailee Smith, Jump blasted a solo home run to right-center field that jumpstarted a four-run inning and put Port Byron ahead 10-9. 

"Jenna works very, very hard," DeAngelis said. "That was the first time she's been in a game all season. She swings the bat well and connected for some nice hits. The confidence is there with her."

One of the keys for Port Byron was to settle down on defense after an eventful first two innings which the teams combined for 10 runs. 

Pitcher Hannah Jones worked a 1-2-3 inning in the third. In the final three innings, she allowed only three hits and struck out four. 

That defense was at its best in the final inning as Union Springs tried to close the gap. Following a lead-off single by Ava Dennis, Jones induced a double-play ball to second baseman Mackenzie McDowell. Then to close out the game, Jones threw three straight heaters for the game-ending strikeout. 

While White and Namisniak led the way, it was far from a two-player show for the Panthers. First baseman Jordan Cook also had three hits to go with two RBIs, while catcher Colleen Jump had two hits, two runs and a walk.

For Union Springs, Dennis went 3-for-4 with two doubles and a run. Catcher Kathryn Herrling had two hits, Ella Johnson finished 2-for-4 with three runs, and pitcher Hailee Smith hit 1-for-3 with an RBI triple and a walk. 

DeAngelis, the Panthers' first-year head coach, said capturing the county championship was one of the team's major goals for this season. But there is still more the Panthers hope to accomplish. 

Port Byron was a section semifinalist in 2019 and 2021, and a deeper run could be in store in 2022. 

"I asked the girls at the beginning of the season where they wanted to be. They wanted this first, they wanted to win sectionals and be able to go to states," DeAngelis said. "I can see this team doing that. We have a strong enough team to go that far, so we'll see how that pans out. 

"This whole team digs in and gives me everything. Defensively I'm blessed, and offensively I'm more blessed. This team gels as a whole and does a phenomenal job."