The corner of Main and Coach Streets in Canandaigua was the site of two notable hotels and the town's second jail. The first hotel, the Franklin House, was destroyed by fire in 1860, and the Webster House later replaced it; the building was later known as the Pickering Hotel and was also destroyed by fire. In 1805, Canandaigua flour merchant Jesse Hawley was imprisoned here for debt, and during his confinement he wrote newspaper articles under the pen name "Hercules" advocating a direct inland water route between Albany and Buffalo to ease the transport of goods. Those writings convinced Governor DeWitt Clinton of the economic benefits of such a waterway, which became the Erie Canal, and in 1825 Hawley was honored by Clinton with the opportunity to speak at the canal's opening celebration. In 1865, Lincoln assassination conspirator John Harrison Surratt escaped by way of the Northern Central Railroad to Elmira and Canandaigua, spent two nights at the Webster Hotel, and attended mass at St. Mary's Church, then at Main and Saltonstall Streets; the hotel register was later introduced as evidence at his trial. Just west of Commons Park, hitch sheds that served the Webster House once stood on what is now a parking lot, and on March 6, 1922, locals gathered there for the Golden Rule Farmers Auction Sale.