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GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01146 6056
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11
A HISTORY OF BUFFALO
DELINEATING THE EVOLUTION OF THE CITY
B.J N LARNED
work SKETCHES INE
THE CITY OF ROCHESTER BY THE THE IROQUOIS.
Built in 1890 and remodelled in 1901. Now under the management of Woolley &AGerrans, also managers of the Grand Union Hotel at Saratoga Springs, New York, and the Marie Antoinette at Broadway and 66th Street, New York City.
BY THE HON. ELONE M VOMFRAX
VOL. II
PUBLISHED BY THE PROGRESS OF THE EMPIRE STATE COMPANY . NEW YORK
1911
ws 1 ,1991)2 (im) bus vewbsord is simon Asits My orly
A HISTORY OF BUFFALO, ny'
DELINEATING THE EVOLUTION OF THE CITY
BY J. N. LARNED
WITH SKETCHES OF
THE CITY OF ROCHESTER BY THE HON. CHARLES E. FITCH AND
THE CITY OF UTICA BY THE HON. ELLIS H. ROBERTS
VOL. II
PUBLISHED BY THE PROGRESS OF THE EMPIRE STATE COMPANY NEW YORK
1911
Nauber - $ 9,50 (2 votos)
1211066
CONTENTS OF VOLUME II
INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION-Continued
Chapter
Page
IV. Metal Working and Machinery
I
V. Miscellaneous Industries 18
CULTURAL EVOLUTION
I. Protestant Churches and Jewish Religious Societies 31
II. The Roman Catholic Church . 68
III. Institutions of General Benevolence 82
IV. Institutions of Specialized Benevolence IO8
V. Education 130 .
VI. Literary Institutions and Organizations I57
VII. Scientific Institutions 176
VIII. Local Literature - The Newspaper Press 188
IX. Art . 204
X. Social Organization
222
ROCHESTER, PAST AND PRESENT
228
UTICA, ITS HISTORY AND PROGRESS
257
Index
293
INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION
CHAPTER IV
METAL WORKING AND MACHINERY
T HE earliest of the Buffalo manufactures of machinery which grew to importance and has had a continuous existence to the present time appears to have been that of flour-mill machinery, founded in 1834 by Elisha Hayward and now represented by the works of the Noye Manufacturing Company. Mr. John T. Noye came into partnership with Mr. Hayward at an early stage of the business, bringing to it a practical knowledge of the milling business and an energy of character which pushed it rap- idly to an increasing success. It was the only manufacture of the kind west of Utica and north of Cincinnati and Bal- timore; and the development of the wheat-lands of the Northwest opened an always widening market for the ma- chinery it produced. The increase of business was constant until about 1882, when the sales of the establishment ex- ceeded $1,400,000, and it employed about 400 men. West- ern competition since that time, at Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Leavenworth, St. Louis, Moline, Ill., Richmond, Ind., and other points, has narrowed its field. Within recent years a department of steam engines and another of automobile specialties have been introduced in the works. At succes- sive periods in the seventy-four years of its existence, the business has been carried on in the names of Elisha Hay- ward, Hayward & Noye, John T. Noye, The John T. Noye Manufacturing Company, and the present Noye Manufac- turing Company, of which Richard K. Noye, son of John T. Noye, is the president. Its plant was on the Hamburg Canal between Main and Washington streets till 1886, when it was removed to its present site on Lake View Avenue.
I
2
INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION
The manufacture of edged tools was introduced in Buf- falo as early as 1837, by L. and I. J. White, under whose name it has been carried on continuously to the present time. The business has grown to large dimensions, operating an extensive plant on Perry and Columbia streets, and selling its product in all parts of the world. For some years past incorporated, as the L. & I. J. White Company, of which John G. H. Marvin is president, M. White vice-president, and J. W. White general superintendent.
Next in date of origin, among the manufactories that have had importance in the industrial history of the city and a continuous career, is that which bears now the name of the Buffalo Pitts Company. Its founders were John A. and Hiram Pitts, twin brothers, of Winthrop, Maine, who were the first American inventors of threshing machinery, and who patented, in 1837, the first successful threshing and separating machine combined. Prior to this they had made improvements on the old style of thresher, which turned out grain, chaff and straw together, to be separated by another operation. In combining the thresher and the fanning mill, producing the "endless apron" or "grain belt" separator, they opened a new era in that line of invention, and the principles covered by their original patents have been fol- lowed in all improvements since. In 1840 John A. Pitts came to Buffalo and established the manufacture of the new threshing machine here, at the corner of Fourth and Caro- lina streets, from which place the shops have never been changed, though enlarged till they contain many acres of floor space.
On the death of Mr. Pitts, in 1859, the management of the business passed to James Brayley, who conducted it for many years. In 1877 the proprietors were incorporated, under the name of The Pitts Agricultural Works, James Brayley president, Thomas Sully secretary. This title was
3
AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY
changed to that of Buffalo Pitts Company in 1897, when Carleton Sprague became president of the company. Re- cently Mr. Sprague retired, and the present officers of the company are C. M. Greiner, president and treasurer ; William G. Gomez, vice-president; John B. Olmsted, secretary.
Under all administrations the business has expanded con- tinually, its products going to all parts of the world. Those products are not only the threshing machinery for all kinds of grain, flax, rice, beans, etc., but traction and portable engines, that burn wood, coal, straw or oil for fuel; special steam traction engines for plowing, hauling and grading; road locomotives and road freight cars for hauling ore, timber, logs, etc., and special cars for carrying and spread- ing crushed stone. The development of the steam traction engine is due to this company.
The plant of the company is operated by electric power from Niagara Falls, and is equipped with the latest and most complete system of electric and pneumatic machinery. It employs a large force of men, and the shops are run throughout the year. The company maintains important branches at Minneapolis, Fargo, Portland, Oregon, Spo- kane, Wichita, Houston, and other points east and west.
The old Buffalo Steam Engine Works, founded in 1841, had a long and important career. Acquired by George W. Tifft in 1857, the works were carried on by him and his family, in the firm of George W. Tifft, Sons & Co., for many years, turning out a very considerable part of the product of the city in steam engines, boilers and architectural cast-iron.
In 1842 David Bell, a Scotch machinist and mechanical engineer, came to Buffalo and found employment at the Buffalo Steam Engine Works, then lately brought into operation. In 1845 he joined William McNish in starting
4
INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION
a small plant for the same business. The partnership was dissolved in 1850 and David Bell continued it alone. A few years later his works were burned, just after the expira- tion of insurance, and he began anew with little to capitalize his undertaking except the stuff of courageous energy in himself. He not only rebuilt his works, but enlarged their scale. In business management he could hardly be called successful ; but he kept his feet, and was always at the front of new ventures in his line. He built the "Merchant," the first iron propeller on the lakes. He began locomotive building in 1865. He constructed for the city its first fire- boat, in 1887. He was full of enterprise to the end of his life, and the David Bell Engineering Works, which sur- vived him, were merged, in 1907, in the Buffalo Foundry and Machine Company, of which some account will be given later on.
Mr. William Pryor Letchworth came to Buffalo in 1848 from New York City, where he had been engaged for a time, in the interest of Peter Hayden, of Columbus, Ohio, establishing the sale and manufacture of saddlery hardware in that section. At Buffalo he formed a partner- ship with the brothers Samuel F. and Pascal P. Pratt, under the name of Pratt & Letchworth, opening a store at No. 165 Main Street, as importers and wholesale and retail dealers in and manufacturers of saddlery hardware.
The firm was the first in our vicinity to engage in the manufacture of this branch of hardware, and its establish- ment was soon recognized as headquarters, in a measure, for general supplies to dealers in its department of trade, from both American and foreign makers, as well as from its own works. The limits of the original store were outgrown by the business in a few years, and it was removed to The Terrace, at No. 52, where its principal offices were located for two decades or more. Railroads as well as steamboats
5
MALLEABLE IRON .- OPEN HEARTH STEEL
on the great rivers were now enlarging the sphere of trade from the Lakes with extraordinary rapidity, and the firm of Pratt & Letchworth won its full share of the consequent gain.
In 1856 Mr. Letchworth's health had become somewhat impaired by his application to business, and he made an extended pleasure tour in Europe, leaving much of the detail of the business to a younger brother. It was not many years after his return that he bought the beautiful estate on the Genesee River, near Portage, which he named Glen Iris, and which, augmented to a thousand acres by later purchases, was presented by him to the State of New York in 1907. Under the name of Letchworth Park, and under the immediate care of the American Scenic and His- toric Preservation Society, this noble public park will preserve for all time the three falls of the upper Genesee and their beautiful surroundings.
In 1860 Pratt & Letchworth bought property at Black Rock and located their manufactory there, adding to it the manufacture of malleable iron, which they used in their business largely. Subsequently they added the production of open hearth steel. Scientific study applied to these cast- ings has produced a superior quality, and the products of the Pratt & Letchworth Works are now used for the driving wheels and frames of some of the finest and largest loco- motives on American and foreign railways. The products of the firm are to be met with in almost every quarter of the globe.
In 1873 William Pryor Letchworth sold his entire inter- est in the business to his brother Josiah, who had been an active member of the firm for some years. The retirement of the former from business was not to give himself wholly to the attractions and cares of Glen Iris; for he accepted, in 1873, an appointment as one of the commissioners of the
-
6
INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION
State Board of Charities, becoming its president and its hardest working member for many years. It is by his labor in that important office, especially as it was directed to the better care of the insane, and to the separation of children from county poorhouses, that the name of William Pryor Letchworth, LL.D., has been made one of historic fame. His death, in his eighty-eighth year, occurred but recently, on the Ist day of December, 1910.
On the death of Samuel F. Pratt, in 1873, his interest in the Pratt & Letchworth business was bought by the junior partner, Josiah Letchworth. The interest of Pascal P. Pratt remained in the business until 1896, when it was sold, and the business was incorporated under the name of Pratt & Letchworth Company, Ogden Pearl Letchworth being chosen its president and personal manager. From this time the business became greatly enlarged in the making of steel castings on the open hearth principle for railroad work. The quality of the P. & L. castings is unsurpassed.
The branch of the business which comprises the manu- facture of wood and iron hames, in connection with New England manufacturers, was organized separately, under the name of the U. S. Hame Company, with Ogden P. Letchworth in the presidency. New styles of these goods found a ready market, in South as well as North America, and much larger forces of workmen have been required for the manufacture of the goods.
The Jones Iron Works, still in operation on The Terrace, were founded in 1848, and have been carried on by the family successors of the founder ever since.
In the same year, the Shepard Iron Works, known later and still known as the King Iron Works, were opened, manufacturing engines, both stationary and marine. They are now under the management of H. G. Trout.
7
VARIED MACHINERY WORKS
In the next year R. L. Howard withdrew from the firm of H. C. Atwater in the grocery and ship-chandlery busi- ness, to engage in the manufacture of the mowing machine invented by William F. Ketchum, whose patent interests he had bought and whose services in business he had secured. It was the first successful mowing machine, and a great and highly profitable manufacturing establishment was soon built up. When the original business declined, on the expiration of patents, other lines of manufacture, in general machinery and foundry work,-paper-cutting and book-binding machinery, passenger elevators, etc.,-were introduced, and the Howard Iron Works continued to be an important factor in the industries of the town. In 1905 they passed under the control of the Otis Elevator Co., be- coming one of its plants.
The Delaney Forge, still in operation on an enlarged scale, was founded in 1850 by Charles Delaney.
The Eagle Iron Works, still in operation, were founded in 1853 by a company which included S. S. Jewett, F. H. Root and Robert Dunbar among the stockholders. After a few years the Works were purchased by Robert Dunbar and S. W. Howell, and became subsequently the property of Mr. Dunbar and his son. In 1901 the works were acquired by the firm of Wegner & Meyer for use in the manufacture of ice-making and refrigerating machinery.
In 1856 the brothers Edward and Britain Holmes, who had been dealing previously in lumber and timber and carrying on a large planing mill and sash and door factory, established a manufactory of patented machinery for cooperage and other wood-working, which grew to large proportions, and has been carried uninterruptedly to the present day.
8
INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION
The very extensive manufacture of bolts and nuts now carried on by the Buffalo Bolt Company was begun in 1859 by George C. Bell. In 1869 the late Ralph H. Plumb bought an interest in the business, and it was conducted for a short time by the firm of Bell & Plumb. Mr. Bell then sold his remaining interest and Mr. Orrin C. Burdict came into partnership with Mr. Plumb. Later on the firm acquired a third member and became Plumb, Burdict & Barnard. The business remained under this proprietorship until 1897, when the Buffalo Bolt Company, in which Mr. J. J. Albright is largely interested, was formed. The com- pany's extensive plant, in which it is now employing about 750 hands, is located at Tonawanda. Its present output is more than 1,250,000 bolts and nuts per day, which rolls up a yearly product of 35,000 tons. In 1869 the daily manu- facture was but 14,000 bolts and nuts. Comparing the production of 1907 with that of 1869, it shows an increase of about 9,000 per cent., while the labor increase is only 1,000 per cent. We have a striking illustration of the eco- nomics of invention in this.
Chillon M. Farrar, inventor of a reversible steam engine, much used in boring oil and artesian wells, formed a part- nership, in 1864, with John Trefts and Theodore C. Knight, and the firm established a modest plant that year, on Perry Street, for the manufacture of engines and boilers and for general machine work. Mr. Knight retired from the firm in 1869, and the business, grown large with the years, has continued ever since under the name of Farrar & Trefts. In conjunction with Rood & Brown, manufacturers of car wheels, the firm established also the general foundry busi- ness of the East Buffalo Iron Works, on the New York Cen- tral Belt Line, near Broadway.
The United States Cast Iron Pipe and Foundry Company,
9
CASTING .- FORGING .- BOILER WORKS
which now turns out daily about 120 tons of pipe for water, gas and steam, is conducting a business that was started in 1868 by George B. Hayes and F. O. Drullard, on so modest a scale that its output was but 25 tons per day. The original plant was on Exchange Street between Chicago and Louis- iana streets. It was removed to Box Avenue, on the New York Central Belt Line, in 1892.
The original business which grew into that of the existing Buffalo Forge Company was founded in 1877 by William F. Wendt, now president of the company ; but within recent years it has absorbed the George L. Squier Manufacturing Company, which had a long previous history, and likewise the Buffalo Steam Pump Company, controlling and operat- ing the three plants. In all, about 1,000 people are em- ployed. In its beginnings the Forge Company occupied only the fifth floor of a building at the corner of Washing- ton and Perry streets. From this it removed in 1880 to the corner of Mortimer Street and Broadway.
The Lake Erie Boiler Works, established. in 1880, and the Lake Erie Engineering Works, brought into operation in 1890, are successive creations of the same industrial or- ganizer, Mr. Robert Hammond, who conducts them both. The boiler-making plant is said to have been the first in the country to be equipped with a complete outfit of hydraulic tools, for heavy work. It turns out about $300,000 worth of large marine boilers per year. The Engineering Works, founded ten years later, were constructed and equipped in the same complete style, with large tools, all of special de- sign. These works employ 700 men, and their capacity is for an annual output of $600,000 in value. Both plants are at the corner of Perry and Chicago streets.
An industry that has acquired large importance was planted in a small way, in 1881, by two men from New
IO
INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION
England, Joseph Bond and John B. Pierce, who had been looking at different places, with a view to undertaking a little business in the manufacture of steam-heating boilers. They saw advantages in Buffalo which induced them to start a modest plant, and it had such success that, before many years, they found it best to put their business on a much broader base. For this purpose they bought about twenty acres of ground on Elmwood Avenue, at the crossing of the New York Central tracks, and there, under the name of the Pierce Steam Heating Company, established a large radiator foundry, with machine shops and boiler works.
As thus named, the business was carried on prosperously until 1892, when it was sold to the American Radiator Com- pany, formed under the presidency of Mr. Joseph Bond. A few years later this company bought, also, the plant and business of the Standard Radiator Company, which Mr. Nelson Holland had established in Buffalo, on Larkin Street, some time before. The American Radiator Com- pany proved to be a very vigorously expansive corporation, branching widely in its business, with its general offices in Chicago; but Buffalo has continued to be the main seat of its producing works. In 1901 it erected a new plant here, on twenty acres of land at Black Rock, near Hertel Avenue, on Rano Street, and gave it the name of the "Bond Plant," in memory of Mr. Bond, who died that year. This estab- lishment includes one of the largest gray-iron foundries in the country, and its machinery is run by Niagara electric power. It employs about 1,000 men. The enlarged "Pierce Plant," on Elmwood Avenue, employs another 1,000, and the "Standard Plant" about 500, making a total of 2,500 men who are kept busy by this company "all the year round," it is said, "for the plants rarely ever shut down."
The products of the company are solely "American Radi-
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NELSON HOLLAND. 1. Dwind. Wholesale dealer in lumber; born Belchertown, Mass.,t and June 24, 1829; educated at Springville Academy, Erie Mr. County, New York; director in the Manufacturers' andarkin Traders' Bank; member of Westminster PresbyterianCom- Church ; Republican in politics. ve corporation. wro is gene 1 offices in Com und to brathe main set of 100 il melol | new plant here,
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Helson Holland
BRIDGE WORKS
ators" and "Ideal Boilers" for steam and hot water heating; made in endless variety of pattern and capacity and sold in all countries for the warming of all kinds of buildings, from the cottages of America to the palaces of the king of Eng- land, the czar of Russia and the crown prince of Japan. Though the company has five other plants elsewhere in the United States and one in Canada, about a third of its total output is from Buffalo.
The beginning of what furnished the foundation for a greatly important organization of bridge-building was made by Charles Kellogg, who established the Kellogg Bridge Works, in connection with the Union Iron Works. In 1881 these bridge works were acquired by George S. Field, Edmund Hayes and C. V. N. Kittridge, who gave them the name of the Central Bridge Works, and they were operated under that name for three years. In this period the most important work of the company was the construction for the Michigan Central Railroad of the Cantilever Bridge which spans the Niagara chasm below the Falls.
In 1884, by an amalgamation of the Central Bridge Com- pany with Kellogg & Maurice, of Athens, Pa., with the Delaware Bridge Company, of New York, and with Mr. T. C. Clark, of Clark, Reeves & Co., of Phoenixville, the Union Bridge Company was formed, which conducted the business on a very extensive scale for the next eleven years. Its most notable engineering achievements were the bridging of the Hudson at Poughkeepsie ; of the Mississippi at Cairo and at Memphis, and of the Hawksbury River, in New South Wales, Australia. The last named structure is com- posed of seven spans, 430 feet each, for double track. Its remarkable feature is the depth of the foundations that were necessary, going 176 feet below tide ; the deepest ever laid.
In 1895 the Union Bridge Company was merged in other
12
INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION
companies and passed later into the American Bridge Com- pany, in which no Buffalo interest remains.
The manufacture of bicycles, organized in 1890 by George N. Pierce, soon took rank with the most important establishments of its class in the country. No wheels had a higher reputation than those which bore the Pierce name, in the days when hundreds of different styles and makers were in the field. The business increased steadily until about 1897, when a great decline occurred, universally, and continued till about 1904. Then came the beginning of a revival which has restored the manufacture to a healthy state. The makers of bicycles in the United States now number but thirteen or fourteen, while more than five hun- dred are said to have been engaged in the business in 1896. The recent output of the Pierce Cycle Company was about 10,000 per year. The company as now constituted was or- ganized in 1906, when the George N. Pierce Company, making automobiles, sold out the bicycle part of their fac- tory, and the Pierce Cycle Company was formed, with Percy P. Pierce, son of George N., as its president. This company conducts the bicycle manufacture exclusively.
In 1893 Mr. W. H. Crosby, becoming manager of works established by the Spaulding Machine Screw Company (then just organized), began to develop the manufacture of parts for bicycle construction stamped from sheet-steel. Up to that time bicycle frame connections or joints had been made exclusively from solid drop-forgings, which had to be bored out and machined to a considerable extent. By the process of stamping from sheet-steel these parts were pro- duced more quickly and cheaply, of fully equal strength, and the more progressive of the bicycle manufacturers were soon turning out more wheels at lower prices than before, by reason of using the products of the Spaulding Company.
13
SHEET STEEL STAMPING
From the management of that company, however, Mr. Crosby withdrew in 1896 to organize The Crosby Company, himself its president and manager, his brother, Mr. A. G. Crosby (who died four years later), vice-president, Mr. William H. Hill secretary and treasurer, and Mr. Edward Ehler superintendent. The new company's office and works were then located at 506-507 Genesee Street. Increasing business required a much enlarged plant in 1903, for which a factory building on Pratt Street (181-187) was bought. Four times since that date extensive additions to the original building have been erected, giving nine times the floor-space that was occupied by the company on Genesee Street in 1903. The plant, which employs 450 men, is operated by electric power from Niagara Falls.
The sole business of The Crosby Company at the outset of its career was the manufacture of bicycle parts; but it soon began adding to its list of products a large variety of special parts required in constructive work for different trades. At first these included parts for wagons, carriages, harnesses, sewing machines, trolley wheels, telephone instru- ments, etc. Then came the rapid development of the auto- mobile manufacture, opening to the company a field in which its business has had an extraordinary growth. In a note from Mr. Crosby to the present writer, answering in- quiries addressed to him, he remarks : "Almost every line of manufacture is looking towards people like ourselves to develop from sheet-metal pieces that were heretofore made either of castings or forgings, and in many cases we displace pieces that are turned from a solid bar of steel. We are turning out parts now that weigh seventy pounds, and from this down to a fraction of an ounce. We have recently added an autogenous welding plant, by means of which two stamped pieces are welded together, making a piece that could not be stamped in one single unjoined article. This welding process is quite new."
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