USA > New York > Erie County > Buffalo > A history of Buffalo : delineating the evolution of the city > Part 3
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At about this time several other attempts to enter the re- fining industry in Buffalo were being made. Adjoining the Atlas Works, a company formed by Buffalo and Titusville parties began operating what were called the Solar Oil Works, using a process for continuous distillation of crude petroleum which had been patented by Samuel Van Syckel. Mr. Van Syckel was a well known inventor in the oil in- dustries, who had been the first to conceive the idea of piping oil, and who, over a short distance near Titusville, had laid the first pipe-line. It goes without saying that the Solar Works had a struggle for life with its powerful rival and succumbed in the end. It passed, first, in 1883, to the Tidewater Pipe Line Co., which had maintained its inde- pendence thus far, but which surrendered soon afterwards to the Standard Company, carrying with it the Solar Works.
Another attempt of the same period was that of Mr. C. B. Matthews, who established the works of the Buffalo Lu- bricating Oil Company, near the Atlas Works, on Elk and Babcock streets, in 1881. His long litigations and conten- tions with the Standard Oil Company, including the
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OIL REFINING
indictment and conviction of persons connected with the Vacuum Oil Company, of Rochester (one of the subsidiary organizations of the Standard), who were charged with having suborned a workman in the employ of the Buffalo Lubricating Oil Company to prepare conditions in its appa- ratus that would bring about an explosion, form a notable chapter in the published history of petroleum oil. The struggles of the Lubricating Oil Company were prolonged until about 1887, when its works were transferred to a com- bination of independent refineries in Cleveland, Oil City and Corry. They were operated for a short time by this combination, and then given up. About 1888 Mr. Matthews organized the Buffalo Refining Company, the business of which he has conducted ever since. It does no refining in Buffalo, but holds stock in a Pennsylvania re- finery, from which it obtains its oil. Its business in this city is the compounding of cylinder and engine oils and the manufacture of greases, nearly all of which product goes up the lakes. It has little to do with shipments by rail.
Still two other refineries were started in Buffalo about 1881, both of them located on the Tifft Farm. One, the Niagara, of which Mr. Backus, of Cleveland, was president, was carried on till bought and cleared away by the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company, to make room for its terminal improvements on that ground. The other, the Phoenix, was embarrassed by freight conditions till it gave up.
The surviving Atlas Refining Works, which became the property of the Standard Oil Company in 1892, have been greatly enlarged in the hands of that all-powerful trust. They occupy a tract of about 84 acres at the corner of Elk and Babcock streets, having a frontage of 1,782 feet on the former street, and running back to the Buffalo River. Oil refining in all its departments is carried on, and with it a mechanical department, equipped with labor-saving ma-
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INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION
chinery of the latest types, for the construction of tank cars and for other boiler-shop work. From 500 to 600 men are employed in the works as a whole. The present capacity of the refining plant is for the yearly treatment of 1,200,000 barrels of crude oil, and it is fully employed. Mr. Horace P. Chamberlain has been the general manager since 1890.
The manufacture of fire-brick was established in Buffalo by the late Edward J. Hall, in 1866, as a branch of the busi- ness of A. Hall & Sons, at Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Within a year or two it became an independent business, conducted by Mr. Hall during his life, and still continued, in the administration of his estate, with C. M. Helmer as its manager, and under the name of Hall & Sons. The location of the plant has always been, as now, at the corner of Tonawanda Street and West Avenue, in Black Rock. With a thorough practical knowledge of the manufacture and much executive ability, Mr. Hall organized a plant that is noted for the quality of its output. In the past fifteen years it has been largely rebuilt and extended. Modern machinery has been put in and the capacity of the works about doubled.
In 1879 Mr. J. F. Schoellkopf, Jr. (his father, bearing the same well-known name, being then alive), returned home from seven years of chemical study in Germany, and began the manufacture of coal tar dyes. The undertaking was moderate in scale at the outset, but its importance was in the fact of its being the first of its kind in America started by specialists, trained in the art, and with the avowed pur- pose of producing as nearly as possible a full line of coal tar colors. Owing to unfavorable tariffs and patent laws the business was of slow growth and unremunerative at first; but as important foreign patents expired, and as the scientific managers, making new discoveries of their own,
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INDUSTRIAL CVOLUTION
chery of the latest types, for the construction of tank cars And for other braler shop work. From 500 to 600 men are omole von wo Che works as a waule. The present capacity f de refrainy plant is for the yearly treatment 1,200,000 Levels of crudesill, and it is fully employed Mr Horace P. Chamberlite Has been the general manager ince 1890.
I hen wwwwwwwwreal Are-brick was established in Buffalo Fy the lete Edward J Hall, in 1866, as a branch of the busi- nes of . Hall & Sons, at Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Within a year became an independent business JACOB SCHOELLKOPF (J conducied by Mir Hall during This fife, and still continued in the a Chemical manufacturer ; born Buffalo, (New [York; | Feb- as ruary 27, 1858; e ; educated in Buffalo and Germany , presithe
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In 1879 Mr. | F Schoolkopf, Jr (his father, bearing tor lohe wel knowwe name, being then alive), returned home towi de er veirs of chemical study in Germany, and burgon the manufacture of coal tar dyes. The undertaking w toiletare uff kale at the outset, but its importance was W the last of us being The first of its kind in America started M eomalies, Fre l in the ant and with the avowed pur- al produund w pourly as possible a full line of coal uren Co wonfavorable un ffs and patent laws Di le Hof = provth and unremunerative at Kos: Leo @ bojamaos loco co patents expired, and as the Norm E wiggens making new discoveries of their own
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ACIDS AND COAL-TAR DYES
took out valuable patents here and abroad, they were able to increase their line.
In 1886 the founder of the manufacture was joined by his brother, C. P. Hugo Schoellkopf, who, in his turn, had completed a course of chemical studies in Germany. The business had now attained a steady growth. In 1887 a company was organized in the city of New York for han- dling its products, and a similar company was formed at Philadelphia in 1896. In 1899 these companies were con- solidated with the Buffalo plant, by incorporation under the name of Schoellkopf, Hartford & Hanna Company, and a branch in Boston was opened at the same time. A year later branch houses were established in Chicago, Cincin- nati, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Kansas City, covering practically all of the territory in the United States that is tributary to the trade in aniline colors.
In 1902 the company, being an extensive consumer of mineral acids, established a plant for the manufacture of those. This, again, was a pioneer undertaking,-the first in the United States to produce sulphuric acid by the con- tact process, and to operate continuous processes of making nitric acid and muriatic acid by patented methods. This new plant grew to such dimensions that it was separately organized in 1904, and is now conducted in the name of the Contact Process Company. It is now one of the largest and most complete plants of its kind in the country.
The entire business that has grown from Mr. Schoell- kopf's undertaking of 1879 was measured by sales of product in 1907 to the extent of nearly $4,000,000. In 1881 its sales amounted only to $75,000. Inasmuch as the pro- prietors are continually putting new products on the market, there appears to be no reason why it should not continue to grow in future as in the past.
The present officers of Schoellkopf, Hartford & Hanna
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INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION
Company are J. F. Schoellkopf, president; W. W. Hanna, I. F. Stone, and Jesse W. Starr, vice-presidents; Charles Ware, secretary ; C. P. Hugo Schoellkopf, treasurer.
In 1903 the house of Pratt & Lambert, which ranks with the largest manufacturers of varnish in the world, operating many plants in this country and in Europe, established works in Buffalo on Tonawanda Street, so extensive that they cover five acres of ground. The president of the com- pany, Mr. W. H. Andrews, is resident in Buffalo.
CULTURAL EVOLUTION
CHAPTER I THE DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT CHURCHES AND JEWISH RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES
U NDOUBTEDLY the village settlement on Buffalo Creek had been visited by Protestant missionaries prior to 1812; but one came in that year who first organized the membership of a church. This was the Rev. Thaddeus Osgood, from Connecticut, who is said to have been making his fifth journey through the western settle- ments, and who wrote in his journal, of his visit to the Buf- falo hamlet, that he found here "more attention to religious instruction and to divine things in general" than he had wit- nessed "in any other new settlement." The society that he formed took originally the name of the First Congregational and Presbyterian Church; but in 1815 it preferred and assumed the title of the First Presbyterian Society of Buf- falo. In the following year it obtained a settled pastor, the Rev. Miles P. Squier, at whose installation the services were held in a new barn, at the corner of Main and Genesee streets. Writing subsequently of that time, Mr. Squier said: "We of all names as Christians agreed to hold to- gether until we got able to separate. I did not say much about sects, but preached the great essentials of the gospel ; and the people were united, and worked together for the advancement of the common cause. The Episcopalians were the first to hive out."
The separate hiving of the Episcopalians (if Mr. Squier's
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CULTURAL EVOLUTION
expression may be used) was consequent on a visit in 1817 from Bishop Hobart, of New York. "I gave him my pul- pit the first Sabbath," wrote Mr. Squier. "We all heard him gladly. He, with his people, met on their own ap- pointment after that, and the result was our neighbor, St. Paul's Church." St. Paul's Church parish is said, how- ever, to have been organized in February, 1817, by the Rev. Samuel Johnston, Episcopal missionary for the district west of the Genesee. Services were held at the Eagle Tavern and in the school house until the summer of 1819, when a framed building, of Gothic form, was erected on a lot given to the Church by Mr. Ellicott, of the Holland Land Com- pany. St. Paul's Church has occupied the same ground, bounded by Main, Erie, Pearl and Church streets, ever since.
This first St. Paul's Church was not, however, the first church edifice to be erected in Buffalo. A Methodist chapel had preceded it by half a year or more. The history of "Methodism in Buffalo," by Rev. Sanford Hunt, states that New Amsterdam appears first in the minutes of the Genesee Methodist Conference in 1812. It was included in a missionary circuit which extended from Batavia to the Niagara River, and from the Tonawanda to twenty miles south of Buffalo Creek. The Rev. Gideon Lanning, who was on the circuit in 1813, reported two Methodists only in Buffalo; but in 1818 the Rev. Glezen Fillmore, then preaching on what was called the Eden Circuit, organized a class of eight or nine in Buffalo village and four at Black Rock. He held Sunday services for a time in the school house, dividing time with the Episcopalians, to do which his preaching was at sunrise and early candle-light. Then he leased a lot on Franklin Street, a little below Niagara, and built a small church, with help obtained from Mr. Ellicott and from New York. This building was dedi- cated on the 24th of January, 1819.
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EARLIEST PROTESTANT CHURCHES
It seems probable that a society of Baptists had existence before this time; but the present writer has found no record of its date. A Holland-Purchase Baptist Association was organized as early as 1815, and the Buffalo Public Library is in possession of a file of the Minutes of its yearly meetings from 1818 to 1839. It then became the Buffalo Baptist Association, and its Minutes under that name are continuous in the Library until 1906. In 1822 there was some gather- ing of Baptists in the village which called the Rev. Elon Galusha, of Whitesboro, to come to them as a missionary, and he organized a Baptist Church that year.
These four societies, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Method- ist and Baptist, were the first religious organizations in Buffalo, and formed the parent stocks from which much branching in their several denominations occurred in later years. The First Presbyterian Society erected and dedi- cated its first building in 1823, on the triangle (given for the purpose by the Holland Land Company) between Main, Niagara, Pearl and Church streets, which it occupied until 1890, when it gave place to the Erie County Savings Bank, and the focal point in the city which St. Paul's and the "Old First" had marked as "The Churches," for almost a century, lost that familiar name, and became Shelton Square, in memory of the first rector of St. Paul's. The original First Presbyterian edifice, which cost $874, was used by its builders four years only, and then sold to the Methodists, whose still smaller chapel was outgrown.
The second undertaking of the Presbyterians, in 1827, produced a large edifice, of old-fashioned stateliness, cost- ing $17,500, which held the most conspicuous site in the city for two generations and more. About three years after the completion of the church its broad-faced steeple received a clock and a bell. The building bought by the Methodists was moved in 1827 to a lot which Mr. Ellicott had given
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CULTURAL EVOLUTION
them, on the north side of Niagara Street, running from Franklin to Pearl, and used there for five years.
In 1828 the first meetings of Protestant Germans for religious service were held in a room over a grocery store, on Main Street, near Genesee. The congregation thus gathered was organized subsequently into the First German Evangelical Lutheran Church, of St. John. In 1829 the Baptist society had become able to build for itself, and erected a framed church at the corner of Washington and Seneca streets, which sufficed it for the next seven years. Hitherto St. Paul's Church had been served by missionaries ; but in 1829 it received the rector, Rev. William Shelton, who ministered to it for fifty-one years. In the same year the first church organ heard in Buffalo was placed in St. Paul's.
In the Third Decade of the Century .- The First Pres- byterian Church began mission work in the opening year of this decade, building a chapel for sailors and boatmen on Main Street near Dayton. This led to the formation in 1834 of a Bethel Church, which was maintained until 1848.
The first Unitarian and the first Universalist societies were organized in 1831. The Universalists built during the next year, on the east side of Washington Street, a little north of Swan. The Unitarians met in the old court house until 1834, when they had erected the long-familiar church, at the corner of Franklin and Eagle streets, which under- went transformation into the existing Austin Building after many years of sacred use. In 1836 it received as its pastor the Rev. Dr. G. W. Hosmer, who was one of the most beloved of the city for thirty years.
The little church bought by the Methodists from the Presbyterians in 1827 served them, on their Niagara Street ground, until 1832. They gave the use of it then to a Ger- man Protestant congregation, and sheltered themselves in
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PROTESTANT CHURCHES : THIRD DECADE
the basement of a new church, on the same ground, which they were building of stone. 1214066
This German congregation had been gathered by a young evangelist from Switzerland, the Rev. Joseph Gombel, who came to Buffalo in 1831 and joined the First Presbyterian Church. The Buffalo Presbytery appointed him to take up work among the German-speaking people, and he did so with such success that the United Evangelical St. Peter's Church was organized in 1832. In 1835 it received as a gift from its Methodist hosts the little building in which its meetings had been held for three years, and removed it to the corner of Genesee and Hickory streets, where it was continued in use for another fifteen years.
From the First Presbyterian Church a first off-shoot ap- peared in 1832, when some of its former members were united in the organization of a Free Congregational Church, and built a meeting place on the north side of what was then known as the Court House Park, now Lafayette Park. This society, reorganized in 1839 under the name of the Park Presbyterian Church, had no vitality, and seems to have faded out of life; but the homely little building it had created was brought nobly into use in the next decade.
A more successful and important movement of coloniza- tion from the First Presbyterian Church occurred in 1835. It was that which formed the new society known in its early years as the Pearl Street and later as the Central Presby- terian Church. Of its original membership of thirty-five, twenty-nine came from the Presbyterian Church and six from the Free Congregational. Temporarily its meetings were in a rude structure on Pearl Street; but within its first year, or soon after, it had built, on the northwest corner of Pearl and Genesee streets, the costliest and most notable church edifice then adorning the city. The building, in its form, was an exact copy of the Parthenon; the interior was
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CULTURAL EVOLUTION
an ellipse, and the result was acoustic perfection. It was lighted from a dome, through colored glass by day, and at night by a massive chandelier. The exterior was of cut stone. It was a famous edifice in its time, and soon made more famous by the preacher in its pulpit, the Rev. Dr. John C. Lord, who was installed as the pastor of the church on the Ist of February, 1837. He was not eloquent; he was not an orator, in any sense of the term; he was not deep in learning or strong in reasoning; but he possessed the some- thing indefinable which gives to certain men a great per- sonal force.
Another church organized in 1835, in connection with the Associate Reformed Church of America, fell to pieces a few years later, but was reorganized in the next decade and became the First United Presbyterian Church in Buffalo. In that year, too, there were beginnings of meetings which resulted in the forming of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
The next sacred edifice to rise in the city was one that stood lately in the thick of the traffic of the lower streets, and still echoed from its original walls the voices of prayer and sacred song. It was built in 1836, on Washington Street near Swan, by the First Baptist Society, and occupied by that parental society for nearly fifty-eight years, when it became the citadel of the Salvation Army.
The first parting of a church colony from St. Paul's oc- curred in 1836, when Trinity parish was organized and services held for a time in rented rooms on Washington Street; afterward in the Universalist Church on the same street. The new society deferred building for six years.
In 1837 a German society was formed in connection with the Evangelical Association of North America and is still known as the First Church of the Evangelical Association. Its meetings were in a small building on Sycamore Street
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PROTESTANT CHURCHES : THIRD DECADE
until 1839, when a plain church was erected on Mortimer Street, and occupied there for the following seven years. The same building was then removed to the corner of Syca- more and Spruce streets. Also, in 1837, an organization of colored Baptists was effected, conducting services on Michigan Street, between Broadway and William. With help from the Baptist Union, this society survived many vicissitudes.
The year 1839 brought large accessions to the German Lutherans of the city, consequent on the enforced union of Lutheran and Reformed Churches in Prussia, depriving the former of the right to worship according to what they be- lieved to be the faith of the true Lutheran Church. Many Lutheran congregations came then to America, with their pastors, as the Independents and the Puritans of England had come two centuries before. One such body, number- ing about one thousand, led by the Rev. J. A. Grabau, arrived in Buffalo on the 5th of October, and held a Thanks- giving service in a hall at the southwest corner of Main and Eagle streets on the following day. Until the spring of the next year their meetings were in several places; then they built at the corner of Goodell and Maple streets, and their society was incorporated under the name of "The Old Luth- eran Church." It is known likewise as the German Evan- gelical Church of the Holy Trinity. Another large con- gregation of Prussian Lutherans arrived from Silesia in the same year, with their pastor, Rev. C. E. F. Krause. This society, too, held meetings for a time in the hall at Main and Eagle streets, and did not build for itself until 1842. It bears the name of the First German Evangelical Lutheran Trinity Church.
In the Fourth Decade .- Pastor Krause's First German Evangelical Lutheran Trinity Church society built a church for its own services of worship, at the corner of Milnor and
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CULTURAL EVOLUTION
William streets, in 1842 ; and pastor Grabau's Old Lutheran congregation was enlarged by further arrivals from Prussia in that year and the next.
In those years (1842-3) the Trinity society of the Protes- tant Episcopalians built the plain but dignified church edifice, at the corner of Washington and Mohawk streets, which it occupied for forty-two years; and in 1844 there came to it the beloved rector, the Rev. Dr. Edward Inger- soll, who was parted from it only by his death, in 1883. The Universalist Church received its first regular pastor, the Rev. S. R. Smith, in 1843, and its second, the Rev. A. G. Laurie, in 1849.
The oldest of the German Protestant churches, known afterward as the First German Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. John, finished and dedicated in 1843 a build- ing of which it had laid the corner-stone in 1835. In the same year it sent out an off-shoot of thirty families from its membership, who organized a new society, under the name of the German United Evangelical Church of St. Paul, and built for it, in the next year, on Washington Street, between Chippewa and Genesee.
Two new church societies were organized in 1844, one by forty families which parted from the First Baptist Church, to build the two-steepled edifice still standing on Niagara Square; the other by migration from the First Methodist Church, to found Grace M. E. Church, on Michigan and Swan streets, which was dedicated in 1845.
The year 1845 was one of many events in the religious communities of the city. On the 7th of June in that year it was announced in the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser that "there will be preaching by the Rev. Grosvenor W. Heacock in the Park Church to-morrow (Sunday)." This service assembled for the first time a congregation that was organized on the 13th of July following as the Park Church
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PROTESTANT CHURCHES : FOURTH DECADE
Society, and which changed its name on the 21st of October to that of the Lafayette Street Church Society. Thirty-one years later the same preacher, the Rev. Dr. Heacock, con- tinuous pastor of the church from its organization till his death, described, in a historical sermon, the homely edifice in which his pastorship was begun. It was, he said, "as to its interior, a small, old and gloomy church building," while the exterior was no more attractive; "and around it had gathered the wrecks of two or three previous church failures." The congregation which braved the discourage- ments of its past history, in 1845, was gathered by the desire to establish this young preacher in a pulpit of his native city. Son of one of staunchest of the pioneers of Buffalo, gifted with a personality so big and so strong in noble attributes, and yet so simple, so sweet, so transparently pure that its power and its charm were alike irresistible, Grosvenor Heacock, then approaching his twenty-fourth birthday, was the center already of a love and admiration that grew till all the city was embraced. To speak of Dr. Heacock as a great orator might convey the impression that some intention and effort of art was in his speech; and nothing could be farther from the truth. In everything he was, above all else, a spontaneous man. His nature expressed itself openly in everything that could give it expression,-word, action or look; and that was the source of a wonderful eloquence of speech when his soul was stirred.
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