USA > New York > Niagara County > Outpost of empires; a short history of Niagara County > Part 10
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The present town site The village of Youngstown began in 1805 was the farm of Isaac Swain when New York State sold lots in the Mile Strip, the strip of state-owned land a mile wide along the Niagara River. Alexander Millar bought land on the present site of Youngstown. In 1807 he sold it to Isaac Swain, a pioneer farmer.
Youngstown's early years were lively
By 1807 Youngstown showed the usual signs of growth. River Road, forming the main street, was a ribbon of dust edged with grass and without sidewalks. Hitching rails stood in front of log buildings along the streets. Young's store, DeWolfe's wagon shop, Campbell's tavern, a blacksmith shop, and a school house stood close to where River Road and the Youngstown-Lockport Road now meet. Below the steep river banks, boats piled with goods docked in the small harbor.
On Saturdays, settlers, doing the week's trading, crowded Youngstown's dusty streets with their horses and wagons. At De- Wolfe's wagon shop, Campbell's tavern, and on the street corners, knots of traders, boatmen, and settlers exchanged stories, laughed, drank, and sometimes fought. Women did their shopping with their children clutching at their skirts. Sometimes they gathered at Young's store, or in the streets, and passed on bits of gossip. Older children wandered to the docks to stare in wonder at the boats from far-away lake ports, thinking perhaps of questions to ask William Coggswell, the schoolmaster.
Although the town was a busy place on Saturday, it could boast of only six or seven families by 1812. And by December of the next year there were none. Youngstown went up in flames during the War of 1812. Colonel Murray burned the village. Some families living on the outskirts of town escaped. Isaac Swain's family was one of these. That December dawn of 1813, William Swain, Isaac's son, was startled from sleep by the crack of muskets at Fort Ni- agara. The Swain family fled, packing what they could in a sled. As they fled eastward they yelled warnings to others along the way. Industries developed Youngstown was slowly rebuilt after the after the War of 1812 war. In the 1830's, the shipping of oak to Montreal was the main industry. Seven ships, built at Youngstown, carried goods to other lake ports. When the oak forest disappeared, settlers turned to wheat farming. Then flourmills and tanneries, run by water power, replaced ship build- ing and lumbering.
It became a village in 1854 In 1844, Jesse P. Haines, surveyed and mapped the village. But not until ten years later was Youngstown officially incorpo- rated as a village. Since then, it has changed little in size. Today Youngstown is a quiet town of tree-lined streets and neat homes. People living there work in Niagara Falls or in nearby towns. The Youngstown Yacht Club now occupies part of the bay where boats
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once docked. On summer weekends Youngstown is crowded with people going yachting or fishing, or on their way to visit nearby Fort Niagara.
The River Road runs southward from Youngstown along the river bank, past La Belle Famille where the French lost an empire in 1759, past Five Mile Meadow where Murray landed in 1813, and then up a small rise finally entering Lewiston.
What accounts for Lewiston's growth?
It was favorably located More than is true of most towns, time and place shaped the life of Lewiston. In a time of roadless wilderness, it stood by a waterway that led into the heart of a continent. For a long time it was the center of trade routes. The village was also the best landing on the lower Niagara River, because it is the only break for miles in the fifty foot high banks. Beyond Lewiston toward the Falls, these banks tower over three hundred feet, forming a can- yon alive with boiling rapids. Thus boats coming up river on the American side have to dock at Lewiston.
Lewiston, as the lower landing of the portage, had a colorful history long before Americans turned it into a boom town. Senecas sent Neuters fleeing and burned Onguiaahra in 1651. For seventy years little happened on the site. Then in 1720 the French quietly seized it. The French Portage Master, Joncaire, raised Magazin Royal and began French trade on the portage. Six years later the French built Fort Niagara at the mouth of the river and held it until the British took over in 1759. John Stedman now replaced Joncaire as Portage Master and set about improving the portage to carry more trade. Captain Montressor built an inclined railway up Lewiston Hill, increasing trade. Thus Lewiston, or Lower Landing as it was then called, became an important trade center. But not until American settlers came did Lewiston or Lower Land- ing grow rapidly.
Men with ambition settled there During the period between 1783 and 1796, a few American drovers trickled into the raw frontier settlement. In the 1780's Mid- daugh opened a log tavern to serve frontiersmen and Indians. In the late 1780's Silas Hopkins, his son, and Benjamin Barton each drove cattle to Fort Niagara and later settled at Lewiston. In the 1790's Joshua Fairbanks and his wife set up a tavern and store at Lower Landing. About the same time, Jonas Harrison- lawyer, teacher, and customs collector-unpacked his law books and offered his services to the settlement.
Five years later, in 1798, Joseph Ellicott had the Mile Strip surveyed and laid out the town of Lewiston. Soon afterward came the Cookes, who were businessmen, lawyers, and lawmakers. The Cookes added fame and numbers to the growing frontier settle- ment. The Hustlers also were an interesting part of the settlement. Tom and his wife Kate, supposed models for the tavern keepers in James Fenimore Cooper's book, The Spy, ran a lively tavern.
After 1800 other settlers pushed into the settlement, seeking land. But the land was still owned by New York State. So Joseph Annin also surveyed the Mile Strip for the State in 1803. Two years later he divided the village into lots. Land buyers, like Alexander Millar, snapped up choice lots at auction. Most lots were soon sold. Enough settlers had now arrived to form a village. They named their settlement Lewis Town, in honor of Governor Morgan Lewis, who signed the bill creating Lewis Town. The two dozen or so villagers now looked forward proudly to becoming a great city, especially if the planned canal linking Lake Erie and Lake Ontario passed through Lewiston. They also thought the port- age would bring about growth if it could be repaired and put into operation again.
The Porter, Barton, and Company's re- vival of the Niagara Portage made it a boom town While Lewiston was being settled, the portage that had caused so much fighting among the French, Indians, and British lay largely unused. The portage was part of the Mile Strip. No one could take over the portage without permission from New York State. But in 1805 all this changed. Augustus and Peter B. Porter, Major Benjamin Barton, and Joseph Annin got the right to be the only ones to use the portage. The company they formed now held the land link in the waterway the French and British had fought over. In 1805 the portage was still the key to trans- portation into the heart of North America. Now it carried goods to American settlements in the west as well as fur trade goods.
In time Porter, Barton, and Company built a shipping empire that covered the eastern states. They built their own ships and warehouses and made agreements with other shipping companies. Soon their company controlled much of the Great Lakes trade. And the key to their vast empire was the Niagara Portage. Their earnings from shipping barrels of salt and molasses over the portage came to over $36,000 in one year alone. This was a huge sum in those days, when hired hands earned ten dollars a month.
Porter, Barton, and Company brought tremendous growth to Lewiston. The village grew rapidly as settlers streamed in. In 1807
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John Latta set up a tannery. And Dr. Alvord, and a blacksmith, and a druggist opened shop. The village, now a busy settlement, echoed to the sound of hammer and saw as new buildings sprang up. The raw smell of fresh cut lumber hung about the village. Two frame houses and five or six log houses, as well as shops, stood beside roads deep with ruts. But village pride was hurt at the sight of hogs and bears running loose. So, the town fathers ordered hogs yoked or fenced in, and bears shot. They paid a five dollar bounty on bear scalps.
More settlers poured in. Among them came another doctor, Willard Smith, to help heal the increasing population. In 1811, Lewiston became a port of entry for ships and goods coming into the United States from Canada. The collector of customs was the leading politician in the village. The War of 1812 destroyed the village. But after the war, ambitious and confident citizens re- turned and rebuilt their village. Lewiston continued booming.
The village soon had an "upper class." Hotchkiss' store adver- tised the finest selection of imported goods in Western New York. Lewiston fashions, up to date and fancy, caused many backwoods folks to stare in wonder. Stately homes graced shady, tree-lined streets. Well-groomed horses, hitched to fine carriages, pranced through the village. Glittering social affairs at Kelsey's Hotel kept village gossips talking for weeks. But in time Barton's Frontier House became the leading hotel.
The village had its other side too. It swarmed with people coming and going - traders, Indians, settlers, and riff-raff. Wagons, rattling west, lined the streets, waiting for the ferry to Canada and American settlements further west in Michigan. In dry weather dust clouds hung over the streets and in wet weather wagons churned the streets to mud. Below the hill by the river, boatmen and woodsmen and tramps, drunk and loud voiced, stag- gered from one tavern to another. And the poor, huddled in their dirty shacks by the river or on the edge of town, ate their salt pork and cornbread.
But Lewiston had much to be proud of-the first court, the first printing office, and the first newspaper, the Niagara Demo- crat. It also had a bakery, a stage office, and mills and docks by the river. It also boasted of Lewiston Academy, the finest school in Western New York. It had mail service twice a week, and later, more often.
All signs pointed to a great future for the busy settlement on the river. Confident merchants and public leaders talked loudly and often of Lewiston, "the future county seat of Niagara County."
And a state committee had reported the village as the best place for a canal linking Lake Ontario with Lake Erie.
The Erie Canal trans- formed it into a residential town But Lewiston's days as the largest and busiest village in Niagara County were com- ing to an end. The portage and river that made it thrive now chained it to the past. Lewiston's future was bound to the Portage. As the canal, and later railroads and better roads appeared, the portage became less im- portant and was abandoned. Gradually Lewiston became less busy. Much of the population moved on to Buffalo, then booming. Mills and docks rotted. Lewiston became a gentle town, quiet after its wild boom years. It went to sleep.
This did not happen at once. The drive of early years carried growth forward for a while. But blow after blow staggered the village. The planned canal joining Lake Erie and Lake Ontario was never started. In 1821, Lockport was chosen as the county seat of Niagara County. But the hardest blow was the completion of the Erie Canal, making the portage unnecessary. Reeling under this blow, Lewiston never recovered.
One of the major engineering feats of the Erie Canal, the Lockport locks.
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After World War II, the village awakened again to the whine of saws and the rap of hammers. Lewiston became a booming residential area. The population increased from 1,626 in 1950 to 3,012 in 1957. In the 1950's the rumble of heavy machines, tearing at the cliffs, set villagers wondering about the future, as the Niagara Power Project took shape. But what the giant hydro- electric power plant will do for Lewiston is a question for the future to answer.
How did Suspension Bridge get its name?
Up Lewiston Hill and a few miles south of Lewiston on the Portage Road was a small settlement. Only a few pioneer farmers lived in the area before the 1840's. Then the Bellevue Land Com- pany bought the land about the settlement, cut it into lots, and offered the lots for sale. The company had few buyers and failed. However, it did leave the name Bellevue tied to the settlement.
Bellevue really began to grow in the late 1840's. In 1848 a foot and carriage bridge was built across the gorge to Canada. The bridge brought people and people brought business. In 1854, the settlement had grown enough to officially become the village of Niagara City. After the first railroad bridge to Canada was com- pleted in 1855, Niagara City soon became a railroad center. It continued to grow as the area expanded in manufacturing and transportation. And again its name was changed; this time Niagara City became Suspension Bridge, honoring the bridge that had brought growth and prosperity. Finally, in 1892, with a population of over 5,000, Suspension Bridge became part of the City of Niagara Falls.
How was Fort Schlosser influenced by the river?
Running southward from Suspension Bridge, the Portage Road tied Lewiston to the settlement of Fort Schlosser on the Upper Niagara River.
Since the days of the French, a fort had guarded the upper end of the portage. In 1745, a stockade surrounded French storehouses there. In 1751 Fort Little Niagara was built. It protected the upper portage first from Indians, and later from the English. During the French and Indian War in 1759, Captain Pouchot, commander of Fort Niagara, ordered the second Fort Little Ni- agara burned to keep it from English hands. After the French surrendered and paddled away from Niagara County, Captain Schlosser of the British Army raised Fort Schlosser near the ruins of the second Fort Little Niagara. John Stedman, who replaced Joncaire as Portage Master, lived in a house nearby.
In 1796, a tavern and a few cabins and Indian bark shacks stood in the clearing around Fort Schlosser. But the settlement never prospered. In 1806, Porter, Barton, and Company took it over as a landing for their shipping trade over the portage. It lingered on until the British burned it in 1813.
Three-quarters of a mile west of Fort Schlosser, closer to the falls, began the settlement of Manchester destined to become one of the most important power centers in the world. It started with Augustus Porter, who planned to use power from the Niagara River.
How did the Founding Fathers aid development of Niagara Falls?
Augustus Porter Augustus Porter, born into an important planned an industrial Connecticut family in 1769, lived during city exciting and fateful days. By the time he was twenty, he had seen thirteen British colonies become a nation-the United States. The American Revo- lution was the background of his boyhood. One of his earliest memories was of men meeting at his home, and the ring of angry voices from the parlor, demanding liberty from the English. As a small boy he remembered rag-tag American colonials drilling in the village square for war with England. At six he stood in the dusty streets of Salisbury village, waving good-bye to soldiers marching to war. At ten he saw grief and tears on the faces of women receiving war news. At thirteen he watched ragged vet- erans straggling home from war. A few years later, he listened excitedly to the eager talk of soldiers going west to carve empires and fortunes from the forest. And he caught the fever of these restless times.
His restlessness and dreams did not pass as he grew older. His father was a physician, but Augustus had little interest in the quiet life of a small town doctor. So he turned to the outdoors. At seventeen he worked for a surveyor, picking up knowledge of the trade. But more and more the talk of vast lands waiting to be conquered filled his thoughts. At twenty the course of his life changed. At that time his father bought land in Western New York, near the Genesee River. In 1789 Augustus traveled west with a small party to survey the land. They plodded from Salis- bury, Connecticut, to Albany, and then poled and portaged to Canandaigua and the Genesee Valley.
And so began many years of surveying and wandering in the western wilderness. In 1795 Augustus gazed upon Niagara Falls
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and marked the spot as a future site for a city. In 1796 he surveyed land in Ohio. On that trip, supplies gave out and he had to live on rattlesnake meat. In that same year he married a girl from Hart- ford, Connecticut. In 1797-1798 he worked for Robert Morris and Joseph Ellicott, surveying the boundaries of the Holland Land Purchase.
Gradually he changed from small town youth into a frontiers- man, quick and hard and sure of himself. His eyes and ears sharp- ened to the wilderness. He knew the rustle of wolves in the under- brush, the scream of panthers, the shuffle of bear, and the sounds of other forest animals. At night from his blankets beside the fire, he listened to the moaning wind in the tree-tops. At times he fol- lowed forest trails so narrow his saddle bags brushed thickets on both sides. Towering far above, trees shut out the sun, making the forest trail gloomy in the half-light.
But in all his wanderings, Porter never gave up his dreams of carving an empire from the wilderness. After his first wife died in 1799, he settled in Canandaigua, closer to the wilderness of the Niagara Frontier. In 1801 he married Jane Howell, but still he roamed the western forest, always surveying and buying land. In time he knew Western New York-its creeks, swamps, lakes, trails, and Indians-as few other white men did.
Porter, Barton and Company attracted settlers
In 1805, at the age of thirty-six, his years of wandering ended. Augustus gained a government contract to supply western posts and the exclusive right from New York State to use the Portage Road for thirteen years. With his brother Peter, Benjamin Barton, and Joseph Annin, he formed Porter, Barton, and Company. From the new settlement of Man- chester by the Falls, Porter directed the company.
Under his leadership, the company built a shipping empire stretching from New York to Michigan, and from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi. Goods hauled from Montreal and Albany were unloaded at Lewiston and passed over the portage to Fort Schlosser. Loaded into boats there, the goods were poled up river to Black Rock and waiting lake vessels. Fleets of ships owned or hired by the company then carried the supplies into the heart of North America.
Porter spent most of the years 1805 and 1806 lining up men and equipment to operate this vast shipping empire. The work required was unbelievable. The company constructed warehouses, mills, houses, boats, ships, and docks. To keep goods moving, they hired boatmen, teamsters, clerks, carpenters, blacksmiths, farmers, and
sailors. Their need for wagons, horses, and oxen never ended. The company also had the problem of feeding men and animals. They bought land, cleared the forest, and planted crops to feed men and animals. At Manchester, the company built a sawmill, flour-mill, rope walk, and a boat yard, to supply their needs.
In 1806 Porter took his wife, son, and month-old baby from Canandaigua to Fort Schlosser. Fort Schlosser was not a sight to gladden the heart of a young wife and mother. Brush and grass grew in roads and footpaths, even coming up between the floor boards in some buildings. Rotting cabins stood empty, their doors ajar, windows staring blankly, and roofs sagging. Scurrying mice, rattlesnakes, and other creatures nested in and about buildings. The weather-beaten fort and barracks drooped nearby. The two families living there in miserable poverty did not make the place any more inviting. And the whole settlement, including the orchard, was surrounded by a towering oak forest. The only open spot was on the river bank, looking out onto the river.
The Porters moved into the old, rundown Stedman house, built in 1761. Jane Porter began the hard work of cleaning it. She eased her work somewhat by thinking of the fine brick house being built at Manchester. Helpful, too, was the thought that her husband was doing what he wanted, living and building in the wilderness he had visited so often in the past seventeen years. But wolves howling around the house at night, and bears killing sheep, made her uneasy.
Indians bothered her, too. Painted and feathered and wrapped in blankets, they visited her husband at all hours, day or night. Usually they came at night and entered without knocking. After eating and drinking, they slept on the kitchen floor before the fire. Next morning they vanished before the household stirred. Al- though her husband laughed at her fears, she never felt quite safe with Indians in the house. She also worried about the boys riding horses seven miles through the woods to school at Lewiston. Wolves and drunken Indians might harm them.
Porter founded Manchester
Part of Augustus Porter's dream was to raise a city to supply the shipping empire he had helped build. Soon after 1806, he made Fort Schlosser a shipping center. He built docks, houses for teamsters and boatmen, and barns for oxen and horses. He also added a blacksmith shop and sawmill.
But it was the settlement by the falls that he tried to build into an industrial city. After surveying it, he even named it Man- chester after the famous industrial city in England. He offered
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lots for fifty dollars an acre, hoping to bring settlers. Showing his own faith in its future, he moved his family to their new home in Manchester in 1809.
The settlement grew steadily. Mills, shops, a school house, and Fairchild's Eagle Tavern brought more settlers. But it was still a raw frontier settlement. The main street was a mud hole or a dust cloud, depending on the weather. Only small scattered clearings for houses and gardens broke the solid blanket of forest covering the village. Settlers dodged chickens, hogs, and sometimes cows, wandering in the streets. At night wise villagers shut up all live- stock because of bears and wolves.
De Witt Clinton, future governor, rode through the village looking for a canal route in 1810. He wrote in his notebook that Manchester had a flour mill, sawmill, and tannery on the road beside the river. A post office in the Porter home, a tavern, a rope walk, and a few houses were half-hidden in the village woods. By 1813 a store joined the other buildings in the woods about the Falls. Whitney, De Veaux and Thomas worked for Manchester's future One day in 1812, a stocky man in his late twenties rode into Manchester. Parkhurst Whitney in time became a leading man in the little frontier community. Whitney did not work in the mills or on the farms of Porter, Barton, and Company. He rented a mill but soon saw future prosperity in the people viewing the wondrous Falls. He opened a tavern and prospered for a few months. Then came the War of 1812.
During the War, old Fort Schlosser was repaired and two hundred soldiers were stationed there. But they scattered before the attack of General Riall and his Indians. Riall and the Indians burned Manchester and Fort Schlosser as they had other settle- ments on the frontier. Only Fairchild's Eagle Tavern and two other buildings escaped the torch. At the time of the attack Augustus Porter was away on business. Jane Porter, piling val- uables on a sled, slipped away with her children in the dead of night, headed for Canandaigua. They remained at Canandaigua until the war ended.
No new buildings went up until after the War of 1812. Park- hurst Whitney, who had fought well at Queenston Heights, re- turned to his ruined inn. He found it a complete loss. Fairchild, who lacked faith in the future of Manchester, sold his Eagle Tavern to Whitney. Whitney began improvements, looking for- ward to the future tourist trade. In 1819 he built a large addition to the tavern. In 1820 Whitney gave a public dinner to celebrate
the completion of the improvements in the Eagle Hotel. One hundred guests attended, and the dinner was the talk of the com- munity for years. Later he bought the Cataract House to handle the overflow customers from the Eagle Hotel. In the following years most tourists seeking food and lodging stopped at Whitney's hotels.
Whitney was not the only one who saw the end of the portage carrying trade. The Porters also knew that the Erie Canal, then under construction, meant the end of the portage. So in 1815 Porter bought Goat Island for industrial development and tourist trade. The bridge the Porters built to the island carried goods and sightseers for many years.
In 1817 Samuel DeVeaux moved to Manchester. At the age of nineteen he had been appointed supplier at Fort Niagara. De- Veaux settled on a farm near the Whirlpool and opened a store close by the Falls. In a short time he had a name for fair and honest trading. In later years he was postmaster, judge, and law- maker. His interest in the Falls led him to write a guide book for tourists. After his death, he left his fortune to establish a school for orphaned boys. De Veaux School is still operating.
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