USA > New York > Niagara County > Outpost of empires; a short history of Niagara County > Part 11
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Not long after DeVeaux moved to Manchester, another man of importance to the community arrived. The day Dr. Ambrose Thomas came in 1821, wives and mothers breathed a sigh of relief. Fear of sickness always nagged them. Thoughts of cholera or typhoid brought a hot flash of panic. Dr. Thomas's neat white house was a comfort to the village. At any hour, day or night, winter or summer, he was ready with his horse and buggy to visit the sick in the village and surrounding woodlands.
Four years after Dr. Thomas arrived, the Erie Canal was completed. Although the Erie Canal slowed down the growth of Manchester, the village had other resources. As well as being beautiful, fast falling water is a source of power. And it was water power that fulfilled Augustus Porter's dream of an indus- trial city at the brink of the Falls. By 1825 villagers knew their future depended upon tourists and water power. But this is the story of another chapter.
What happened to La Salle as a result of its growth?
Eastward from Manchester, past Fort Schlosser, the Niagara River branches at Cayuga Island. The Little Niagara River, flow- ing between the island and the main bank, is joined by Cayuga Creek. Where creek and Little Niagara meet was a settlement called Cayuga Creek. Cayuga Creek settlement was also the place
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where the Military Road, running between Buffalo and Lewiston, met the Fort Schlosser Road which ran between Cayuga Creek and Manchester.
Near the junction of creeks and roads, Big Smith raised a log cabin in 1806. In time, stage coaches stopped there, giving passen- gers a chance to stretch before jolting on to Lewiston or Buffalo. In spite of roads and waterways, Cayuga Creek grew slowly. By 1850, there were only two houses, a sawmill, a blacksmith shop, and a tavern at the junction of Military and Fort Schlosser Roads.
But one summer day in 1867 the little settlement was crowded with people. Flags and banners draped houses and tavern. Village officials, carrying stove-pipe hats, their long black coats flapping in the wind, stood on a platform decorated with flags. On horse back, in wagons, or standing in the dusty road, villagers listened to speeches. Village leaders spoke of the great French explorer La Salle and of his brave little ship, the Griffon, built nearby on Little Niagara River. And finally they noted how. fitting it was for Cayuga Creek to be renamed La Salle. After the shouting and cheering stopped ringing in the nearby forests, the men filed into the tavern to argue the future of La Salle. And the women and children gathered in nearby homes, brightening their dull lives with gossip.
In September, 1897, La Salle village again celebrated an im- portant event. This time the village was incorporated and legally became a village. But in spite of all hopes for La Salle, its growth was painfully slow. By 1902 it had a population of only seven hundred.
Then came World War I. Under the pressure for more goods to fight the war, La Salle expanded rapidly. Size also brought headaches. The village had to provide water, police, and fire pro- tection, and many other services. Increased services meant higher taxes. Faced with increasing taxes, La Salle listened carefully to offers by Niagara Falls officials to make the village a part of Niagara Falls. This would make public services cheaper. After heated arguments, La Salle finally became part of the City of Niagara Falls in 1927.
How did the founding of Bergholtz differ from that of other settlements near the Niagara River?
Northeast of La Salle, Bergholtz Creek flows into Cayuga Creek. In the 1840's, Prussian Lutherans left Germany to escape religious persecution and settled by Bergholtz Creek. Ministers,
schoolmasters, and skilled workers came with the group from Germany. They set up a religious community which is still prosper- ing after a hundred years.
Busily going about daily living, early towns along lake, river, and creek were soon to undergo changes. Another strip of water, the Grand Erie Canal, brought changes few people even dreamed about. Hardly a settlement in Niagara County escaped the in- fluence of the canal. Some stopped growing, while many new ones sprang up along the canal, as we shall see in the next chapter.
8. Settlements spring up along canal and escarpment
The Erie Canal brings life or death to towns
About five miles southeast from Cayuga Creek, Tonawanda Creek joins the Niagara River. Winding and twisting westward from Batavia, the creek forms the southern boundary of Niagara County. At the time of settlement, the creek drained the Great Tonawanda Swamp that began a few miles east of the Niagara River.
Beginning near the mouth of Tonawanda Creek, the Grand Erie Canal (now part of the New York State Barge Canal System) stretched over three hundred miles to Albany, New York. After its completion in 1825, many early settlements died. And overnight wilderness farms became new sites of thriving villages and towns.
How did North Tonawanda grow into a city?
George Burger was an early settler The settlement of North Tonawanda took root in the unbroken forest where the Ni- agara River and Tonawanda Creek join. In 1809 a wagon lurched through the woods north of the creek. George Burger, dressed in homespun grey and a black felt hat, guided his oxen with a long stick. He walked beside them, trying to avoid deep holes in the crude road. The broad rimmed wheels sank deeply into the soft mud. Sometimes the wagons jolted to a stop. Man and oxen struggled to get it moving again. Pools of black water formed in the ruts, reminders of the swamp close by. All the while, clouds of mosquitoes and flies hung about man and oxen, biting until blood flowed.
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The forest gloom was thickening to night before Burger reached a clearing he had cut from the forest. Approaching the clearing, he saw among the trees the dark shape of the lean-to he had built earlier. By the lean-to he yelled the oxen to a halt. Un- yoking the animals, he staked them out to graze, planning to un- load the wagon next day.
After building a campfire and eating, Burger sat staring into the fire. Visions of the farm he would build in the wilderness filled his mind. The campfire burned low and the night dampness chilled him and brought his dreaming to an end. Carrying wood from a nearby pile, he threw it on the fire and crawled into his blankets. Sometime during the night, the snort and stamp of the oxen awoke him. He piled more wood on the fire to keep wolves away and rolled into his blankets again. Next day he was up before the fog had cleared the forest, eager to start raising his home-the first in the future North Tonawanda.
to stop at Van Slyke's. Passengers, sore and stiff from bouncing around in the stage, climbed down to rest and eat at the inn. Not far from Van Slyke's tavern a small creek cut through the forest to the Niagara River. Here a third pioneer, Joshua Pettit, built a cabin and tavern near the creek that later bore his name. From his farm by the creek, Pettit was one of the first settlers to boat his goods to markets and mills at Manchester (Niagara Falls) down river.
Early settlers traded at Manchester
Manchester was near the Upper Landing of the portage and so was a gateway to eastern markets. It is also a trading center for the surrounding area. Mills there turned out the flour and lumber that pioneers needed so much. Most early pioneers followed Pettit and traded in Manchester. They pushed their boats, loaded with farm produce, from wooded creeks and inlets and drifted down river to Manchester. On the return trip, men dragged the heavy, flat-bottomed boats up river with ropes. A man on the boat, using a pole, kept it clear of shore and snags. In time the path on shore, worn by the feet of many straining men, was known as the towpath.
Other settlers came Burger had little company in the forest and taverns appeared the first year. The only humans he saw were a few horsemen and passengers in the stages that rumbled along Military Road between Lewiston Settlers traded at Manchester until the Erie Canal was com- and Buffalo. Then other pioneers came. One of them, Garrett Van pleted in 1825. Of course, no trading took place during the War of Slyke, thought an inn would make money, and in 1810 he built a 1812, when Manchester was burned. Not only Manchester, but log tavern close to the Lewiston-Buffalo Road. Soon stages began North Tonawanda also, went up in flames in the war.
Stopping to change teams. The stagecoach and tavern were a common sight in the Niagara Frontier region.
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The War of 1812 de- destroyed North Tonawanda
When the war broke out in 1812, one small block house on the south shore of Tona- wanda Creek guarded the settlement. It was manned by sixteen United States reg- ulars. It might have been destroyed in 1812 rather than in 1813, but for the quick thinking of the lieutenant in command of the block house.
One clear day in 1812, a guard's yell brought the lieutenant to the top deck of the block house. Snatching the field glass, he peered in the direction the guard pointed. Across the Niagara River on Grand Island, he saw several hundred redcoats and Indians lining the banks. He also noticed that some British soldiers pointed toward the blockhouse. He watched the enemy on Grand Island a few moments longer. Then he gave a few sharp commands and a small troop in blue and buff uniforms marched smartly from the blockhouse. The ruffle of drums and the shrill clear notes of the fife carried the tune "Yankee Doodle" to the surrounding forest.
After the British had seen them, the men marched back into the blockhouse. Inside, they turned their uniforms inside out and left the block house again. Perhaps the British thought a large force was on guard for they did not attack.
But in December, 1813, British and Indians captured and burned the block house and the nearby settlement. Settlers around the creek mouth fled eastward before the onrushing British and Indians. They buried what belongings they could not carry, hoping to get them later. After the danger had passed, they straggled back to their ruined homes.
More pioneers settled After the War of 1812, more settlers drift- in North Tonawanda ed into the settlement that later became North Tonawanda. In 1818, Steven Jacobs rode into the settlement, then a cluster of a dozen or so cabins, surrounded by woods and swamps. Jacobs was born in Massa- chusetts. At the age of seventeen, he had fired on charging lines of British redcoats at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Like many others after the Revolution, he wandered westward to seek his fortune.
The next year, James Carney settled on Tonawanda Island at the mouth of the creek. Carney worked for Porter, Barton, and Company as a teamster and boatman. He passed the island many times as he poled goods between Fort Schlosser and Black Rock. Attracted by the beauty of forest-covered Tonawanda Island, he lived there many years.
Besides settlers, others tramped through Irish workers came to dig the canal the mud of the frontier settlement follow- ing the War of 1812. Sturdy immigrant workers, speaking English with a pleasant accent, came to dig the Erie Canal. Plastered with mud from the digging of the canal, some roamed the settlement's unpaved streets. Others drove wagons loaded with dirt, stone, lumber, and supplies down the deeply rutted streets. And they lived in flimsy shanties by the creek, and brawling, drinking, and gambling, they livened up the settlement in the early 1820's.
Niagara Village took root
In 1823, a dam across Tonawanda Creek raised the water four feet. Tonawanda Creek now became a part of the Erie Canal. The next year a bridge replaced the old rope-drawn ferry across the creek.
When the canal was completed in 1825, hopeful villagers looked forward to a booming future. They felt their village had much to draw settlers. For one thing, the Erie Canal was a route to eastern markets. For another, a daily stagecoach tied the settlement to Buffalo and Lewiston. And finally, the recently-built Niagara Hotel offered rooms to travelers and businessmen.
Three businessmen, James and John Sweeney and George Goundry, also thought the future looked bright for the settlement at the creek mouth. So in 1824 they formed a company, bought land, and laid out Niagara Village (North Tonawanda). Their lots, however, did not sell and the company failed. The canal buildings, barges, wagons, and the swarms of workmen, had given a false idea about the growth of Niagara Village. After they fin- ished the canal, many of the workers and their families moved on, and wagons, shanties, and buildings disappeared. For a time the village was almost deserted, and from 1825 to 1830 the growth of Niagara Village all but stopped.
A few settlers, however, continued to trickle into the village. In 1825, William Vandervoort bought 1700 acres from the Holland Land Company. And in 1828, James Sweeney, who had helped lay out Niagara Village in 1824, moved from Buffalo to the village. He gave a "gospel lot" for a Methodist Church and a "larn'n" ("learning") lot for a school house in the village.
During this period, Stephen White arrived from Salem, Massa- chusetts. White, so the story goes, had fled west to escape vicious gossip following his trial for murder. He was also a representative for a Boston lumber company that cut oak on Grand Island. On
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Tonawanda Island he built a mansion, Beechwater, where famous Americans visited him. During his ten year-stay, his daughter married Fletcher Webster, son of the great orator, Senator Daniel Webster. Daniel Webster visited often at Beechwater. In awe of the mighty Daniel, villagers named Webster Street in his honor.
Although the village was small, an industry was stirring that would make North Tonawanda world-famous. The lumbering industry that made it a success started in the 1840's. White oak on Grand Island was excellent for ship-building, and villagers made good use of it. The graceful clipper ships built in New Eng- land used some of this oak. But the story of the lumbering industry belongs to another chapter.
Industries helped Niagara Village become a city As industry grew, so did the village. In 1857 Niagara Village which for some time had been called North Tonawanda, sepa- rated from the Town of Tonawanda and became part of the Town of Wheatfield. And in 1865 it was in- corporated under the name of North Tonawanda. Finally in 1897 it became the City of North Tonawanda.
From North Tonawanda, the Tonawanda Creek that formed part of the Erie Canal, snaked north and east nine miles to Pendle- ton. At Pendleton canal and creek separated. Tonawanda Creek flowed east through Batavia, and the Erie Canal went north to Lockport.
What events helped Lockport change from a wilderness to a village?
Before 1820 the present site of Lockport was a dense forest. Rarely did sunlight sift through the roof of branches and strike the forest floor. Bear, deer, and wolves prowled in the underbrush and roamed over narrow trails criss-crossing the shadowy forest. A cabin was built at Cold Spring and settlers arrived
Where the road between Batavia and Fort Niagara cut through the Lockport area, there was the famous Cold Spring. Tracks of men and animals marked the mud edg- ing the bubbling water. The charred wood of campfires dotted the area about the spring. In 1802, Adam Strouse built a shelter for Philip Beach, the mail carrier between Batavia and Fort Niagara, at Cold Spring. This was the first cabin in the Lockport area. In 1805, another pioneer, Charles Wilbur, built a tavern in the area. It soon became a stopping place for travelers.
Over the Batavia-Fort Niagara Road tramped Nathan Com- stock about 1816. Comstock halted his oxen at the north end of
present Lockport. Soon the ring of his ax and the crash of falling trees echoed in the forest as he raised a cabin in the wilderness. A few years later, in 1820, Esek Brown, a distant neighbor of Comstock, opened his unfinished tavern.
A new village chose its name
Brown's tavern and the whole frontier were soon to undergo great changes as the Erie Canal turned the area into a roar- ing boom town.
Soon after David Thomas, state surveyor, laid out the exact site of the canal locks, buildings began to go up. A village soon sprang up where canal locks lowered boats down the escarpment. Brown's remodeled and expanded tavern became the Lockport Hotel. Pioneers in the area surveyed their land and offered lots for sale to incoming settlers. Another surveyor, Jesse P. Haines, called a meeting at the Lockport Hotel to choose a name for the new village. Haines wanted the name Lockborough. But most vil- lagers present voted for Lockport, a name suggested by Dr. Isaac Smith, one of the Quaker leaders. The Quakers began settlement in 1816 and in 1819 established a church and school.
The boom begins Now the village had a name, streets, lots, and was ready for settlers. The trickle of settlers into the village increased rapidly. Immigrant canal work- ers and their families came into Lockport. Contractors pitched tents or built shanties along the canal. Irish workers moved into company dwellings or built their own log cabins to form "Irish town," a little community of canal workers. In the evenings, young men spent their time laughing, drinking, and brawling. Close on the heels of the canal workers came lawyers, merchants, carpen- ters, masons, gamblers, tavern keepers, thieves, and riff-raff. They came in covered wagons, carriages, and stage coaches. Others trotted in on horse back or straggled in on foot. They crowded muddy streets dressed in city finery, work woolens, homespun, or buckskins. By the end of 1821, population had grown from a few dozen to over two thousand.
Some of the earliest settlers to come were merchants. On a summer day in 1821, Morris Tucker drove into Lockport in a wagon piled high with goods. His big wagon creaked down the main street to Brown's Lockport Hotel. He stored his merchandise there and began building a general store. Three weeks later, Tucker opened his store, and boasted of having the second largest building in Lockport.
Tucker soon had competition. House and Boughton, and Leb- beus Fish opened stores and became leading merchants in Lock-
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port. Later George Roger's blacksmith shop, John Jackson's bakery, and Elliott Lewis' harness shop opened for business. Soon other shops with nodding and smiling owners dotted the village.
Settlement continued. Axmen hacked streets from the forest and more buildings went up. Carpenters were busy everywhere. The human flood needed hotels, restaurants, stores, houses, and stables. The village changed constantly. Day by day new streets and buildings appeared. And an endless dull roar filled the village. Axes, hammers, saws, picks, and shovels rapped, whined, or clat- tered everywhere. Yelling and cursing teamsters drove wagons around tree stumps in the muddy streets. And above the din was the quake and roar of black powder blasting rock for the canal locks. Each blast brought a shower of rocks thumping onto the tops of nearby buildings.
. Goods and wagons choked Lockport's muddy streets. Freight wagons dumped tons of goods around the village. Before stores, mountains of packing boxes waited to be put on shelves and counters. Fresh-cut lumber stood stacked by half-finished build- ings. Haystacks stood by stables and barns. Logs and rocks from construction areas lay everywhere, even 'blocking some streets. And through the mud and confusion jolted canal wagons, hauling supplies.
Blasting with DuPont's black powder for the Lockport locks.
Brown's Lockport Hotel became the village Lockport Hotel be- came business center business center. Lawyers, merchants, land buyers, and contractors boarded there, crowding the smoke-filled bar room. Tracking the floor with muddy boots, they shouldered through the crowds, seeking friends and business acquaintances. With cigars and whiskey nearby, some sat at tables examining deeds and contracts. Business often was transacted in the streets. Land buyers, coats flapping, hurried about waving deeds at possible customers. Sometimes lots changed hands several times. „Business boomed.
The rapidly expanding village also had its problems. It lacked sewers and garbage collection. Trash heaps beside buildings made nests for rats and a breeding ground for typhoid and cholera germs. As the summer wore on, the smell in some parts of town was almost unbearable. Not until the boom passed was the village kept clean.
By the end of 1821, anyone who had been in the Lockport area in 1820 would not have recognized it. The deer, bear, and wolves were gone. Homes, shops, and other buildings replaced most of the forest. Canal workers had torn a great gash in the earth, heaping mountains of rock and dirt along its edge. But Lockport was more than a boom town-quick to live and quick to die. Beneath the rush and hustle, the village was building a firm foundation. Most merchants and shop owners remained after the boom days ended. Some canal workers and their families moved on, others stayed. In time blacksmiths, harness makers, and others built small in- dustries.
Lockport became the The village also showed other signs of last- county seat in 1821 ing. Lockport was chosen over Lewiston as the county seat of the newly reorganized Niagara County in 1821. The new county included the land north of Tonawanda Creek and west of Orleans County. In that same year mail and stage coach service arrived. Orsamus Turner bought the Lockport Observatory, the village newspaper. Pamela Aldrich also opened a school in the Quaker meeting house in 1821.
The section of the canal between Lockport and Albany was completed in 1823. But the section of the canal between Lockport and Pendleton still waited to be completed. When barges arrived at Lockport, goods had to be portaged overland to Pendleton and then by canalized Tonawanda Creek to Buffalo. The profitable carrying trade between Lockport and Pendleton did not last long. In 1825 the canal locks were completed.
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Lafayette visited Niagara County
A short time before the completion of the locks in June 1825, Lafayette, hero of the Revolution, rode into Lockport. The village lacked cannon to greet him, but blasting powder for the canal was set to go off as he passed. When he stepped from the stagecoach before the Washington House, the only carpet in the village was spread for him to walk upon. And when his canal boat left, the whole village turned out to give him a noisy farewell.
A few months after Lafayette boarded a packet boat and headed east, the canal was completed. Lockport's bustling and brawling days passed. The village quieted to a slow, steady growth. Although the population had been greater during the boom years, in 1829 Lockport Village had twenty-one hundred people. In that year it was incorporated as the second official village in Niagara County.
How did Gasport develop?
The Erie Canal, with piles of earth and rock on its banks, stretched eastward from Lockport to Gasport. As with many villages, Gasport was a result of the canal. Located between canal and Niagara escarpment, it began on land owned by the Holland Land Company.
The area about Gasport had settlers shortly after 1800. In 1803, under the leadership of such men as Gad Warner, a settle- ment took root a little north of the present Gasport. In the be- ginning, settlers had little time for anything but work in their struggle to stay alive. But one day in October 1805, they forgot about work and hardship. Work-roughened hands laid down axes and hoes and brooms. Work stopped. In cabin after cabin, in the settlement and the surrounding forest, families dug into battered trunks and dragged out clothing they had not worn since they had settled in the wilderness.
Mothers and older sisters scrubbed and polished the children with strong home-made soap. They straightened wrinkled, ill- fitting clothing and forced shoes on feet that had been free since early spring. The children in their turn, watched their fathers shave and mothers and sisters carefully comb their hair and wear their best dresses. But no gaiety filled these preparations. The event was too important for that, and even the children sensed it.
Word had spread swiftly that a traveling missionary had ridden into the settlement and would hold service that evening. Most settlers felt a deep ache for religion. In the loneliness of the first years, they missed religious services more than anything.
But the settlement was too small to support a church. Since it started two years before, they had not had a religious meeting of any sort, even without a minister.
Toward evening that October day, families within the settle- ment began drifting over dirt roads and by rough log cabins to the meeting place. Other families rattled out of the woods in wagons or filed out on foot, most seeing each other dressed-up for the first time. They greeted one another perhaps a little uncomfortable in their ill-fitting clothing. And so they gathered in the slight chill of the fall evening.
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