USA > New York > Niagara County > Outpost of empires; a short history of Niagara County > Part 12
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26
When the sermon began, families clustered together, their faces lifted respectfully toward the preacher in the flickering candlelight of the school house. Perhaps their thoughts slipped back to homes and friends they had left when they settled on the frontier. Near the end of the sermon, they hung their heads and mumbled prayers with the preacher. After the sermon, they filed by the minister and gave him their deeply felt thanks.
The respect and attentiveness of these settlers did not escape the minister. He saw that his words had lessened the cares and worries of their hard life in the wilderness. Later that night by a flickering light he scratched his thoughts about these people in his journal. The next day he said good-bye to Gad Warner and others, heeled his horse into movement and continued on his way west. Perhaps as his horse's hooves dug into the dirt road and he dodged low hanging branches, he thought more of these pioneers who had been so moved by his presence.
Enoch Hitchcock owned part of the site of Gasport However, Gasport did not begin at this settlement, but a short distance south. In 1818 Enoch Hitchcock completed the pur- chase of land from the Holland Land Company, now most of the present site of Gasport. With axe in hand and gun close by, he built a home from the forest as others had done. When new settlers struggled into the area, Hitchcock was glad to welcome them. Neighbors meant an easier time for all. They helped in clearing forests and raising cabins. And their presence in time of suffering was a great comfort.
Gasport grew slowly Others came in, and a crude, raw settle- ment slowly took shape in the wilderness. Colonel Jonathan Mabee, who was a miller and land buyer, bought a flour mill on the wooded banks of Eighteen Mile Creek. Settlers for miles around carried grain to be ground to flour at Mabee's. Those lacking oxen or horses staggered through the forest lugging
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hundred pound sacks of wheat or flour. And pioneers using oxen and sleds hauled lumber from Amos and Andrew Brown's rough sawmill to clearings in the forest.
Within a few years, Sextus Shearer's general store was the village social center. On Saturdays, muddy-booted settlers, loafing around a cracker barrel, argued about the politics of President Andy Jackson and about the Erie Canal. Villagers felt pride and relief at the sight of Dr. Timothy Page hurrying about the village.
As soon as the settlement was large enough, schools and churches offered learning and religion to pioneers. In 1850, Gas- port Academy opened its doors and was a success for a time. But it was replaced by expanding public education. Most of the early religions still remain.
Lack of resources limited growth Later improvements in the Erie Canal destroyed the gas springs that gave Gas- port its name. Gasport, lacking any large natural resources, has remained a small village along the canal.
What is Middleport's story?
The Erie Canal made Middleport as it did Gasport and other settlements in Niagara County. Middleport, the last village along the Erie Canal in Niagara County, followed the pattern of other canal villages.
Freeman's Corners took shape Asher Freeman tracked into the forest and swamps in 1811 and settled south of what is now Middleport. As other early settlers did, Asher built a log cabin, cleared land, and planted wheat and other crops and he fought wolves and suffered hunger, loneliness, and sickness. Before long, however, Asher greeted new settlers and attended cabin raising bees and watched with satisfaction as the smoke of new homefires trailed skyward from the forest. New settlers needed flour and lumber, and soon mill wheels creaked in nearby streams. And so the settlement of Freeman's Corners took shape in the forest.
Irish canal workers, digging and blasting their way across New York State, started Middleport, just north of Freeman's Corners. Taverns often sprang up where canal workers swung picks and pushed shovels. Frontier tavern keepers eagerly raked in the twelve dollars a month the workers earned. Shops and stores followed taverns, thus stirring villages to life. Middleport began in this way.
Levi Cole and his wife erected a tavern on the site of Middle- port. In 1820 they cheerfully swung the door wide open for canal
workers. Canal diggers welcomed Cole's tavern as a place to loaf after a day digging the Erie. But not long after Cole opened up he and the canal workers wished the tavern had never been built.
One day a mud-caked gang of brawny workers in sweat- stained shirts tramped into the tavern. They crowded up to the bar and yelled and pounded for whiskey. As the night wore on, the tavern shook with the roar and laughter of half-drunken men. They began to argue. A fight started and Cole, trying to keep order, knocked a canal digger to the floor. Raging at Cole, the other diggers bunched to attack. Cole held a club ready in his fist and backed outside. As the gang caught up with him, he swung the club, and a worker sank to the ground, his head broken. Cole was later convicted of manslaughter and was sent to prison.
Meanwhile, more white-topped wagons rumbled into the area. Axes continued to ring, more trees fell, and buildings went up, one after another. Soon Middleport had a blacksmith shop, James Northam's general store, and G. and E. Mather's tannery, shoe shop, and harness shop. The Mathers sold leather products to the villagers. And at nearby Johnson Creek and Jeddo, pioneers built flour and sawmills.
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The village was divided over incorporation A campaign to incorporate Middleport took place in 1859. The question divided the village into two camps. A majority of poor settlers attacked the move toward in- corporation because it meant increased taxes. They bombarded the rich with charges of dishonesty and evil doings. The wealthy land- owners counter-attacked with charges of selfishness and blindness. Fighting ended in a victory for the forces of incorporation. But bitterness among the defeated poor lingered for years.
Middleport has changed little in size since 1859. Lacking any large waterpower or other resource, the village has remained a farming community. Gradually, however, some industry has ap- peared. Today a leading industry is the Niagara Chemical Divi- sion of the Food Machinery and Chemical Corporation.
The escarpment attracts many settlers
Endless centuries ago, the Niagara escarpment south of Middleport lay beneath a warm sea. Where trees now grow, great fish glided in murky water hunting other fish. Many kinds of sea life lived about the coral reef now forming part of the escarpment and plants on the ocean floor sheltered many more. Millions of years later the ocean disappeared and strange creatures roamed
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the land. Then the ice age glacier arrived, killing all life. Finally, with time and sunlight, the great glacier melted and moved north- ward. By the time Indians wandered into Niagara County, the escarpment was a high rocky, wooded ridge that stretched across the land.
Running east and west, the escarpment divides Niagara County into upper and lower parts. Below the ridge the Ontario Lake Plain reaches northward to Lake Ontario. The escarpment is the edge of a plateau that spreads southward to the Allegheny Mountains. The advantage of fewer mosquitoes and black flies drew many settlers to the escarpment.
What is the story of Pekin's growth?
Nine miles west of Lockport, Pekin perches on the escarpment overlooking the wide lake plain and the distant blue haze of Lake Ontario.
John Carney came into Niagara County in 1809, planning to settle along the Ridge Road. Carney was not satisfied with land along the Ridge Road itself, and he searched elsewhere for land. He pushed and hacked his way up the escarpment until he reached the present site of Pekin. When he gazed over the sweeping plain and distant lake below, he decided to settle on the escarpment. So he began raising a log cabin, sure that his family back east would be pleased with the site.
For the next few weeks, the axe was like part of his arm, fell- ing trees and notching logs. Slowly the cabin took shape in the wilderness. Sweating and straining, he raised the walls with the help of neighbors and then he clung to the pole framework of the roof as he shingled it with bark. Evenings, before turning in, Carney sat leaning against a tree gazing out over the sprawling forest and lake. Finally the cabin was up and he hurried east for his family.
In time other settlers, mostly New Englanders, trickled into Pekin, then called Mountain Ridge. William Crosier, Dr. Myron Orton, and others bought land from the Holland Land Company and settled about Mountain Ridge. By 1822 the village had a few dozen settlers, a school, a flour mill owned by Elias Rose, and a postmaster, John Jones.
In 1837, six years after the village changed its name from Mountain Ridge to Pekin, the Lockport-Niagara Falls Railroad passed through Pekin. A few shops and stores came with the rail- road. Saturdays the settlement was alive with settlers flocking in to trade. Pekin must have been a lively place in those days, for taverns outnumbered all other businesses.
How did the railroad affect Sanborn's history?
Fourteen years later, in 1851, the railroad that had made Pekin grow was abandoned. Pekin's boom years ended. Many settlers went elsewhere to trade. But a new line, the Rochester, Lockport and Niagara Falls Railroad was built in 1851. This new railroad built another village two miles south. At first the settle- ment around the railroad station was called South Pekin Station but later it was renamed Sanborn.
About 1809 Jarius Rose settled in the woods and swamps that later became Sanborn. Two years later Jarius planted apple seeds on land he had bought from the Holland Land Company. The young apple trees he sold were among the first orchards in Ni- agara County.
One of the most important early men in the history of Sanborn appeared in 1846. The Reverend E. C. Sanborn soon had the respect of villagers and became the leading figure in the frontier settlement. He was called upon to settle problems and disputes among settlers and he was always ready to bring sympathy and comfort to those in trouble.
In the early years, Pekin was the trading center of the settle- ment that later became Sanborn. But, as we have already men- tioned, this changed in 1851 when the Rochester, Lockport and Niagara Falls Railroad built its new station. The railroad, running two miles south, started a new settlement, South Pekin Station (Sanborn). Soon the village had stores, a post office, and a Methodist Church.
In 1864 South Pekin Station was renamed Sanborn. Sanborn's first industries were mills. Lee R. Sanborn, son of the Reverend Sanborn, operated one of the earliest flour and sawmills in the village. Later, B. and J. Hudson took over Sanborn's old flour-mill. They remodeled it and built one of the finest flour-mills in Western New York. Many bakeries, hotels, and stores bought the quality flour ground by the Hudson Brothers. After a half century, they sold their mill to the Sanborn Milling Company.
What events shaped Ransomville's development?
About seven miles northwest of Sanborn, below the escarp- ment, is the settlement of Ransomville. In the 1800's the early set- tlers found that beavers had dammed a branch of Twelve Mile Creek north of Pekin and turned the area into a marshland. For many years malaria-carrying mosquitoes and blood-sucking flies kept settlers away. For this reason Ransomville was one of the last parts of Niagara County to be settled. Many settlers who passed through the area thought it never would be settled.
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But about 1817 Gideon Curtiss plodded through the marsh and settled in the area. Clouds of mosquitoes, and black flies hung over Curtiss and his oxen as they hauled logs to the cabin site. He soon learned to smear his skin with bear grease as Indians did and to keep smoke-fires burning by the cabin. By trapping out the beaver and wrecking the dams, he drained the. swamp and so reduced the mosquito population. But smoke-fires were a common sight by frontier cabins for years.
A year or so later, Gideon's younger brother, Gilbert, settled nearby. Young Gil Curtiss had romance in his heart as he strode into Niagara County. During the whole journey from Connecticut, he had been filled with dreams of his future bride and the new home he would carve from the wilderness. For weeks before he left, they had planned every inch of the cabin he would raise near his brother's.
Like many young couples, they had money problems. The payment on land to the Holland Land Company cut into their savings. So Gil brought only enough food to last until the cabin was up. His brother Gideon helped him raise the walls, but finish- ing the cabin took longer than Gil expected. Food ran low and he lacked money to buy more. His brother had barely enough to feed his own family. After the cabin was up, he hurried home to Connecticut on foot. Following the marriage and many joyful, yet tearful, goodbyes, the young couple bumped westward in a covered wagon. Upon leaving the Ridge Road in Niagara County, they had to hack a path for oxen and wagons to their cabin.
During the first year they cleared more land. For weeks smoke and flames from burning trees billowed from the clearing. They collected wood ashes for "black salts" and planted wheat and corn. Unable to ship their crop to markets because of poor transporta- tion, Gil turned it into whiskey and in 1825 he opened a tavern.
Slowly other settlers pushed in and a settlement grew up. In 1822 the Baker family arrived from Canandaigua. Their wagon was useless once they left Ridge Road. So they used ox sleds to drag furnishings through bogs. The Bakers raised a typical log cabin, lacking a door, a floor, and glass windows.
Another important settler came in 1820. Charley Quade had an easy way about him that people liked. Wherever he went, settlers had a pleasant word for him. In 1830 he built a hotel and prospered. Later he gave it up and opened a general store where two roads crossed. Quade's store was a thriving trading center for the surrounding countryside. He was willing to take goods in place of cash-a scarce item among early settlers. Gradually
pioneers called the little settlement "Quade's Corners."
The most respected settler strolled into the settlement on foot in 1826. Jehial C. S. Ransom, carrying all he owned on his back, began working in the village as a carpenter. He earned a name as a hard, honest worker. Not long after this he became post- master. And then he had the honor of having the village of Quade's Corners officially named Ransomville.
Ransomville followed the pattern of other settlements in its growth. It soon had a school, Baptist Church, and a sawmill owned by a pioneer named Fowler. The coming of the Rome, Watertown, and Ogdensburg Railroad in 1876 brought a flurry of growth. But Ransomville did not boom the way Pekin and Sanborn did when a railroad came. By 1876, Niagara County was pretty well settled.
Ransomville has grown slowly through the years. Its chief resource is farm land and so it took little part in the industrial growth of Niagara County. But following World War II, like most small towns near large cities, Ransomville had an increase in residential building.
The escarpment winds westward from Pekin, and finally reaches Lewiston and the Niagara River.
By 1825 most present villages and cities in Niagara County had taken root. The early ones started along the lake, rivers, and creeks where settlers had transportation to markets. Later the Erie Canal gave birth to several more villages. Finally the rail- roads, skirting the Niagara Escarpment, brought a few more.
All these settlements followed a like pattern of growth. First the early settlers hacked homes from the forest. Then sawmills, flour mills, and a general store followed to supply increasing numbers of settlers. Schools and churches appeared with increas- ing population. Then the shops appeared near the general stores and mills. But in 1825 the Erie Canal came and changed the whole economic life of Niagara County. Thriving early towns like Lewis- ton became less important and others like Lockport and North Tonawanda sprang up almost overnight in the woods. But if the settlements had some natural resource like Niagara Falls, with power from the Niagara River, they came back strong when the nation industrialized, as we shall see in later chapters.
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Your History Workshop
Words and terms you should know
squatters
distillery
militia
reservation
epidemic
teamster
survey
husking bee
quartermaster
lean-to
blockade
contractor
barter
flog
incorporation
Where is it on the map?
Susquehanna River
Queenston
Fort George
Genesee River
Newark
Batavia
Oswego River
Big Tree
Seneca Lake
Who's Who in history ?
Robert Morris Isaac Brock
Augustus Porter
Joseph Ellicott
General McClure
Red Jacket
Peter B. Porter
Winfield Scott
William Hull
Stephen Van Rensselaer
Gillet Family
Henry Dearborn
How carefully did you read?
1. Describe the Niagara region in the 1790's.
2. What was the Holland Purchase? What was the "Mile Strip?"
3. From whom did Robert Morris purchase Western New York?
4. What were Red Jacket's objections to the sale of Western New York lands?
5. What were the terms of the Treaty of Big Tree?
6. List the routes pioneers followed to Niagara County.
7. Describe the pioneer's cabin, his diet, and his sources of money.
8. What changes took place in frontier life after 1805?
9. Explain the development of a frontier settlement into a village.
10. What were the causes of the War of 1812?
11. Who were "War Hawks?"
12. Explain the American war plans.
13. Describe the armed forces of Niagara.
14. What was the result of Dearborn's victory over Fort George?
15. What were the provisions of the Treaty of Ghent?
16. In what year was the Erie Canal completed?
Activities to help you understand Part III
1. Make an outline of Augustus Porter's life. Deliver orally your biographical sketch to the class.
2. Make a detailed study of one of the Niagara County towns or cities. Include in your study the founding and development of the settlement, the chief occupations, etc .. Report to the class
3. On an outline map of New York State trace and label the Erie Canal. Include the names of all water bodies which help make up the canal.
4. On an answer sheet you have prepared for this exercise, write the letters of towns after the numbers which correspond to the names that helped the towns to get started and develop.
Groups
1) Jacob Fitts, David Barker
2) William Chambers, John Brewer, James Van Horn
3) Burt Van Horn
4) Arthur Patterson, Otis Hathaway, Charlotte Davis
5) Stephen Sheldon, John Eastman, Reuben Wilson
6) Lemuel Cooke, John Young, Isaac Swain
7) Silas Hopkins, Benjamin Barton, Augustus Porter
8) James Howell, Parkhurst Whitney, William De Veaux
9) Stephen Jacobs, George Burger
10) Adam Strouse, Phillip Beach
11) Jonathan Mabee, Enoch Hitchcock
12) Levi Cole, Asher Freeman
13) John Carney, William Crosier
14) Jarius Rose, Reverend Sanborn
15) Gideon Curtiss, Charles Quade
Settlements, villages, and cities
A. Somerset
B. Wilson
C. Barker
D. Suspension Bridge
E. La Salle
F. North Tonawanda
G. Gasport
H. Pekin
I. Youngstown
J. Bergholtz
K. Lewiston
L. Fort Schlosser
M. Lockport
N. Olcott
P. Middleport
O. Pendleton
Q. Burt
R. Manchester (Niagara Falls)
S. Newfane
T. Sanborn
U. Ransomville
5. Pretend you are a "War Hawk." Prepare a poster urging Americans to rise up against Great Britain.
6. Continue adding to your scrapbook of costumes. Include draw- ings or pictures of military and naval uniforms of the War of 1812.
7. Trace and color in the Holland Land Purchase on an outline map of New York State.
8. Make a Chamber of Commerce folder for one of the villages, towns, or cities you have read about.
9. On a map of your county, locate each town, village, and city. Use symbols to classify.
Part 3a
10. On a map of New York State show the main routes by which settlers traveled to Niagara County.
11. . "The Erie Canal spelled 'doom' or 'boom' for many Niagara County towns and cities." Explain this statement to your class- mates using examples and visual aids. (blackboard, maps, pic- tures, charts, etc.)
12. Select a member of the class to make a crossword puzzle using the names of settlements mentioned in Unit III. Request that your teacher approve it for mimeographing or blackboard use.
13. Re-read the section on the Gillet Family. Then, pretending you are either Mrs. Gillet or her son, Orville, write an account of your escape from Lewiston.
14. Complete the following chart using your own municipal govern- ment as the source of information.
Government Officers Duties Term of Office How Chosen
15. Pretend that you have a time machine which can transport you through the centuries. Travel back to the year 1800. Write a newspaper article predicting future town and city develop- ment, mentioning, of course, what will happen to some of them by the 1960's.
16. Compare the services your community offers with those of a neighboring one. Do this by making two lists.
17. Prepare a bulletin board display on frontier life.
18. There are two sides to most questions. Imagine that some of your classmates are Seneca Indians siding with Red Jacket against the purchase of Western New York; other members of the class are Indians favoring the purchase. Write a short article in support of Red Jacket's objections and another against his objections.
19. Visit the city hall in your hometown to get budget figures for the current fiscal year. Then construct two circle graphs: one to show where the tax dollar goes and one to show where it comes from (collections and expenditures) .
20. List the steps usually followed in the development of a settle- ment from wilderness outpost to village.
21. Middleport struggled with the problems of incorporating as a municipal body, and La Salle faced much the same problem. Should a small community become a larger one, for example,
change from village to city? Before such a question can be resolved there are many things to consider. Select a group to debate or discuss whether La Salle should have merged into a city. Consider :
-The legal requirements (state law) it had to meet.
-The advantages and disadvantages of merging.
-Whether the advantages overweighed the disadvantages?
22. Write a page or two of a diary which might have been kept by an American seaman during the days he was seized from his ship by the British.
23. Interview a councilman to find out how your municipal govern- ment makes a law. Report the procedure to the class.
24. What is the difference in organization between a city with a mayor and one with a manager? Show this difference with a chart comparing the three branches of local government.
Books with exciting stories
Adams, Samuel Hopkins, Canal Town. Fiction. Adult. The Erie Canal (Landmark). Grades 6-10.
Berry, Frick, Lock Her Through. Fiction. Grades 7-10.
Best, A. C., Homespun. Grades 6-10.
Chambers, Robert W., The Little Red Fort. Grades 6-10.
West to the Setting Sun. Grades 7-12.
Edmonds, Walter D., Erie Water. Fiction. Grades 10-12.
Mostly Canallers. Fiction. Grades 6-12.
Wilderness Clearing. Fiction. Grades 7-12.
Greene, Nelson, Old Mohawk Turnpike Book. Grades 9-12. Harlow, Alvin F., When Horses Pulled Boats. Grades 7-10.
Langdale, Hazel, Mark of Seneca Basin. Fiction. Grades 5-7. Meadowcroft, Enid L., Along the Erie Towpath. Fiction. Grades 4-9. Merrill, Arch, The Lakes Country. Grades 9-12.
The Ridge, Ontario's Blossom Country. Grades 7-12.
Stagecoach Towns. Grades 6-10.
The Towpath. Grades 6-12.
Orton, Helen F., The Treasure in the Little Trunk. Fiction. Grades K-6.
Williams, Clara T., Joseph Elicott and Stories of the Holland Land Purchase. Adult.
Wonsetter, A. H., and J. C., Me and the General. Grades 6-10.
Part 3b
Part IV
NIAGARA COUNTY GROWS WITH STATE AND NATION
9. A frontier of America grows strong 10. Niagara County reflects national growth
11. Niagara County and the nation face problems together
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9. A frontier of America grows strong
In 1825 Niagara County was a half-settled frontier ; fifty years later it was a thriving area of farms and industries. Its change from a frontier to a strong part of State and Nation is the story of this chapter. Although most events in these pages happened only in Niagara County, this chapter could be the story of any American frontier area. Not only Niagara County but the whole American frontier faced plagues, the opening of canals and railroads, political campaigns, the slavery problem, and the Civil War.
Opening the Erie Canal brings fifty years of change
What led to the "wedding of waters" ?
Governor De Witt Clinton opened the canal at Buffalo
Buffalo was astir before sun-up on October 26, 1825. The bright morning held a whiff of fall as people moved about in a pink dawn. By seven-thirty, canal diggers, carry- ing polished shovels, moved to their places. Masons, carpenters, sailors, stone-cutters, and axmen gathered in bunches. By nine, the militia, with their officers on horseback, had taken their places. At nine-fifteen, the groups formed ranks, while the Buffalo Village Band, making last minute adjustments, tapped drums and tooted trumpets.
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