As We Were

Delaware Avenue Baptist Church: Lux Aeterna

2009-12-08T14:09:00.000-08:00

This was to be the alternate blog wherein I illuminate a local historical figure, but the research on her is not complete and I have the happy coincidence of a new piece of software and a fall tour of the Delaware Avenue Baptist Church in our fair city. Only a few bits o' knowledge to flesh out your audio visual experience:

the brownstone church was erected 1894-95, designed first in one style and revised as construction was about to begin with another style added. It's generally labelled as Richardsonian Romanesque. Designed by a member, Buffalo architect John Coxhead.
the stained glass contract was put to bid and Tiffany lost to J & R Lamb Studios, just as qualified and much less expensive; lots of amber-tinted glass give the sanctuary a golden tone
the total number of mosaic tiles used in the building is estimated at 1 million
it seems that no detail was too small to be tiled, stenciled, carved, edged in satin-finish golden oak,or encased in Carrera marble. It is awe-some to walk through
the church has not been remodeled much since its completion nor has it been restored
it is still used as a Baptist church

The music is Edward Elgar's Variation IX from his "Enigma and Variations." He titled it 'Nimrod' and it was instrumental only. And along came John Cameron and put the Lux Aeterna words to it, making it truly haunting. "Eternal Light" is a fitting companion for the photos because while we were in the church (for a Preservation Buffalo Niagara meeting) the clouds outside blew away and the sun shone into the room, giving a strikingly different coloration to the space. You will see this with the ceiling dome, which appears in two different colors during the slide show.

Everyone who entered the sanctuary was awed, except for the Baptist minister who was on hand to welcome us and who enjoys it every day. Hope you will enjoy and maybe be a little awed, too. Turn on your speakers. I recommend the full-screen view; click on the little 4-arrow symbol in the right hand of the viewing screen.

For those who don't use Firefox, you may not be able to see the whole box below, so just go directly here:
http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~seck/delaware_baptist_web/

Making Hay

2009-08-16T11:19:00.000-07:00

Growing up in the country at the time I did meant living without the noisome, smelly ATVs and snowmobiles that bisect the fields and reduce the wilderness to recreational space. When I was small, “the woods” really was the woods. And a diet of fairy tales allowed me to assume that deep in the woods must be a little cabin, occupied by a hermit or a witch. And a dragon, possibly. Very possibly.

I met a mechanical dragon when I was about seven. Each June and July farmers cut and collected hay from their fields; the task could last six weeks or more depending on the weather. I didn’t know any of those details when I was first permitted to go along one morning to collect hay. Our farm had work horses that had put in a long career as the literal horsepower for the machines we used. They surely pulled the hay loader and wagon at one time, but during my childhood a yellow-trimmed green John Deere model G did the work. It had three gears: barely moving, moving, and almost moving quickly. Think of the speeds of a work horse and you can understand how that tractor, first introduced in 1938, was designed.

Making hay, as it was and is still called, was a two-person job with a hay loader. Someone steered the tractor over windrows of hay that had been cut with a mower and rolled into windrows by a rake. (That raking step was important because the design of the rake loosely twisted the hay strands, making it easier for the hay loader to pick up the windrow continuously. Think of spinning wool.) The other person was hopefully a young man with agility and strong arms.

Back to my special day out in the field. My grandfather, 66, was working the farm with my father, who had only recently begun the process of purchasing it from him. He always drove the tractor when a two-person job was at hand. My dad, 35, had seemingly unlimited strength and energy, and was always more taciturn than usual when working. I recognized my day in the field for the privilege that it was and minded my Ps and Qs, riding down Merkle Road on the wagon without wiggling or leaning over the edge of the wagon to watch the road go by. We bounced along a field path and finally reached the hay field nestled back against the woods that marked the end of our property at that location, which we referred to by the name of its former owners, the Shrader Place.

And there, waiting for us near the edge of the field, lined up before a windrow, was my first dragon. Taller than the tractor, with great iron wheels, and many arms and fingers, was a hay loader, old as was all of our equipment and probably powered for many years by Dick and Daisy and their predecessors. Now Dad unhitched the empty hay wagon, a flat wagon covered with hay-smoothed boards and a backstop rack of several boards at the back, and hitched it to the back of the hay loader where there was the tall, wide maw of the dragon. Then he hitched the tractor to the front of the hay loader. When grandpa put the tractor into gear, everything moved forward in a slow procession.

The hay loader was powered only by the turning of its wheels and, despite the noise of the John Deere, the clattering, screeching, and chuff-chuffing of the hay loader was clear and somewhat intimidating to a 7 year-old. The machine was a marvel of interlocking gears that forced long wooden arms lined with wire tines to pull up the windrow of hay in a a continuous stream, until it cascaded over the edge of the wide mouth that extended just over the front edge of the hay wagon. There my father, his 3-tined fork in hand, guided the stream of hay to the back of the wagon and then to the right or left side, piling it up evenly back to front, side to side, up and up until he was even with the hay loader’s mouth. I watched him, unable to appreciate how much practice it took to load an open-sided hay wagon so that it was stable enough to make the journey back to the barn at home. I only knew that I loved the sweet smell of drying hay which enveloped us.

And then the event that transformed the morning forever happened: I was asked if I wanted to drive the tractor. Unsure at first if I could do it, I nevertheless immediately agreed that I wanted to. In first gear, I held the big wheel with both hands, and became the person making the dragon move and the hay go up and out and the wagon trail along with my father piling up the hay. I’m sure I grinned; I know my father did.

At some time that day, the hay loader ceased to be a dragon. Perhaps it was because I had achieved some measure of control over what had seemed new, strange, big. Maybe that's how dragons became extinct.

Mary Peacock's Legacy

2009-05-15T09:21:00.000-07:00

We left Mary Peacock at age 17, going home to Mayville, NY, to her wealthy aunt and uncle's home beside the county courthouse. The photo at left came down through the family and, in the diary published by her daughter, is captioned, "Gate to the Outside World." This is what she saw on a fine summer's day when she looked down the wooden sidewalk of the Mayville home. What future awaited this intelligent young woman?

While we're waiting for her to turn 36 and marry, let's take a look at the house in Mayville. A helpful geneaologist named Dolores Davidson tells us that, "In the year 1845 he [uncle William Peacock] built the large brick residence attached to the comfortable frame dwelling in which he and his wife had lived for so many years, but they still continued to enjoy their real home life in the frame one, and were often visited by their relatives and many friend and acquaintances. The house fronts the main street of Mayville, and a portion of it fronts the court-house square, and is surrounded by handsome grounds, shaded by fine trees. An extensive garden is nearby. The farm, including the residence, grounds, and garden, contains fifty acres of land, and is bounded by the main street and by a street at right angles with it..." [The house later became the Peacock Inn and then was demolished in 1971 by the county for expansion of the county administration.]

One may imagine that Mary Peacock assisted her aunt and uncle with myriad social obligations and that she continued her education on her own. Years (and years) passed, and Mary grew from a young woman to what must have seemed to all a wealthy spinster. But Charles W. Evans appeared and, related or not (I couldn't say either way, but Mary's mother was an Evans before she married William Peacock), Mary and Charles were married on September 19, 1857. She was 36 years old.

The couple moved to Buffalo and possibly lived on Washington Street, then still the primary residential neighborhood in the city. They had three children, one of whom was Virginia, born in March of 1863. Virginia married Walter Devereux in 1896 in New York City. They lived in Buffalo.

A lifetime went by and, near the end of her life, Virginia decided to do two things. Her mother had died in 1912 at age 81, but time does not seem to have dimmed her daughter's memory of her. In 1938, one hundred years after her teenage mother wrote of her year in Buffalo and Mayville, daughter Virginia published the diary. And she made a will which created a memorial trust, likely with some of the inheritance that her mother had recieived from wealthy uncle William's estate. She died in 1938 at 75, leaving a son, Walter Jr. [Walter and one of his wives had a son, John Evans Devereux, who died in 2005, ending our direct connection to Mary Peacock.]

Today, the Virginia Evans Devereux Memorial Trust has assets of over two million dollars. A private foundation, it awards small grants to organizations promoting health, social projects aiding poor people, women and children, and educational programs. This interest is not surprising considering that she was a life member of Buffalo's Women's Educational and Industrial Union.

What did she learn from her mother that inspired in Virginia Evans Devereux the desire to use inherited wealth as a continuing force for the good of those down through the years whose names she would never learn, and who would know next to nothing about her? Mary Peacock perhaps left as her legacy a sense of social obligation, reinforced by her daughter's memorial trust.

The City Girl Down on the Farm

2009-05-09T14:24:00.000-07:00

The 24-year old in this picture was born and raised in Dunkirk during its palmy days. The middle child of three girls, she observed that she enjoyed none of the favor of the eldest or the youngest, the latter of which went to Fredonia "down the road" while living at home and so had a long, happy childhood. The middle child, like so many in this position, had to carve out her place in the family, something she attempted without complete success, if the sketchy history is to be believed. Her mother, who had perfected self-absorption, always won her battles with the sharpest tongue in the region.

The middle child dreamed of being a nurse, but her older sister had already started and failed in that career track, so she decided to attend RIT, when it was small and affordable, in the Dietitian program. And that changed everything for the rest of her life.

While doing her final course internship in Warsaw NY, she spotted a good-looking man in the local bar. She went back to her rented room after being introduced and told her landlady that she had met the man she was going to marry.

Perhaps she was naive, or simply ignorant of the mores and folkways of the rural folk of Wyoming County NY. Perhaps she didn't think it would matter that she, a city girl, was moving into a rural neighborhood of interrelated (and sometimes intermarried) mostly German-Americans. It mattered a great deal to those in the neighborhood.

She weighed less than almost all of them, they who were skilled at making fruit pies with the flakiest lard crusts, roast beef and pork moist with flavorful fat, and cooking night after winter night potatoes, cabbage, squash, beets and other root vegetables. In group photos of these well-fed farm wives, each is wearing a similarly-flowered dress whose vertical line is relieved by a slender belt which finds no waist to accentuate. In the back row, her head lifted to be seen over the linebacker shoulders of the ladies of the 'hood, is the bravely smiling city girl. She said, "You make your own good time."

Everyone agreed that the tall, blue-eyed Fordyce, nearly 30 when he married the city girl, should have chosen someone closer to home, someone with a strong back able to help with the farm work and carry full milk pails to the milkhouse. And he was such a catch, a hard worker and frugal, reserved in a group unless he had a humorous story or sardonic observation to make.

He, on the other hand, wanted a wife who would not become a field hand, undoubtedly some notion he picked up from his grandmother, who liked nice things and wanted to live in town so much that she did so for a brief time in the middle of her marriage. And so he married the city girl, who was lively and talkative and enthusiastic and not afraid to learn to prepare a freshly-killed chicken for dinner. She was an optimist, a trait in short supply among those entrenched relatives, and her optimisim combined with her husband's energy made an unbeatable combination. She said, "You've got to have faith," and she wasn't necessarily referring to the religious kind.

None of that impressed the neighborhood women whose backbiting over those early years was documented by the party line telephone system. It must have been intensely painful at times. It was lonely for the most part, also, with her mother back in Dunkirk letting no opportunity pass to point out how the middle daughter had married beneath her family's expectations. But she had her neighbor across the road, fortunately also a former city girl a decade or so older who was not related to the rest. And she had her children. She called upon her middle child's experience to endure and, eventually, to prevail over her environment. She said, "Living well is the best revenge."

As we approach Mother's Day tomorrow, I look at the shy toddler in the photo, sticking close to the protecting embrace of her mother, and remember that I have always had my father's reserve. Or maybe I was simply overwhelmed by the force of her personality at that tender age.

And in the blink of an eye, the young mother has become 83 years old, and is still fighting. This time she is tilting at death, determined to continue to live in her house on the hill outside town, to mow her own lawn, drive her own car. She took a good look at the grim reaper last month from a hospital room, considered living more acquiescently and going along with her childrens' plans to find her a house in town where everything worked and the power didn't go out in a storm and she would be near family and emergency assistance. And then she said, "I'm greedy," fell back and regrouped. We, her aging children, were put in our places. Tomorrow we will gather at her house to eat a meal she has prepared. We were wrong to guess that the time had come to help the middle child, the city girl who went to the country and claimed it as her own.

Mary Peacock at 17

2009-03-21T08:45:00.000-07:00

Buffalo in 1838 was growing rapidly, its population over 17,000. To add more excitement to a city where, young Mary says in her journal, people in their conveyances were "passing and repassing each other night and day, driving as fast as the horses can go," the Upper Canada rebellion was making itself felt in Buffalo in January 1838 .

Briefly, Canadians in Upper Canada (Ontario) and Lower Canada (Quebec) were threatening revolt against their British government, with Patriots (those who wanted Canadian independence) gathering arms and volunteers and performing guerrilla tactics. While Americans personally were instantly sympathetic with those, the American government officially was neutral. What has all of this to do with Buffalo and young Mary Peacock?

Well, Mary was away from her Mayville home at school in Buffalo and decided to keep a diary in 1838. Why we have her diary to read will be the subject of the second installment on this articulate young woman. But first, to the great excitement in January 1838 in Buffalo. Mary has decided to keep a journal just for the fun of it. On January 1, she says,

"I think that we have entered upon this year in anything but a happy manner. The war in Canada has so affected and excited people in this city and country that it is a subject of some doubt where it will end and in what manner. There was a company of five hundred men came in this City today (it is said) to receive their orders what to do and to defend this city , as it as been reported that the Canadians have threatened to burn this city. The people are all in commotion here, and everything has the appearance of war. All the citizens capable of bearing arms have been warned to hold themselves in readiness to fight; guards patrol the streets all night, and arrest every person who appears out after ten o'clock unless they can give the countersign."

This was a succinct summary of the tenor of a small city where so many had memories of the British burning of Buffalo only twenty-five years earlier. And it is a fine introduction to a young woman of intelligence and proficiency in writing down her observations.

She was still a schoolgirl, however, and not a war correspondent. A week later, this:

"When I arose this morning on looking out of the window to see how things were going, I was quite surprised to see the ground all covered with snow, but not enough of it to make any sleighing. I fear that we shall not have any sleigh-rides this winter. The sun soon melted the snow. This morning one of the scholars handed me a note. It was an invitation to join a society that was going to be formed of young ladies, for the purpose of reading. We are to meet at each other's houses once a week - one reads to the company while the rest employ themselves in sewing, knitting, etc. We thought of reading the works of Sir Walter Scott, the Waverly novels; beginning them and reading them through. Even if we read fifty pages in one evening, it would require the term of six years to go through them. We had a laugh when we summed it up and found it would be so long, but nothing daunted we have commenced this evening by reading in the novel which is Waverly, thinking that we would read what we could of them, although we do not expect to continue our meetings for six years."

Mary Peacock, when at home in Mayville, resided with her aunt and uncle, "the" William Peacock who in 1799 came to Western New York and became a surveyor for Joseph Ellicott. He married Alice Evans, niece of Ellicott and they moved to Mayville where he became a land agent for the Holland Land Company. After he left that position, a wealthy and influential man from his fortuitous land purchases (a story in itself), he was made a judge for Chautauqua county and lived next door to his courthouse. I cannot find any information on why she was not living with her parents, William and Alice Peacock when not at school, but it does not seem unusual to her. On January 10th, she says,

"I received a letter from Uncle this afternoon... They are quite uneasy at home on account of the alarming reports that have been circulated about this City's being burnt by the Canadians, and telling me that if there is any danger to write and let them know it and they will come and take me home. I could not help smiling to hear that they were so alarmed there when we here scarcely think of it, but I suppose that the reason we are not frightened is because it is an old story to us. "

The international crisis defused after the Patriots evacuated the (American) Navy Island in the Niagara River on the 14th and a week later Mary worried that she would no longer have news for her diary. But she comments on the mild winter weather often as might be expected because she had to walk everywhere without sidewalks and transportation depended on the condition of the roads, snowy and frozen roads being vastly preferred to muddy ones.

She also talks of attending dances, lectures, and church services, providing critiques of the sermons in the same manner as she does the scholarly lectures. But, despite her busy schedule, she writes with excitement on January 31 of receiving a letter from her uncle that they are coming to Buffalo to take her home to Mayville. She has not been home for six months and can barely keep her mind on her studies with looking for them.

After leaving Buffalo, Mary doesn't write about it, or school, or friends again in her year-long journal. She has other things to do. And, though she doesn't know it, she will leave a legacy still unspooling in 2009.

So Glad We Made It

2009-02-23T13:43:00.000-08:00

This is about a song, and it's not about a song. "Gimme Some Lovin" was originally written and performed by a little-remembered band called the Spencer Davis Group; in 1967 it was #2 nationally. In 2009 it is much better known by most Americans because its ta-ta-ta-ta-ta- TUM beat has turned up in commercials and movies ever since. The Blues Brothers movie featured the song we think of by its chorus line, "So glad we made it" and other groups have covered it including Queen and Olivia Newton-John, even David Bowie. It has lyrics, but don't bother with them. This song is about the phrase and the beat. And, for my generation, it's part of our heartbeat.

Fredonia, autumn 1967, freshman year when the drinking age was 18. The old Colonial, a college bar in an old house, believe it or not. Obviously, this was not going to be big enough for our baby boom numbers and, sure enough, the next year, the new Colonial opened down Main Street in the showroom of a former car dealership. Big enough. Walk through the doors on a winter evening, having walked the 15 minutes from campus, and you were immediately immersed in this beat. So glad we made it. It was a greeting, a welcome into the dark, warm cavern crowded with known and potential friends.

Fast forward to 1971, graduation. No one I knew was really looking forward to life outside of college, separated from our friends, cast into a world hostile to us (a school superintendent who interviewed, and subsequently hired me, asked pointblank if I was "one of those hippie radicals") . But that weekend we had a "last call" of our own. So glad we made it. It was a recognition of the milestone before us, our last looks at each other before walking our separate ways.

Over the intervening years, when I heard the rhythm start up on the radio, or in a store, or a Molson's commercial, a little window opened in my memory and I smiled, if only within. So glad we made it. It sometimes made me think that once I had lived in interesting times or, if I was particularly stressed, in more simple times. And it made me sentimental, an emotion more precious because it is so expensive mid-career.

I heard the ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-TUM again the other day, and felt joyful. You see, we've had some difficult days in Western New York, our first airplane crash in my lifetime, and one whose passengers were connected to people throughout the area. So our news media covered it, and then they covered it and covered it and covered it. In the end, which those of us not directly connected to the victims hope will be soon, this is a personal tragedy for loved ones left behind. And, as is always the case, the rest of us separate from the grieving. On another day, it will be our turn. But not today. So glad we made it. This time the chorus line is a celebration of life going on for the living.

Rich White Guys

2009-02-10T17:41:00.000-08:00

In mid-winter here in the Northeast, the sloppiness of streets and sidewalks made me think about sloppy treatments of the historical record. It may be patriotic to loathe and envy rich white guys, but we should try to keep an open mind. lest we miss some important truths. Based on some recent research that allowed me to look at John G. Milburn anew, I declare that I will defend a dead rich white guy.

When this photo was taken in 1901, John G. Milburn was 50 years old, having achieved the average life expectancy of a male at that time. A successful local attorney, he was also president of the Pan-American Exposition Company. Louis Babcock later said that he was said to have done "a masterly piece of work in harmonizing the many conflicting interests brought together to make the exposition possible."

He was born in England in 1851, son of a civil engineer. Young John had studied engineering at his father's request but didn't care for it. Then he received a letter from his sister-in-law in Batavia, NY that extolled the beauty and opportunities in America. He immediately decided to emigrate, arriving in Batavia at age eighteen. He studied law with a Batavia firm and when he was ready to be admitted to the bar, he was confounded by the fact that he was not an American citizen. Supporters petitioned the state legislature to make an exception for him based on his declared intention to become a citizen. The statewide reputations of the supporters won the exception and Milburn was able to practice law.

In 1875, he married Mary Patty Stocking of Batavia, who undoubtedly thought she had made a smart decision. Her new husband was over 6 feet tall, handsome, intelligent, impeccably groomed, and exceptionally considerate to everyone, the latter trait to be remembered by law clerks and hostesses alike.

The young couple moved to Buffalo in 1876 where he practiced law alone for three years, at which time Milburn formed a law partnership with E.C. and Henry W. Sprague. After a year's stay in Denver, Milburn returned to Buffalo to join with Sherman Rogers and Franklin Locke in the firm Rogers, Locke & Milburn. His reputation grew steadily. Louis Babcock said that "He was a profound scholar and spared no time or effort in his research. His arguments were always excellently prepared."

People liked the Milburns, looked up to them for their social skills and accomplishments. After moving to 1168 Delaware Avenue, they entertained notables that included Matthew Arnold. Milburn served on the Executive Committee of the Library, and served as president of the Buffalo Club. He was a trustee of City and County Hall, and represented railroads and other major entities who appreciated his legal talents. He was a Cleveland Democrat and personal friends with Grover Cleveland. Mrs. Milburn, a teacher before her marriage, was instrumental in founding the association which established the first four kindergartens in Buffalo.

Now, to the facts that lead to the sloppy thinking of some modern commentators. In 1899, Milburn was elected president of the Pan-American Exposition Company. That year, a group of investors led by John J. Albright and including John G. Milburn who was counsel, formed the Stony Point Land Company for the purpose of buying sufficient land for construction of a steel plant. People say today that there was misrepresentation involved, that those who sold land to the Stony Point Land Company sold for less because they thought the Exposition would be built there. I cannot find any facts to support that. And the location was unsuitable for an exposition. The land was entirely undeveloped, not only without water or sewer utilities, but also without streets or streetcar lines.

And there is Milburn's Presidency of the Exposition Company. The Exposition did not turn a profit for many of its investors, therefore Milburn is blamed. Given that we now know expositions and world fairs did not often make a profit, this is not surprising except possibly to those who bought shares in 1900. It's easy to overlook that the 'clubmen' who were the board of the Exposition Company had in mind longterm economic benefits to Buffalo that an exposition would provide. In this, they were entirely correct: Buffalo's economic engine surged in the decades after its unprofitable exposition. I have not heard anyone today credit Milburn for that.

People say, 'Oh, he had to leave town after the Exposition out of shame for not making a profit.' Let us look at the facts of his leaving. His home, the scene of the death of President McKinley, was a magnet for gawkers and souvenir hunters who would chip stone from the walk and cut branches from shrubs. And John G. Milburn was standing beside McKinley when the President was shot. I doubt the Milburns were thinking about profits or losses during what must have been a period of unrelenting stress. In 1904, they decided to move to New York City. to accept the invitation of a prominent lawyer named Ledyard who asked Milburn to become a parter in his firm. Shortly before his move, Milburn was given one of the most lavish banquets the Iroquois Hotel had ever seen. The leather bound menus were said to have cost $25 each. The covers had the seal of the Exposition stamped in gold and inside were photographs of all the directors of the Exposition.

At the time of his leaving, the Buffalo Club made past president Milburn an honorary member and his was the only member portrait hung in the Club during life. As of 1941, the portrait still hung on the Club walls.

Milburn spent 26 years in New York City, practicing law with the prestigious firm of Carter, Ledyard & Milburn. He was counsel for the New York Stock Exchange, Standard Oil, Metropolitan Street Railway Company, among other firms. And in 1920, he was elected president of the New York Bar Assocation. But in every news story for the rest of his life, he was identified as , "John G. Milburn, who was President of the Buffalo Exposition, and in whose home President McKinely died..."

John G. Milburn died in 1930, aged 79, on a visit to London, less than two weeks after his wife died. And, yes, he died rich, with an estate valued at over $1.7 M.

Birthday Present

2009-01-18T18:25:00.000-08:00

This is the week of the great buzz, the inauguration of a President named Obama. Pundits everywhere are talking about his place in history, comparing him to FDR, Lincoln, JFK, even Ronald Reagan. January 20 also happens to be my birthday, my 60th birthday. I've been pondering for two weeks what to say about both, because I think it's relevant to speak of my life of Presidents.

By the time this senior photo was taken, I had experienced two Presidents. The first, Eisenhower, was not much of a memory for me. I think the grownups took him for granted in the 50's; even in school I learned more about Eleanor Roosevelt than our sitting President. The second President was John F. Kennedy, an iconic figure to my generation which reacted to him as they did to the Beatles, like a rock-star. But when I was fourteen, he was assassinated and everyone my age knows exactly where they were when they learned of it. For a while it seemed everyone worthy was being assassinated: Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy would both be dead in a few years.

Lyndon Johnson became President on November 22, 1963 and surprised everyone by pursuing equal rights for African-Americans more aggressively than even JFK would have. He saw that as his legacy; biographers point to it as proof of how the office changes the man. I was in college when he declared that he would not run for another term. We didn't much like him because of Viet Nam, and we blamed him for sending 500,000 draftees to an undeclared war. Everyone knew classmates who were dead or ruined for life in the world.

And then Richard Nixon became President. We despised him on general principles, and I personally crossed him off my Christmas card list when he called me a 'bum' for protesting the war. But he was forced to resign in 1974, and we knew then that, despite his denials, he was indeed "a crook."

So was his Vice-President, Spiro Agnew, who declared that all who criticized the administration as "nattering nabobs of negativity." But comeuppance was nearby and he had to resign before Nixon on his own personal charges of corruption. Fortunately for the country, Nixon's Vice-President when he resigned was Gerald Ford. We didn't elect him but his honesty and sanity were a welcome relief. He was a midwesterner with a sound track record in Congress. But most of us were pretty cynical still about government in general and Republicans in particular, and who could blame us? Well, the Young Republicans did, and they were planning to have their day by and by (think Pat Buchanan and the extreme right wing).

Most of the country felt the same about Republicans, because Democrat Jimmy Carter was elected next. We northerners knew nothing about peanut farming, but he seemed a sincere man with a true Christian attitude (versus just the talk that we have become so familiar with). Sadly, he had no connections with Congress, having never served on the hill, so he couldn't accomplish much despite being the smartest guy in the room most days. He spoke about all of the issues we face today here, one of his last big televised addresses before the election of 1980.

Ronald Reagan thought telling the country it was suffering from a malaise was very poor public relations, and he knew a great deal about imagery. Unfortunately for us in 2009, he knew nothing about real-world economics. But he got elected and then re-elected by telling people they shouldn't worry so much, despite a legion of illegalities and the shameful savings-and-loan debacle which caused financial hardship to thousands of depositers. His deregulation policies poured grease on the slope to economic disaster and we can see where we'll end up as the bottom rapidly approaches in 2009.

Then, in quick succession in my memory came the first Bush, Bill Clinton, and then son Bush with Dick Cheney et al. I think the only bright spot since 1980 was Clinton, despite his weaknesses.

So I will turn three score years on the day Barack Obama becomes President. Lots of press has been given to the involvement in the election by young people, teenagers and twenty-somethings who never cared before about politics. I am heartened by that; it renews my faith in our country's future. But my generation, the one that contributed both Bill and George to the highest office in our land, is feeling excited about Obama, too, the President known throughout the world by just one name. He is President for all ages of Americans; we have claimed him so. And that is perhaps because, for the first time since Kennedy was President, we believe in our system of government again. Through our election of Obama, we reaffirm the ideals we were raised to believe: lead in the world by example and persuasion, help those in need at home and abroad, respect the rights and dignity of all, make strong alliances.

On my birthday, I will believe. The way I believed when my senior picture was taken.

"Those who are dead are not dead, They're just living in my head." Coldplay

2009-01-04T15:56:00.000-08:00

People thought he looked like Andrew Jackson. His contemporaries called him "Sam" or "Judge Wilkeson." We don't call him anything because we hardly know who he was or what he did for Buffalo. That is, of course, unless you have seen his gravestone at Forest Lawn where is engraved, from Virgil, the Latin phrase, "Urbem Condidit," which is translated in these parts as 'He built the City." His contemporaries thought that much of him, the man who accepted responsibility for creating a harbor at the mouth of Buffalo Creek where there was actually only a sand bar.

If Samuel Wilkeson had not agreed to take over the harbor construction with a budget of only $12,000 and an impossible deadline set by the State, the terminus of the Erie Canal would have been Black Rock, and maybe we would be rooting for the "Black Rock Boulders" instead of the Buffalo Bills... Another subject, that.

Here is what Sam Wilkeson said in later years:

"It had occupied two hundred and twenty-one working days in building - the laborers always rested on the Sabbath - and it extended into the lake about eighty rods, to twelve feet of water. It was begun, carried on and completed principally by three private individuals, some of whom mortgaged their whole real estate to raise the means for making an improvement in which they had but a common interest. And now, although but twenty years have elapsed, these sacrifices and efforts and even the fact that such a work ever existed, are unknown to most of the citizens of Buffalo."

He did not mention that, as supervisor of the project, he gave up his paying jobs and often worked chest deep in water beside the laborers in order to make progress. It helped that he was a tall man. And thirty-seven.

To briefly summarize, he fought in the War of 1812, served as Justice of the Peace and first judge of Erie County (despite minimal formal education), served as Mayor, legislator. He also had a day job or two, among them establishing the first iron works in Buffalo.

He was very serious in demeanor and, to strangers, somewhat forbidding in appearance. But he had a gift for conversation, no small gift in those days when few could even read to pass time, and that trait was very disarming.

Sam bought much of Niagara Square along with Ebenezer Johnson; it was away from the commercial district, heavily treed, with lots of space to build a house (or a mansion), good air, and no neighbors. He essentially built a big white columned mansion in a suburb, proving early on that people like to live in those kinds of places. He had three wives, sequentially, and six children, all of whom led exemplary lives. He was known to be an affectionate and undulgent family man.

The Rev. John C. Lord, D.D., in a paper before the Buffalo Historical Society in 1871, said about him, "He was distinguished for the influence he exerted over other minds. He was a natural leader of men and would have filled with credit and honor the most exalted stations of government and authority. He had an extraordinary faculty of impressing his opionions upon others and leading them to conclusions which seemed their own, but were really his... No one who has traveled with him, or spent half an hour at a public table in his society, who was not convinced that he was enjoying the conversation of a man of splendid intellect, of varied knowledge, and acute observation. "

I look at what he said about the city's apparent amnesia of the financial risk he and Oliver Forward and Charles Townsend took with little hope of major personal gain, and of his own nearly year-long labor, some of it in freezing spring water and always in mud, and I wonder what he must have been thinking twenty years later. He could have made money anyplace besides Buffalo, and had done so before moving here; he was that kind of entrepreneurial spirit. But here he invested his life, much of it in public service.

Samuel Wilkeson died in 1848 at age 67 on a trip to visit a daughter in Tennessee. He was remembered for years after and written about. As long as that great white mansion reposed in Niagara Square people spoke the Wilkeson name and remembered. And when the last family member willed that it be demolished after her death, people still remembered, especially in the 1920's when talk of building a new city hall on the site of the Wilkeson home brought him to mind. And then the forgetting began.

If we forget such people, whom do we teach our children to emulate as we hope for a future where we can expect that our leaders risk all to do the right things, the legal things, the ethical things?

As for Coldplay, a fine band. Young people, but very cool, nonetheless.

Thomas Bell's Really Good Book

2008-12-21T13:50:00.000-08:00

Last fall when I was researching Buffalo's early steelmaking history, I found a citation that mentioned "Out of This Furnace" and bought it used online. It's clear that this book is being assigned to students in some class or another, and for good reason, whether it be history, sociology, or even B-school labor history courses. But I want to say that this is a fine story, ranging over three generations of a Slavic immigrant family in the Braddock area of Pennsylvania's steelmaking region. Here is a particularly painterly passage that could apply to any steeltown:

"A Talbot Avenue streetcar, waiting to begin its long trip through the sleeping towns, the lonely streets, to Pittsburgh, made a yellow glow for the young people to sing by. The voice of the mill was harsher than theirs. It came over the wall like the breathing of a giant at work, like the throb of an engine buried deep in the earth. In it were the piping of whistles and the clash of metal on metal; the chuffing of yard locomotives, the rattle of electric cranes and skip hoists, the bump-bump-bump of a train of cars getting into motion; the wide-mouthed blow of the Bessemers, the thud of five-ton ingots dropping six inches as they were stripped of their moulds, the clean, tenpin crack of billets dropping from a magnet, the solid, unhurried grind of the ore dumper, lifting a whole railroad gondola of iron ore and emptying it, delicately; the high whine of the powerhouse dynamos, the brute growl of the limestone and dolomite crushers, the jolting blows of the steam hammers in the blacksmith shop, the distant, earth-shaking thunder of the blooming mill's giant rolls. A hundred discords merged into harmony, the harsh, triumphant song of iron and flame.

"Listen to it," Mike said. "When I remember that men built that it makes me proud I'm a man. If they'd let me I could love that mill like something of my own. It's a terrible and beautiful thing to make iron. It's honest work, too, work the world needs. They should honor us, Stefan. Sometimes when the bosses bring their friends through the mill they watch us make a cast and when the iron pours out of the furnace, you know how wonderful it is, especially at night, I feel big and strong with pride. I hope the visitors get afraid, I hope they're admiring us. I know when I saw my first cast, I was only a boy, the men working with that burning iron seemed like heroes to me."

Lots of information is available on the web about Thomas Bell and this book is widely considered his best. I don't know if it is or not, just that this is a great story, and I was sorry when it ended. Pass it on.

Julia Miller Snow (1832-1911)

2008-12-14T11:43:00.000-08:00

This is from the end of her Recollections, a speech she gave to the 20th Century Club of Buffalo in 1908, at age 76. The speech was a long one, published afterwards, and is a great first-person account of living in the 1830s and 40s Buffalo, a rollicking, risky city for entrepreneurs, when Buffalo was growing rapidly as a result of the Erie Canal and the lake shipping industries.

Sometimes some of the dear young people ask me this question: "Didn't you have better times than we do, more fun?" "Mother says she did."

Well, your mothers and I were young, and youth is the great factor in a good time, and youth is a good time, of itself.

It was very different. We had no clubs, no art gallery, and societies, no park, few drives, no daylight festivities, no gas, no bath-rooms, no great water supply, only candles and lamps, occasional balls and sleigh rides. All very occasional, once a week or once a fortnight in winter; few picnics; no trolleys, no street cars, nor omnibuses, few and very expensive hacks, and very few private carriages. We had much to do and we did it. No telegraphs, no telephones, no ocean cables, no magazines but Knickerbocker and Graham's and Godey's Ladies' Book, although the day was dawning for magazines and the best of them, too. Housework, housekeeping, care of sick, old folks and young children (of the kitchen girls, very many were raw from emigrant ships), dressmaking at home with or without help, gardening, care of silver (a little of it), but much brass, and we were busy most of the day. But when all was done, and the tea was over, and the sweet summer twilight or cozy, comfortable winter evening came on, we each put on a pretty dress, and brushed and braided or curled our hair and received our evening visitors, sometimes many, sometimes few, or, best of all, only one. We made it a point not to be tired, not to own that we were ever really busy, only that we had a few pleasant little things to do (which was true, if one only thought so). In the evening we assumed an attitude of absolute leisure. Perhaps we overdid it, but it avoided pressure and fidgets, and made for serenity and repose, the attitude of the period. And we certainly did have many friends and good times. And after all, it worked pretty well. Women may be judged as generals are, by results and successes, and judging by the women I see before me, their mothers brought them up pretty well after all, or maybe it was their grandmothers.

But what privileges you have! To begin with, the charming clubs, the beautiful parks (the garden went out with the invention of the lawn mower; and much prettier are the velvet lawns than our straggling hardly kept gardens!) Your beautiful homes, your delightful luncheons and beautiful, delightful teas in broad daylight, not to mention dinners, and better trained service, more variety and better dishes, and, except in rare cases, better average cooking, fruits and vegetables from all the world, all the year 'round, good schools and well-educated daughters and sons, music of the best and as often as you like. (We only had a concert or two in a year. To be sure, we had Jenny Lind, Patti, Strakosch, and Ole Bull.) Pictures and exhibitions all the time, and, as I said before, we might never have had them, had it not been for our beloved friend Mr. Sellstedt and his untiring and almost life-long work.

Most of your houses are better planned, and home and travel alike attractive and ready for you, happier and easier for everyone. This is all better, if you let it be so. The simple life does not altogether consist in self deprivation, in inconvenience, in heroic "doing without." It is in the mental attitude of content, of industry, of self-respect, refinement, honest, straightforward dealing with others, of loving attention to important trifles, in care and consideration for one's own family and close friends, and even strangers. In short, by whatever name it be called, it amounts to the same thing. Call it the Simple Life, the New Thought, this or that, or the New Church, etc. ; it can be called anything, but for all soul growth, all pure and worthy life, there has never been any improvement upon the theory and practice of the Sermon on the Mount.

In one respect I see gain. It is in the love, kindness, and attention paid to us, the seniors. Our mothers did not have half so good times as we do as we have today, and especially is your consideration shown in your interest and patience in listening so long to my old stories.

Julia Snow contributed for many years to Harper's Monthly and published many children's stories.

Read the rest of her speech, which is often quite witty, here:
http://www.archive.org/stream/earlyrecollectio00snowrich/earlyrecollectio00snowrich_djvu.txt

Rockin' Frank Severance.

2008-12-08T12:15:00.000-08:00

I want to introduce Frank Hayward Severance to modern people. He died in 1931 but for those of us who love history he continues to live. Frank Severance was "Secretary" of the Buffalo Historical Society (now Buffalo & Erie County H.S.) from 1902, when the Pan-Am building first opened, until his death in 1931 at age 75. It was he who created the locally well-known "Picture Book of Earlier Buffalo" but he also edited volumes 4-29 of the annual Society publications. It is difficult to briefly summarize the debt we owe to his talent for writing and editing. How fortunate Buffalo and Western New York are today that he was passionate about recording and promoting our history!

My point in introducing him today is to pass along an excerpt from the above-named "Picture Book" from page 309 where he introduces the chapter on 'Vanished Main Street.' With each demolition today, some tear their hair and lament; Frank Severance puts all of the change into historical perspective...

"...The home of the well-to-do resident, built in the 30's or 40's, was then the pride of a somewhat primitive neighborhood. Well and honestly put up, it bespoke the dignity of labor, the taste and refinement of its owner. Within its walls, for a generation or more, dwelt a worthy household. It was surrounded, at first, by an ample garden, where fruits flourished and happy children played. Then set in the inevitable succession of change. The father and mother go to their rest; the children scatter. The growing town encroaches; the garden is despoiled, cut up in lots, smart new structures crowd each other. Perhaps the older residence lingers on, through a second generation of alien occupancy. It is leased to most excellent people, who take as lodgers and boarders a few persons of high respectability. With its good furniture and careful service, it is renowned in the town; it begins to be advertised, but always as 'select,' and charges are in keeping. Presently, something elsewhere, a shade newer and smarter, takes precedence. The erstwhile home, scene of all domestic blisses and sorrows, begins to be known as the 'old' so-and-so house; and as a place of lodgment and food, it steadily cheapens; the neighborhood declines into untidiness, with a hint in its atmosphere of boiled cabbage. Presently, it seeks the patronage of the impecunious, who do not object to bare hallways and rickety stairs and dubious odors. Last stage of all, it stands a while empty, locked, with cobwebbed windows and placards on the walls, till the march of improvement comes down the street and the old home disappears in a few loads of brick and plaster, and there arises on its site a new Pride of the Neighborhood.

So we change through the decades. .."

And so we do continue to change. And reinvent our city and region. Some of us live in the past because the gauze of memory makes it seem more warm, slower-paced, neighborly. And some of us visit the past in order to illuminate our present, and our future. Which are you?

photo credit:BECHS

Thanks For The Stamp.

2008-12-01T12:21:00.000-08:00

One of my fellow swimmers this morning at the Aquatic Center had a snorkel with a 'U.S. Divers' logo. I smiled because I recalled the 10-year old who lived for Mike Nelson (Lloyd Bridges) in the TV show 'Sea Hunt.' I was growing up in rural Western New York, landlocked as could be. But I wanted to scuba dive as much as a child can want to do anything.

What I was able to do was incremental. I saved my birthday money and, when the local Western Auto had its sales in summer, I bought a cheap face mask and, later, cheap fins (which the uninitiated called 'flippers' to my disdain).

But my fantasy scuba life was given a big boost when, in my doctor's office, I found a magazine that had an ad for U.S. Divers. By tearing out the printed form and mailing it in, I would receive the U.S. Divers catalog. I confess that the only time in my life that I tore anything out of a doctor's office magazine was in 1959.

And when I got home, I had to ask my mother for a stamp. I was well aware that we didn't have much money and a that 4-cent stamp was a valuable commodity. I can't explain why she gave me the necessary stamp, but she did. And weeks later, the most wonderful envelope arrived. The U.S. Divers catalog was full of color, with neon yellow fins, and navy wetsuits, some with stripes. It had masks with big porthole-sized lenses of real glass, and knives and weight belts and so much stuff to learn.

I wore that catalog out, studying it for days at a time. And, when we went swimming in a nearby spring-fed pond or the Tonawanda Creek, visibility was limited (to put it charitably), but I studied the polliwogs, minnows, and crayfish while imagining myself a member of the great community of Mike Nelsons and Jacques Cousteau, all of us underwater explorers.

When I grew up, I saw no other female marine archaeologists (my interests sharpened thus), and could not know that there was indeed just one woman in the field. And so I put aside that dream and did more ordinary things.

And now that I can learn to scuba dive if I want to? Well, I may yet have time to do that. If I do, I'll remember Lloyd Bridges and the lessons he taught. And the power of a postage stamp, placed in my hands by a mother who may have found her oldest daughter perplexing, but who was on my side.

2008-11-24T12:05:00.000-08:00

Children of yesterday, heirs of tomorrow
what are you weaving?

Mary Artemesia Lathbury
American poet

Welcome.