Forman-Cabana House - Table of Contents

Oliver Cabana, Jr.

Illustrations courtesy of Elma, NY, Historical Society





Photo courtesy of Elma, New York, Historical Society


Oliver Cabana
, Jr. who was born of French-Canadian ancestry in Island Point,Vermont, in 1865, one of ten children of Oliver Cabana, the village blacksmith, and his wife Edmire De Rainville.

At fourteen he came to live with relatives in Buffalo where, after studying bookkeeping at Bryant & Stratton, he went to work for a tanning and belt manufacturing firm. Six years later he sank his savings of $480 in a belt fastener and mender invented by his half-brother. He then bought out the brother's interest and formed the Buffalo Specialty Company. Cabana prospered and established two factories in Buffalo, also in Canada, England and Germany. Sales went into the millions and the name was changed to the Liquid Veneer Company.

In 1886 he married Isabelle Josephine Pilliard of Buffalo in the French Church at Clinton and Washington.

He then got into old mining, hospitals, oil producing, cattle raising, and banking, and was director of thirty-five companies and a member of numerous societies and clubs. Cabana became the official head of all the industries with which he was connected. He developed the Wright-Hargreaves Gold Mine in Kirkland Lake, Ontario. He was chairman of Liberty Bank of Buffalo, and was responsible for its building. He developed the Sun Diet Health Foundation in East Aurora, and wrote books on Central Park Hospital. He assisted in the development of Canisius College.

Democratic Party

Cabana used his wealth to become a power in the Democratic Party. He managed the campaign for Gov. Alfred E. Smith in Buffalo and Erie County in 1928. He bankrolled banquets for visiting sachems and during the Smith-Hoover presidential election wrote Al a check for $25,000, besides spending locally $26,000 ($888,930 in 1997 dollars.)

During the 1930s he gave more than $100,000 to Democratic causes besides making good on $27,000 worth of notes signed by party leaders. Cabana was an original Roosevelt-for-president man. For his second inaugural as governor in January 1931, Roosevelt summoned him to Albany and deputized him to clean house in Erie County. This made William H. Fitzpatrick, off-and-on County Democratic boss for thirty years, unhappy, but Cabana put down a Fitzpatrick revolt in the primaries. In the general election Democrats not only won the city clerk's office and captured the common council but for the first time in memory gained a one-man majority on the Board of Supervisors. It was a Democratic year anyway, but Cabana claimed credit for the win. This was the zenith of his political career.

Shortly before the election he resigned the chairmanship and appointed George Zimmerman in his stead. Cabana expected to remain the power behind the throne, but Zimmerman was his own man, and Cabana was out.

Cabana bred, developed and drove race horses in Elma and bred Holstein cattle.

He died in 1938. His friend, Archbishop Thomas J. Walsh of Newark, formerly of Buffalo, came back to celebrate the funeral Mass. The widow, Isabella, stayed at #824  Delaware until her death at ninety-two in 1953.

A daughter, Miss Isabelle Cabana, lived there until 1961 when the house was vacant for two years until it became a child care center


Text sources:
  • 1999 Preservation Coalition tour: Greg Lodinsky, tour guide
  • Buffalo's Delaware Avenue: Mansions and Families, by Edward T. Dunn. Pub. by Canisius College Press, 2003



..........
......





.....

.....


.....










     Source:  Elma, New York, Historical Society
Liquid Veer Company








1930

1930






1930

Ill of1930
 Elma, NY,



1930

1930







1938


































The son of Oliver Cabana, Jr. was named Oliver F. Cabana (Senior), who took over the various firms after his father passed away. 

The grandson of Oliver Cabana, Jr. is Oliver F. Cabana, Jr. (he's known as Buck, and now lives in Ft. Meyers, FL).

A granddaughter of Oliver Cabana, Jr. also survives: Sister Mary Oliver Cabana, and she is here in Buffalo, NY.

FYI, the family has always pronounced Cabana as "CAH-ben-augh."

- Brian Szafranski, 2016
Special thanks to Brian Szafranski for sharing his research

Page by Chuck LaChiusa in 2016
| ...Home Page ...| ..Buffalo Architecture Index...| ..Buffalo History Index... .|....E-Mail ...| ..

web site consulting by ingenious, inc.