1664 1679 1689 1721 1722 1759 1774 1775 1780 1785 1786 1788 1789 1790 1791 1792 1793 1794 1795 1797 1798

1800 1801 1802 1803 1804 1805 1806 1807 1808 1809

1810 1811 1812 1813 1814 1815 1816 1817 1818 1819 1820 1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831

1832 1833 1834 1835 1836 1837 1838 1839 1840

1841 1843 1844 1845 1846 1847 1848 1849 1850 1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 1856 1857 1858 1859

1860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870 1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885

1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909

1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1945

1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949

1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970

1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985

1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 INDEX

1832

Buffalo 1832 Directory Alphabetial list of households (WNY Geneology) Buffalo 1832 Directory (Distantcousin.com) Online Buffalo City Directories - LINKS (BuffaloResearch.com) Henry Priebe, The City of Buffalo 1832 - A City is Born Henry Priebe, The City of Buffalo - 1832 to 1840 Essay Buffalo incorporated as a city on April 20. 4 .5 square miles, with a population of 10,000. The northern border is North Street. Virtually every aspect of daily life in the city is closely supervised by the Common Council (the mayor is appointed by the council and has powers similar to a village justice of the peace), including the management and control of finances of all property, real and personal. Original city charter Buffalo first mayor, Dr. Ebenezer Johnson, is elected for a one-year term. Under the first city charter, the Common Council has the power to elect the mayor. Salary: $250. per year. Before the election, Johnson is one of Buffalo's wealthiest citizens. Johnson Park will be named after him. In June, a cholera epidemic breaks out. City spokesmen (among them the physician and first mayor of Buffalo, Dr. Ebenezer Johnson) say it is caused by Irish immigrants in Quebec who had brought the dread disease with them from the old country. The Common Council's first action is to quarantine the city. All traffic - lake and canal boats, stages and coaches - is stopped immediately. A man might be in apparent good health in the morning and in his grave the same night. The death carts patrol the streets, and when there is an indication of a death in a house , the driver would shout, "Bring out your dead." Bodies are not permitted to remain unburied over an hour or two, if it is possible to obtain carriers or a sexton to bury them. By July, over 120 Buffalonians die from the epidemic. Another epidemic will occur in 1849, and the worst in 1854. Cholera Epidemics in Buffalo, NY Cemeteries: When Buffalo incorporates, the city established cemeteries beyond the northern boundary of the city, Guideboard Road, which the city fathers appropriately name North Street . The principal cemeteries: The Franklin Street Cemetery, the site of the present Old Erie County Building. North Street Cemetery Potters' Field for the indigent on the site of an old Indian burial ground bounded by North St.., Best St., Michigan, and Cemetery St. (Masten St. ). Present day site of Pilgrim Housing and City Honors School. East North Street Cemetery Forest Lawn Cemetery on the Web Kopp, Katherine M. City of Buffalo Cemeteries... Description of cemeteries In November, a fire destroys 60 buildings in the heart of the city. The Williamsville-Buffalo Road (later to become Main Street) is paved and to recoup the cost, a toll house is built at the present intersection of Kensington Avenue and Main Street.

1833

Millard Fillmore elected to US House of Representatives 1833-35 After Dr. Ebenezer Johnson declines a second term as mayor, the Common Council votes Major Andre Andrews as Buffalo's second mayor. In 1834, the cholera will returne and Andrews, as well as his wife and daughter, die from the disease. White Oaks on Grand Island The East Boston Company purchases about 16,000 acres of land on Grand Island for five dollars per acre. The Company planned to cut the white oaks and sell the timber to the shipyards in Boston and New York. The timber would be shipped via the Erie Canal. The Company cleared the land on the island opposite Tonawanda. A small "town" was laid out, including the beautiful home on the south portion of the cleared land now occupied by the Mesmer Supper Club. Bunkhouses for the Iumberjacks, a store, a building used as a school and a church, a dry dock, warehouses for ships' supplies and a long wharf were built. A gristmill and a sawmill were included in this settlement which was named Whitehaven in honor of Stephen White. The sawmill at Whitehaven was said to be the largest steam saw in the world at that time. Six gangs of nine to ten men each were needed to keep the saw supplied with raw material. They used white oak logs from eighteen inches to five feet in diameter and from forty to seventy-five feet long - Source: The History of Grand Island Buildings erected: Buffalo Lighthouse First Unitarian Church

1834

Buffalo's single Police Constable proves inadequate to keep the peace. Additional watchmen are appointed. The Buffalo & Black Rock Land and Railroad Company opens a horse railway between the city and a horse ferry to Canada. The Commercial Bank - Buffalo's first bank - opens for business. Weekly steamboat service between Buffalo and Chicago is inaugurated. The city's first railroad, the Buffalo & Black Rock, is chartered. 80,000 people pass through Buffalo headed for the West. Dr. Ebenezer Johnson appointed mayor of Buffalo for the second one-year term. He served one term in 1832. Dr. Ebenezer Johnson, physician turned politician, purchases almost 100 acres north of the settled area of the city, on Delaware Avenue, and erects a magnificent home. Around 1850, a few years after Johnson has sold his estate and left Buffalo, the grounds will be divided into Johnson Park and Johnson Place, the lake will become part of Rumsey Park, and the cottage will serve as the first home of the Buffalo Seminary. The Rumsey family will sell Rumsey Park around 1914. By 1915, Rumsey Lake will be filled in and subdivided, making it possible to extend Elmwood Avenue from Virginia Street into downtown.

1835

Benjamin Rathbun builds 99 buildings at a cost of $500,000, including the first American Hotel on Main Street near Court and the city's jail. Rathbun apparently entrusts the wrong men -- including his brother and a nephew -- who become involved in a forgery scheme on his behalf. The ensuing scandal lands Rathbun a five year prison sentence. A fugitive slave family named Stanford is kidnapped from St. Catherine's, Ontario, and taken to Buffalo. Blacks of both cities free the Stanfords at Hamburg, and return them to Canada after a clash between liberators and a sheriff's posse at Black Rock. Escaped slave William Wells Brown, a steamboat crew member, arrives and begins helping other former slaves escape to Canada. The Commercial Advertiser becomes Buffalo's first daily newspaper, New Year's Day, 1835. Buffalo's population: 19,715; Erie County's: 57,594.

1836

Another bank, the City Bank, opens. The Eagle Street Theater opens and is praised for its elegance. Samuel Wilkeson appointed mayor Buffalo and Erie County Public Library (BECPL history) was founded in 1836 as the Young Men's Association, not to be confused with the YMCA. The Young Men's Association donated their collection to the city as the basis for the Buffalo Public Library, which became the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library in the 1950s.

1837

Appendix A, B, C, Buffalo Historical Society Publications and Index (1837-1838) Reprinted by Cornell U. 42 steamboats operate on Lake Erie. Fort Porter, known as The Castle, serves as a customs and guard house and will be demolished for the Peace Bridge in 1925. On Mar 18, future Buffalo mayor and U. S. President Stephen Grover Cleveland is born in Caldwell, New Jersey, to Congregationalist minister the Reverend Richard Falen Cleveland and Anne Neal Cleveland. Village of Black Rock is incorporated on April 24. It takes its name from a large, flat Onondaga limestone rock that rises four to five feet out of the Niagara River, forming a small natural harbor and ideal ferry crossing point. The rock will be removed by blasting in the 1820s. Black Rock will be Buffalo's rival for the county seat and the terminus of the Erie Canal and will be annexed by the City of Buffalo on April 13, 1853, becoming one of Buffalo's west side neighborhoods. Prior to the Civil War it will serve as an Underground Railroad "station" from which runaway slaves can cross over into Canada. The Buffalo Post Office has its first permanent building, a former Baptist church at the corner of Washington and Seneca Streets. Previously, the post office moved with the postmaster. 1804 Erastus Granger entry Old Buffalo Post Office/ECC Illustrations, history, architectural analysis Samuel Morse invents the telegraph. The Caroline Incident during the Patriot War The eruption of the Patriot War of 1837 in Canada results in an influx of leaders of discontented Canadians to American soil. Buffalo becomes a center of plotting for a serious campaign. On December 29, 1837, the steamer "Caroline" is hired at Buffalo and begins a ferry service between Navy Island and Schlosser on the American shore. Seven boatloads of men from Chippewa seize the boat killing one American. A great American clamor breaks out over this incident. However, the American government stops the rebel reinforcement from the American side and American involvement subsides.

1838

Appendix A, B, C, Buffalo Historical Society Publications and Index (1837-1838) Reprinted by Cornell U. The Ogden Company succeeds in having the federal government approves the sale of the lands on the Buffalo Reservation from the Senecas who are living on the reservation just a few blocks from the Buffalo harbor and the Erie Canal terminus. Encyclopedia of North American Indians: Efforts to remove Senecas from their lands culminated in the Treaty of Buffalo Creek in 1838, by the terms of which the four remaining reservations -- Buffalo Creek, Tonawanda, Cattaraugus, and Allegany -- were sold and provisions were made for the Senecas to remove to Kansas. The corrupt proceedings were protested, however, and a new treaty of Buffalo Creek was signed in 1842. The new agreement stipulated the sale of Buffalo Creek and Tonawanda, but retained Allegany and Cattaraugus. As a result of the Buffalo Creek treaties, some Senecas moved to Kansas Most did not, however, and of those who did, all but two returned. Senecas of Tonawanda, who had not been present at the treaty proceedings in 1842, objected. By a treaty signed in 1857, they bought back most of their reservation with money set aside for their removal from Kansas. The Tonawanda Senecas maintain their government by hereditary chiefs, practice the Longhouse religion, perform traditional calendric rituals, and have medicine societies (a tradition separate from the Longhouse religion) for preventative and curative practices. In 1828 Red Jacket had successfully thwarted their efforts by appealing to President John Quincy Adams who negated a deal. But in 1832 Red Jacket had died. Buffalo's first fire alarm bell is placed in the Terrace Market. Ebenezer Walden is elected mayor for a one-year term. He will build the first brick building in Buffalo. Erected buildings: Three companies of the U.S. Artillery establish a garrison at Buffalo Barracks or Poinsett Barracks after Martin Van Buren's secretary of war Joel Poinsett who visited here. (Poinsett's name continues today in the holiday plant poinsettia which Poinsett is credited for introducing to the United States from Mexico.) In just a few years, this military post will give way to the more strategically located Fort Porter.

1839

New York State's first public school opens in Buffalo on Church St.. The bicycle is invented. An African School is established in July 1839 within the Buffalo School System. This school is located on Washington Street and has 30 children attending. The total of$150 for teacher's salary suggests there was probably one teacher.

1840	Henry Priebe, The City of Buffalo - 1840 to 1850 Essay Buffalo's population: 18,213; Erie County's: 62,465. Sheldon Thompson becomes mayor in 1840, winning the first popular election by a slim margin of 10 votes.