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V
SOME EARLY
BUFFALO CHARACTERS
By FRANK M. HOLLISTERSOME EARLY BUFFALO
CHARACTERS
By FRANK M. HOLLISTER
Of a few persons and things standing out in my own
recollections of Buffalo in the'“fifties”-I may speak here. If
I were master of the pictorial art I could paint a picture of
“Crazy John,” for example, that every one recalling him
and his piteous story would instantly recognize. A tall,
lean man of thirty years, perhaps, with the pathetically
wistful look in his eyes of one half-conscious of a hopeless
quest for lost wits, John was a familiar and welcome visitor
in most of the kitchens in my neighborhood. It was under-
stood that he had lost his reason either through disappointed
love or from over-study. The accomplishments he was in
the habit of displaying as a return for food and warmth
were limited to dancing and saying his prayers. He made
few complaints, the only one I recall being that his father
shaved him with the scissors, a process he found no pleasure
in. “All the ladies love me,” he would say. “Do you love
me? Give .me two cents.” I can see his poor gaunt figure
at the street corner now, his eyes peering furtively up apd
down, this way and that. Then he would start off at a
rapid pace—nowhere, as if a happy thought had struck him
or a call had come for him. It will probably be hard to
piake those who never knew “Crazy John” realize how large
a place this gentle and forlorn creature fills in the memories
of some of us. Boys are often thoughtless to the point of168
FRANK M. HOLLISTER
cruelty to animals and the mentally defective; but I cannot
remember any one teasing or tormenting “Crazy John.”
OLD SCOTT.
Another quaint character that those who lived in Buffalo
fifty or sixty years ago recall with a smile was “old Scott,”
the one-legged colored town crier, galloping about on a kind
of an animated rocking horse and offering rewards for the
restoration of lost children. His appearance, foretold by a
bell which he swung with great vigor, and his proclamations,
, created almost as much excitement as the booming of the
fire-bells and the desperate anxiety of Red Jacket 6 to get
to the scene of conflagration before Live Oak 2. Really to
appreciate the importance of this figure of old Buffalo, one
should have been a small child in the forties, with a keen
memory of the dreadful sound of the crier’s bell, which
smote one’s ear while running home, hours behind time,
followed by the loud cry: “Oh, Yes! I have lost a little
Yankee boy five years old. He had on a blue jacket on,
and gray pants on," and some shoes on his feet, and who ever
puts me on the track of that little Yankee boy will* be well
rewarded.”
EARLY DELAWARE AVENUE.
It must have been in Scott’s day, in “the forties,” that
historic times really dawned on my own personal conscious-
ness with the narrow escape I had from being killed by an
enraged sow on the sidewalk on Delaware avenue near
Mohawk street. In those days swine and cattle were allowed
to roam for forage in the streets of this as of other Ameri-
can cities, greatly to the surprise and disgust of Mrs.
Trollope, Charles Dickens and other fastidious travellers.
Misconstruing my attempt to pet one of her progeny the
animal charged with fury and bowled me over, and I haveEARLY BUFFALO CHARACTERS.	169
always understood that I was only saved from the ignomini-
ous fate of being reduced to sausage meat, then and there,
by the timely interposition of a chance passer-by. Strangely
enough, this gruesome incident, vividly stamped on my
memory, has never impaired in the slightest degree my life-
long fondness for pigs, more especially, I should say, in the
sublimated form of spare-ribs, bacon and sausages.
“water JOHN.”
I do not personally remember a certain “Water John,”
who may be properly recalled here, as a sort of companion-
piece to Scott, the town-crier. Mr. Samuel M. Welch, in
his breezy “Recollections of Buffalo Fifty Years Since,”
published in 1891, while writing of the town's primitive
method of obtaining spring water from the Jubilee Water
Works, near Gates Circle, through hollow logs, notes, as a
curious coincidence, looking out of his window and seeing
workmen disinterring from a trench in front of Sherman S.
Jewett's residence some of those same primitive wooden
conduits. He goes on to remark that Another water-supply
supplemented the Jubilee logs in early times, namely, that
furnished by John Kutcheson, who filled a hogshead with
lake water and drove it on wheels about town, selling it to
regular customers. He was a jolly happy-go-lucky Alsatian
and one of the town characters. His depot, a frame and
plaster shack on the southwest corner of Franklin and
Court streets, survived until 1910. Mr. Kutcheson siphoned
water into his peripatetic reservoir at the foot of Erie street
and sold it at the rate of a shilling (twelve and a half cents)
a barrel.
THE LAKE CAPTAINS.
I have often thought it a pity that some one with Mark
Twain's memory, gifts of literary expression and intimate170
FRANK M. HOLLISTER
acquaintance with his subject, could not have commemorated
the skill, daring and resourcefulness of our early lake navi-
gators, as Mr. Clemens has happily preserved the marvellous
story of piloting on the Mississippi, in the halcyon days of
steamboat traffic on that mighty stream. If Captain Dorr, or
Captain Dobbins, had possessed the literary knack, or if
the late L. G. Sellstedt, who had the knack, had caught the
inspiration and had gathered material available forty years
ago but lost forever now, we might have had a longer list
of old-tipie characters to draw from than is within my ken
today. The lake captains of the period between 1820 and
1850 were a peculiarly hardy, bold and clever race of navi-
gators. To command a lake passenger steamer was then a
far more difficult and dangerous duty than to command a
vessel on the ocean. During the greater part of this period
the lakes were not adequately charted, lights were few arid
harbors unprotected. The lake captains sailed by eye and
ear and they had their work cut out for them by about as
hazardous conditions as could have been found on any large
body of water in the world. Without doubt there were
“characters” among these brave and capable mariners of
whom we should like to know more than their names, which
is about all the information that has come down to us con-
cerning them. Mr. Welch pays handsome tribute to them
as a class and has recorded many names, some of which I
remember well as of heroes I have seen or heard celebrated
in local tradition.
Of these I may mention Captain Bob Wagstaff of the
Northern Indiana, and Captain A. D. Perkins of her equally
famous consort, the Southern Michigan. Buffalo boys used
to go down to the foot of Main street to feast admiring eyes
upon these splendid vessels. Then there was Captain
Morris Hazard of the Empire State, and as for the City ofEARLY BUFFALO CHARACTERS.
171
Buffalo, the latest and peerless flower of the old side-wheel
floating palaces, no Buffal6 boy who lived in “the fifties”
will ever abandon in this world the conviction that she was
the handsomest ship that ever floated. Of course, we under-
stand that the great Imperator, the latest triumph of megalo-
mania in marine architecture, is bigger, but “the lines” of
the City of Buffalo were much finer. The Waldorf-Astoria
is bigger than the Albright Art Gallery, but—well, you see
how it is.
Among the retired lake captains who resided in Buffalo
some few may recall Wormwood, commonly known as
Deacon Wormwood, who became a pillar of the Methodist
Church on Niagara street, where the Masonic Temple now
stands. The Deacon was a Christian of the stern, unbend-
ing type and in his store, near the wharf, where he sold
sailors’ outfits, he often had occasion to vindicate his reli-
gious principles. His customers when sober respected his
scruples, but one day a drunken fellow became abusive and
blasphemed horribly. Deacon Wormwood, marching up to
the offender with fire in his eye, cried, “Drop that, you
rascal; another word and I’ll backslide for five minutes and
give you the damnedest hiding you ever had in your life.”
Before leaving the ancient mariners I might make a pass-
ing allusion to a certain Fred Emmons, mentioned by several
chroniclers of small beer as “a famous humorist” and prac-
tical joker in the middle decades of the century. Emmons
was a steamboat runner, or agent, whose taste in jokes was
shown in scaring a party of idlers in Stevenson’s livery
office nearly out of their senses by declaring that he was
tired of life and putting what looked like a keg of gun-
powder into a blazing fire. A less drastic jest was that he
played at the expense of a farmer whom he induced to drive
a load upon a platform in front of the churches where the172
FRANK M. HOLLISTER
town sundial was located and wait patiently for the official
weigher, under the belief that it was a hay-scale. As for
Mr. Emmons’s humor, it appears to have had but one di-
mension-breadth only. It would have to be described, I
fear, as of the kind that distinguished the literature which
Mr. Wegg thought could not be read aloud in the presence
of Mrs. Boffin. And there were other humorists of the
early days, anecdotes of whom are likewise debarred from
rehearsal in my discreet paper by the application of this
same wholesome test.
, JOSEPH ELLICOTT.
Among the most notable characters among our own
townspeople in the first two decades of the last century,
must be reckoned Joseph Ellicott, in whose imagination,
before men lived on the spot, the city of Buffalo was pic-
tured in a future more brilliant than it has yet realized. In
1800, when he was forty years old, Joseph Ellicott, who had
surveyed the great Holland Purchase for Dutch capitalists,
became the agent of the Holland Land Company and served
in that capacity for twenty years. His policy, in dealing
with settlers in the townships under his charge, was lenient
and far-sighted, in one sense. He advised purchasers to
pay in part only and to keep a reserve for improvements
on the land. This liberal arrangement might have worked
out better for the interests of his principals had not the war
of 1812 and a period of bankruptcy intervened. The actual
result was disastrous. During these twenty years Joseph
Ellicott was the great man in Western New York—literally
“monarch of all he surveyed”; and it is to be said to his
credit that vast power neither corrupted him nor made him
arrogant. He did not exert his influence in politics, but did
lend it freely to the building up of the community—to theEARLY BUFFALO CHARACTERS.
173
cause of education and of religion; to the building of the
Erie Canal. It is a pity that his plan for erecting a mansion
on the “Ellicott Square,” which originally included the lots
between Eagle and Swan streets and from Main running
back to Michigan street, was abandoned, owing to the
parochial narrowness and obstinacy of the town officers.
He meant to develop a fine park there and to bequeath it to
the city to be used for a public resort. Another of his large
projects not carried out was the construction of a great
inner harbor between the Terrace and the lake. Ellicott
was the seer, the prophet of Greater Buffalo. It was after
the Erie Canal was completed that one of the early boomers
wrote: “Buffalo has no rival—it can have none. Cities
west of us may arise to wealth and importance, but they will
be our tributaries;	.	.	. thus rendering Buffalo what it
may ever claim to be—the Great National Exchange.” The
loose screw in this reasoning, as in Joseph Ellicott’s prophe-
cies, was failure to anticipate the effect on Buffalo of the
opening-up of the West by railroads. That was a factor no
one could anticipate.
THE FOUNDER OF BUFFALO.
One man looms pre-eminent among the early Buffa-
lonians—Samuel Wilkeson. He is called “the Father,” or
“Founder” of the city. On his monument in Forest Lawn
are placed the words
“Urbem Condidit”—“He Built the City.”
What this tribute means is that to him more than to any
other man is due the credit of inducing the state authorities
to make Buffalo the terminus of the Erie Canal and of
opening Buffalo river as a harbor for lake vessels. The
story of the harbor-building is a familiar one and shows
Judge Wilkeson’s strong characteristics to great advantage.174
FRANK M. HOLLISTER
He was of Scotch-Irish stock—which some people think the
finest strain in our American blend. President Woodrow
Wilson, when president of Princeton, said at a Harvard
Commencement: “I am one of those who are of the seed of
that indomitable blood, planted in so many parts of the
United States, which makes good fighting stuff—the Scotch-
Irish. The beauty about a Scotch-Irishman is that he not
only thinks he is right, but knows he is right.” Samuel
Wilkeson had the fighting-stuff in him—he came by it hon-
estly. Six Wilkesons were killed at the siege of Derry.
John, the father of Samuel, fought throughout the Revolu-
tionary War. Eight of his grandsons fought to save the
Union—“all on the shooting line/' And Samuel, too, “knew
he was right.” That was why he beat General Porter and
Black Rock on the canal proposition and forced the building
at Buffalo of the steamboat Superior, which succeeded the
wrecked Walk-in-the-Water, first steamboat on Lake Erie.
He was not always right but he was always in earnest and
usually had his way. He was, in short, a born leader and
the acknowledged head-man in Buffalo in the quarter of a
century following the close of the War of 1812. He had
three sons, William, John and Samuel, who were also men
of force and intellectual power, and who worthily main-
tained the reputation of the family. The homestead, built
by Judge Wilkeson in 1825, still stands on Niagara Square,
a dignified monument in a way, to its builder who “built
the city.” If it becomes any community to rear monuments
in honor of its founders, Buffalo ought thus to commemo-
rate the masterful and public spirited Samuel Wilkeson. Is
it not strange that there should be in this city a public
memorial of Red Jacket, the Seneca chief, but none of
Samuel Wilkeson, its founder and chief citizen? “This
man,” wrote his son Samuel, “was a king among men. MenEARLY BUFFALO CHARACTERS.
175
obeyed him without loss of self-respect. He moved masses
of men and did not excite jealousy. His scorn of what was
dishonorable or mean was grand. His courage was chivalric
and complete. And way down in the lion heart of the man
was a soft nest in which his children were held and his
friends found warmth and sympathy/’ In the compara-
tively short and simple annals of our city we shall find no
finer type of all ’round manhood than Samuel Wilkeson.
A DARING EXPLOIT.
In connection with Wilkeson and his memorable achieve-
ment in making a harbor at this port, I must mention here
the most recklessly daring feat ever performed on this
frontier. N. K. Olmstead and James Sloan were two assist-
ants of the Judge in the harbor work whom he praised
highly in his writings. Wilkeson writes: “N. K. Olmstead
was a man of unusual muscular power. The severe labor
he performed on harbor work, perhaps no man in the
country could equal. He lived in Buffalo when the village
was burned by the British, and his home and property were
destroyed. When peace was declared he declined to be a
party to the contract, remaining alert to make reprisal while
on the river. Managing to obtain a load of (British) mili-
tary supplies to transport from Chippewa to Fort Erie,
which included two kegs of specie, he landed on the Ameri-
can shore and hid the money. He then left the frontier, but
returned to Buffalo in 1819. When on harbor work he at
times went to the Canada shore for boat-loads of stone, and
on such an occasion was arrested and placed in a boat to be
taken to Chippewa. The boat had a small skiff in tow, in
which was a single paddle. When nearing Chippewa he
leaped into the skiff, cut its fastening, and took to the rapid
current, where his captors declined his pursuit. By extra-176
FRANK M. HOLLISTER
ordinary exertion he landed on Grass Island. Observing a
boat putting out from Chippewa, he again braved the rapids
and managed to make Porter’s mill-race. A less active and
powerful man would have been swept over the falls. The
next day he resumed harbor work.”
COLONEL "lance” PALMER.
It takes all sorts to make a world, even so small a world
as our Buffalo was when it first became a city, in 1832.
This community in the thirties was as gay a town for its
size as there was in the land. It was full of characters.
Take Colonel Alanson Palmer, for example. From all that
I have read of "Lance” Palmer, I imagine him to have been
a gaudy combination of Mr. Micawber, Colonel Sellers and
"Old Billy” Lee. Like Mr. Micawber he was affable and
generous to a fault, "not only with his own money,” says
Mr. Welch, who knew him, "but with that of other people.”
Like Colonel Sellers, he was a born speculator, overflowing
with grand schemes that rarely came to anything. And like
"Old Billy” Lee, of whom Lowell tells, he was a magnif-
icent spendthrift. Billy Lee’s idea of a competence was "a
million a minute and expenses paid.” Colonel Palmer could
have taken the starch even out of Rockefeller’s fortune. He
was a very handsome man and in his prosperous days
famous for his fashionable raiment and brilliant equipages.
The pin on his ruffled shirt front, a portrait of Andrew
Jackson, set in diarhonds, was the envy of all the lesser
swells of the period. Well, Colonel Palmer flourished like
the grass and was soon cut down, of course. There was a
rank growth of that sort in Buffalo during the boom times
in the thirties, most of which vanished when the light went
out, with the gas, in the panic of ’37. Colonel Palmer left a
more substantial monument than some of the high-flyers,
however, in the original grand American Hotel, which heEARLY BUFFALO CHARACTERS.
177
built, and which, we are told, had “some features only to be
found in certain royal palaces in Europe.” He also built
one of the only two full-rigged ships that ever sailed the
lakes. This vessel was named for his wife, the Julia Palmer.
Very characteristically she carried every sail ever mentioned
in the history of navigation. She was elegantly finished in
mahogany and shining brass. Mr. Welch says that Monte
Cristo’s yacht was a hooker to the Julia Palmer. Unfor-
tunately she didn’t pay and was later converted into a mere
steamboat. The Colonel was never converted. Yet his
intentions were of the best. There were no public schools
then and Colonel Palmer, seeing the need, established the
Palmer School with a handsome endowment for sixty pupils.
In two or three years the securities of which the endowment
consisted became worthless and the school collapsed.
The Colonel was certainly a character. He scorned
small transactions. Once over a cold bottle he said to a
companion: “I’ll give you $150,000 for everything you own,
except your wife and babies and household effects.”
“Done,” says the other and the bargain was consummated.
The Colonel took lands, houses, mortgages, notes; paid part
in cash and gave a mortgage to secure the rest. Guy H.
Salisbury in his interesting paper on the “Speculative Craze
of 1836”1 alludes to this incident and in close context writes:
“Day before yesterday (his paper was written in 1863), I
met that wholesale purchaser on his way to the Poorhouse
with a certificate from the Overseer in his hand.” In 1836
Alanson Palmer was almost a millionaire and the most dash-
ing figure in Buffalo society. Thirty years later his burial
was a public charge. In him it may be said, is to be seen
the personification, in its most engaging and yet pitiful form,
of the “Buffalo boom” of 1836-7.
1. See Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society, vol. IV, pp. 317-337.178
FRANK M. HOLLISTER
THREE LAWYERS.
Qf the old-time members of the bar, perhaps no one is
better entitled to honorable mention in the category of
“Early Buffalo Characters” than Roswell L. Burrows. Mr.
Burrows was commonly called Judge Burrows, after he had
served for a time as County Judge. He looked like an old-
fashioned country lawyer. In dress, speech and manner he
was extremely unconventional, but he is remembered by the
veterans of the bar as one of the masters of the science of
law in this community. He was said to be so much more
interested in the legal aspects of his cases than in the mere
winning of a verdict that he seemed to be acting as counsel
for both sides, sometimes to the dismay of his own client.
He could not help looking at the case on all sides and his
careful weighing of arguments and balancing of the merits
of a disputation tended to aggravate “the law’s delays.” He
had a dry, caustic wit in which his contemporaries delighted.
One day a friend informed him that his partner, David F.
Day, who was even more deliberate in action than himself,
had discovered a new species of snail in one of his excur-
sions in the suburbs. “Hml” grunted Burrows, with a
twinkle in his eye; “David must have met it!” To another
friend who asked for the address of a notary public, Bur-
rows said: “A notary public! Why, lift a plank anywhere
and a dozen will scrabble away.”
As a complete antithesis to R. L. Burrows, John Ganson
may be mentioned. He was a handsome, well-groomed,
aristocratic looking man of courtly manners and rare ability.
He was brilliant and yet thorough. He had the artist’s joy
in perfection of professional work and there was pleasure
as well as profit for other lawyers in seeing him try a case.
When a Member of Congress, during the Civil War, Mr.
Ganson once called upon the President and said:EARLY BUFFALO CHARACTERS.
179
“Mr. President, can it be true as reported that you intend
to issue an Emancipation Proclamation in the near future?”
Mr. Lincoln looked the elegant thoroughbred all over,
rather quizzically, and then laying a big hand on his in-
quisitor’s shoulder quite irrelevantly observed:
“Why, Ganson, how close you shave!”
As one historic example of Lincoln’s various happy ways
of maintaining discreet reserve on important questions, or
of bringing too protracted interviews to a close, this anec-
dote, though familiar to many, will bear repetition here.
John Ganson was a notable personage in whatever circle he
moved, and the impression he made on his contemporaries
was deep and lasting. The late Sherman S. Rogers, who
survived his friend many years, often mentioned to his in-
timates the fact that the most constantly recurrent figure in
his dreams was John Ganson.
In his day a certain nondescript lawyer named Josiah
Cook, universally known as “Joe” Cook, was one of the
town “characters.” How he ever broke into the legal pro-
fession was veiled with the same mystery that surrounded
his escape from the clutches of the Vigilance Committee in
San Francisco in 1849. Perhaps the late Police Justice
Thomas King, himself a member of that committee, could
have dispelled some of the mystery had he been interro-
gated. But it matters little now. “Joe” Cook was a crim-
inal lawyer in a rather broad sense of the word. To the
lake transportation companies he was a terror, by reason
of his pernicious activities as attorney for deckhands and
roustabouts who had disputes about wages with the vessel
owners. On a three or seven dollar claim he would libel
and hold up a steamer whose time was worth big money.
His success on these lines grew into a kind of blackmail that
resulted in Mr. Cook’s accepting a regular “retainer” from180
FRANK M. HOLLISTER
every large transportation interest in Buffalo. He had an
office and lodgings in the old Spaulding’s Exchange on the
Terrace. It was doubtless in his flush days that he bought
the famous sealskin overcoat that made him a marked figure
in the streets and saloons of the city for many winters. He
kept no books and squandered his income in gambling and
riotous living. He died in his squalid rooms on the Terrace,
a forlorn and pitiable object. But his last months were
brightened by the charity of a lawyer friend of this city
who had known him in his prosperous days and could “make
allowances.”
R. W. HASKINS.
In looking for “characters” among the old-time Buffa-
lonians we naturally search for men different from their
contemporaries, distinguished by exceptional qualities and
temperaments, by eccentricities and so on. In this class I
cannot fail to notice Roswell W. Haskins, one of the most
interesting personalities of his day and generation. Our
respect, and even admiration for the man is heightened by
the fact that his childhood was unhappy and that he had no
advantages in the way of education and training other than
those obtained in the hard school of adversity. He came to
Buffalo in 1822, after a few years spent in New York and
Canandaigua; acquired a modest competence at journalism,
book-binding and book-selling and retired from business in
1832 at the age of 36 to devote his time to scientific studies
and the public welfare. He mastered the French language
that he might read the reports of the French Academy of
Science. He was chairman of the meeting at which the
Young Men’s Association was organized and was one of
the earliest friends and supporters of the Society of Natural
Sciences. He cared nothing for money, but was always
thinking and planning in a large way for the develop-EARLY BUFFALO CHARACTERS.
181
ment of natural forces for the general good. Mr. Sellstedt,
in his excellent paper on Mr. Haskins in the Historical
Society Publications,1 tells how he argued for the utiliza-
tion of natural gas and of electricity for lighting pur-
poses; how he proposed the use of iron columns in build-
ings and urged a continuous line of railroad from Albany
to Buffalo, ten years before it became a reality. In all these
manifestations of a vigorous and original mind he was
. simply a generation or two ahead of his time. Most people
could not understand him and he resented their lack of appre-
ciation. Naturally such a man could not accept the geology
of the OldTestament and as his dissent was bluntly expressed,
many persons thought him a “dangerous’’ character.
Doubtless the community generally regarded him as
“queer,” while he thought his upright life and disinterested
labors deserved at least the good opinion of his fellows.
Thus in later years he became isolated and embittered. But
back in 1830, when the cholera ravaged the town, no other
man so gave himself and all his time and strength to nursing
the friendless and alleviating the misery of the awful situa-
tion as did R. W. Haskins. A miserable vagabond when
stricken with the plague was left alone in a deserted tene-
ment. Haskins sought him out, carried him in his arms to a
wagon and put him in the hospital. He and Loring Pierce,
the undertaker, were the heroes of this terrible episode. If
R. W. Haskins did not believe that the whale swallowed
Jonah, and was not sound on the natural science in Genesis,
nevertheless, he was the best Christian of them all when
the time came that tried men’s souls.
PIERCE, THE UNDERTAKER.
Speaking of Loring Pierce, in connection with Mr.
Haskins, there was a character who certainly deserves hon-
1. See vol. IV, pp. 257-284.182
FRANK M. HOLLISTER
orable rank among the rough diamonds of older Buffalo.
He survived in my own day and I remember him well. A
big, burly man, brusque in manner and of a bluntness of
speech that would jar the teeth out of modern sensibilities.
These qualities imparted to his ministrations a certain
humor that was certainly incongruous, but is, I confess, the
chief characteristic of the man that abides in my memory.
His loudly whispered summons to a fellow-pallbearer of
mine on one occasion: “You boy with a mouth big enough
to eat pudd’n’ with a shovel,” put a terrible nervous strain
on all of us. And who that has heard Mr. Pierce’s laconic
order to the bearers: “Fetch her,”, when the moment for
action had come, will ever forget it! Mr. Pierce’s heart was
tender if his speech and manners were rough. He meant
to pay a compliment when he assured a lady that she would
“make a lovely corpse.” One cannot imagine our modern
funeral directors, to whom a decorous and sympathetic
sobriety of demeanor has become a second nature, guilty of
seeming brutalities like these.
But Loring Pierce was a character and a privileged one.
He was sexton, undertaker and general utility man in mort-
uary , matters. His humor, in one sense, was in harmony
with his business. It was deadly. Alas! poor Yorick! It
is related that he was himself in mortal fear of death. How-
ever this may have been in his later days, in his prime he
never flinched when he had to walk hand in hand with the
Enemy, day and night, for months together. In 1832, when
pestilence held the town in its grip, Lewis F. Allen, with
Haskins and Dyre Tillinghast, was a member of the Board
of Health. In his account of this invasion of cholera in
Buffalo, he tells how he went to bed alone in his house, on
Main street, one night, in the midst of a violent thunder-
storm. About midnight he was startled by a tap at theEARLY BUFFALO CHARACTERS.
183
window and upon investigation found Pierce outside. In
reply to an anxious inquiry as to what had happened, Pierce
said:
“Well, Mr. Allen, Pve got six coffins in my wagon and
am going up to the graveyard to bury them; and not know-
ing but you would like to take a look at the bodies and see
that all was right, thought I’d call and ask you.”
“And is that all ?” asked the astonished Allen. “In such
a storm as this, you call me out of bed to see six coffins on
the way to burial. You are surely not alone.”
“Oh, no! I’ve got Black Tony with me—he’s watching
the wagon now in the street. I guess we two can bury ’em
and get home before morning. Good night, Mr. Allen.”
The next morning Pierce was at his post at the Board of
Health office, sedate as usual, as if he had slept all night.
Mr. Allen’s tribute is brief but significant. “Pierce was a
hero.”
AN HUMBLE HEROINE.
There were heroines, as well as heroes, too, in those days.
When the chief nurse at the improvised hospital died sud-
denly, it was difficult to fill the unenviable position. In the
emergency Pierce found a healthy Irish girl of twenty who
volunteered to take the place. She did fine work but in four
days Pierce buried her, too, sadly and tenderly. She was
known only as “Bridget.” And there was another—one
Lydia Harper, a woman of the town, thirty years of age,
whose appearance and carriage belied her occupation. When
there was sore need of attendants for the sick this woman
offered her services, without pay, and proved a ministering
angel. She nursed the sick most efficiently and tenderly in
the best and worst houses in the city throughout the cholera
season. When the crisis passed she went back to her voca-
tion and so into oblivion. But somewhere, we may be sure,184
FRANK M. HOLLISTER
there are books kept where brave and devoted service, like
that of “Bridget” and of Lydia Harper, is duly credited.
LE GRAND MARVIN.
7
All BufFalonians who have known Le Grand Marvin will
concede that he was entitled to the distinction of being the
queerest character that ever made this city his home. He
was born Nov. 9, 1807, in Clinton Valley, New York, “hale
then,” he records in his will, “and uniformly so ’til in 1880,
July 24th to 27th, on rush of blood to my left eye-socket.”
“My incline from a child,” he continues in this same unique
instrument, “to investigate causes, etc., and to do right,
withheld me from seeking claimed (but really pseudo)
benefits in any ‘ring/ in or out of religious or political
partyism, or other bigotry, or secret societies, yet aggressive
everywhere, ‘for the right of the masses’ (even though un-
aided) thereby some selfish, bad, or evil persons (some
vicious lawyers, judges, ministers, etc.) tried to advance
their selfish, untruthful purposes by perversions and un-
truths, as to me and my doings; as pre-threatened, in sub-
stance, to ‘crush’ me in newspapers and elsewhere and by
unjust suits, inequitable and willfully erroneous opinions,
with inequitable decisions unjustly to harm me.” The
mental attitude toward society, and individuals with whom
he came in contact, disclosed in this characteristic passage
would doubtless have enabled Professor William James to
reconstruct a Le Grand Marvin much as Agassiz would
correctly classify and describe a whole fish from a single
bone. This man was a born come-outer. He was not a
gregarious animal. He distrusted and condemned all
churches, political parties and professions. He found
women full of guile and men wicked conspirators against
his property and his peace of mind. His memory is per-EARLY BUFFALO CHARACTERS.
185
petuated, in the city where he lived sixty years, by his own
skeleton, handsomely mounted, in the rooms of the Medical
College, to which he bequeathed it, and by a bundle of papers
and pamphlets in the Public Library containing a minute
history of his interminable quarrels and litigation with his
wife, brother and other relatives, A search among Mr.
Marvin’s literary remains reveals only two papers not
litigious in character. Even in his famous will he fights his
battles over again in 37 printed pages. The first of the two
non-polemical documents was his diary, written in his youth
before he had acquired the fearful and wonderful style that
marks his maturer composition. The other is a lecture on
“The Benefits of Rum,” written in 1829. The title, the
reader will find, is to be taken ironically. In robust sarcasm
the author depicts the joys and glories of the habitual
drinking of intoxicating liquors. It was a great industry
in Buffalo in 1829; six thousand gallons were then drunk
yearly. Mr. Marvin figured the topers would drink up the
town and consume their own bodies in a hundred years.
“What a sublime thought it must be,” he says, “to drink
down not only whole farms and swallow houses, but to
gullup (sic) down one’s own arms and bodies—in compari-
son with which Jonah’s whale is but a small .fish.” The
writer then tells of a woman eighty years old, addicted to
strong drink for many years, who went off in spontaneous
combustion one day, and he says he could mention several
cases in which a moderate drinker’s breath has caught fire
from coming in contact with a candle! .
TRAGEDY OF THE BLACK CAT.
Le Grand Marvin’s eccentricities of speech and conduct
constituted one of the joys of life in Buffalo forty and fifty
years ago. It is safe to assume that few older residents in186
FRANK M. HOLLISTER
this community, addicted to the habit of keeping “scrap
books,” have failed to preserve choice examples of his un-
conventional style. From one of the golden treasuries of
local memorabilia there comes a contribution that deserves
“honorable mention,” at least, in this category. The cor-
respondence may be said to explain itself:
LE GRAND MARVIN,
LAW OFFICE.
Buffalo, April 20th, 1876, 7 A. M.
Mr. Thomas Farnham,
At 637 Main St.
This morning in my rear yard just by the garden gate—I
perceive a black dead cat; said by my family to be one of
your two cats, yesterday P. M. in our back yard by the
cherry tree—amusing themselves, when our kind neighbor,
Mr. L. C. Woodruff’s, powerful dog leaped over the par-
tition fence between Mr. W. & my yard wholly uncalled, &
unprovoked & prior unnoticed—ruthlessly attacked the cats,
—one of which escaped up the cherry tree,—while he greatly
injured the other cat before he could be driven off,—&
NOW that injured cat after having sympathy & care &
seeming restoration in part last evening—is the dead cat.
So much is due to you as neighbor—& to Mr. W., who of
course, would not approve the ruthlessness—& of course—
you will dispose of the dead cat as you deem meet;—only
PLEASE have it so disposed of THIS MORNING; or
suggest if any misapprehension (above) of supposed facts—
Resp yr frd
Le Grand Marvin.EARLY BUFFALO CHARACTERS.
187
LAW OFFICE, NO. 639 MAIN ST.
Buffalo, May 22, 1876, 10 P. M.
Mr. Thomas Farnham,
At 637 Main St.
Last week,—by a kindly intimation of a successful mer-
chant—was first known to me—a “local” item in the Buffalo
Courier of 26 April (last), headed “Black Cat.” Then
about leaving town—I finally returned late this week & now
have said ITEM—quoting parts of my PRIVATE “neigh-
bor” letter of 20 April (last) to you,—
That “item” seems a MALICIOUS, what? & suggests
queries—. To wit;
1.	Could that “item” have started without said “private”
letter had been furnished, by THEE?—of course, not.
2.	Art THOU IN a Civilized Community?
3.	Is such item MEET for a Civilized Community?
4.	Art THOU an elder, or deacon in the 1st Pres. Ch.
in Buffalo? So reputed.
5.	Is that “item” the standard of “love” or “morals” in
that church even in its “session”?
6.	What is “meet” to be done under the Circum-
stances?—
Here is a PAUSE FOR A REPLY.
Resp— & a friend to you all,—in what is right.
Le Grand Marvin.
As for the three famous “exposes” of the deceits and
machinations of the enemies of Le Grand Marvin, let those
who care for the curiosities of literature consult the docu-
mentary and printed evidence in the grotesque and pitiful
collection in the Buffalo Library.1
1. In the library of the Historical Society, besides Mr. Marvin’s singular
pamphlets, are also preserved his will (typewritten) and five manuscript diaries,
with his own entries and memoranda through several years; also two folio
volumes, with his own records of cases at court, 1873-1884.188
FRANK M. HOLLISTER
HEROIC TREATMENT.
How can I fail at least to mention that heroic old prac-
titioner of the early days, Dr. Cyrenius Chapin? Dr.
Chapin practiced by ear and the rule of thumbscrew. Let
me note one prescription which was recently in the posses-
sion of the late Barton Atkins. It is in the shape of a bill
for services rendered the famous Red Jacket:
Erastus Granger, Esq.,	Dr.
To Cyrenius Chapin.
For medical attention and for medicine delivered to Red
Jacket, Nov. 5th, 1806.
To emetics.
Croton oil pills.
Sol. Tartar emetic.
Spice and opium plaster.
Pills of Croton Oil.
Item second.
19th call.
Cathartic.
Sol. of Glauber’s Salts.
Emetic of Powdered Epecac.
Pills of Croton Oil.
Total £1, 17s. o d.
Received Payment, Buffalo Creek,
Cyrenius Chapin.
“Some of the doses thus prescribed have been known to
kill a horse,” comments Mr. Atkins, “but Red Jacket sur-
vived the treatment twenty-four years.”EARLY BUFFALO CHARACTERS.
189
CLINTON AND SALISBURY.
And then there was that most interesting and lovable of
men, George W. Clinton, lawyer, judge, naturalist—a de-
lightful character ! He was not like other men but wherein
he differed he excelled in all ways that go to make up a
gentle, strong and winning personality. I remember the
old man, but know him best by tradition and the tributes of
friends. There were in this man qualities, tastes and a fel-
lowship with nature that made him kindred with Walton,
White of Selborne and our own Thoreau—different from
each with much in common with all. If R. W. Haskins was
the father of the Society of Natural Sciences, Judge Clinton
was its constant patron and sympathetic supporter.
I may also note another attractive character of the middle
decades of the last century—Guy H. Salisbury. “In his
happy moments/5 wrote one who knew him well, “as he was
a few years ago, we seldom conversed with him without the
suggested recollection of what literary tradition relates of
Lamb. It was the suggestion of a likeness in exquisite sim-
plicity of nature, in womanly delicacy of feeling and
thought—in a certain quaint tone of being which is very
rare.” Salisbury, like others of his name, was connected
with the press of Buffalo and engaged in other pursuits, but
these do not concern us. His personality is a fragrant re-
membrance.
OTHER NOTABLE MEN.
There were other notable characters in the professions
in Buffalo’s early day—George P. Barker, John Talcott and
Albert H. Tracy, in the law; Dr. George W. Hosmer,
whose thirty years’ pastorate here was a power among the
influences that made for civic and personal righteousness;
Dr. William Shelton, the stout churchman, famed for
brusque speech and big heart; and Dr. John C. Lord of the190
EARLY BUFFALO CHARACTERS.
Central Presbyterian Church, whose good wife’s amiable
eccentricities made her a more talked about, if not a more
prominent figure, in local society, than was her distinguished
husband. I would like to recall to the memory of some of
you the McArthurs, who kept the famous candy shop.
Mrs. Poole, whose “Reminiscences” were lately published,1
and all of us, agree that there are no sweets in these degen-
erate days “like mother used to make” and the sedate Mc-
Arthurs used to sell.
Our city of Buffalo, a very mushroom of a city in com-
parison with many others, being younger, reckoning from
its burning in 1812, than men now living, has nevertheless
been prolific in “characters” coming within the purview of
my subject. It is truly a little world, full of interest to the
student, and especially to the lover of human nature.
“ Whatever moulds of various brain,
E'er shaped the world to weal or woe,
Whatever empires wax and wane,
To him who hath not eyes in vain
His village Microcosm can show."
1. See Publications, Buffalo Historical Society, vol. VIII, pp. 439-493*