Memories of Early Days in Buffalo

Written by Sylvester J. Matthews in 1913, this manuscript details early life in Buffalo, New York. Buffalo in 1838 was a city of "magnificent distances." The speculative bubbles that had been blown during the previous decade had been burst as in a single night by the panic of '37. Building enterprises of every kind were at a standstill, real estate in great quantities had been thrown into chancery and much more tied up in various ways of litigation, rendering it unavailable for new enterprises that subsequently started up in the '40's, and in some instances even into the '50's.

This manuscript is a series of memories written onto paper by an early resident of the bustling suburb. It can assist the genealogist by providing an excellent glimpse into the life of Buffalonians during the early to mid nineteenth century. This narrative of events, intertwined into your heritage, can create a full bodied tree, not just the roots. This manuscript contains names of some of the early residents of Buffalo, and the interesting facts about them.

Buffalo in 1838 was a city of "magnificent distances." The speculative bubbles that had been blown during the previous decade had been burst as in a single night by the panic of '37. Building enterprises of every kind were at a standstill, real estate in great quantities had been thrown into chancery and much more tied up in various ways of litigation, rendering it unavailable for new enterprises that subsequently started up in the '40's, and in some instances even into the '50's.

Vast tracts of land within the city limits were held by Eastern capitalists for speculation. Notable among them was that strip of barren plain of a quarter of a mile and over in width that extended for a mile and a half east from near Niagara street and away over the Cheektowaga town line. Washington, Ellicott, Oak, Elm, Michigan and other streets north from Genesee street, which crossed this young Siberia on paper, without even a fence, tree or house to mark their passage across were left unimproved until late in the '40's, excepting their continuations over the hill north across High, North, Goodrich and other streets in the Cold Spring district.

Consequently the march of improvement came not from the old center and spreading out into the suburbs, but it came rolling in down Niagara street at the north from "over the hills from the poor-house" in Black Rock, down Main from the country seats of Cold Spring, up Genesee from the plains of Cheektowaga in the east, up Batavia (now Broadway), from the Prussian settlements beyond the hemlock woods, up Swan and Seneca, from the Hydraulics, and across the flats from Bidwell & Banta's shipyards in the south.

Along the docks the commercial spirit was as buoyant as ever, for the long heads then in possession were conscious of the fact that they held the keys of the "Gate City" of the Lakes, and were putting their houses, boats and docks in order for the fast-incoming tide of emigration that was to seek an entrance through Buffalo to the great Northwest.

Table of Contents:

  1. Early Day in Buffalo
  2. Steamboat Art
  3. The Old Terrace Market
  4. Boat-Building on the Conjockety
  5. The Real Ships of the Lakes
  6. Old-Time Residents
  7. Some Buffalo Bells
  8. New Year's in the 1840's

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Sylvester J. Matthews

The author of these reminiscences was born in Auburn, N. Y. In response to a request from the editor of this volume, for facts about himself, Mr. Mathews writes that after removal, with his father's family, to Utica in 1833, and to Ithaca in 1835, he came to Buffalo in 1837. Here he was "a little Sunday-school scholar in the Old First Presbyterian Church basement Sunday-school room, with entrance on Pearl street." "The old-time Sunday-school picnics to the old Indian Mission Church of the Senecas, four miles away, were great events in our youthful days. Later I was a pupil of Dr. Chambers' private school in the basement of the Unitarian Church, corner of Franklin and Eagle streets." He recalls his schoolmates, among them Julia Dean, the actress. He was fond of sketching, and used to make excursions with "Al" (the Rev. Albert) Bigelow "on the old Black Rock horse-ferry boat to Fort Erie for sketches of the picturesque ruins. He remembers the steamboat Caroline, and many stirring episodes of the Patriot War of 1837-8. He was for a time in the employ of Hall & Mooney, printers and lithographers, and during the period about which most of his reminiscences cluster, he lived at the corner of Court and Pearl streets.