Saturday, March 16, 2013

Samuel Wilkeson, He Built Buffalo By Building It's Harbor: Part 3

Buffalo From the Light House

In all Buffalo's history no event was so significant to the future welfare of the city as the building of the first harbor. This task, carried on despite tremendous physical and economic obstacles, was an act of civic zeal unmatched in the later annals of the city. 


   THE exact date in which the harbor work was begun is not on record, but it was some time before May 20th in 1820.  The rains were heavy that spring when Sam Wilkeson got his cook shack and sleeping quarters built. Day after day, clouds hung in leaden-gray banks over the lake and then moved inland before the wind. The rain came in driving blasts against the village. The earth was sodden. Men sank almost to their knees in mud when they walked in the streets.
   INSIDE the homes of the frontier village, fireplaces were still lit against the dampness. Trees stood dark and forlorn in the rain, black with water, writhing in the wind. Against the lake shore, waves crashed in roaring spray as the wind churned the surface into, whitecaps which gleamed, even in darkness, like bared teeth.
   IT was not the kind of weather in which men liked to leave the snugness of their homes. The day after the cook shack and sleeping quarters were built, Wilkeson sent out a call for laborers to assemble at daybreak. Only a few responded. He called the work off. For several more days the project was stalled. Then, with characteristic determination. Wilkeson broke the bottleneck. He made a standing offer of $2 a month more than the regular wage, if the men agreed to work regardless of weather. The result was gratifying and the problem was solved. Thereafter the men worked six days a week, from dawn to sunset, with a half hour break for breakfast and an hour for lunch. There was little absenteeism and only one case of intoxication on the job. Almost without exception, the men who began the project worked through to the end. There were no fights among the workers.
    Wilkeson writes: “Two plans had been proposed for the work; One by driving parallel lines of piles and filling up the intermediate space with brush and stone, and the other by a pier of hewn timber, filled with stone. The latter plan was adopted. The timber intended for piles was used in the construction of cribs, three of which were put down the first day.” Since few tools were on hand, the cribs could be put down only when the lake was perfectly smooth. As far as possible, they were fitted on shore. The opposite timbers were made secure with six-foot ties bored and numbered and then floated to their places. There they were assembled. The trunnels, two feet long and made of oak or hickory, were driven home. It took an hour to put the crib together. On the same day it was assembled, it was sunk and secured with stone.
   ON the first day of work the lake was calm. Three cribs were built and sunk. The weather remained good the second day and the work proceeded. But late on the second night, the wind rose suddenly. There was no breakwater to protect the shore. The waves chopped their way landward, lashing against the cribs until daybreak. When Wilkeson arrived at the scene in the morning, it was as if ruin stared him in the face. The waves had eaten away at the sand and gravel on which the cribs had been sunk. Almost all the cribs were out of line. In some cases the sides were sunk, in others the ends were deeper. They jutted this way and that, “the whole presenting a most discouraging appearance.”
    But as he waded into the water to examine the worst damage, He writes: "Fortunately a little brush had been accidentally thrown to the windward side of one of the piers, which became covered with sand, and preserved this pier from the fate of the others." There he found the key to his problem. "Profiting by this discovery every crib subsequently put down was placed on a thick bed of brush, extending several feet to the windward of it."
   JUDGE Wilkeson's faithfulness to the underlying principle of the undertaking, economy; is indicated in the following paragraph of the record:  "Neither clerk, nor other assistant, not even a carpenter to layout the work, was employed for the first two months, to aid the superintendent, who, besides directing all the labor, making contracts, receiving materials, etc., labored in the water with the men, as much exposed as themselves, and conformed to the rules prescribed to them of commencing work at daylight and continuing until dark, allowing half an hour for breakfast and an hour for dinner. Besides the labors of the day, he was often detained until late at night, waiting the arrival of boats, to measure their loads of stone, and to see them delivered in the pier, as without this vigilance some of the boatmen would unload their stone into the lake, which was easier than to deposit it in the pier."
Heck, "I could do this blindfolded." 
A Blind horse and a cannon begin work on 
Buffalo's Harbor
   THE improvised pile driver was pressed into use. It took 100 strokes of the old Army mortar to drive each pile to the desired depth. As the work progressed out into the lake a platform was built for the blind horse which furnished the motive power for the pile driver. The horse plodded round and round on the wooden planks; a few feet above the surface of the lake. Two months after the work got under way, Wilkeson hired a carpenter at $1 a day to build the timbering of the piers above the lake surface. By autumn the pier extended almost 800 feet into the lake and Wilkeson's crews were sinking cribs at a depth of 7 1/2 feet. As the pier-construction proceeded, and the deeper water was reached, "the cost of the work alarmingly increased." It was decided "to suspend operations for that year." Possibly they hoped to gather additional funds during the winter months. But if the future of the harbor was uncertain, in matters of money and of use, the builders had had the satisfaction of seeing that the cribs could make a harbor.
   ON SEPT. 7, 1820, the still incomplete project underwent it first test. The timber work was finished but the pier was only partly filled with stone. That afternoon two small vessels came under the lee of the pier and made fast. The captains went ashore to conduct some business. As evening approached, clouds piled in threatening banks in the sky. The wind rose suddenly. A storm was definitely in the making. Fearful that, if the storm came, the two vessels might carry away the part of the pier to which they were fastened. Wilkeson sought out the two captains and asked them to move the ships. But he was too late. While they were talking the gale broke. The wind drove spray like buckshot. The water seethed, waves, broke with a roar against the pier. To move the ships now was impossible, unless they were simply to be cast loose and allowed to run on shore. Despite the fact their vessels could be damaged seriously in the process, the two captains agreed to do-this if it appeared the pier would collapse.
   THE ships rose and fell in the pounding waves, crashing against the pier as the water bore down an them, pulling with tremendous weight at their lines as they rolled away. In the blur of wind and water, Wilkeson waited for the storm to pass. Then he saw for the first time how well the challenge of the elements had been met. Neither the pier nor the ships, were damaged. The next day the work of filling the pier with stone was resumed. The pier, which at this time extended 50 rods into the lake, was in a few days filled with stone, and the operations upon it suspended for the season."
    NOW another problem had to be met. The pier was only part of the harbor plan. The most difficult part was yet to come. This involved cutting a new straight channel for Buffalo Creek and it also was the most dangerous element in the entire operation. No one knew whether the plan for the new channel would succeed. If it did not, there was no additional money on hand to meet the emergency and the entire harbor project was doomed. 
   AT that time, Buffalo Creek entered the lake about 1,000 feet north of its present mouth. For some distance it ran almost parallel to the lake shore behind a bank of sand. The new channel was to be cut across this sand-spit, thus making it possible for ships to sail directly from the lake into the creek without navigating the sharp bends.
Map showing Harbor Pier Built by Wilkeson near bottom of 
Map. Original route of Buffalo Creek at the Foot of 
Vollenhoven Ave.
   THE plan was to scrape through the sand, dam the stream, form the beginning of a new channel, and hope that spring floods would scour it to sufficient depth. Tools were gathered and a call went out for volunteers. The villagers responded quickly. Work was begun in November. The volunteers walked out over the sandpit, took their places along the route of the desired channel, and started to dig and scrape. But just a few feet below the surface heavy stone and gravel were encountered. The stone was of such size it was doubtful whether the spring freshets would carry it out to the deep water of the lake. If it was not carried far enough, it would serve only to block the channel at another point.It was late in the year. The wind was sharp and there were hints of early snow. The new problem, could not be solved in time. The scraping of the channel was suspended before water level was reached. It was something that would have to be resumed in the spring.
    But while all work had stopped, Wilkeson's worries had not. All during the remainder of the fall and through the winter, Buffalonians watched the pier with anxiety. Its fate was out of their hands and they could only wait. Snow, sleet and hail, the pounding of frigid waters, the razor-edged scraping and tremendous weight of ice, the winter winds which howled across the lake with unremitting fury--if the work should be destroyed by gales, or by ice, "the fund remaining would be insufficient to repair the damage. These were the challenges the pier now had to meet. By spring Buffalo would know the answer.

End of Part Three: 
Part Four
Part Two

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Samuel Wilkeson, Harbor Builder, Part Two


The Walk-In-The-Water.....built in Black Rock, spurred Buffalo ambitions. The small group of citizens who overcame tremendous physical and economic obstacles to construct Buffalo's first harbor laid the foundations for this city's future greatness....Without them, Buffalo would have remained just another frontier village. 


  THE PLAN to Make the Village of Buffalo a great harbor city had its origins not only in the development of the Erie Canal but in a bitter commercial rivalry with the Village of Black Rock. The rivalry had existed almost from the time the two villages were founded. When Joseph Ellicott was commissioned by the Holland Land Company to lay out a village near Buffalo Creek, he saw at once that Black Rock had more natural advantages than Buffalo. Fearful that his work would be undone, Ellicott wrote in 1802 to Paul Busti, general agent of the company, urging that the lands at Buffalo be opened for sale immediately. Black Rock clearly "was equally or more advantageous for a town than Buffalo," he wrote, and Buffalo's opportunity might be lost if the land sales were delayed.
Main Street Buffalo 1825
  The Holland Land Co. purchase did not extend to Black Rock and Ellicott could not carry his work that far. There is no doubt that, if he could, he would have laid out the Village of New Amsterdam, as he intended to call the community, near Tonawanda Creek instead of Buffalo Creek. Ellicott realized immediately Black-Rock had a natural harbor while the mouth of Buffalo Harbor was blocked by a sand bar which prevented all vessels but canoes from entering. This sand bar was for many years a tombstone on Buffalo's hopes. In dry weather it could be walked across. Even when rain was frequent, the water rarely rose higher than a man's waist.
   IN BLACK ROCK there were forces which made the rivalry more intense. Peter B. Porter and his brother, Augustus, were making strenuous efforts to monopolize Black Rock's harbor facilities. Long before Buffalo could dream of such a venture, the Porter brothers were busy with shipbuilding and shipping.  But Busti heeded Ellicott's plea and Buffalo began to grow. Still, there was no portent of the village's future in those early days.  The eyes of early Buffalonians were turned more to the earth beneath their feet than to the water at their doorstep. It was natural this should be. The land around Buffalo was fair. From Lake Erie to the Genesee, pine grew in the ridges and hemlock in the valleys. Upon the plain, mile after mile, stood an unbroken stand of maple, oak and elm.
Village of Black Rock
  But along Buffalo and Tonawanda Creeks, the land was swampy. In summer, thick swarms of mosquitos and flies rose from the water's edge. Just before the swamp, near the banks of the stream where the beginnings of Buffalo were to be made, were thick groves of basswoods. The prehistoric lake beach, of which the Terrace is now a part, was a stretch of treeless bluff overlooking the lake. Below the lake beach, along the easterly border of the Niagara River, was a succession of sand dunes. This was not a country to which harbor builders came. In spring it was the scent of bursting buds that carried on the wind, not the smells of water and ships. In October, the smell of wood smoke hung in the air, not the whirling of trade winds. In winter, part of the lake was frozen. There was no way to leave. 
    Black Rock, proud of its reputation as a shipping center, busy and prosperous as a result of its role in the salt trade, which was the main commodity of commerce on the lakes at that time, shrugged off Buffalo's protestations of equality. It watched, almost with condescension, the reconstruction of the village the British had burned.
   While Buffalo struggled for sheer survival, Black Rock made plans for its future. But the idea of the Erie Canal grew. And with it the conviction of Buffalo's citizens that the western terminus of the canal must be located in Buffalo. This was to be the Phoenix springing from the ashes of burned Buffalo. Black Rock was a shrewd and resourceful opponent. Its men were working as vigorously as Buffalo's to gain the great prize of the canal. Letters were dispatched, wherever there were men to be influenced or policies to be decided, lobbyists for both sides were hard at work. In 1817 construction on the first portion of the canal got under way near Rome. It was expected that 10 years would elapse before the project was completed. But Black Rock didn't wait. Just one year after the first canal excavation was begun, Black Rock took a mighty step in its campaign to become the western terminus of the canal.
    A group of New York businessmen were persuaded to finance the building at Black Rock of the first steamer to be put afloat on the Great Lakes. It was a major effort and on the day the ship was launched in August of 1818, there was a civic celebration in Black Rock. The steamship was called the Walk-In-The-Water, not only because of its sailing characteristics but in honor of a neighboring Wyandotte chief. It was built along the general lines of Robert Fulton's Clermont and used sails as well as steam. But instead of closing out Buffalo's claim as the logical terminus of the canal, the launching of the Walk-In-The-Water was fuel for the flames of Buffalo's ambition to overcome its old rival.
   Despite its steam boilers and sails; the Walk-In-The-Water could not breast the rapid current of the Niagara. The vessel was ready for use about the middle of August. Again and again it poured all its power into an attempt to steam upriver into the lake. Each time it fell back, its engines too weak to force the passage. After several days of this unavailing effort, the owners of the vessel swallowed their chagrin and asked Capt. Sheldon Thompson of Black Rock for the loan of his celebrated "Horn Breeze," the ox teams which dragged sailing vessels against the current until they reached the relatively calmer waters of the lake.
   On Aug. 23, the final effort was made. The "Horn Breeze" was attached by cable to the ship and a pounding head of steam was built up in the vessel's boilers. The stokers flung wood into the fireplaces, the drivers cracked their bullwhips, the oxen strained against the line, and to the cheers of spectators and shouting of drivers and crew, the vessel finally moved upstream. Thus, with the aid of one of the most ancient motive powers, the age of the newest motive power was inaugurated on the lakes.
     BUT THE EXPERIENCE of the Walk-In-The-Water proved that if vessels were to use this end of the lake with regularity, a harbor would have to be built in Buffalo. Only thus would the time-consuming and expensive method of hauling the ships against the Niagara current be overcome. Samuel Wilkeson, a man who saw this city, at perhaps, its most degrading time in our history, had, along with three other resolute Buffalonians, recognized that Buffalo's fate, lie in its getting a harbor. A good harbor, would most certainly bring the termination of the Erie Canal to Buffalo.

End of Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Samuel Wilkeson, He Built Buffalo, by Building It's Harbor



In it’s pioneer days Buffalo was a Village without natural advantages or economic prospects. Then a harbor was built and it became the key-stone upon which the Village grew to greatness, becoming a City in 1832, and one of the largest ports in the world 75 years later.  The building of that harbor by Samuel Wilkeson and a small group of citizens, is a story of heroic vision and sacrifice unmatched in the later annals of the city. This is the first in a several part series telling that story.


BEGINNING OF BUFFALO's HARBOR 
   The war which had swept over the Niagara frontier, had impoverished the inhabitants of the little place that has since grown into the City of the Lakes. Their property had been destroyed—they were embarrassed by debts contracted in rebuilding their houses which had been burned by the enemy; they were without capital to prosecute to advantage mechanical or mercantile employments; without a harbor, or any means of participating in the lake trade, and were suffering, with the country at large, all the evils of a de-ranged currency. In the midst of these accumulated embarrassments, the construction of the Erie Canal was begun, and promised help. However distant might be the time of its completion, Buffalo was to be its terminating point, and when the canal was completed, our village would become a city. But no craft larger than a canoe could enter Buffalo Creek. All forwarding business was done at Black Rock, and the three or four small vessels that were owned in Buffalo, received and discharged their cargoes at that place. Sailing vessels at the time, unless of very light draft, had to lie a half a mile or more off port, or drop down below the Black Rock Rapids to find anchorage.
The Earliest Picture of Buffalo Known - View of Fort Erie
From Buffalo Creek - 1811, Drawn by E. Walsh 49th
British Regiment
   A harbor was then indispensably necessary at the terminus of the canal and unless one could be constructed at Buffalo before the western section of the canal was located, it might terminate at Black Rock. This was the more to be apprehended, as an opinion prevailed, that harbors could not be made on the lakes, at the mouths of the rivers. But a harbor we were resolved to have.
   The great project upon which the Village of Buffalo was staking its future had lain dormant for years. The delay was costly. With each passing day the initial upsurge of enthusiasm for the project had receded a little more. Times were hard. Buffalo was impoverished. The grim hand of economic misfortune laid itself with cold finality upon the zeal for civic improvement. One by one, seven of the nine men who had signed a petition for a $12,000 loan from the State to build the harbor, withdrew their support. All that had been done in Buffalo in the seven years since the British had put the village to the torch had accomplished little more than sheer survival. The rebuilding had been carried on steadily, but it was a grueling process and required much sacrifice. The British had been thorough. When they departed, there remained standing in the black and smoldering ruins only two stone buildings, a blacksmith shop, the jail and a frame dwelling owned by Mrs. St. John.
Black Rock in 1825
   Two years later as many buildings as had been destroyed were rebuilt. Now, in 1820, there even were a few new structures. Sam Wilkeson had built a fine house.  Charles Townsend and George Coit had built a store in which they were running a drug business and, at the same time, were venturing into shipping affairs. Others who had arrived since the first villagers straggled back to survey the embers of their homes and properties also were adding to the reconstruction. But, for the most part, the village struggled merely to stay on its feet. 
   It was little wonder, then, despite the first great wave of enthusiasm, that seven of the nine men had withdrawn as sponsors for the $12,000 loan. The money was intended to finance the building of a harbor in Buffalo. If the harbor could he built, there was a strong possibility De Witt Clinton and the Erie Canal commissioners could be persuaded to make Buffalo the Western terminus of the canal. Otherwise, The Village of Black Rock, three miles distant, aggressive, more prosperous, with more natural advantages than Buffalo, was destined to secure the great prize. If it did, Buffalo would never be more than a frontier village, a tiny settlement which the mainstream of history had bypassed! 
Judge Samuel Wilkeson
    These were the stakes and they were tremendous. But there was doubt that the project ever could be executed. Tough-minded men in the State Legislature had laid down stern conditions for the loan. It was to run for 12 years and was to be secured by twice its amount in personal pledges of money or property. If the harbor was not built, the security was forfeit. If the work was carried to successful completion, the State could accept or reject it. Should the harbor be rejected, no reimbursement was to be made. The builders could recompense themselves by charging tolls for the use of the port. It was a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. Buffalo took it. 
   With nine men behind the loan it seemed a simple matter to raise the $24,000 security. But with seven withdrawn, the whole project was a lost dream. Still, a few did not give up. Charles Townsend remained stead-fast and so did Oliver Forward. But their resources were too slim to make up the $24,000 mortgage. A third party was needed. Someone with the same bold vision, the same spirit or daring, the same tenacity of purpose. There was only one man in the village to whom they could turn. Sam Wilkeson. Wilkeson had not been among the original nine sponsors for the loan but he understood the need for harbor development. He agreed to help back the loan. With each of the three men pledging $8,000 in personal property as security, the loan was secured. 

Joseph Ellicott - Surveyor for the
Holland Land Company
   That had been a year ago and still nothing had been done. Just having the money did not solve the problem. And with each passing day their risk grew greater. Black Rock was lobbying vigorously for the canal and seemed almost a certain winner. In Buffalo itself there was doubt and opposition. So eminent a Villager as Joseph Ellicott was against them. He brusquely refused to lend the only pile driver in the area for the work. The three harbor builders were not only without a plan and men to execute it, but without even the most necessary tools. Ellicott's refusal to co-operate hurt. They decided to go over his head. Together with George Coit, Towsend’s partner, the three men wrote to Paul Busti, general agent of the Holland Land Co., asking his support for the work.
    The letter came directly to the point. Since the loan had been granted the year before, a great deal of political manipulation had taken place and the entire problem of where the canal was to be located was still open to question. The four men were frank. They admitted under present circumstances it seemed more reasonable to suppose the canal would terminate at Tonawanda Creek, not Buffalo Creek.  If it did, the harbor planned at Buffalo would be useless to the state and to the men who built it "as the business of the place would be removed to the vicinity of Grand island." But, the four men continued, not withstanding all this they intended to proceed with their plan for the building of a pier if the Holland Land Co. would back them. And would Mr. Busti, please, tell Joe Ellicott to stop guarding the pile driver as if it were made of gold and allow them to borrow it so they could get on with the work.
   It was a month later, in May, 1820, that Busti replied from Philadelphia. He was polite but uncooperative. He could not place the Holland Land Co. behind their scheme, he wrote, because experience had shown that public works carried out by private individuals or companies did not have the same assurance of being completed as those undertaken by the Federal or State Government. He even turned them down on the pile driver, claiming he had no authority over it, "Mr. Ellicott is the master to do with the pile driver as he sees fit," Busti said. But, he added, "I believe him to be too reasonable as to deny you the use of it on suitable terms."
   So that was that, and they were on their own, Joe Ellicott glowered when they approached him again on the pile driver, he was not so reasonable a man as Busti assumed. He would not, lend it and he would not rent it. They decided to build their own pile driver. The rigging was not too hard to construct, but they had no hammer. Finally, a good substitute found.  Wilkeson located an old Army mortar which had been used in the war but which had lost one of its trunnions. They broke off the other trunnion and bored two holes in the end of the mortar, a staple by which to hoist it. It worked excellently and had a driving weight of 2,000 pound. The machinery to lift the hammer was simple and cheap. A blind horse was attached to a line and raised the hammer simply by walking in a circle. Now they had both the money and the pile driver. There was only one way to find out what could be accomplished with both. That was to get on with the job.
A construction superintendent who boasted of harbor building experience was brought to Buffalo at $50 per month. His start was an expensive one. Flint stone for piers was purchased at $5 per cord. Four hundred hemlock piles, 20 to 26 feet long, were ordered at a cost of 31 cents each. Within a few week's, $1,000 of the precious $12,000 was spent and still no actual construction was under way.
    At this rate, it was easy to see the loan would never carry the project through. Again something had to he done. Wilkeson, Townsend and Forward did it. They fired the superintendent and decided to carry on the work themselves. But Townsend was ill, almost an invalid. Forward knew nothing of harbor work. Neither did Wilkeson. Yet it was Wilkeson to whom the others turned. It was an all or nothing gamble and they knew it. Their personal fortunes and the ultimate destiny of the village they believed in was at stake. 
Judge Samuel Wilkeson
   But Wilkeson had a business which consumed all his time. He had a family. He could not afford to ignore either. Wilkeson had never seen a harbor, and was engaged in business that required his un-remitted attention. But rather than the effort should be abandoned, he finally consented to undertake the superintendence.  Thus it was that the morning after his final talk with Townsend and Forward, Sam Wilkeson appeared at the site of the proposed harbor at daybreak to mark out a spot for the erection of a shanty on the beach between the creek and the lake so that the men who would work on the harbor project would not have to leave the site. He hired a few laborers, gave the necessary orders for lumber, cooking utensils and provisions. The boarding house and sleeping room were completed that same day. 

Without suitable tools, without boats, teams or scows, and neither the plan of the work, nor it's precise location settled, THE HARBOR WORK WAS COMMENCED.