Browse Items (1393 total)

Watercolor and graphite composition captures the 1,000-ft. wide falls two miles upstream from where Mohawk joins the Hudson River. The name may derive from the Mohawk phrase "a canoe falling"--a wry bit of humor. According to an 1813 description, the…

Southwestern county, part of the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua that extinguished most Seneca nation land rights, is shown here not long after its incorporation in 1817. Remnants of Senecas land are visible as the Cattaraugus Reservation (at upper left)…

The titular protagonists of Four Girls at Chautauqua are pictured here prior to their two-week spiritual journey in the popular novel written by "Pansy," the pen name of Isabella Macdonald Alden. Founded in 1874, the Chautauqua Institution…

Promotional brochure from the motor age--"There is no Automobile Road Through the Gorge"--was created by an electric railway company started in the early 1890s. Capt. John M. Brinker, a Buffalo businessman, had the perseverance to capitalize a…

Joseph Biel (1891-1943) was a Jewish immigrant who had witness the pogroms of Bialystock, Russia; Lena Gurr (1897-1992), born in New York, was the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants. Both were painters committed to social justice who appear to…

Short story by F. St. Mars adopts centers upon a black kite--that is, the migratory predator--who as the narrative opens is hunting in the Southern Downs of England. A series of events take it across Europe and eventually to Africa, engaging in…

This site at the mouth of the Niagara River always has had a strategic importance: prior to European contact as the beginning of a portage around impassable rapids and falls; then as the French Fort Conti built in 1678; then as a reconstructed Fort…

Overview map of important settlements, forts, trails, and battles during the War of 1812 along the Niagara River.

During the War of 1812, the outpost of Buffalo, NY was scarcely populated but of geographically of strategic importance. As Benson J. Lossing writes in his history, “At the time we are considering that frontier was sparsely settled. Buffalo was a…