Nevertheless, the land was sold to the Ogden Land Company in 1842. The Senecas were given two years to relocate after receiving what was a pittance for the value of their homes. A runaway black slave, Humphrey Tolliver, with his Irish wife became the only remaining residents. It was Tolliver who took a proprietary interest in what remained, the small burial ground, maintaining it and doing burials of white people,
though not in a way approved by the Dept. of Health.
A lovely, but disturbing, description of the cemetery was published in the " New York Evening Post", May 24, 1852 as quoted by Glenn R.P. Atwell in his article entitled "The Indian Church Cemetary" (WNYGS Journal, Vol. XXXIX, No. 3}
"By perseverance...I succeeded...in getting to the old burial
place of the Senecas, for I had nearly missed it...Jumping over a
broken rail fence, and following a little foot-path running by the side
of a potato patch, a few steps brought me to one of the most beau
tiful sites in the world for a quiet rest 'after life's fitful fever:' a
pleasant opening rather more elevated than the other part of the
field...here and there were scattered large oaks, which under a
high wind were swaying their branches to and fro...Graves were thickly
sown about: some marked by boards, others by the swelling of the
turf; four had marble slabs...The most prominent of all. and standing unenclosed - was "In memory of the white woman, Mary Jemison"...
A little beyond...was that of Red Jacket, the celebrated orator and chief. I had been told that the stone was very much mutilated by visitors, who were carrying it away piecemeal, but its actual condi
tion showed a stretch of this feature of Vandalism in our American
manners, I was totally unprepared for."
Ogden Land Co. sold the burial ground for $500 to William Little in 1887, who, in turn, sold it to Allen Strickler I 1894. By then both of its famous permanent "residents", Red Jacket, who died in 1830, and Mary Jemison, who died in 1833, had had their graves plundered by "souvenir collectors." Many other Seneca's graves had been dug up. Red Jacket's remains had been exhumed in 1852 and laid in the attic of the home of Red Jacket's stepdaughter for many years, till eventually recovered in 1883 by the Buffalo Historical Society which had them stored in a vault at Western Savings Bank for five years till reburied at Forest Lawn .
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William Letchworth.
The Polyman
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Jemison, who had been a neighbor and friend of Buffalo industrialist and philanthropist, William Letchworth , (who owned a large amount of property spanning the Genesee River and its three water falls and who had built a home there) had returned to the Buffalo Creek community before she died, suffered her remains removed from the Buffum Street site in 1874 and reburied near Letchworth's home, Glen Iris. The exhumation of bodies of about 700 other Senecas that had been buried at the Buffalo Creek cemetery, had been ordered by Mr. Strickler, who then owned that property. They were reinterred in 1893 at Howard Cemetary on Ridge Road.
John Larkin had been horrified by this history, and was very concerned that the Seneca's legacy in their Buffalo Creek community not be entirely lost. Why did he care?
First of all, the horror of such lack of respect being shown to the Seneca's who had lived so near to what had become the Larkin Soap Co. (LCO) and the likely news of Strickler's removal of the graves and his activity selling off parcels of the village land for residential development, may well have motivated him. An article in the Buffalo Express in 1897 had urged the City of Buffalo to procure the cemetery and incorporate it into the Buffalo Park System., arguing, " No other place in Buffalo rivals this in the wealth and significance of early associations." No action was taken. Further attempts were made in 1902 and 1905, to no avail. Fearing that, with the graves gone, Strickler might begin selling cemetery land, JDL, quite likely aware of the earlier attempts to protect the burial site, purchased it, cleaning up and grading the site
J.D.L. may also have been troubled from a more spiritual base. He may have been aware of the sacred nature that Indian beliefs gave to particular places like landscapes, geological formations, bodies of water, and animals as well as to burial sites.
Jake Page, in his article, " Sacred Grounds: Landscapes as a Living Spirit," published in "Native Peoples Magazine," May-June 2007 issue, notes:
"There is a long history of heedless despoliation of sacred
Native lands...While all land is sacred, ancestral grounds
are particularly so and now are oft 'smothered by cities,
housing tracts and highways or fouled by strip mines, chem
ical plants, clear cut forests and polluted streams...Tens of
thousands of such holy places are gone, but thousands remain-
modest little shrines here and there...including ancient burial
sites."
(Interestingly, and as a side note, Page cites as an example of hope given by the state and federal statutes enacted in the 1960's, the designation of Bear Butte in S. Dakota as a National Monument. The extraordinary stone walls of the butte bearing ancient carved petroglyphs had been a sacred site to several tribes whose members made treks to visit it frequently year round.. Its status has now been wiped away in a moment with the scrawling signature of a President hell bent to please the mining industry.) Forgive me, I digress, but the rage I feel made me do it.
Just maybe JDL was sympathetic to that ethic of native Americans.
A more likely motivation may have been the history of his wife, Frances'
family with the Senecas. JDL's biographer, his grandson, Daniel Larkin, writes that JDL and "Frank," as his wife was called, had a keen interest in the early history of Buffalo. Frank's mother, Juliana, had taught Indian children at the mission school at Buffalo Creek Indian Reservation. Frank's father, Silas Hubbard, was a physician who regularly drove his buggy out the unpaved Seneca Street to care for his patients on the reserve.Dan Larkin says that "the stories of Red Jacket and Mary Jemison were a part of the lore" that both JDL and Frank would have grown up hearing. Even though much of the desecration of the graves had occurred years before, according to Dan, both felt strongly that the site should be set aside as a memorial. Both executed the Deed conveying the site to the City of Buffalo with the proviso that it maintain the site as a public park honoring the Senecas.
Though Frank did not attend the dedication ceremony, it may have been that she sympathized with the Senecas, many of whom were still angry about the removal of their ancestors' bodies. The few Senecas who attended the dedication ceremony mostly stood apart from the rest of the attendees and did not actively participate.
Another consideration that may have influenced the Larkins to make this extraordinary gift might be the history of the Irish immigrants who had populated what are now the First and Fourth wards. Catholic Irishmen had escaped from their homeland in droves because of persecution by the Protestants, arriving on the shores of the U.S. beginning in the early 1800's.
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latinamericanstudies.org
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Many literally dug their way to Buffalo as laborers manually excavating the Erie Canal. Once in Buffalo penniless, they took whatever work they could find. With the canal in place in 1825, boats bringing grain from the Midwest required unloading here. Soon grain elevators were erected which required labor as well in the form of grain-scoopers. Jobs involved hard work, long hours, danger and low pay. Making their lives even more miserable, most jobs were handed out day by day by reporting to a tavern where assignments were given out on a 'merit' system, i.e. how much money of your day's pay did you drink before heading home. What little was left was often stolen by thugs who preyed on the drunken workers. It took the Great Strike of 1899 where the Irish strikers were supported by Bishop James Quigley, to stop such predation.
Since JDL had been born and raised at 13 Clinton Street (later became the location of the Lafayette Hotel), and later lived on Oak and then Elm Streets, till about 1865, he was close enough to the old city line to have likely become aware of the Irish who lived just east of him, and learn their history of hardship and the help given them by the Senecas. This would have sensitized him and engendered compassion
The Irish were considered the worst kind of human being. Timothy Shannon, in his historic fiction trilogy, writes, "To be Catholic in Buffalo was a burden and to be Irish Catholic was a damnable blight." The Irish immigrants were forced to live outside of the then city limits. Heading east, the boundary was a few blocks from Main Street, so they built cabins initially and then modest homes along the dirt Seneca trail that led to the Buffalo Creek Seneca reserve. As the population grew, they spread out to what is now N. Division and to Exchange Street and over the old bed of the Buffalo River to the marshy area towards the docks.
Timothy Shannon, in his well-researched historic fiction trilogy, Vol. I, "Da's Shillelagh: Tale of the Irish in the Niagara Frontier Frontier," describes the heartbreak of life for these Irish immigrants. As they first settled in what was then woods along the Seneca trail, they had little money, no food, no gardens nor livestock and no hope.. It was the Senecas who came to their rescue, bringing them baskets of food, helping them plant gardens of corn, beans and other vegetables. They helped build their cabins and cared for them when they were ill. Mary Jemison had been known to these families.
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Black Rock Historical Society
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When the War of 1812 broke out and Buffalo was invaded from Canada by the British and Canadian Mohawk Indians, the Senecas initially took the position that they would stay neutral rather than fight their "brothers", the Mohawks. But when Buffalo had been burned and the blood-hungry enemy started down the Seneca trail to burn homes and kill families, the Senecas came to their aid' fighting off the enemy and providing food and shelter to the decimated families who had lived along the Seneca trail.
The great potato famine in Ireland between 1845 and 1855 brought 10,000 more Irishmen to Buffalo, many of them settling in the areas of those Irish who had come before. They and the Germans who followed a few years later provided a vast reservoir of workers upon which the LCO drew beginning when the company began business in 1875. As JDL built up his company buildings on over 60 acres of land between Seneca, Swan and Exchange Streets beginning in 1897, he surrounded himself with hard-working Irish people, both men and women, unskilled and skilled, who reminded him of the hardships they and their families before them had endured. Perhaps it was that knowledge that drove a compassionate JDL to provide so many benefits for his employees that were unheard of till then. And made him feel kindly towards protecting the Seneca legacy three miles away on Buffum Street.
I cannot resist inserting here a story included in an article by Dick Burke published in the Buffalo Evening News on August 25, 1972. It is about an incident occurring (supposedly) right outside our building. "No story of the Hydraulics would be complete without the one about the old Irish cop who found a body on Van Rensselaer near Seneca. He went to the call box and told his Seventh Precinct desk lieternant about it. Stumped when asked for the spelling of Van Rensselaer Street, he hung up and, as the story goes, carried the body down to Larkin Street, not only reaching a name he could manage but adroitly dropping the mystery in the old South Division Precinct."
One other factor may have influenced JDL. Buffalo has always been a "small town," and by that I mean, people are apt to know or be aware of each other.
Willaim Letchworth was a wealthy industrialist who co-owned Pratt and Letchworth and Buffalo Malleable Ironworks. As mentioned previously, he had been a neighbor and friend to Mary Jemison and had had her remains reburied near his home in what is now Letchworth State Park. His life was quite involved with the Senecas both in Buffalo and in the Castile area. One of his major philanthropic ventures was supporting the Thomas Indian Orphan Asylum on the Cattaraugus Reservation until Letchworth's death in 1910. Interestingly, at the 1912 ceremony dedicating the Buffum Street park, a chorus of Indian children sang and Henry R. Howland, a trustee of the Thomas Indian Orphan Assylum spoke..
Both Letchworth and Larkin were simultaneously members of the Ellicott Club, a businessman's social organization.
Letchworth had been very concerned about the welfare of immigrants settling near his factory in N. Buffalo and monitored conditions in his factory and in the community, making changes to ease the plight of these newcomers.
Though I am unable to find a direct link between these two wonderful men, it is unlikely that they did not know each other. It is highly likely that Larkin viewed the older gentleman as an example of a great and socially conscious business man, a community leader, a philanthropist. Letchworth mat have become JDL's role model. Like Letchworth, who had donated his thousands of acres land including the Genesee River's three water falls to be held in perpetuity by the State of New York as a park for the benefit of everyone; Larkin donated the Seneca burial site to the City of Buffalo to be maintained as a park in honor of the Senecas.
So why did JDL make this wonderful gift? We will never know for sure. But on that day, June 29, 1912, a small group of people hovered aronnd a huge boulder that JDL had had brought from his property in Queenston, Ontario on which was affixed a bronze plaque in the shape of a wolf hide. As the mayor, Henry Howland, and other dignitaries spoke, that day. JDL stood behind everyone, quiet and unobtrusive. As was his character, he never sought the limelight.
