Niagara's Hidden History

Volume 10 • Number 1 S U M M E R 2 0 1 0 $4.95 Secrets of Niagara Falls Inconvenienced by General Washington Troy Riot Liberates Captured Slave Misbehavior in Saratoga The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Deli 12 The American Falls, Niagara Falls, ca. 1905. NEW YORK archives • SUMMER 2010 13 Hidden History B Y G I N G E R S T R A N D Not just for honeymooners or daredevils, Niagara Falls and its historical secrets now stand revealed–– from Egyptian dynasties to the Civil War to the atomic bomb. iagara Falls is one of America’s best-known natural wonders. Scholars have ex- pounded on its role NNin shaping the American sublime, popular histories have recounted its capacity for power development, and souvenir volumes regularly recount tales of daredevils NEW YORK STATE LIBRARY/MANUSCRIPTS AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS COLLECTIONS SPECIAL AND LIBRARY/MANUSCRIPTS STATE YORK NEW and honeymoons. The image of the Falls has graced every- thing from masterpieces of landscape painting to tea towels, from early Lumière Brothers films to blockbuster IMAX movies. A depiction of the Falls even occupies one corner of New York’s license plates, opposite the New LIBRARY OF CONGRESS York City skyline: landscape This promotional pamphlet for the Niagara Falls Museum touts and cityscape, the state’s two its thousands of curios, including must-see sights. Yet the most mummies. interesting features of this www.nysarchivestrust.org 14 icon’s history have remained the famous landscape architect. canals required to harness hidden—sometimes forgotten, Luminaries like J.P. Morgan, Niagara’s power. After the sometimes deliberately ignored. Oliver Wendell Holmes, John state park was established, My search for this hidden Jay, Thomas Carlyle, and the Falls was quickly harnessed, history led me to numerous John Ruskin signed a petition beginning a new industrial archival collections—each of urging the creation of a state age at Niagara. which, it seemed, yielded up park at Niagara. They were another surprising story. successful in 1885. But left Mummies and out of the story of a public- Two-Headed Calves Beauty and Power minded movement is the For many years, the Niagara One of the most common profit motive that drove it. Falls Museum was an tales told about Niagara Falls Many of the same men who attraction rivaled only by the is that the family of Augustus signed Olmsted’s petition waterfall itself. Built at the Porter, who founded the town turned up on the board of brink of the Horseshoe Falls, of Niagara Falls, kept the area the Niagara Falls Power the museum was owned by around the falls in its natural Company, which succeeded, Thomas Barnett and his family, state until the State of New ten years later, in harnessing a museum clan dedicated to York bought it in 1885. But the Falls for electricity. In the study of natural history letters between Augustus and fact, Thomas Evershed, who and the pursuit of exotic his brother, Peter, founder of specimens. Their collections The Porters the town of Black Rock just included plants, minerals, upstream, show that this was shells, and mounted birds and NEW YORK STATE LIBRARY/MANUSCRIPTS AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS developed the Niagara far from the case. The Porters animals. Like many museums environs to the best developed the Niagara environs of the time, they also had a to the best of their ability. collection of “freaks of nature,” of their ability…they In the 1820s and 1830s they including a two-headed calf built snack stands and built snack stands and viewing and a two-legged dog. platforms, grist mills and In the 1850s, the Barnetts tanneries, and even planned acquired a group of Egyptian viewing platforms, to build a large hotel for mummies that quickly became grist mills and wealthy patrons on Goat Island, a featured exhibit at the tanneries, and even which separates the Canadian museum, but shortly thereafter Horseshoe Falls from the the family fell on hard times planned to build a American Falls. They also and lost possession of the attempted, at least twice, to collections they had built for large hotel for sell all their land at Niagara Peter B. Porter years. Those collections passed wealthy patrons on to wealthy “capitalists,” as surveyed the land around the through several families’ they called them. They ran Falls and drew up the map ownership and ended up, Goat Island. newspaper ads touting the of the proposed state park, in 1999, in the hands of a potential water power to be was the company’s engineer. Toronto shrunken-head had from the Falls. History has painted him as a collector named Billy Jamieson, After the Civil War, well- savior of Niagara’s beauty, who sold the mummies to heeled and well-connected but he was also thinking of an American museum for a gentlemen began appealing money; Evershed’s map, which hefty sum. To the shock of to the state to buy the exists only in two hand-drawn the antiquities world, one area around the Falls. The versions, shows how he care- of the mummies turned out movement, known as “Free fully drew the boundaries of to be a pharaoh—Rameses I, Niagara,” was spearheaded the state park so that they founder of the New by Frederick Law Olmsted, wouldn’t interfere with the Kingdom’s 19th Dynasty. NEW YORK archives • SUMMER 2010 15 Jamieson realized the In the years leading up to mummy might have been a the Fugitive Slave Act of pharaoh because a diary 1850, slavecatchers became recorded its purchase. Dr. increasingly active in northern James Douglas, a Montreal states, and fleeing slaves physician, had traveled to began heading to Canada, Egypt with Sidney Barnett, where slavery was illegal. Thomas Barnett’s son, and in One of the key places to cross his travel journal Douglas into Canada was the Niagara related how he and Barnett region. There were rail had bought a mummy from connections to the Falls, and COURTESY MICHAEL CARLOS MUSEUM, EMORY UNIVERSITY an Egyptian antiquities dealer the area was well known; After experts at Emory University named Mustapha Aga Ayat. many southerners even took catchers who came to Niagara determined that the Niagara Falls Mustapha was a well-known their slaves with them when to “retrieve” fugitives. He mummy was Pharaoh Rameses I, “fence” for a family of tomb they went there on vacation. even helped spark Canada’s they displayed it briefly, then robbers who had discovered Before 1848, when the first race riot when he assisted returned it to Egypt. a cache of royal artifacts in first bridge across the river a man, David Castleman, the cliffs of Deir el-Bahri. was completed, boats could who attempted to extradite When the robbers were finally be hired to cross the river into a fugitive named Solomon caught, authorities discovered Ontario. At Black Rock, the Mosby from Canada in 1837. the coffin of Rameses I in the river narrowed enough that Castleman stayed with For decades, rumors tomb they had plundered. It some fugitives even attempted Porter while petitioning persisted that a was empty. to swim across. As national Ontario’s provincial governor For decades, rumors dissent over slavery grew, for extradition. When the pharaoh lay among persisted that a pharaoh lay fugitives by the hundreds governor agreed and Mosby among the artifacts at the crossed at Niagara to Canada, was arrested at Niagara-on- the artifacts at the Niagara Falls Museum, but no often helped by African the-Lake, people began to Niagara Falls one could believe it. A royal American workers in Niagara’s gather outside the jail. As the mummy lying just steps away restaurants and hotels. Harriet deputy sheriff attempted to Museum, but no one from a two-headed calf? Tubman, who lived in nearby take Mosby to the ferry for Only when the Michael Carlos St. Catharines, personally extradition, an angry mob could believe it. A Museum of Emory University led scores of people through intervened and freed him. In royal mummy lying bought the mummies and Niagara Falls to freedom. the melee, two protesters began analyzing them using Peter B. Porter, Black were killed. Peter Porter just steps away from CAT scans and computer Rock’s founder, watched all wrote an angry letter to the imaging was the rumor taken of this with dismay. He was a governor after the incident, a two-headed calf? seriously. Egypt’s top antiqui- hero from the War of 1812 but it fell on deaf ears. In ties expert examined the and was now a militia general. fact, the case only fueled mummy and declared it to be He had served in Congress Canada’s strong abolitionist a pharaoh, at which point it and as John Quincy Adams’s stance. The following year, was returned to Egypt. Thus secretary of war. He had also the British government upheld with the help of a simple married into a prominent, Canada’s decision not to diary, another of Niagara’s slave-owning Kentucky family extradite fugitive slaves to the secrets was brought to light. and even inherited twenty-five United States. slaves himself. In fact, it’s one Icon of Fugitives of Niagara’s most surprising Coded Spectacles A little-known highlight of secrets that General Porter, In sharp contrast with the Niagara’s history is its role in one of Niagara’s town fathers, Underground Railroad, there’s the Underground Railroad. aided and abetted slave- no shortage of stories about www.nysarchivestrust.org 16 nearly explicit in the magazines T H E A R C H I V E S of the times: cartoons in C O N N E C T I O N Harper’s and Vanity Fair depicted President Lincoln as he Local History Depart- Blondin, crossing a tightrope ment at the Niagara over Niagara Falls with a slave T Falls Public Library holds a on his back.

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