Buffalo Rising Online

Sep 15th 2007, 4:07pm By queenseyes

While visiting the Erie Basin Marina yesterday a couple of us ran into preservationist Tim Tielman. He was buying an ice cream cone at The Hatch and preparing an open-air bus tour dedicated to The War of 1812. Tim asked if we wanted to ride along on the 'test run'... to see what one of the tours entailed, and we responded that we wanted to go along. When we hopped onto the bus, we were greeted by community activist Chris Brown who was already going over the details of the tour. The actual tour was scheduled for this morning.

The tour started at the end of the Erie Basin Marina, right alongside Outlook Tower. It was there that Chris began to go speak aloud on the happenings that occurred during the war. He pointed and spoke as Tim drove the bus, and before we knew it we were learning things about Buffalo that we had never even imagined. For instance, it was actually Upper Canada, that was invaded by the US - a move that was, at the time, considered to be a fairly easy takeover since Great Britain was already busy with another European war. The mouth of the Niagara River was a prime spot to launch American troops, and since control of the Niagara River was key to the War of 1812, and the area was constantly occupied with American troops, which caused many conflicts with the residents of the small city.

The re-capturing of American war ships at Fort Erie... the soldiers who were buried where they lay in what is now the Inner Harbor... the heroes and the heroines... the burned downtown residential communities (the first house was burned at the corner of Delaware and Tupper). Tim and Chris didn't miss a beat. (Next Friday will be a tour of the grain elevators).

In December of 1813 the British Empire landed with the intentions of destroying all of the Buffalo villages in retaliation for the burning of Newark (Niagara on the Lake). The British landed on Squaw Island and marched down Niagara Street, and it was the corner of Mohawk and Main that housed some of the more memorable heroes and heroines of the war. The War of 1812 monument at Forest Lawn still pays tribute to the bodies that had been removed from The Franklin Street Cemetery (moved due to the fear of cholera from the buried bodies). In 1836 the last burial was performed, and in the early 1850's the cemetery was officially moved.

Many people might be aware that public executions were performed at Niagara Square. But I had never heard that deserters of the army were actually executed back in the day. During one of the executions five graves were dug for five deserters, and five guns were trained on the hooded soldiers. Only four rifles were loaded, which meant that the youngest of the deserters was allowed to live... though the unloaded rifle ‘clicked’ along with the rest. And did you know that Front Park was formerly called Sandy Town because of the sand dunes that could be found there. This was where many of the Seneca Indians lived. Many bodies were buried in these dunes, and in later years bones were discovered quite often as the sand was used for building purposes.

That is the point in the tour where we hopped off to join Bill Zimmerman for a beer at the CPO Club. The test tour was a fascinating look at a famous Buffalo battle that has an anniversary (200 years) coming up in just five years. We'll let you know when Tim and Chris will host their next War of 1812 open-air bus tour. In the meantime there are scheduled tours coming up that we will post. I highly recommend this fun and enlightening way to spend a day in Buffalo. It also must be an unusual sight to see the open-air bus cruiding around the city, because everywhere it goes people yell and wave as it goes by. The bus certainly entertains more than just the people taking the tours.

To find out more about these tours, click here.