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NIAGARA OF BUFFALO
PRE-WAR HISTORY
Like most cities,
Buffalo had been the scene of ball games for as long as anyone could remember.
As Joseph M. Overfield discovered, when Buffalo was incorporated in 1832, its
city council was specifically authorized to regulate “the rolling of hoops,
flying of kites, playing at ball or any other amusement or practice having a
tendency to annoy persons passing in the streets and sidewalks of said city or
to frighten teams or horses within the same.” (Joseph M. Overfield, “Baseball in
Buffalo Before the Civil War,” Niagara Frontier, Summer 1964, 54)
It was not, however,
until 1857 that the Knickerbockers’ rules were introduced in Buffalo and the
game began to take on formal structure. (“When Baseball Was A Fledgling,”
Illustrated Buffalo Express, October 7, 1897) Indeed as late as that
summer, the earliest known reference to baseball in a Buffalo newspaper
indicated that “sundry” players from the seventh ward would be playing an
“equal” number from the city proper by “old-fashioned” rules. (Buffalo
Express, August 7, 1857; cited in Joseph M. Overfield, “Baseball in Buffalo
Before the Civil War,” Niagara Frontier, Summer 1964, 54)
The impetus for
change was the arrival in Buffalo in the fall of 1857 of two members of the
Excelsior Club of Brooklyn, James B. Bach and Richard Oliver. Bach and Oliver
found a receptive group of Buffalonians and familiarized them with the rules
that had been adopted by the newly founded National Association of Base Ball
Players earlier that year. The two Brooklynites then demonstrated how to lay
out a diamond according to those rules, an event that took place on a vacant lot
on the corner of Pennsylvania and 7th streets. In deference to the
city council’s authority to prevent ball-playing when it had a “tendency to
annoy persons passing in the streets,” the location chosen was not just a vacant
lot but one that was described as being in a part of town that “was all vacant
lot … in those days.” (“When Baseball Was A Fledgling,” Illustrated Buffalo
Express, October 7, 1897)
Bach and Oliver also
showed the locals the by-laws of the Excelsior Club and persuaded them of the
need to organize a club. The existence of the new club and its intention to
follow the national rules were announced in the Buffalo Express on
September 12, 1857, along with an impressive list of club officers. Neither of
the Brooklynites served as officer, but Bach’s brother Robert became the club’s
secretary and was joined by president George C. Webster, vice-president Edwin
Richards and directors William T. Wardwell, Thomas Shields, and Orlando Allen,
Jr. The Niagara Base Ball Club had been born. (Buffalo Express,
September 12, 1857; cited in Joseph M. Overfield, “Baseball in Buffalo Before
the Civil War,” Niagara Frontier, Summer 1964, 55; “When Baseball Was A
Fledgling,” Illustrated Buffalo Express, October 7, 1897)
The Niagaras
restricted themselves to intrasquad competition that fall and when the spring of
1858 rolled around, it was far from clear that the new version would catch on in
Buffalo. The first recorded game that year was played on August 20 with fifteen
players aside and old-fashioned rules. The two combatants were the Star and
Buffalo clubs, which a local paper described as the “two crack clubs of the
city,” and the Stars won 82-71 in three innings. (Joseph M. Overfield, “Baseball
in Buffalo Before the Civil War,” Niagara Frontier, Summer 1964, 56)
But the Niagaras had
not abandoned the new way of playing and six days later they met another local
club called the Eries in the first match game of baseball played in Buffalo by
the Knickerbockers’ rules. The Niagara Club had moved their grounds from the
vacant lot at 7th and Pennsylvania to a much more accessible location
at the northwest corner of Main and Virginia streets, which they shared with a
younger club, the Frontier Club. The August 26th match, however, was
played at the old site, which was now the home field of the Erie Club. (“When
Baseball Was A Fledgling,” Illustrated Buffalo Express, October 7, 1897;
Joseph M. Overfield, “Baseball in Buffalo Before the Civil War,” Niagara
Frontier, Summer 1964)
The match was
arranged so as to present it as not just a game but an event. The Express
announced the match beforehand and suggested that it would be appropriate if
a large number of female Buffalonians turned out to “inspire the players and
urge them on to derring do before their ladies fair.” The contest was indeed
witnessed by a crowd of several hundred that included a significant number of
women, some of them in seats around the field and others in the carriages that
flanked the field. The match was played with “good feeling throughout” and the
sense of ceremony was underscored after it ended with the Niagaras winning by
the score of 25-16. The Niagaras joined in offering three cheers for the Eries,
who responded with three times three. (Joseph M. Overfield, “Baseball in Buffalo
Before the Civil War,” Niagara Frontier, Summer 1964, 57)
One week later, the
Niagaras played their first match against an outside club when they took the
Genesee Valley train to Rochester and faced that city’s Flour City Club.
(According to Joseph M. Overfield, “Baseball in Buffalo Before the Civil War,”
Niagara Frontier, Summer 1964, 57, the game took place on September 3,
while the article “When Baseball Was A Fledgling,” Illustrated Buffalo
Express, October 7, 1897, stated that the game occurred on the 4th.)
Once again, the match was as much ceremony as competition, with the home nine
meeting the Niagara Club at the depot and escorting their guests to the Osburn
House. At the conclusion of the match, the players from both clubs joined in an
“elegant supper” and listened to speeches. (Joseph M. Overfield, “Baseball in
Buffalo Before the Civil War,” Niagara Frontier, Summer 1964, 57, citing
the Express and the Rochester Democrat)
While the result of
the game may not have been of primary concern, the Niagara Club members had the
pleasure of coming away with another victory, this time by the score of 30-20.
Any doubt that the result mattered was erased by a report in the Express
that “there was considerable money bet on the result, with some of our citizens
wagering on the Rochester boys.” (cited in Joseph M. Overfield, “Baseball in
Buffalo Before the Civil War,” Niagara Frontier, Summer 1964, 57)
One week later, the
Niagaras played their first match at their new home grounds at Main and
Virginia, once again beating the Eries by the score of 22-18. Then the 1858
season was brought to a fitting conclusion when the Flour City Club paid a visit
to the new grounds on September 23.
The Niagaras won the
match by the score of 35-20, but once again the on-field competition was only
part of a much larger event. The visiting players were accommodated at the
American and Clarendon Hotels, and the match played in front of a crowd
estimated at 2,000 that included many ladies. When it ended, both sides regaled
the other with three cheers and a tiger (an odd noise popularized by Princeton
students) and then they adjourned to Bloomers for a banquet and to the American
Hotel for more festivities.
The eating, drinking
and merriment continued into the wee hours, accompanied by music from
Poppenberg’s Orchestra. The players also listened to a song by a man named
Everett L. Baker, who chronicled the exploits of the Niagaras in twenty-three
verses such as this one:
Sidway’s bat sends a rolling ball,
And he makes his first base,
As Demarest strikes an airy one,
Sidway has gained a base.
It seems likely that
they also heard a song entitled “The Base Ball Polka,” which had been written
that year by Niagara Club member J. Randolph Blodgett and had become the first
published piece of sheet music devoted to baseball. (Joseph M. Overfield,
“Baseball in Buffalo Before the Civil War,” Niagara Frontier, Summer
1964, 58)
The post-match
festivities also included many toasts and speeches, beginning with one from
Myron Gelston, a member of the Eagle Club of New York City, who had come to
Buffalo to serve as umpire. One of the more notable toasts was given by
Buffalo Courier publisher Joseph Warren, who responded to one entitled “The
Music of the Ball Clubs, their Thorough Base is full of Harmony” as follows:
“May your innings at this fireside hearth be the best of all, and when the
short-stop is put out by the great umpire, may he find his home base where
celestial music is struck by angel bands on golden lyres.” (Kate Burr, “Handsome
Captain Hawley Still Live Wire,” Buffalo Times, July 10, 1927; Joseph M.
Overfield, “Baseball in Buffalo Before the Civil War,” Niagara Frontier,
Summer 1964, 58)
It was a fitting
close to a season that had seen baseball rapidly gain popularity in Buffalo.
The game did receive a setback when the city’s aldermen voted to enforce an
ordinance prohibiting ball-playing in the centrally located Franklin Square, but
there were still plenty of vacant lots available. The Knickerbockers’ version
had also made significant inroads in the city during 1858. Despite the
continued existence of nines like the Buffalo Club that still played by less
structured rules, the new version now had more prestige and more prominence.
1859 was another
strong year for the Niagaras, as the club retained the informal city
championship by again besting the Eries. One unpleasant exchange did, however,
when the Niagaras declined to accept a challenge from the Live Oaks of
Rochester. The Niagaras maintained that they did not have to accept the
challenge because the Live Oaks hadn’t established themselves as Rochester’s
best club, but the Rochester Democrat dismissed this reasoning as a
“miserable subterfuge.” (Joseph M. Overfield, “Baseball in Buffalo Before the
Civil War,” Niagara Frontier, Summer 1964, 59)
The Niagaras also
had a photograph made of themselves that year. Since photography was still in
its instance, each image had to be taken separately and then all nine were
pasted on to an appropriate background. Despite the contrived nature of the
image, it was kept by John Van Velsor and eventually donated to the Buffalo
Historical Society. (“When Baseball Was A Fledgling,” Illustrated Buffalo
Express, October 7, 1897)
The 1860 season saw
several more milestone events for baseball in Buffalo. Things began with an
early July game in which the Niagaras hosted the mighty Excelsiors of Brooklyn.
(Most sources have this game occurring on the 5th, but Joseph M.
Overfield, “Baseball in Buffalo Before the Civil War,” Niagara Frontier,
Summer 1964, 59, places it on the 4th.) The Excelsiors were in the
midst of an unprecedented twelve-day, one-thousand-mile railway tour of New York
state that began on June 30, 1860, and included matches in Albany, Troy,
Buffalo, Rochester and Newburgh-on-the-Hudson.
The point of the
excursion was not so much competition as providing a showcase for the game. The
Excelsiors were one of Brooklyn’s top clubs and none of the games on the tour
were close, including the one in Buffalo. The Excelsiors won by the convincing
margin of 50-19, handing the Niagaras the first loss in the club’s history.
The outcome was a
disappointment to the overly optimistic Buffalo fans who had wagered on the home
nine, but in all other respects the match was a rousing success. A crowd of
more than 3,000 turned out to witness the spectacle, filling all of the seats
that had been set up in tiers and overflowing into the windows and roofs of the
surrounding buildings. And it was indeed a spectacle that they saw, as the
Excelsiors played the game with a skill and finesse that inspired awe. One
account noted: “no such ball playing was ever before witnessed in Buffalo. The
manner in which the Excelsiors handled the ball, the ease with which they caught
it, under all circumstances, the precision with which they threw it to the
bases, and the tremendous hits they gave into the long field made the optics of
the Buffalo players glisten with admiration and protrude.” (Brooklyn Eagle,
July 9, 1860; quoted in James L. Terry, Long Before the Dodgers, 31)
As usual, the
Niagaras went to great lengths in hosting their guests. The Excelsiors were met
at the train depot and escorted to Bloomfield’s Hotel for dinner, given a tour
of Niagara Falls, and then lodged in comfort. (Charles Peverelly, The Book of
American Pastimes; Joseph M. Overfield, “Baseball in Buffalo Before the
Civil War,” Niagara Frontier, Summer 1964, 59)
In August, it was
the Niagara Club’s turn to play the role of ambassadors, as the players and
their supporters traveled to Hamilton, Ontario, to face the newly formed Young
Canadian Club. The game proved such a mismatch that one of the Niagara players,
John B. Sage, later claimed that “the visitors finally struck out purposely in
order to catch a train for home.” (“When Baseball Was A Fledgling,”
Illustrated Buffalo Express, October 7, 1897) But the Hamilton players
weren’t discouraged and they paid a return visit to Buffalo, where the Niagaras
beat them by the less lopsided score of 45-13.
The Niagaras
continued to reign as Buffalo’s top club in 1860, twice beating a new local
rival called the Queen City Club. But their status as the champions of Western
New York was brought into doubt in September when they traveled to Rochester and
were handed their second-ever defeat. Their vanquishers were the Lone Stars of
Rochester, who won by the surprisingly easy margin of 33-10 in a match that
reportedly dragged on from 2:10 until 6:45. (“When Baseball Was A Fledgling,”
Illustrated Buffalo Express, October 7, 1897. This article states that the
game took place on the 11th, while Overfield gives the date as the 21st.)
That was the last
important match played by the original incarnation of the Niagara Base Ball Club
of Buffalo and may have been their last game of any sort. The club apparently
made preparation to play again in 1861, but the onset of the Civil War led
several of the club’s best players to enlist. In June of 1861, the club that
had introduced the Knickerbocker version of baseball to Buffalo went on a hiatus
that would last until the war ended in 1865. (“When Baseball Was A Fledgling,”
Illustrated Buffalo Express, October 7, 1897)
After the war, the
Niagara Base Ball Club reorganized and again established themselves as the
standard-bearers for Buffalo baseball. Of the antebellum players, only David
Burt continued to play and even he soon gave up playing, meaning that the
post-war roster was almost entirely made of up new faces.
Yet while in some
ways the post-war version of the Niagaras was a distinct club, in another way it
was a continuation of Buffalo’s pioneer club. As a retrospective article
explained, “Towards the close of the brief history of the original Niagara
Baseball Club, the pioneers of the National game in Buffalo, full teams for
practice were filled on occasion from the young lads who attended every practice
and every game – the original rooters – and unconsciously schooled the material
for a team to carry on the reorganized club and make a name for it quite as
honorable as that bequeathed by the original organizers.” (“When Baseball Was A
Fledgling,” Illustrated Buffalo Express, October 7, 1897)
PRE-WAR MEMBERS
The antebellum
Niagara Club was a who’s who of Buffalo’s influential young men. As one later
account of the club’s membership put it, “It was in the days of the old
volunteer fire companies when membership therein was the test of a young man’s
good citizenship, and the leading baseball clubs were largely composed of young
men drawn from one company or another. Later on, these same individuals
shouldered the responsibilities of making this good city a leader among the
cities of the United States.” (“When Baseball Was A Fledgling,” Illustrated
Buffalo Express, October 7, 1897)
Another later
summary noted, “The players were all young gentlemen of irreproachable family
connections and plenty of money to swing the thing. The Niagara, from its
organization, was really a men’s social club with sixty or seventy members. The
nine were merely the athletic features.” (Kate Burr, “Handsome Captain Hawley
Still Live Wire,” Buffalo Times, July 10, 1927)
This description is
undoubtedly true and it shows why it is tricky to paint an accurate portrait of
the membership of the Niagara Base Ball Club. While we know the names of the
men who played on the first nine, those men are just the tip of the iceberg.
Yet it is all but impossible to get a good handle on which of the other club
members looked at it as a social club and which were genuinely participants in
the club’s baseball activities. Another trouble is that retrospective accounts
of the club tended to mention the members who became socially prominent or
successfully, rather than those who were active in the club’s activities. As a
result, this listing may not be entirely representative and probably tends to
overstate the social prominence of the club’s members. Nonetheless, there can
be no question that the club membership was a distinguished one.
Orlando Allen, Jr.:
Allen was an original Niagara Club director in 1857 and his highly recognizable
name was a boon to the club. His father and namesake arrived in Buffalo in
1818, learned the language of the native Indian tribes, became a translator
between the natives and the new settler and later served as mayor of Buffalo in
1848-49. The younger Allen was born in Buffalo in July of 1830 and enlisted in
the Civil War and died on February 14, 1862, in Cairo, Illinois.
James Brown Bach:
Bach was one of the two Brooklynites who helped form the Niagara Club. Although
he spent only a few years in Buffalo, he was an appropriate figure to bring
regulation baseball to the city. Bach’s parents were married in New York City
in 1831, then moved to Buffalo where his father became one of the young city’s
leading businessmen. James was born in 1836 but his father died four years
later at the age of 33 and his mother moved her young family back to Brooklyn.
James remained in Brooklyn and went in to business, also joining the Excelsior
Club of that city in 1855. But his mother eventually was remarried to a
Buffalonian and returned there. In 1857, James Brown Bach visited his brother
in Buffalo and, along with fellow Brooklynite Richard Oliver, help to introduce
the Knickerbockers’ rules. He was soon back in New York City where he continued
to enjoy success in business, eventually moving to New Jersey, where he died in
July of 1914.
Robert Bach: Robert
Bach was James’s older brother and the original secretary of the Niagara Club.
There is no trace of his whereabouts after 1857.
Albert W. Bishop:
Bishop was the center fielder of the Niagaras’ original nine and one of the most
distinguished members of the club. Born in Alden, New York, in 1832, he
graduated from Yale University in 1853. He returned to Buffalo and began
studying for the bar exam, while working as chief clerk for the local law firm
of Rogers & Bowen. When he passed the bar, he started his own practice and was
succeeded as chief clerk by a junior clerk – future president Grover Cleveland.
When the war broke out, Bishop enlisted, rising to the rank of General and being
appointed Adjutant General of Arkansas in 1864 by Abraham Lincoln. He remained
in Arkansas after the war, serving as president of the University of Arkansas
and running unsuccessfully for governor in 1876. He returned to Buffalo in
1879, becoming a prominent member of the local bar and a writer of some note.
He died there on November 30, 1901.
John Randolph
Blodgett: Blodgett was born in New York state around 1830 and celebrated his
allegiance to the Niagaras by writing a song called “The Base Ball Polka,” which
in 1858 became the first baseball-themed composition to be published as sheet
music. Blodgett owned a Buffalo music store and became a prominent music
dealer, director and organist. He got married in 1886 and sold his store to
move to Chicago. The marriage proved an unhappy one, and the couple were living
apart when Blodgett died at his brother’s house in Cortland, New York, on March
21, 1873, leaving an infant son.
David Wales Burt:
Burt was born in Buffalo around 1842, the son of a successful local businessman
and state legislator who also served as a Brigadier-General and commended the
Erie County regiments during the so-called “Patriot War” of 1830. The older
David Burt died in 1848. His namesake became the youngest member of the pre-war
starting nine of the Niagaras, being the club’s shortstop when the photograph of
1859 was taken. Still in his early 20s when the war ended, Burt became the only
pre-war player to continue to represent the Niagara Club, but soon retired from
active play. He went into banking, but around 1889 he opted for a quieter life
and moved to the small community of Alexander, where he operated a small hotel
and a large farm. He gave up the hotel after a decade, but continued to farm
until his death in 1914 even though the other members of his immediate family
predeceased him. He died on June 8, 1914, in Corfu, New York.
Edward Payson
Chapin: Chapin was never a member of the Niagaras’ first nine, but after being
killed in the Civil War his membership in the Niagaras was prominently mentioned
in profiles of him. Chapin was born in Waterloo, New York, in 1831, and moved
to Buffalo to become an attorney. At the onset of the war, he enlisted and
became captain of Company A in the 44th New York Volunteers,
nicknamed Ellsworth’s Avengers. Chapin was promoted to lieutenant-colonel after
being wounded at Hanover Court House, Virginia. He was then appointed a colonel
in the 116th New York Volunteers in September and selected two of his
fellow Niagaras to help command the regiment, George M. Love as lieutenant
colonel and John Higgins. Chapin was killed on May 27, 1863, at Port Hudson,
Louisiana. President Lincoln posthumously promoted Chapin a brigadier-general.
Buffalo’s Chapin Parkway is named in his honor.
Frank Demorest or
Demarest: This man was listed as the shortstop of the Niagara Club when the club
played its first game in 1858, but I have not been able to identify him.
John Higgins: John
Higgins, who was born around 1833, was the second baseman of the Niagaras before
the war. The 1860 census shows him working as a leather dealer, unmarried, and
living at the St. James Hotel, where fellow club members J. Randolph Blodgett
and Edward Chapin also lived. In 1862, Higgins and another young man named
Charles F. Wadsworth, led efforts to recruit a company to represent Buffalo in a
new regiment. When the 116th Infantry was formed, Higgins became a
captain and was joined in command of the regiment by fellow club members Edward
Chapin and George M. Love. Higgins received several promotions and was a
lieutenant-colonel when he was given a disability discharge on September 19,
1864. After the war, he worked as a bookkeeper for the Buffalo firm of A.
Rumsey & Co. He was reported as being dead by 1897, but the details of his
passing are not known.
George B. Ketchum:
The appropriately named Ketchum was the catcher of the Niagaras in 1858. He was
injured in the club’s game at Rochester and had to leave the game, and did not
represent the club after that. His first child was born that year, which may
have had more to do with his withdrawal from the first nine. Born around 1830
in New York, Ketchum was a prominent local businessman. His father had been a
cheese merchant and George followed him into the business, then later went into
insurance. Ketchum served briefly in the Civil War and eventually filed for a
disability pension. The 1910 pension shows a man who appears to be Ketchum
living in a home for incurables in New York City. This man died in the Bronx on
March 19, 1913, at the age of 81.
William N. Loomis:
Loomis, born around 1836 in New York, played left field for the Niagaras. He
was the son of a Horatio N. Loomis, a physician who moved to Buffalo at about
the time of his son’s birth. On August 28, 1862, the Buffalo Courier and
Republic reported that W. N. Loomis had enlisted as a lieutenant in the
Subsistence Department of the Army of the Mississippi, serving under General
William S. Rosecrans. On November 5, the same paper brought the news of
Loomis’s death on the previous day. The account reported that Loomis had led a
battalion into combat at the battle of Corinth and “acquitted himself under fire
like a hero.” But he contracted a severe fever and was sent home, where he
died.
George Maltby Love:
Love was the Niagaras’ third baseman in their first match. Born in 1831, Love
was the son of a Buffalo judge who had been a prisoner of war during the War of
1812. George M. Love went on to earn military glory of his own in the Civil
War, serving three tours of duty, the last of them with the New York 116th
Infantry. Although severely wounded at Port Hudson, where his cousin and fellow
Niagara member Edward Chapin was killed, Love rose to the rank of
Brigadier-General and was awarded a Medal of Honor for capturing the battle flag
of the 2nd South Carolina at Cedar Creek, Virginia, on October 19,
1864. He remained in the Regular Army after the war, but he continued to be
affected by wartime injuries and retired in 1883. Love died on March 15, 1887.
Wells B. Miller:
This man was later listed as the pitcher of the 1858 club but I have found
nobody by that name in Buffalo.
William F. Miller:
William F. Miller, who was born in New York around 1822, was the first baseman
of the Niagaras. He was a prominent Buffalo attorney, who was in a partnership
with Albert P. Laning, later a partner of Grover Cleveland. He died during the
1880s, but passed the photograph of the Niagara players along to his son.
Richard Oliver:
Oliver was one of the two Brooklynites who helped introduce the Knickerbockers’
version of baseball to Buffalo in 1857. Oliver was then the president of the
Wayne Base Ball Club of Brooklyn, and would later serve as president of
Brooklyn’s Excelsior Club in 1868 and again from 1871-77.
Edwin Richards:
Richards was the vice-president of the club in 1857, but his identity is a
mystery.
John B. Sage: Sage,
who played right field for the Niagaras, was born in New York around 1832 and
joined the family business in lithography and printing. His playing days ended
with the war, but he remained prominent in the Buffalo sporting scene. He
served as president of Buffalo’s National League club from 1881 to 1885 and was
later named official printer of National League. He was still alive in 1900.
Thomas Shields:
Listed as a director in 1857 but not identified.
Franklin Sidway:
Frank Sidway, a starter for the Niagaras in both 1858 and 1859, was born on July
23, 1834, in Buffalo into a family so wealthy that he was simply listed as a
“gentleman” on the 1860 census. His father, who had made his fortune in
shipping, banking and real estate, died when Frank was 13. Frank Sidway
graduated from Yale University and during the war was commissioned to raise a
regiment of volunteers. He was unable to raise an entire regiment because of
the ending of the practice of paying bounties, but his recruits were transferred
to another regiment. Sidway later became vice president of the Farmers and
Mechanics’ National Bank. He married a daughter of Buffalo mayor Elbridge
Spaulding and raised a large family, eventually moving to Grand Island, New
York, and becoming a gentleman farmer. After the turn of the century, he and
his wife began to winter in St. Augustine, Florida, where he died in 1920.
Although Sidway had a long and successful life, his name is now best remembered
because as executor of a friend’s estate, he became the defendant in Hamer v.
Sidway, a landmark case in U. S. contract law.
James Henry Sidway:
James Sidway, Frank’s younger brother, became one of the youngest members of the
Niagaras’ first nine in 1859. Sidway was a member of the volunteer Taylor Hose
Company and he responded when a fire broke out at the American Hotel around
midnight on January 25, 1865, and spread to the surrounding buildings. A
blizzard prevented the fire-fighters from using their gas lamps and the fire
raged on despite their best efforts. When it was finally put out, the dead
bodies of three prominent young Buffalonians – Harrison Tifft, Harry Gillett,
and James Sidway – were discovered under fallen walls. The whole city went into
mourning. Sidway was only 25.
George S. Wardwell:
George Wardwell was part of another pair of brothers who played for the original
Niagaras. His father was in the whale, linseed and tanning oil business.
George, who was born in Rhode Island in 1829, graduated from Harvard, passed the
bar and then became city attorney and a local judge. He died in Buffalo on
October 18, 1895.
William T. Wardwell:
William Wardwell was George’s brother and he too played on the first nine, as
well as serving as a club director. He was born in Bristol, Rhode Island, on
February 1, 1827, and at thirteen was sent to Buffalo to become clerk for his
uncle, who worked in the oil refining business. He went into the business
himself and after the 1859 discovery of oil near Buffalo, he built a refinery
and became very wealthy. His company was eventually bought out by the Standard
Oil Company and Wardwell became treasurer of the company. He moved to New York
City, where he a generous supporter of the Prohibitionist Party. He was the
party’s candidate for mayor of New York City in 1896 and for Governor in 1900.
He also became a major donor to the American Red Cross. William T. Wardwell
died on January 3, 1911.
Joseph Warren:
Warren was the publisher and proprietor of Courier and he gave a
memorable toast at the banquet that concluded the 1858 season. Warren was born
in Vermont around 1829 and graduated from university graduate and taught Greek
and Latin before turning to journalism. In 1854, he arrived in Buffalo to
become local editor of the Courier. He purchased part-ownership of the
paper in 1858 and soon gained a controlling interest. He remained the
newspaper’s president and editor-in-chief until his death in 1876, also serving
as a park commissioner and as superintendent of schools and being prominent in
Democratic politics.
George C. Webster:
Webster was selected as the first president of the Niagara Club. He was born in
Litchfield, Conn., around 1822, but his family moved to Buffalo when he was
three months old. His father became a Buffalo pioneer in the transportation
business and George Webster followed him, then became an oil refiner and finally
went into life insurance. He married the daughter of a local judge and they
raised four children. George Webster died suddenly on February 1, 1873 at 50.
Click
here for the postwar history.
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