British Heritage In Niagara Falls, NY

The original name of Niagara Falls was Manchester. Because of all the industry that came to Niagara Falls for the water and electric power, the city was named after the English city where the Industrial Revolution began.

The name was changed because of the war of 1812, but nearby Amherst, NY was named after a British general and that name did not get changed. General Jeffrey Amherst did not get along with the native Indians in the area. So, he was eventually recalled and replaced with Thomas Gage, who understood the Indians better and for whom Gage Park in Hamilton is named.

During the time of slavery in the U.S., Canada was still British territory and Niagara Falls was where so many crossed into freedom. Slavery was absolutely illegal in British territory. Any worker could leave a job at any time and workers could bargain over such things as wages and working hours. There was education and employment facilities at St. Catharines and Owen Sound, and Harriet Tubman owned a home in St. Catharines during this time.

A British engineer named Thomas Evershed seems to have been the first to suggest using the water power at Niagara to generate electricity. He teamed with a local mill owner named Charles Gaskill, for whom the school on Hyde Park Boulevard is named. Unfortunately, the two were better at coming up with ideas than they were at securing funding for those ideas but this was the beginning of electricity generation at Niagara.

A settlement was started some distance upstream from the falls at what was to be the location of a water intake for the generation of power. The settlement came to be known as Evershed, and can be seen today in the older homes on 56th Street and nearby streets off Buffalo Avenue. There was once a school at Stephenson Avenue and 57th Street called Evershed. As Niagara Falls expanded eastward, and merged with what was then the separate town of LaSalle, Evershed was incorporated in also.

The first man to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel was Bobby Leach, of England, although it is true that a woman preceded him. Charles Stevens was a barber from Bristol, who went over the falls in a barrel but did not survive. Matthew Webb, who had crossed the English Channel, was the first to swim the lower rapids but did not survive the whirlpool. Arthur Midleigh was a visitor from England at Niagara Falls. He was unimpressed when told about the Niagara Daredevils and boasted that he would row a rowboat right across the brink of the falls before going back to England and, well, he never did make it back to England.

I have no interest in such stunts, but I feel that I have met the British tradition of encountering Niagara Falls by making the discoveries in the natural history of the area as descibed in the Niagara natural history blog. Today, Hyde Park in Niagara Falls can be seen as a model of Hyde Park in London, except that there is Gill Creek in place of the Serpentine and the Long Water. The hills adjacent to the Prime Outlet Mall are sculpted in such a way as to make visitors feel that they are on a visit to highland Britain.