By Carol Fisher-Linn
Summertime means the Ellicottville Historical Society Museum is open for business on the weekends: Saturday, and Sunday, 1-4 pm, or by request, through September. Our beloved historic building sits on one of the four corners, next to the ski tree. There is a note on the door with Town and Village Historian Ellen Frank’s phone number (716-474-8528) in case you or your group would like a museum tour during the week. She will also treat 5 or 6 visitors to an impromptu Village walking tour if she is available.
This Saturday, July 13, Ms. Frank will be offering a Walking Tour around the village, showing off the historic homes, and talking about the founders and people who lived in them. Sunday’s (July 14) walk will feature a walk to the Jefferson Street Cemetery where you will meet many of the founders in their eternal resting places and perhaps pass the homes they lived in prior to their last trip to the cemetery. All tours meet at 1pm at the Gazebo and cost $10 per person, which supports the Museum.
Displays this season include Abram (Abe) Maybee’s banjo and stories about Eli Parker who lived and studied law in Ellicottville for three years. Abe, a black man, was born in Canajoharie NY in 1839. His father was a liberated slave living in Syracuse who got involved in the famous “Jerry Rescue” Abe’s dad, recognizing his own liberty was at stake took his family to Canada. At around the age of 12, Abe left Canada for Buffalo where he was “found” by Lewis Coit of Ellicottville who invited him to come live on a farm with him and his family on Poverty Hill Road. He stayed with them until he was twenty-one (1861). He went south, was a teamster in the U.S. service and in 1864 enlisted in Co. A, 20th U.S. Colored Infantry. Twice wounded, he was honorably discharged at the close of the Civil War. Maybee returned to Ellicottville and became a popular barber living and working in what now is Maybee Alley for fifty years. He married Martha who is buried in the Jefferson Street Cemetery. Abe is buried at Sunset Hill near the Coit family.
Town/Village Historian, Ellen Frank gives us this information about Ely Parker: Ely Parker was a full-blooded Seneca who was born on the Tonawanda Reservation in 1828. “Invited to come to Ellicottville to study law, the budding lawyer student soon found a place in Ellicottville’s society” … One of its prominent citizens remembered Ely as ‘a fine-looking man of stalwart proportions and said that he mixed in society where he was a favorite and was a cultured man.’ Ely also served for a time as postmaster…”
Unfortunately, Parker was not permitted to take the bar exam because he was Native American and not considered an American citizen. Undeterred, Parker continued his education at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. He became an engineer, was instrumental in the development of the Erie Canal, and made many friends along the way, one of whom was Ulysses S. Grant. This friendship paved the way for Parker to join the ranks of the military during the Civil War. Parker was appointed as the military secretary to Grant, as lieutenant colonel. His legal training served him well as he wrote much of Grant’s correspondence. When Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, April 9, 1865, Parker was present. It was Parker who helped draft the surrender documents. At war’s end, Parker remained Grant’s military secretary, serving as a member of the Southern Treaty Commission, which renegotiated treaties with Indian tribes that had sided with the Confederacy.
Ms. Frank goes on to tell us that “When Grant became President, he appointed Parker as Commissioner of Indian Affairs.” After retirement, Parker moved his family to Fairfield, Connecticut and lived there until his death in 1895. “He was buried in Connecticut but in 1897 he was brought to Buffalo and reinterred in Forest Lawn Cemetery. He now lies beside his forefather and beneath the shadow of Red Jacket’s monument.”
To get the full story of these men and their contributions to local and national history, be sure to visit the museum.
Speakers coming up: all at 7pm at the Ellicottville Library
- Wednesday, August 7 – Don Dwyer, playing music of women of the Civil War
- Wednesday September 4 – Amanda Woormer, speaking about paranormal activity in the region
- Wednesday, October 2 – Shane White Eagle, from the paranormal investigative group, Spirit Hunters