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Who Was Buffalo’s First Woman Property Owner?
What makes women property owners unusual at this time is that once they married, they could not buy, hold, or sell property under their own names. On their wedding day, by law, husbands automatically acquired all right and title to whatever land or fortunes women brought to the marriage.…
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Try These Five Simple Tricks to Get Research Assistance
What we want to do here is help you, the person with local history, family, or house history questions, get help from libraries, archives, museums, historical organizations, government record offices, and genealogical societies.…
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Remembering City’s Martyr in Fight Against Klan
The Buffalo Klan members were not rural, undereducated whites with poor economic prospects. Here, the Klan’s 4,000 members were drawn mostly from the Protestant, educated, professional and merchant middle class. …
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Was the Michigan Street Baptist Church a Secret Hiding Place?
The professional historians who compiled the 2013 Historic Structures Report of the Michigan Street Baptist Church were unable to find any period evidence that the church served as a hiding place during Underground Railroad days.…
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How Come No One Has Old Pictures of My House?
Illustration of woman with camera courtesy of Pixabay Or maybe you’re looking for an old picture of your old church, school, corner tavern, or favorite neighborhood deli. The first places to check are your local library, museum, and historical society.…
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Buffalo Takes on the Ku Klux Klan
On the evening on August 31, 1924, shots rang out in front of 128 Durham Street, near Delavan and Grider in Buffalo. Moments later, Special Officer Edward C. Obertean lay mortally wounded; Klansman Thomas Austin was dead; and a Ku…
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Back Cover Blurb for City on the Edge
It is easy to dismiss Buffalo as the poster child of urban decrepitude and dysfunction. It is also wrong.…
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Thoughts on Little Libraries
LLs are a creative solution to the fact that in many places, book supply exceeds demand. There are more books than there are collectors or libraries or used bookstores or rummage sales who want or need them.…
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No, City Hall Has Not Lost Records in a Fire
Originally published at my LinkedIn page in December 2019, then reprinted by BuffaloRising.com with the title Buffalo’s Newest Urban Legend at both sites. Reproduced here with edits and updates. Article about 1863 fire added in January 2022. Image of Buffalo…
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