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Lancaster |
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Address
21 Central Avenue
Lancaster, NY 14086
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Phone
716/683-1610 |
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Lancaster is situated east of Buffalo, in the north-central part of Erie county, and comprises fractional township 11, range 6, and a strip averaging a mile and a half in width off the north side of the Buffalo Creek Reservation. This town was formed from Clarence on the 20th of March, 1833, and includes the Indian lands to the center of the original reservation, the whole being six miles east and west and about eight and three-fourths miles north and south. The town of Elma was set off December 4, 1857, thus reducing Lancaster to its present area of about thirty-seven square miles, or 23,531 acres.
The surface is generally level. The soil is clayey loam in the southern part and gravelly, with considerable limestone, in the north part; these sections are watered by Cayuga and Ellicott, or Eleven-mile, Creeks respectively. Into the former flow Little Buffalo Creek and Plum Bottom. Outside of the villages the principal industry is general farming, with the dairying interests paramount.
According to the books of the Holland Land Company the first purchase of land in Lancaster was made by Alanson Eggleston in November, 1803, the price being $2 per acre. Asa Woodward and William Sheldon purchased lands in the same month. The first actual settlers, as near as can be ascertained, were James and Asa Woodward, in 1803, at Bowmansville. They were followed in 1804 by Matthew Wing, Joel Parmalee and Warren Hull. Soon afterward William Blackman, Edward Kearney, David Hamlin, Zophar Beach, Peter Pratt, Elisha Cox, and others came in. Elias Bissell, Benjamin Clark and Pardon Peckham located near Cayuga Creek in 1808. Their sons, James Clark, Elias and Elisha Bissell, and Thomas Nye Peckham, became prominent citizens of the town. In 1808 a road was cut from Buffalo through Lancaster village, eastward, and in the same year Daniel Robinson built the first saw mill in town at Bowmansville. About 1810 Benjamin Bowman purchased this mill and built another, and ever since then the place has been designated by his name.
In 1810 the first school house in town was built, of logs, on the farm subsequently owned by Leonard Blackman, Miss Freelove Johnson (afterward Mrs. Amos Robinson) being the first teacher; it was replaced by the so-called “Johnson school house,” which stood on the site of the brick school house in the Peckham neighborhood. In 1811 Bartholomew Johnson erected a saw mill on Ellicott Creek at what is known as Johnson’s Corners. Among the early corners to the Cayuga Creek settlement were the Carpenter, Field, Johnson, Hibbard and Paine families. Ahaz Allen built the first grist mill in town, at Lancaster, in 1811, and when work was stopped the first night 955 fish were caught in the mill-race. Edward Kearney, Riley Munger and Joel Mix were also early settlers there. Joseph Carpenter erected the first tavern, which with the mill were the nucleus of the village.
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