(Publisher’s note: This is the second of a three-part investigative series
by Niagara Falls Reporter Editor in
Chief Mike Hudson examining spurious claims that the city was a major
hub of the Underground Railroad in
the years prior to the Civil War, claims
that are now being used to justify the
spending of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars celebrating a history that
never happened.)
History is a funny thing.
Library shelves are filled with
volumes that will tell you that Thomas
Jefferson messed around on his wife,
that Winston Churchill was a war
criminal, or that Elvis slept with his
mother, and since most of the people
who could have spoken definitively
about the subjects are now dead, who’s
to say?
Back in 2009, Kevin Cottrell —
who was hired by the city to promote
the idea that what is now the city of
Niagara Falls played a central role in
the Underground Railroad that helped
thousands of former slaves escape
their tormentors — repeatedly told
reporters that Harriet Tubman personally led hundreds of former slaves to
Canada and freedom across a suspension bridge very near to what is now
the Whirlpool Bridge in the city’s
North End.
A series of articles in this newspaper showed conclusively that Cottrell
was either lying or sadly misinformed,
and raised serious questions concerning his motivation by exposing his
involvement with a tour company he
founded that profited from the absurd
claim.
Historians agree that Harriet
Tubman may actually have led as few
as 17 people north, and that most of
these traveled along a New England
route hundreds of miles away from the
roar of Niagara Falls.
It turned out that the story of her
heroics here was rooted in a single
passage from a book that was billed as
her autobiography, but was actually
written by a young white woman with
Abolitionist sympathies long after the
events it described actually took
place. The book is riddled with errors,
perhaps the most comical being a
solemn prayer for the soul of the late
Confederate president Jefferson
Davis, who happened to be very much
alive when the book was published.
Cottrell’s conflict of interest in
the matter was readily apparent to
anyone who wanted to look at it. He
founded the for-profit Motherland
Connexions tour company, billed on
its website as being the “originators
of the Underground Railroad tour
experience.”
For just $78 ($48 for children
under 12), Cottrell or one of his
employees will guide you on a three-
hour tour dedicated to a history that
never happened. The company’s website, filled with misspellings and
typographical errors, describes the
experience.
“Sojourn the towns and sites that played host to thousands of freedom seekers passing through Niagara Falls on what’s described as one of this countries (sic) ‘First Mulit-Cultural (sic) Humanitarian Efforts,’” the site states.
Interestingly, Cottrell’s employment by the city is never mentioned.
“As a local Historian,
Preservationist, Educator and
Entrepreneur, Kevin Cottrell has been
lecturing both locally and nationally
on the topic of the Underground
Railroad especially as it relates to
Western New York, and Southern
Ontario,” the profile states.
“Presently, Mr. Cottrell is Station
Master (owner operator) of
Motherland Connextions, a company
specializing in Heritage Tourism.”
All of this would be easy to dismiss as the shenanigans of a two-bit
history hustler, were it not for the fact
that, aside from his $74,800-a-year
salary as the city’s resident
Underground Railroad “expert,” he is
a principal consultant on a project that
will ultimately cost Niagara Falls taxpayers millions: The Niagara Falls
Underground Railroad Heritage Area.
The centerpiece of the heritage
area, the old U.S. Customs House on
Whirlpool Street, is in the midst of a
$40 million renovation that backers
hope will one day house a new
Amtrak station, as well as the
Underground Railroad Interpretive
Center.
One of the oldest buildings in
Niagara Falls, the Customs House was
built in 1863, well after the
Underground Railroad was stopped in
its tracks by the outbreak of the Civil
War.
But unlike the actual
Underground Railroad, the city’s
Underground Railroad Heritage
Commission won’t be stopped. With
an annual budget of $350,000 a year
provided by the city, Cottrell’s commission affords him the perfect vehicle to promote and expand his private
company without having to explain
his business plan to any pesky
bankers.
The commission’s recently
released Niagara Falls Underground
Railroad Heritage Area Management
Plan, completed at an unknown cost to
the city by an outside consulting firm
called EDR Companies, does little to
hide what is about to occur here.
The report identifies 23 sites in
the city as serving “important functions during the formation and operation of the Underground Railroad.”
One of these, St. Peter’s Episcopal
Church, wasn’t built until 1873, a full
14 years after the Underground
Railroad ceased operations. Its “important function” was apparently
that “many prominent local families,
both African American and European
American, were associated with St.
Peter’s Episcopal Church.”
Another “important site” is the
Emma Tanner home, located at 619
Ashland Ave. Tanner was a black
Canadian woman who moved to the
city in 1925. Like every other black
person living in the United States at
the time, she had relatives who had
once been slaves.
The so-called Colt Block, at the
corner of Main and Ontario streets,
also had an important connection to
the Underground Railroad and was
named in the report.
“Leander Colt represents widespread local support for helping people to get out of slavery. Colt ‘and
lady’ attended a benefit concert for
George Goines in Lockport, who was
raising money to buy freedom for his
mother and brother,” the report
states. “After Colt constructed this
limestone commercial block in 1855,
he rented part of the building to
George Hackstaff, editor of the
Niagara Herald, who had antislavery
sympathies.”
That’s right, Leander Colt went to
some benefit and then rented out
space in a building of which he was
the landlord!
The Solon Whitney home, now
better known as the law offices of
John Bartolomei, was also found to be
very significant. Why?
“Solon Myron Napoleon Whitney,
son of Parkhurst Whitney, owned the
Cataract Hotel for more than 50 years
with his brothers-in-law Dexter
Jerauld and James Trott,” the report
states. “All of them hired African
Americans as waiters. Many of these
waiters had born in the South and had
likely escaped from slavery.”
In other words, the private home
of a man who owned a hotel that hired
black waiters who may or may not
have “escaped from slavery” has been
deemed culturally significant. All of
the hotels in Niagara Falls at the time
hired black waiters, and indeed, all of
the places the hotels once stood — for
none exist today — have been named
as important sites.
The historical fraud being perpetrated on the taxpayers of a city
whose guest book has been signed
by luminaries such as Abraham
Lincoln, Charles Dickens, Nikola
Tesla, Marilyn Monroe and more
kings and queens than you can shake
a stick at is truly historic in its
appalling proportions.
(NEXT WEEK: In Part 3 of this special Niagara Falls Reporter investigative series, we’ll see why Kevin Cottrell, Mayor Paul Dyster and City Engineer Tom DeSantis have a vested interest in phony history.)
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | May 1 2012 |