(Publisher’s note: This is the final installment 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 millions of taxpayer dollars celebrating a history that never happened.)

Even the most disinterested among us are aware that the Niagara Frontier possesses a rich and varied history, one involving undeniably important historical and cultural figures of just about every race, creed and ethnicity.
Why then is the administration of Mayor Paul Dyster already spending what will amount to millions of taxpayer dollars to celebrate a dubious, though undoubtedly politically correct history that – even if it were true and verifiable, which it isn’t -- would be largely insignificant in comparison with the region’s well-documented past?
Let’s take a look at some of the city’s actual history, much of which goes completely without commemoration, and compare it with the largely concocted history put forth in the recently released Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Area Management Plan, which points up 23 sites in the city that allegedly “served important functions during the formation and operation of the Underground Railroad.”
Even the most fervent advocates of Underground Railroad history could not argue that its ill-documented activities here were as important to the history of the region or, indeed, of the United States itself as did the century-long conflict between the European colonists and Native American Indian tribes that played itself out violently right in our own backyards.
The French and Indian Wars, Pontiac ’s Rebellion, the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 – the bicentennial of which is now being criminally ignored by the Dyster administration – were all but episodes in the larger game that would determine who would control what was then America ’s western frontier.
There was the burning of the French Fort du Portage in 1759 and the later burning of Fort Little Niagara during the Revolutionary War. The Old Stone Chimney – perhaps the oldest architectural artifact west of the Hudson River in New York State – stands crumbling and neglected in a former factory parking lot on Buffalo Avenue , bore witness to both of these events.
On Sept. 14, 1763, a wagon train loaded with supplies bound for Old Fort Niagara was attacked by a large force of warriors under the command of the great Seneca war chief Farmer’s Brother in the city’s North End, where the trail crossed a small stream known today as Bloody Run.
Led by a cowardly colonist named John Stedman – who fled the scene and saved himself – the entire 25-man wagon train party was wiped out, along with a British relief column made up of about 80 members of the vaunted 80th Regiment of Light Armed Foot, by experienced Indian fighters trained in guerilla tactics.
The battle, popularly known as the Devil’s Hole Massacre, was the largest single defeat suffered by the British at the hands of solely Native American forces during the entire colonial period. Whole books have been devoted to the battle and its repercussions, but the names of Farmer’s Brother, John Stedman and Lt. George Campbell, the brave but headstrong commander of the British relief force, are all but unknown here. The state has erected a small marker to commemorate the battle, while the city has done nothing.
Contrast this with the reputed train ride taken by Harriet Tubman in 1856 or 1857, she couldn’t quite remember.
Like Davey Crockett killing a b’ar when he was only three or John Henry, that steel-driving man who died in a race against a steam-powered hammer, much of Harriet Tubman’s life has been relegated to the quasi-historical and often whimsical status of lore and legend.
The story of her brief passage through what would eventually become the city of Niagara Falls is based on a single paragraph in a highly problematic booklet, “Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman.”
Although billed as her autobiography, Tubman, who was illiterate, had a ghostwriter named Sarah H. Bradford actually write it. Only about 40 error-riddled pages of the 132-page book is Tubman’s spoken word story, the rest being letters from well wishers about what a nice person she was.
The book was published in 1869, more than a decade after Tubman allegedly passed through Niagara Falls on a train bound from Rochester to Canada , crossing over a bridge located near the present day site of the Whirlpool Bridge .
Even if her account was factual, her time in what is now Niagara Falls amounted to about 15 minutes, assuming that the train was traveling at the then-normal speed of 25 miles per hour.
Talk about 15 minutes of fame!
Now that the ridiculous stories of Tubman leading 300 escaped slaves across the bridge have been put to rest, does the city of Niagara Falls really need a park, a museum and walkway on the bridge dedicated to commemorating an event that was so unimportant Tubman herself couldn’t remember what year it happened in?
Let’s contrast Tubman’s vague recollection with a more concrete Niagara Falls experience by another individual who had a little bit to do with freeing the slaves, Abraham Lincoln.
Not being illiterate, Lincoln was therefore able to jot down his own awed impressions of Niagara Falls following an 1848 visit. The following is an excerpt from a 500-word account in Lincoln ’s own hand, originally published in the nine-volume “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln.”
“ Niagara Falls! By what mysterious power is it, that millions and millions, are drawn from all parts of the world, to gaze upon Niagara Falls ?” the future president wondered.
“There is no mystery about the thing itself, every effect is just such as any intelligent man, knowing the causes, would anticipate. If the water moving onward in a great river reaches a point when there is a perpendicular jog of a hundred feet in descent… It is plain the water will have a violent and continuous plunge at that point.
“It is also plain the water, thus plunging, will foam and roar and send up a mist, continuously, in which last, during sunshine, there will be perpetual rainbows.
“The mere physical of Niagara Falls , is only this. Yet this is really a very small part of that world's wonder. It's power to excite reflection, and emotion, is it's great charm.”
Lincoln visited Niagara Falls during his return trip from Boston to Chicago , between Sept. 23 and Oct. 5, 1848. Later, on July 25, 1857, he returned here, signing the register at the famous Cataract House Hotel as “A. Lincoln and Family.”
Comically, absurdly and ultimately tragically, the former site of the Cataract House is one of the 23 Niagara Falls sites identified in the Underground Railroad Heritage Area Management Plan as being important, though not because the Great Emancipator whose Proclamation freed all the slaves then living in the United States but because the hotel was known to employ black waiters.
“Many of these waiters had born in the South and had likely escaped from slavery,” the report notes dryly.