The wanderlust genes of an adventurous Lockport family apparently skipped one generation when Peter De Lozier -- and, later, his grandson -- fled hearth and home to seek adventure out in the world.
De Lozier started his adventurous career by joining the Navy to see the world, while his grandson, Daniel R. Whitcher, started wandering by taking a job as a muleskinner traveling the length of the Erie Canal.
De Lozier's military career took him to Tripoli on the frigate Philadelphia in 1803, when the United States decided to put an end to piracy on the Barbary Coast. This conflict, incidentally, is recalled in the Marine Corps Hymn with the phrase, "From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli."
The Philadelphia unfortunately ran aground and the entire crew was captured. De Lozier and his shipmates spent 30 months in a Tripoli jail. After the conflict was over, De Lozier was mustered out of the Navy and took up residence on Lewiston Road near Lockport.
He eventually learned the cabinetmaker's trade and opened a shop on Richmond Avenue in Lockport. He married and had a daughter, but the lure of the open road, or the open sea, was too compelling. He left his family and returned to seafaring.
De Lozier died a few years later in Norwich, Conn., without ever returning home to his wife, Lucy, and daughter, Ordelia. His daughter married Bailey H. Whitcher in 1825. Whitcher, also a cabinetmaker, took over De Lozier's business. The couple had a son, Daniel, who was born in 1830.
When Daniel was 16, he took a job driving mules pulling barges along the Erie Canal. During a stay in Albany, he and a fellow worker decided to take a side trip to see the sights of New York City.
The boys, probably touring the bars and bawdy places in the big city, were shanghaied onto a whaling boat heading for the south Atlantic. They jumped ship at the island of St. Helena, hid out in the mountains until the whaler had sailed, then sought help from American authorities.
They could get passage home by promising to enlist in the Navy. They wound up on a U.S. Navy ship patrolling off the coast of California during the Mexican War. After the war, they were discharged in Brooklyn. Whitcher returned to Lockport in 1850.
He joined a state military unit in Lockport, then transferred to the regular Army in 1854. He was sent out west, promoted to sergeant, and participated in the wars with the Plains Indians. Whitcher's enlistment was up in 1859, and he returned to Lockport, but only briefly. He took a job as a lumberjack in the north woods of Michigan for a year, then again returned to Lockport.
He enlisted in Company A, 28th Regiment, in April of 1861, to fight in the Civil War.
Whitcher was promoted to first lieutenant, but decided to return to his lumberjack job when his short enlistment was up. But the lure of the war was too great. He then enlisted in the Michigan Light Artillery and was appointed a captain.
Whitcher was mustered out of the Army in Detroit, where he lived and raised a family for several years. He returned to Lockport with his wife and two children in 1891, and lived there until his death in 1914.
There is no record of any wanderlust or exploits on the part of his mother, so evidently the adventure genes skipped from Peter De Lozier to his grandson, Daniel Whitcher.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Dec. 20 2005 |