uburb of Buffalo, and
shortly afterwards British soldiers from the Canadian garrison at Ft.
Erie (directly across the Niagara River from Buffalo) made a raid into
Buffalo harbour and captured the schooner "Connecticut." The Americans
replied with a brilliant exploit in which Lieut. Jesse D. Elliott
(1782-1845) crossed the river and captured the "Detroit" and the
"Caledonia" under the guns of Ft. Erie.

The ruins of Ft. Erie are among the most picturesque features of
the region about Buffalo. The fort was captured in 1814 by an
American force under Gen. Winfield Scott, and was held by the
Americans till the end of the war, despite the efforts of a
British besieging force to dislodge them. At the close of
hostilities the Americans blew up the fort.

In the following spring (1812) five of the gunboats used by Capt. Perry
at the Battle of Lake Erie were fitted out in the harbour at Buffalo.
Perry's victory, however, did not save the little settlement from an
attack in Dec. of that year in which Gen. Sir Phineas Riall and a force
of 1,200 British and Indians captured the town and almost completely
destroyed it. After the war the town was rebuilt, and grew rapidly.
In 1818, near where La Salle in 1679 built his little sailing
vessel, the "Griffin," a group of N.Y. capitalists completed the
"Walk-in-the-Water," the first steamboat on the Great Lakes. The
completion of the Erie Canal, seven years later, with Buffalo as its
western terminus, greatly increased the city's importance. At Buffalo in
1848 met the Free Soil convention that nominated Martin Van Buren for
the presidency and Charles Francis Adams for the vice-presidency.
Grover Cleveland lived in Buffalo from 1855 until 1884, when he was
elected president.

Stephen Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) was born, fifth in a family
of nine children, in the town of Caldwell, Essex County, N.J. He
came of good colonial stock, but the death of his father
prevented his receiving a college education. About 1855 he
drifted westward with $25 in his pocket, and not long afterward
began to read law in a law office in Buffalo, where he was
admitted to the bar in 1859. He was assistant district attorney
of Erie County, of which Buffalo is the chief city, in 1863, was
elected sheriff on the Democratic ticket in 1869, and mayor of
Buffalo in 1881, although the city was normally Republican. As
mayor he attracted wide attenti