The First Town Meeting

The first Town meeting was held on April 2, 1816 at an inn constructed in 1811 and run by Oliver Booth. The inn was a double log cabin described as “a log building one and one half stories high with a big chimney in the middle and two front entrances; one leading into the bar room, the other into the general reception, dining and sleeping room and contained in all five rooms”.
According to local accounts, the meeting was said to have been quite enthusiastic and attended by all the voters and settlers in the county from the swamp to the lake (i.e. The Tonawanda Swamp to Lake Ontario). Some traveled from ten to fifteen miles on foot to reach the polls and many remaining over night at Booth’s inn, sleeping on the floor, in order to participate in the initial proceedings of township government. Approximately estimated, there was one vote to each square mile and a half of territory, and it required nearly one-third of the entire number of voting population to fill the various offices.
The officers elected that April were Samuel Clark, Supervisor; Daniel Pratt, Town Clerk; Silas Joy, John Proctor and Oliver Benton, Assessors; Nathaniel Whitney and Gideon Freeman, Commissioners of Highways; Eleazar T. Slater, Collector; Eleazar T. Slater, Henry Luce and John Proctor, Constables; Samuel Clark, Lemuel Daniels and Gideon Freeman, Commissioners of Common Schools; Jesse Beech, Festus Giddings and Oliver Booth (2nd), Inspectors of Common Schools.
Major concerns at that first meeting were impassable highways, development of public institutions like schools and churches and providing for the poor. One worrisome issue was addressed at this meeting. During this time there were no established pastures for animals, and most settlers had their own private drove of hogs. Thus a major consideration was how to deal with free roaming swine! The animals were crawling through log and brush fences and doing a good deal of damage to gardens and cultivated ground. The decision was made after lengthy discussion “that hogs weighing over sixty pounds shall be free commoners, with a yoke of nine inches above the neck, and four inches below and six inches at each side, and that there be a fine of fifty cents if they are seen running at large without being hampered as above mentioned. . .”
As stated, most of the issues concerned survival and improvement of conditions, but perhaps the most absorbing topic, and the one that was to have the greatest impact on the area, was the building of the Erie Canal. This was a topic of conversation as surveyors had been through the area just the year before laying out the path for this new transportation route.

The War of 1812 and the Settlers

Picture of General Gaines
For whom the Town is named.

The War of 1812 was a reality to the settlers on the Holland Land Purchase. The people living along the Ridge Road witnessed those fleeing a burning Buffalo in 1813 and heard the reports of British ships on Lake Ontario. The Battle of Lundy’s Lane in July of 1814 had stopped the Americans. Major General Brown, the commander of the American forces on the Niagara Frontier, sent a messenger to Sackets Harbor ordering Brigadier General Edmund Pendleton Gaines to assume command at Fort Erie. On August 5, 1814 General Gaines arrived at the Fort. Two days later the British General Drummond advanced. Because the Fort had been strengthened with new bastions, the Americans were able to answer the attack and the exchanges lasted for eight days. Even though the regular troops on the Niagara Frontier totaled 1,000, they were being besieged at Fort Erie by an army of 4,000 British troops and Canadian militia. The frontier troops could not be expected to hold the fort or to evacuate and retreat against such odds. Therefore on September 1, 1814, the militias in all the counties west of the Genesee River were called out. The militia was composed of all able-bodied white male citizens between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. These settlers were ordered to march to Buffalo from where they would be sent as reinforcements to Fort Erie. These local militia arrived and soon were engaged in the fighting.
At the end of the engagements the Americans had lost 20 to 30 men, a number were wounded and a few taken prisoner. The British could count killed, wounded and prisoners at 1,000. Due to their losses they halted their siege and retreated down the Niagara River. The volunteers were then discharged and returned home.
Many of these volunteers are familiar names in the history of our town. John Proctor remembered well the battle in September as several bullets passed through his clothing and one grazed his hand. Ptolemy Sheldon, brother of Abner and Zelotes Sheldon, was severely wounded in the shoulder from which he never fully recovered. Moses Bacon was shot through the neck and taken prisoner to Halifax. He was released in 1815, but never regained his health. Reuben Root and his father assisted in taking some 500 prisoners on that September 17 and were discharged receiving the rate of $8.00 a month for their service.
It was only a short 17 months after this battle that a new town was formed in Genesee County (Orleans County was not formed until 1825) and the War was fresh in everyone’s mind. William J. Babbitt was the one who suggested and supported the name of Gaines, for the new town, in honor of the General with whom the local men and boys had held Fort Erie.