Urial Driggs 1802 - 1884

 This grave marks the resting place of Urial Driggs, one of the oldest and wealthiest early residents of Tonawanda.

Urial Driggs died at his home in the village at the age of eighty-one. Until shortly before his death, newspapers noted that he remained active and enterprising — a description rarely given lightly to a man of his age in the 19th century.

Driggs was born on November 15, 1802, in Marcellus, Onondaga County, New York. As a boy, he moved west with his father, Roswell Driggs, first to Ontario in Wayne County, and later to the Niagara frontier.

His life followed the path of early western expansion. Before the Erie Canal was built, the family moved to Grand Island, and later settled in the village of Tonawanda. Driggs became a successful landowner and businessman, accumulating extensive real estate holdings as the village grew around him.

For many years, he was closely connected with the Tonawanda House, an important early hotel and gathering place in the community. Like many pioneer businessmen, his wealth was built slowly through land, patience, and proximity to transportation routes.

Urial Driggs represents a generation that arrived when Tonawanda was still frontier land — long before paved streets, electric lights, or formal city boundaries. His lifetime spanned the transformation of the area from rural settlement to canal town and growing industrial community.

Standing here today, his grave reminds us that beneath modern Tonawanda lies the work and ambition of early settlers whose lives shaped the village long before it became a city.

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The Man Whose Stomach Was Taken Away

This stop tells the story of Urial Driggs, whose death stirred such suspicion that part of his body was removed — and sent away — to settle the matter.

When Driggs died in Tonawanda in the late 19th century, rumors spread quickly. Whispers moved through the village that the old man had not died naturally. Some claimed foul play. Others accused heirs of darker motives. The gossip grew so intense that it threatened to tear the family apart.

To silence the rumors, Driggs’s son, Roswell Driggs, took an extraordinary step.

He ordered his father’s stomach removed.

At the coroner’s inquest, held at the family residence on North Canal Street, Coroner Coroner Forsyth presided while testimony was heard. The stomach of Urial Driggs had already been taken to Buffalo for scientific analysis by physicians there — a drastic measure meant to prove, once and for all, whether poison had been used.

Doctors testified that no injurious substances were found.

The verdict was clear: Urial Driggs died of dysentery, worsened by old age. No murder. No poison. No crime.

The jury ruled it a natural death.

And yet, the damage had already been done.

The newspaper noted that this extreme action was taken to stop the “ugly rumors” circulating through the village — proof that suspicion could linger even after death, and that a body was not always allowed to rest in peace.

Urial Driggs may lie buried, but for a time, he was not whole.

Even in death, the people of Tonawanda demanded answers — and sometimes, they were willing to cut a body open to get them.