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Louis Borko
Louis Borko 1877-1915 Sections G131 Louis Borko, AKA Lajos Borko, was born in Hungary in 1877 and is among the many immigrants that swarmed into this area from Eastern Europe at the turn of the last century – passing thru the famous Ellis Island immigration depot in New York City. Louis and his wife Julianna arrived here about 1902 but Julianna died a few years later in 1908. Louis ran a saloon / hotel at 221 Fillmore Ave in Gastown – Gastown being the area many of our Hungarian immigrants settled. In 1915 Louis fell ill and was taken to the Ernest Wende Hospital in Buffalo where he died shortly after. One last tragedy is connected with Louis. When funeral director Wattengel was transporting Louis’ body back to Tonawanda in his ambulance / hearse, he accidentally hit and killed a young bicyclist. As with many gravestones in the Twin City’s cemeteries, the inscription is written in the language still spok...
Ralph Clench
Ralph Clench Section C7 Ralph J Clench was one of the Tonawandas’ first resident photographers, setting up a studio here on South Canal Street in the 1870s. In the 1890s he moved it to Webster Street – both sites being located in the very heart of the growing villages. Ralph’s much older brother Frank B Clench had set up his own studio in Lockport in 1864 when the science and art of photography was in its infancy. Brother Frank is now most famous locally as the photographer who took a photograph of lock-keepers at Lockport, NY which was reimagined as a twelve-character bronze sculpture by Susan Geissler unveiled in Lockport in 2023. Ralph is buried here with no marker alongside the family of his wife Sophia Tay, one of three daughters of Joachim and Fredericky Tay. Brother Frank B Clench Flight Of Five Sculpture depicting Frank taking the photograph