The Historic City Cemetery

 In 1898 georges house in Tonawanda was hit with a tornado. His porch stairs flew over a mile ending up on the shores of the creek. 

 George Rogers ? - 1840 Florence Rogers ?-1820 Edward H Rogers 1835 - 1909 William Rogers ?-1892 William J Rogers 1862-1917 Fannie Rogers ? - 1917 Anna Oldenburg Rogers ?-1917

 In the early 1900's, a Tonawanda woman, Mrs. Rudolph Ismer, became central to a series of events that revealed how uncertain death could be.  In 1907, believing she recognized the description of a suicide victim found on a train in Nebraska, Mrs. Ismer identified the body as that of her son, Arthur Perry. The remains were brought back and buried in the family plot in Tonawanda. But the identification was wrong. Perry later returned alive, revealing that another man had been buried under his name. By that time, his wife, believing him dead had already remarried. That experience shaped everything that followed.  In 1910, when a body was recovered from the Niagara River and thought to possibly be her husband, Mrs. Ismer was asked to identify it. This time, she hesitated. Newspapers reported that she examined the body carefully but refused to make a definite identification, fearing she might repeat her earlier mistake. The body was buried as unknown. Soon after, another twis...

               In the summer of 1852, Tonawanda was struck by a cholera epidemic that claimed the lives of many residents in a short period of time. Cholera is a severe intestinal disease caused by contaminated water or food. Before modern sanitation and water treatment, outbreaks could spread rapidly through a community, often proving fatal within hours or days.      Among the victims were members of the Anguish family, descendants of one of Tonawanda's earliest pioneer families. Mary (Bacon) Anguish, wife of William Anguish, died on August 3, 1852, at the age of 51. Three days later, her two-year-old grandson, Albert B. Bartlett, died. On August 10, Mary's daughter, Wealthy Anguish, age 21, also succumbed to the disease. Their deaths, occurring within a single week, illustrate the devastating impact cholera had on local families.      Mary and Wealthy were originally buried in Tonawanda's River Cemetery, the co...

          Anna Neal  1858 - 1940 Section: B86      Mrs. Anna Neal dedicated her whole life to the promotion of American Patriotism and especially the remembrance of our Civil War veterans. She was born in North Tonawanda just before the Civil War. In 1877, at age 19, she married the 44-year-old Civil War veteran John Schwartz. From its very start, Anna was involved with the local branch of the Ladies Relief Corps, an auxiliary of the Civil War Veterans Organization – the G A R. As the Patriotic Instructor of that organization, she visited schools, Boy and Girl Scout Troops, and other organizations promoting the importance of the American Flag.      In 1894, Anna’s husband John Schwartz was seriously injured when he was struck by a train on Main Street in Tonawanda. He died a few days later, never regaining consciousness. Two years later Anna married her neighbor George Neal, becoming Mrs. Anna Neal, a name by which she was...

GAR Monument Dedicated: Memorial Day 1910      The GAR monument that stands before you was the product of many groups coming together in 1910. The Winfield B. Scott GAR Post of Tonawanda, The Winfield B. Scott GAR Post Women's Relief Corps, and the Ladies Auxiliary raised money, organized, and planned the erection and dedication of this twenty plus foot monument. The statue of a Union soldier at the top alone cost $450. The base would have cost about the same. It was made by the White Bronze Monument Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The groups raised just over two thousand dollar, which would be around seventy-thousand dollar's today.       The monument was designed to memorialize the names of over two-hundred members of the Winfield B. Scott GAR Post living and dead at the time. It also recognized the other groups who helped make the monument possible.       Miss Onelee Edmonds was supposed to dedicate the monument after a grand...

                                                              Chester Fitzgerald 1896-1918 Section G115      The death of a child can change the course of a parent's life forever. This is the case when it comes to Chester Fitzgerald and his mother. Chester entered the military during WWI at the age of 22. He was assigned to  Co I of the 125 Infantry. He was sent to France to fight in the first World War. Chester was killed at the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. The war ended a month after his death, but Chester's story didn't.       Soldiers returning home from war told Chester's parents that he had not died. They claimed to have seen him in a hospital in France.  His parents contacted the Red Cross to find out if Chester was in fact alive. It wasn't long before word ...