Site of the Peter Buell Porter House1 Falls Street, south side, just east of Main Street Niagara Falls, New York Significance: The Peter B. Porter family represents the tension between slavery and freedom embodied in personal family relationships. Both Peter B. Porter and his son Peter A. Porter married women from slaveholding families. In 1821, Peter B. Porter tried to recapture a woman who had escaped from his household at Black Rock, and in 1837, he assisted his brother-in-law, David Castleman, in Castleman’s attempt to recapture Solomon Moseby. The Porter children (Elizabeth and Peter A. Porter), however, had antislavery sympathies and most likely helped on the Underground Railroad.

Peter B. and Letitia Porter House indicated with red dot.

Chart o f Niagara Fal l s , the Shores & Is lands , 1844.

1 Site description from Survey of Sites Relating to the Underground Railroad, Abolitionism, and African American Life in Niagara Falls and Surrounding Area, 1820-1880, by Judith Wellman, Ph.D., April 2012, pp. 44-48. Prepared by New York Historical Research Associates for edr Companies and the Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Area Commission. The complete historic resources survey report is available at www.niagarafallsundergroundrailroad.org.

Description: Peter B. Porter and Letitia Porter first built a house at Black Rock, now part of Buffalo. When the railroad from Buffalo to Niagara Falls was built in 1836, it cut through part of the Porter grounds. Before 1840, Peter B. Porter sold his house to Lewis Allen and moved to Niagara Falls, where he built a new house on Falls Street. His house in Niagara Falls later became a hotel called the Prospect Park House. 2

Peter B. and Letitia Breckenridge Porter House at Black Rock, (Buffalo: H. Merrill, c. 1835)

http://buffaloah.com/h/allen/source/5.html Discussion: Peter Buell Porter (August 14, 1773-March 20, 1844) was born in Connecticut, graduated from Yale in 1791, began work as a lawyer in Canandaigua, New York, and moved to Black Rock in 1809, where he and his older brother Augustus supervised the portage around the falls, as part of the firm of Porter and Barton. He served two terms in Congress from 1809-13, where he became, with Henry Clay from Kentucky, a leader of the War Hawks. He resigned to become a General in the U.S. Army, leading troops in battle at Chippewa, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Lundy’s Lane, and Fort Erie, across the Niagara River from his home. After the war, he helped survey the boundary between the U.S. and Canada. He served one more term in Congress (1815-16) and also served on the committee to pick the route for the Erie Canal. He became Secretary of War under John Quincy Adams (1828-29).3

2 Souvenir History of Niagara County, New York (The Pioneer Association of Niagara County, 1902), 191; History of Niagara Falls with Illustrations, 305. 3 Tanya Warren, Porter Family Genealogy; Peter A. Porter (grandson of Peter B. Porter), sketch of Peter B. Porter’s life, c. 1925, myoakwoodcemetery.com/major-general-peter-b-porter/. Thanks to Michelle Kratts for this research.

On October 16, 1818, Peter B. Porter, age forty-five, married Kentucky-born Letitia Breckenridge Grayson, a thirty-two-year-old widow (January 22, 1786-July 17, 1831). The Porters had two children, Elizabeth Lewis Porter (April 19, 1823-January 28, 1876) and Peter Augustus Porter (June 14, 1827-June 3, 1864). 4 Letitia Porter died at Black Rock in 1831. Peter B. Porter moved to Niagara Falls before 1840 as a widower with two children. He built a new house on Falls Street, just south of Main Street. After his death in 1844, his children Elizabeth and Peter A. Porter continued to live in this house until the late 1850s. Peter B. Porter is buried in Lot 191 of Oakwood Cemetery. Letitia Breckenridge Porter brought people in slavery with her to Black Rock when she married, but according to a later account, “she did not keep them long. They imbibed notions of freedom which they would not have dared picture to themselves in Kentucky, and one by one they slipped across the river into Canada.” 5 One of those enslaved by Letitia’s family was Solomon Moseby, owned by Letitia Breckenridge’s brother-in-law David Castleman. In 1837, the Moseby case created Canada’s first race riot, and Peter B. Porter was intimately involved. In May 1837, Solomon Moseby left the plantation of David Castleman in Fayette County, Kentucky, riding Castleman’s horse. Castleman described Moseby as “a dark mulatto about five feet 10 inches high, straight and finely formed quick brisk motion and walk, pleasant & cheerfull countenance—a fine manager of horses and fine driver.” Moseby crossed the Niagara River and came to what is now Niagara-on-the-Lake. In 1837, this was a town of about 4000 people, including about four hundred African Americans, most of whom had escaped from slavery in the U.S. 6 In July, Castleman notified his brother-in-law, Peter B. Porter, still living in Black Rock, asking him “to employ some man in whom you have confidence, to decoy him [Moseby] over the line, have him apprehended and confined in jail as a felon [sic] or a fugative [sic] from justice.” George Cabell, owned by Mrs. Breckinridge, had also recently escaped. Both, asserted Castleman, had been helped by “old George, who drove Mrs. Breckinridge to Black Rock.” Castleman also hoped to retrieve Jesse Happy, who had escaped from Judge Thomas M. Hickey in Lexington in 1833 and was last seen living in Hamilton, Ontario. “It is important that enerjetic measures should be used to put a stop to those escaping,” Castleman emphasized to Porter, “for they are becoming very common.”7 Porter offered his home as a base from which to recapture Moseby, and in late August, Castleman arrived with arrest warrants for all three men, not because they had escaped from slavery but because they had stolen horses. Canada did not extradite people accused of escaping from slavery, so Castleman hoped to use the Fugitive Offender Law, which allowed extradition for people accused of criminal offenses. Porter emphasized the importance of secrecy in this mission, and Castleman agreed. He asked Porter to alert his children (Elizabeth, age thirteen, and Peter, age ten) not to mention Castleman’s name. One can only imagine the position in which these children, both of whom knew Solomon Moseby personally, found themselves in terms of divided loyalties.8 The Canadian government supported Castleman’s claim, but Moseby escaped with the help of three to four hundred African Canadians, who rescued him. In the process, two people were killed, including Pastor Herbert Holmes. Later historians called this Canada’s first race riot. (For more details, see historic context statement.)9 The Moseby case elicited a lengthy philosophical statement from Peter B. Porter about his own views. “I am as much opposed to slavery in the abstract, as they [the Council of Upper Canada]. But this is a subject which cannot be 4 Peter A. Porter (grandson of Peter B. Porter), sketch of Peter B. Porter’s life, c. 1925, myoakwoodcemetery.com/major-general-peter-b-porter/. 5 Buffalo Courier, August 14, 1867 [?].

6 David Castleman to Peter B. Porter, July 11, 1837, Peter B. Porter Papers, I-3, Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society.

7 David Castleman to Peter B. Porter, July 11, 1837, I-3, Peter B. Porter Papers, Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society.

8 David Castleman to Peter B. Porter, August 15, 1837, I-10, Peter B. Porter Papers, Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society.

9 Janet Carnochan, “A Slave Rescue in Niagara Sixty Years Ago.” Niagara Historical Society, Publication No. 2, n.p., n.d.; David Murray, Colonial Justice: Justice, Morality and Crime in the Niagara District, 1791-1849 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 198-216; “The Amazing Story of Solomon Moseby,” from Lewiston History Mysteries (Winter 2009-2010), historiclewiston.org/downloads/solomon_moseby.pdf. Further research in the Peter B. Porter papers in the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society would fill in details of Porter’s involvement with this story.

safely disposed of, by the summary application of general principles.” He himself had once owned twenty to twenty-five slaves, he noted, part of his wife’s inheritance. He offered to give them their freedom if they would emigrate to Liberia. “We deemed it unkind to turn them loose among their kindred and connexion in Kentucky while in slavery,” he noted. In effect, Porter espoused the views of the American Colonization Society, which set up the colony of Liberia in West Africa and settled the area with free people of color from the U.S. 10 The Porters did bring five or six people in slavery to Black Rock, “where they proved to be excellent servants until they were fastened upon by the emancipators and free blacks of Buffalo who persuaded them (with the exception of two only who served their time) to flee across the river.” 11 Porter asserted in 1837, “I have never made any efforts to recover them.” That was not quite true. In 1821, Porter attempted to retrieve a young woman who had escaped to Canada. Two Canadian officials, Thomas Dickson and Jonathan B. Robinson, both assured Porter that “slavery is no crime for which she can be apprehended in this Province, where she is free and entitled to the protection of the laws the minute she arrives in it.” Robinson did, however, suggest a loophole. A law in 1797, he noted, provided for extradition for anyone charged with “crimes of high return.” This loophole was reinforced by the Fugitive Offenders Act of 1833, and it was this provision that Porter and Castleman tried to use to retrieve Moseby, Cabell, and Happy in 1837. 12 Porter feared in 1837 that, if Canada continued to harbor fugitives from slavery, “the borders of our beautiful river will soon become the haunts of a banditti of negroes capable of giving us great & continued annoyance.”

Courthouse where Solomon Moseby was held.

Janet Carnochan, “A Slave Rescue in Niagara Sixty Years Ago.” Niagara Historical Society, Publication No. 2, n.p., n.d.

Daughter Elizabeth Porter was fourteen years old at the time of the Moseby affair, and her brother Peter A. Porter was ten. Although their father helped to capture Moseby, both children grew up to support the Underground Railroad.

10 Peter B. Porter to James Boulton, September 30, 1837, I-13, Peter B. Porter Papers, Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society.

11 Peter B. Porter to James Boulton, September 30, 1837, I-13, Peter B. Porter Papers, Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society.

12 Jonathan B. Robinson to Peter B. Porter, May 16, 1821, I-15; Thomas Dickson to Peter B. Porter, May 21, 1821, I-14, Peter B. Porter Papers, Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society.