By 1893, James Hulihan and Thomas Conley owned the Royalton Basket Company which supplied local fruit farmers with different size baskets ranging from berry baskets to fruit crates. The logs were floated down the canal and held in the log pond until they were needed. The lower level of the building was used to cut the logs into strips while the assembling of the baskets took place on the top floor.

Deliveries of the finished baskets were made by horse and wagon to local farmers. Owners of the business at its closing in 1934 were James and Timothy O’Shaughnessey.

Today we look forward to once again having the building in use as the Basket Factory Restaurant.

*See this article about the Basket Factory Restaurant re-opening. 

The post History of the Basket Factory appeared first on Life in the Village of Middleport, New York 14105.

Early residents of Middleport were fortunate to have two private banks available, one owned by Linus S. Freeman and the other by Charles B. Taylor.  Harvey Hoag would later take over the banking from Mr. Taylor and ran the bank in connection with his drug store.

In 1908 the First National Bank was formed with capital totaling $25,000.  The Community Trust Co. was formed as an additional Middleport bank in 1924 and both banks served the community until the “bank holiday” of 1931.  In 1934, the Niagara County National Bank and Trust Company of Lockport merged with the Marine Trust Company of Buffalo and the local bank became the Middleport office of the Marine Midland Group.

Middleport Savings and Loan Association, formed in 1922, merged with Niagara First Savings and Loan Assoc. and in 1976 opened the new building located at the corner of Main and State Streets.  Anchor Savings Bank merged with them in 1982 but moved its business to Albion and placed the building for sale.

The Middleport Federal Credit Union, formed in 1975 by a small group of interested people, moved their growing business which was housed in the front of the Masonic Lodge to the former Anchor site after merging with Unit #1 FCU , now known at the Cornerstone Community FCU.

The post Banking in Middleport appeared first on Life in the Village of Middleport, New York 14105.

W.F Pollard and business partner Arthur Whittaker set out for points west around 1893, finally settling in Spokane, Washington where they did some of the first advertising for two daily and 4 weekly newspapers.  Their business  was eventually sold to the Spokane “Spokesman Review” where Pollard remained as an employee while Whittaker returned to Middleport.

An original of this chart can be viewed at the office of the Village Historian.

The post Middleport Industrial Chart 1881 appeared first on Life in the Village of Middleport, New York 14105.

The post Park Inn mystery solved appeared first on Life in the Village of Middleport, New York 14105.

This creek and its four ponds furnished the employment for more than 400 at the 16 manufacturing firms who used the water to power their steam engines, water wheels or both. At one time, the creek flowed all year around, and was a fisherman’s paradise. All kinds of fish were caught.

In 1872, about halfway between the railroad and Route 31, the R.T. Chase Cheese Factory made 400 lbs. of cheese per day, the milk furnished by 130 cows. Just north of the Church St. bridge, the first pond was located behind the houses on Orchard St. although it has been filled in for years except for the creek bed. At the corner of Church and Orchard Streets, there was a broom factory, taken over by Dr. E.L. Downey for the bottling of his “Downeyside” liquid insecticide.

The dry docks were on the west side of the pond at the canal; west of the docks a bay opened directly into the canal so that the boats could be floated in and out of the docks. On the east side of the pond was Monroe Woodworth’s stave mill.

The next pond downstream was the grist mill pond, extending along N. Hartland St. from Mechanic St. t Sherman Rd. On the southwest corner, the Carey Bothers Ice House stored 12′- 14′ blocks of ice cut from the pond. On the east side, a small culvert ran under Hartland St. to a small pond at the Gould Greenhouse for their water supply. At the northeast corner at Sherman Rd., a 4-storey stone flour mill operated for about 80 years. This pond was nearly square in shape and a waterfall flooded the area that is now Trail Home Estates.

The third pond, or paper millpond, extended from Sherman Rd. to Chase Rd. along Hartland St. At the northeast corner of this pond at Chase Road was the Sterritt Paper Mill, operating two 12-hour shifts per day. This mill was taken over by the Middleport Electric Company about 1903, and supplied the village with its first electric arc streetlights.

The fourth pond ran between Hartland Street and Chase Road, north of the Chase Road bridge. On the northeast corner was the heading mill of George Smith. There were several heading mills, cooper shops and stave yards along this creek, but when the bushel baskets and other small containers began to be widely used in the shipping market, they faded out of the picture.

The post Wildcat Creek – powering Middleport’s growing businesses appeared first on Life in the Village of Middleport, New York 14105.