The First Ward: Niagara Tightrope

Based on the true history and tumult of boom-town Buffalo's First Ward from 1850 through New Year's Eve 1899, and the real-life characters who influenced and controlled the lives of half a million people.

Newlywed Sam Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, was gifted with a spledid home with servants, as well as a part ownership of the Buffalo Express newspaper by his generous father-in-law, yet the Great American Storyteller would find neither happiness nor success in this unruly city.

When First Ward dock-walloper Fingy Conners' family members all died mysteriously within a single year, he inherited everything, including his father's saloon. Using his saloon as the key, he set out to control labor contracting on Buffalo's docks. So overwhelming was his iron-handed saloon-boss system that within a few years he controlled the entirety of shipping on the Great Lakes, ascending to enormous wealth and power in less than a decade, defrauding voters, installing his own puppet politicians, and dominating the entire Buffalo Police Department. By hiring, paying, feeding, watering and boarding laborers out of his saloons, Conners enslaved thousands of families in Buffalo and all around the Great Lakes in misery and hunger for two decades.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Buffalo
• NY
• Fingy
• Conners
• First
• Ward
• 1st
• Mark
• Twain
• Samuel
• Clemens