Generations helped build our region

Editor, OBSERVER:

With the publication this year of “Dunkirk: Then and Now,” Dunkirk Historical Museum President Diane Andrasik has emphasized the role of the national and state governments in establishing the physical assets of newly-settled territory.

Specifically, on page 18, she discusses the 1858 construction of a “Divisional Arsenal” at the intersection of Fourth Street and Central Avenue. In 1874, the City took the building as City Hall until it burned down in 1925.

Samuel Geer, my great great great grandfather, arrived in Chautauqua County as a Connecticut State Militiaman in 1802, widening the trail between Buffalo and Cleveland to provide year-round transit. That trail is now called “US Route 20”.

Finding its crossing of Canadaway Creek the most satisfying place on that route, he returned permanently in 1804, using his militarily-gained skills as the first “Overseer of Paths” when the Town of Pomfret was formed in 1808. That title has been subsumed by the title “Highway Superintendent”.

Ezra Convis, the brother of my great great great grandmother, was a Major General in the New York State Militia and took his militarily gained skills to plate the Michigan Central Railroad, a technology that provided all-weather access between New York and Chicago. At the time of his death in 1838, he was the First Speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives.

On March 8, 2024, M.J. Stafford reported in the OBSERVER that Madeline Dewey of the US Army Corps of Engineers addressed the Fredonia Village Board of Trustees on the topic of streambank stabilization of the Fredonia Reservoir. The point is that national and state government investment in specific localities has a long tradition that continues.

MICHAEL C. BARRIS, Ph.D.,

Fredonia