Cyrenius Chapin

Chapin played a significant role during the War of 1812, leading a New York militia in an effort to defend Buffalo from being burned by British forces.

[1] Towards the end of his life, Chapin provided refuge to William Lyon Mackenzie, a Canadian rebel leader involved in the Patriot (Hunter) Wars.

Cyrenius' father, Captain Caleb Chapin (1736–1815), was a Bernardstown farmer who supplemented his income by making and installing mill stones and served in both the French-Indian and the Revolutionary wars.

[4] Chapin's patients included the Haudenosaunee leader, Red Jacket, and he devised a surgical technique to restore ear contours after they were torn by trinkets and decorations worn by the Senecas.

Thirty-two-year-old Dr. Cyrenius Chapin first visited New Amsterdam (Buffalo) in 1801 and made an offer to bring 40 of his friends from Oneida County to the Holland Land Company's proposed village on the shore of Lake Erie.

Their first child, Sylvia, was born on February 7, 1796, and died at age 36 on December 1, 1832, as a cholera epidemic swept the United States.

A fifth child, Louise, was born in 1803, married a hardware merchant, Thaddeus Weed, and died on July 20, 1894, at age ninety-one.

[13] Cyrenius Chapin was a leader of the New York State Federalist party when the War of 1812 was declared by Democratic-Republican President James Madison.

The British responded by organizing a base at the Canadian village of Beaver Dams to counter the raids and placed Lieutenant James FitzGibbon in charge.

Before leaving, the American General George McClure ordered the burning of the nearby village of Newark, today known as Niagara-on-the-Lake, on December 10, 1813.

British General Phineas Riall marched his troops along the Niagara River shoreline, burning every village and farmhouse they encountered.

Far outnumbered, Chapin's men accomplished little more than slow Riall, eventually taking a last stand at the northernmost edge of the Buffalo village.

Employing modern farming methods, Chapin found he could produce surpluses for profitable shipment on the Erie Canal.

[33] United States president Martin Van Buren sent General Winfred Scott to disperse Mackenzie's forces and Navy Island was evacuated.

Chapin provided support for the Hunter Lodge in Buffalo, eventually planning an invasion of Canada across a frozen Lake Erie for February 1838.

Upon learning of the plan, General Scott sent a force to break up the Hunter Lodge advance camp on ice-covered Lake Erie.

He was the last person buried in the 'New Amsterdam' Franklin Square Cemetery, site of today's Erie County Hall, and only a few steps from where he defended Buffalo using the makeshift cannon in 1813.

[2] In 1836, two years before his death, a committee led by Peter Buell Porter, a former congressman and War of 1812 general, presented Chapin with a silver setting of two massive pitchers and twelve goblets.

In his remarks, General Porter said that no one displayed more patriotic zeal or enthusiasm, nor "embark[ed] in almost uninterrupted succession of enterprises against the enemy, involving imminent personal hazard, as well as great fatigue and privation, [and] none [were] more liberal of his purse.