BUFFALO, N.Y. — We are celebrating Women's History Month with a story of bravery in Buffalo's earliest days and the woman who gave her life protecting her home in the War of 1812's burning of Buffalo. She was the only woman to die in the assault, she is also the namesake of a proud Buffalo neighborhood, Sarah Lovejoy.
"For me personally, it's a story that's near and dear to my heart because my grandmother lived in Lovejoy and I spent a lot of time there as a child." Buffalo City Historian Lindsey Lauren Visser says it is a story of bravery that dates back to the earliest days of Buffalo and a plot of land where 465 Main Street stands today. "Sarah Lovejoy was very protective of her house."
Sarah and Joshua Lovejoy came to the small frontier Village of Buffalo from Avon in 1807 or 1808. They made their home in what is now downtown. When the War of 1812 broke out, they found themselves on the front lines. The Americans burned what is now Niagara-On-The-Lake and in retaliation, the British and their Mohawk allies came to the future Queen City with a vengeance. Most of the men, including Joshua Lovejoy, went to the neighboring Village of Black Rock to stand their ground.
When the assault reached Buffalo, Sarah refused to leave her house. "When they came in and tried to raid it, she fought them back and unfortunately she was killed in the process. It's so unfortunate because she only needed to go across the street to Margaret St. John's House, which was spared." There is a plaque marking the spot where the St. John's house stood. Before Sarah made her stand, she did send her 12-year-old son Henry into the woods to hide.
Marge Hastreiter, of the Iron Island Museum, says Henry would go on to do great things. "Henry was a drummer boy in the War of 1812 and then he was a surveyor, and the surveyors named streets after themselves and their family." The Iron Island Museum pays tribute to the neighborhood's proud history, a history that started with Sarah and Henry Lovejoy, who Visser says personified the fighting spirit of those early settlers. "Our city is still imbued with that resilience and determination that those pioneers and early citizens had coming here and staying here during the war zone and coming back and rebuilding the city, and they said, you know what? Not only are we going to rebuild, we are going to prosper, and they did it."
Sarah Lovejoy's body was burned with her home, but a monument bearing her name is in the Lovejoy family plot at Forest Lawn, as well as with her parent's grave in Mumford.
You can watch more segments of Pete Gallivan's Unknown Stories of WNY on the WGRZ-TV YouTube channel: