Abbott Road is a road that starts in the City of Buffalo at an intersection of Bailey Avenue and South Park Avenue and runs to an intersection at Bayview Road/Armor Duells. Abbott Road is about 9 miles in length and runs through not only the City of Buffalo, but also the City of Lackawanna and the Town of Orchard Park. Abbott Road used to continue north across the Buffalo River towards the First Ward neighborhood, but that portion of the road was changed to South Park Avenue during the 1930s.
Brothers Samuel and Seth Abbott helped to build Abbott Road in 1809. Seth Abbott lived at Abbott’s Corners and was interested in constructing a road to lead into Buffalo. Samuel was one of the earliest settlers in Orchard Park. The brothers helped clear the road of huge primeval trees, using their teams of oxen brought here from Vermont in 1807. The road still follows, with only slight deviations, the same path that the brothers originally cleared.
The brothers’ ancestors came from England to Massachusetts in 1646. Another ancestor, Timothy Abbott, was one of the first settlers of Rutland, Vermont. From Vermont, Seth and Samuel made their way through the forest and ended in the vicinity of Orchard Park and Armour (a hamlet on the boundary between the towns of Hamburg and Orchard Park). Armour was originally known as Abbott’s Corners after the Abbott brothers. Abbott Road was originally known as Abbott’s Corners Road. Often on the journey, they would have to leave their ox carts to go ahead to clear passages through the forest by hand before being able to bring the cart through the forest.
The Abbott brothers invested in large amounts of land. Samuel was a farmer and surveyor and surveyed most of the principal early roads of Erie County. In 1812, Samuel was first overseer of highways and fence viewer for District 10, East Hamburg. During the war of 1812, Samuel Abbott and his wife, Sophia (Brown) Abbott were afraid that the British would continue south and burn them out. They hid their most valuable possessions in the well next to their home.
Samuel Abbott’s house in Orchard Park circa 1915 (source: Orchard Park Bee)
Samuel was also the second supervisor of the Town of Hamburg in 1813. He then moved to the Town of Boston, where at the first town meeting in 1818, he was elected first supervisor of the Town of Boston. Around 1825, he returned to East Hamburg (now Town of Orchard Park) and built a home on East Quaker Road in front of the log cabin he had built ten years prior. After Samuel died, his son Chauncey Abbott and wife Charlotte moved from Buffalo to the Hamburg house in 1851. The house is at the corner of Franklin Chauncey Lane and Franklin Street were named after Chauncey and Franklin Abbott, sons of Samuel.
Seth and his wife Sophia (Starkweather) Abbott lived in Amour, formerly Abbott’s Corners. Before Seth settled in the area, it was known as Wright’s Corners. From 1812 until about 1850, Abbott’s Corners was the business center for Hamburg, also being the location of the post office. In 1891, an influential resident Mr. Louis Hepp, proposed renaming Abbott’s Corners to Armour, supposedly after the Armour Meat Packing Company after a trip to Chicago.Seth opened a tavern in 1820. The tavern went by several names and had several owners before being destroyed by fire in 1912. A new building containing a tavern and an inn was built in it’s place. In April 1824, a meeting of concerned citizens was held at Seth Abbott’s home. As a result of the meeting, the first public library in Southern Erie County was established. The library opened in 1824 with $102 in seed money, selling subscriptions to fund the project. Little else is known about this early library in Hamburg.
Seth Abbott died on June 8, 1831 and is buried in Hillcrest Cemetery in Hamburg.
Samuel Abbott died on October 2, 1846 and is buried in Deuel Cemetery in Orchard Park.
To learn about other streets, check out the Street Index.
Sources:
- “Abbott Brothers Helped Build Road of that Name.” Courier Express July 10, 1938, section 6 p. 10
- White, Truman, ed. Our County and Its People: A Descriptive Work on Erie County, New York, Volume 2. The Boston History Company:1898.
- Kulp, Suzanne and Joseph Bieron. Images of America: Orchard Park. Acadia Publishing, Portsmith, NH: 2004.
- Kulp, Suzanne. History of Orchard Park. http://orchardparkny.org/content/history accessed February 24, 2018.
- “Seder’s Armor inn, historic site of Seth Abbott’s original hotel, later become Hook’s Armor Inn”. Hamburg Sun. December 17, 2009.
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