Skip to main content

Friday, October 8, 2021 - Buffalo History Museum Off-Site Storage Facility

The plane touched down at 12:30 in the afternoon. By 2:00 I was pulling into the tiny parking area of a non-descript building in a well-seasoned area of Buffalo. This red-brick building was the off-site storage facility, or resource center for the Buffalo History Museum. 

At any given time, only a fraction of any major museum's artifacts are on display. The rest are carefully stored, restored, maintained and eventually staged by a select few who are the rock stars of museum-dom. I rang the bell at the door and was soon met by the building's only occupant, Director of Museum Collections Walter Mayer. 


I recall being impressed by artifacts in a lobby/reception area, but I'm a little embarrassed to admit that what was to follow was so extraordinary that it occupied all of my accessible memory; it would take hypno-therapy to recall the details of the lobby, I'm afraid. 

We passed through one or two key-padded doors and I soon found myself standing in a massive room populated by hundreds, maybe thousands of ghosts. Masses of all shapes and sizes were enshrouded in white sheets; lights in the room took a full minute to fully intensify, which served to enhance the drama of the moment. Mr. Mayer explained that the area we were standing in contained the items that would be on display at the museum proper in two weeks. He walked me to a ghost and removed its cover. There in front of my was Michael Wiedrich in full color. This was the original portrait completed in 1892 by A.E. Elsasser. 


Looking upon the man's face helped to personalize my interactions with other artifacts in the room. I noticed a few uncovered items in the room, presumably the artifacts Mr. Mayer was busy preparing when I interrupted his afternoon's work. I glanced at a pistol on a table, because, well, I'm a guy...a Texan no less...and guns played a significant role in my career. I gave it little more than a glance as we walked on, and before I knew it, Mr. Mayer was holding up the Holy Grail of this trip.

Michael Wiedrich's presentation sword and its accompanying scabbard was far more ornate than I had anticipated. I could spend an hour examining the sword itself, and another two with the scabbard, which bears the inscription, "Presented to Lt. Col. Michael Wiedrich by Battery 'I' 1st Regt. N.Y. L. Art." The scabbard further documents the various battles the battery endured. Mr. Meyer placed the sword and scabbard on plexiglass stands so I could photograph it at length. I will now test Blogspot's bandwidth by providing you with closeups of this amazing artifact.




















The five minutes or so I spent with that sword will remain one of the most precious memories in my life. After bidding farewell to it, Mr. Mayer escorted me to another room that extended to the rear of the building. Its massive shelves were reminiscent of the closing scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, where a box containing the Ark of the Covenant is placed amongst thousands of anonymous crates in a massive warehouse. A sheet was removed from a bulky item on the floor, and I was momentarily relieved to find it was not the Ark (we all know what happens when you look at the Ark), but a plaster version of a familiar piece of art. 



This was the plaster rendition of a plaque on the monument dedicated to Wiedrich's Battery at Gettysburg. It was used to produce the mold from which the final product was poured. 



My visit to the Resource Center was coming to a close. We exited the back room, and as we passed the table with the pistol, Mr. Mayer, in mid stride declared, "That's the gun that was used to assassinate President McKinley." Wait...what? It couldn't be...it was just sitting there, with no fanfare, a few expended bullets beside it, along with a handkerchief it had been wrapped in as it fired the fatal round. I'll leave the Googling to you, but this bombshell, though unrelated to my great-great grandfather or his battery, provided a tasty icing on a cake that was already delicious. I correctly assumed it would be best if I did not take photos of the item, so I am borrowing this one from historicalfirearms.com



And thus ended the first hour of my Buffalo historical adventure. Next up: a quick trip to the Buffalo History Museum followed by a visit to the Soldiers and Sailors Monument and a side-jaunt to a natural wonder.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Birth of a Blog...and a Disclaimer

Battery I, 1st NY Light Artillery - AKA Wiedrich's Battery - consisted of a few hundred enlisted men who bravely fought for the Union Army during the American Civil War. The Battery was born through the recruitment efforts of my great-great grandfather, Captain Michael Wiedrich, who led the men through numerous battles, including Gettysburg at East Cemetery Hill. That's about the extent of the story as I knew it until mid-2021. I'd read a few articles about the Battery over the years, found Wiedrich's name in a Time-Life book and even visited Cemetery Hill with my wife in 2014. While that experience was awe inspiring to say the least, to me, the Battery largely remained a two-dimensional, enigmatic collection of men whose black-and-white visages did little to provide insight into who these heroes were or what motivated their charge.  Survivors, provided by Forest Lawn Historian Patrick Kavanagh Then, in 2021, I received a forwarded email via my sister from Diane Pesch-S...
Post a Comment
Read more

There It's Not! A String of Absences.

A little after 3:00 on Friday the 8th, I made the one-mile journey from the Resource Center to the Buffalo History Museum because I wanted to see something I knew wasn't there. Certainly I wanted to learn a little more about Buffalo's history, but I especially wanted to see the spot Mr. Meyer had described: the area designated as the new home of the Wiedrich Battery artifacts. He said I'd find a white sheet covering the area where the exhibit would be. Yet another ghost. The museum itself is an impressive structure. Built in 1901 as the New York State pavilion as part of the Pan-American Exhibition (World's Fair), the architect fashioned at least part of it after the Parthenon. I was pleasantly surprised to find exhibits representing all periods of Erie County's history within these walls and I was especially impressed with the quality of presentation. Here's an example... I made my way up to the third floor, and there it wasn't! I could hear construction be...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Hearts of the Children

The very last verse of the Old Testament prophesizes that the hearts of the children will be turned to the fathers, and that's what I witnessed at Concordia Cemetery on Saturday afternoon. A Google's-eye View of Concordia Minutes after bidding farewell to Maria Wiedrich, I found myself parking in a Mexican deli parking lot across from Concordia Cemetery. "Honor, Sacrifice and Courage: Erie County during the Civil War Featuring Wiedrich's Battery" was poised to begin in a few minutes, and I hustled across the street on the heels of two uniformed members of the Grand Army of the Republic, or what most of us on history's periphery refer to as the "Union Army." This event, sponsored by Friends of Concordia Cemetery, was what brought me to New York in the first place, with the aforementioned Diane Pesch-Savatteri at the head of the group. First a word about the Friends. Concordia, one of the oldest cemeteries in Western New York, is home to approximately ...
Post a Comment
Read more