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Cornell University Library 1993.THE CHARLES LAMB .OF
BUFFALO”
<<
MEMOIR OF
GUY H. SALISBURY
FIRST SECRETARY OF THE BUFFALO HISTORICAL SOCIETY —
PAPER READ BEFORE THE SOCIETY MARCH 7, 1871
BY DAVID GRAY l
It is with real reluctance and under many disadvantages
that I undertake to place among the records of your society
a sketch of Guy H. Salisbury. It is my misfortune that I
scarcely knew the man until after his life had sustained a
mortal shock of disaster. I must paint him, so to speak,
from photographs and post-mortem casts, and reconstruct
the character that you knew from the wreck of it that was
known to me. But I shall make the sketch, trusting that
some fitter hand will finish the portrait. I shall at least
show that in the gallery of our city's men of mark, it is
entitled to a place of prominence.
In the first or second year of the present century there
came from remote Rhode Island to the village of Canan-
daigua, in this State, a family of Salisburys. The patriarch
of the household was John Salisbury, a man of English
descent, and at the time of his migration to this far West
about forty-three years old. He had been twice married
1. Published in the Buffalo Courier, March 11, 1871. Revised by David
Gray, for the Buffalo Historical Society, in 1887, the year before his death.408
MEMOIR OF
and already had had ten children, seven being those of his
first wife. Eight more were afterwards born to him in Can-
andaigua. The fourth son of the first series was Smith H.
Salisbury, who must have been a youth of sixteen when the
family moved from Rhode Island. This youth learned the
printing business in the office of the pioneer printer of West-
ern New York, James D. Bemus, and, a year or two after
he had passed out of his teens, he married a Canandaigua
girl named Nancy Hyde. I have not learned the precise
date of this marriage, but this I know, that the gift Nancy
gave to her husband in Canandaigua, on Christmas morning
of the year 1811, was a baby named Guy Hyde Salisbury,
her first-born.
A few months before this interesting event. Smith H.
Salisbury, and his next younger brother, Hezekiah A.,
started westward to seek their fortunes, and landed in Buf-
falo. Both were practical printers and both, in the Ontario
Repository of Mr. Bemus, had caught the infection of jour-
nalism. They found Buffalo a rising village of 500 inhabi-
tants and no newspaper. In October, 1811, accordingly,
they started the Buffalo Gazette, with the exception of a
little sheet in Batavia, the first paper published in the State
of New York west of Canandaigua. The Salisbury brothers
brought with them a stock of stationery and, in connection
with their printing-office, opened a small store which after-
wards became a book store, of some importance in our early
history. The first numbers of the Gazette were largely
indebted to this stationery business for the advertising pat-
ronage which helped to fill their columns.
I cannot discover exactly how old was the little Guy
when his mother followed her husband and brought him to
Buffalo. Indeed, the first trace I can get of him after his
Christmas advent is on the road from Buffalo back to Can-
andaigua. This is in February, 1813, when, on account of
the war troubles on the frontier, doubtless, the mother and
child appear to have retired to the security of the village
whence they came. A letter written by the husband to his
wife a few days after this hegira, enquires anxiously howGUY H. SALISBURY.
409
the latter had got on on the road and “how pretty little Guy
i-s.” I infer that a good part of the years of the war was
spent by Mrs. Salisbury and her babe at Canandaigua, for
Buffalo was not a place, in the years 1813 and 1814, to which
a young husband could with much comfort bring his young
family. Indeed, in December, 1813, the brothers Salisbury
found it politic themselves to leave Buffalo, and while the
British were applying the torch to the infant settlement, the
Salisburys’ Gazette was safely surveying and reporting the
scene from the heights of Harris Hill, near Williamsville.
The paper was published at that locality for some time, and
the chronicles of the time say that tremendous editions, con-
taining the “war-news” of the frontier, were printed and
mailed from the temporary office. A tradition survives that
Smith’s friend, Stephen K. Grosvenor, was wont to throw
off his broadcloth coat and work like a beaver mailing
papers, on publication days, in order to secure the company
of the publisher for the regular whist party of the evening.
In 1815 the Buffalonians had rallied and rebuilt their
burnt homes, and the Salisbury family, as well as newspaper,
were reestablished in the rehabilitated village. Among its
half-rural scenes, which have since been obliterated by the
streets of a great city, Guy’s childhood was spent. His
recollections of this period were vivid and happy. After
fifty years of checkered life he looked back at it and wrote
in this strain:
“Haven’t I made dirt pies with the other boys on the
common where St. James Hall2 now is—hoed potatoes and
corn on the lot where the Arcade3 stands1—went swimming
in Buffalo creek, where Main-street bridge now crosses,
without fear of any N. F. P.’s4—slid1 down hill on the Ter-
race when it was such a high, steep bluff that our sleds didn’t
stop going till they got where the Erie canal now runs—
waded across Buffalo harbor, on the sand-bar, until Judge
Wilkeson stopped that fun by driving piles to open the chan-
2.	East end of Iroquois Hotel site.
3.	Mooney-Brisbane building, Main and Clinton streets.
4.	Niagara Frontier Police.410
MEMOIR OF
nel ? Haven’t I pattered along, bare-foot, in the tracks made
by the broad tires of the big Pennsylvania wagons, with
eight horses and a leader, that brought all the eastern goods
to our merchants till ‘Clinton’s Ditch’ was made?”
Among the companions of his sports in those childish
days was James C. Harrison, son of the first Collector of
the Port. The Salisbury office and dwelling were in the
square now occupied by the Arcade and other buildings, and
on the Court House hill adjoining,5 as he used to tell, he and
young James used to play, making mud forts in summer
and “coursing down hill” on their sleds in the winter. There
were no fences, even, in the way, in those days, and the
“run” was a good long one.
It was in the midst of this happy time, when little Guy
was about ten years old, that his parents took him to St.
Paul’s Church, and the Reverend Deodatus Babcock, the
second rector of that noble parish, sprinkled, as he says him-
self, upon his “unworthy head the holy waters of baptism.”
Rev. Dr. Shelton has kindly looked up for me the records
of this ceremony, which fix as its date the 9th of September,
1821. In that same year Guy’s mother, a patient, dutiful,
saintly woman, was- confirmed by Bishop Hobart and became
a communicant of St. Paul’s. “I worshipped in that church
in those days,” wrote Guy long after, “but my most effective
achievements in the gospel line were in the Sunday school,
up gallery, at the east end of the church. I could rattle
off the verses like a parrot—and, I fear me, knew as little
of their beauty and meaning as the parrot would.” Through
all his life, however, and amid his various spiritual wander-
ings, Guy preserved a thorough acquaintance with the Scrip-
tures ; a genuine respect for religion and all its manifesta-
tions, and a lively if not profound religious feeling. I can-
not be wrong in referring these facts to the influence of his
pious mother and that old St. Paul Sunday school.
Smith H. Salisbury edited the Gazette till January, 1818,
when he sold out his share to William A. Carpenter, and be-
5- Site of the Buffalo Public Library. The Harrison home was at the
northeast corner of Washington and Batavia streets, now Broadway.GUY H. SALISBURY.
411
took himself to less irksome business pursuits. Smith
seems to have transmitted a good deal of his nature to his
son Guy. He was talented but unsteady, and he had that
curious craving Guy afterwards displayed: when he was in
a newspaper to get out of it, and when out of it as soon as
possible to get in again.
It was in 1825 that journalism again sucked Smith H.
into its vortex. At that time Black Rock fully believed
itself to be a good length ahead of Buffalo in the race for
commercial supremacy, and Smith took stock in its fair pros-
pects to the extent of purchasing the Black Rock Gazette.
In the outer office of this1 paper Guy took up the composing-
stick and learned to be a practical printer. He had begun
his connection with journalism as a carrier boy, and it was
his boast at the Franklin festivals of after years that he had
held every post in a newspaper office, from lowest to high-
est, except that of printer’s devil.
While he was thus engaged, however, his intellectual
nature was rapidly developing and with some interruptions
he attended school. His advantages in this respect had been
very ordinary, but he was ever eager to make the most of
them. I hear of him at several of the city’s primeval seats
of learning, public and private, and at all the agility of his
mind seems to have been noticed. But more prominent still,
perhaps, was his retiring disposition—his almost girlish sen-
sibility and bashfulness. I fancy that two circumstances
contributed in his youth to intensify this one of his charac-
teristics. In the first place, while quite a small boy, a fall
sustained in a wrestling match with a companion inflicted a
severe injury on his knee, so that ever afterwards he was
slightly lame and walked with a cane. Secondly, he suffered
from what in juvenile circles used to be considered an irre-
parable misfortune, if not disgrace—he had red hair. The
young Buffalonian of the period had no mercy on either of
these peculiarities, and was only too happy on every apt
occasion to take advantage of the weak limb or to startle
its timid owner by the sudden information that his head
was on fire. Covered with mortification and a conscious-412
MEMOIR OF
ness of his unpardonable physical defects, Guy would
shrink within himself and add another thickness to his
shell of shame-facedness. I think it is scarcely correct to
say that he outlived this excessive sensibility, for instead
of its disappearance I have rather to note its transmu-
tation into that exquisite delicacy of feeling, that modesty
of manner and absence of self-assertion which were among
Guy’s peculiar charms.
Dr. White, who was a school-fellow with Guy at the
school of Peter Miles, tells me that as a lad of fourteen to
sixteen, he was one of the foremost scholars. Shy and
retiring in his manners, he was nevertheless alert and clever
in all his studies. Of his associates at Miles’ school I have
recovered the names of Morton Taintor, Austin and Le
Grand St. John, J. G. White, Deloss Bliss and Miles Joy.
There are doubtless others, living in the city. But before
this time Guy had contracted an undying friendship and ad-
miration for Cyrenius C. Bristol. There is something
infinitely touching to me in the constancy with which Guy to
the last cherished this sentiment. The men were in nearly
every respect unlike, having only the one point in common,
that both were dreamers. But Bristol’s visions were dark
and Dantesque, while Guy built his of sunshine. Disap-
pointment made the one a misanthrope, but only rendered
more inveterate the cheerful, loving, visionary habit of the
other. Yet the sunny Guy had the most intense appreciation
of the gloomy peculiarities of his friend, and, though it cost
him something in various ways, to the end believed in and
loved him.
A good many years of Guy’s youth he lived with his fam-
ily in a house which his father had built, at the corner of
Court and Pearl, and which is now occupied by Mrs. B. A.
Manchester. A large brick arch built as the substruction of
a chimney of this dwelling, was somehow converted by
Guy into a miniature stage and became the scene of much
youthful drama. Long after, when the building had been
reconstructed and the histrionic arch enclosed in its base-
ment part, Guy used to beg permission to go down cellar andGUY H. SALISBURY.
413
survey again the spot where he and Bristol and Jack Lar-
zelere had been wont to “spout Shakespeare/'
One other little incident connected with this house, to
show the tender, sentimental nature of my subject: When
in the course of human events it became proper to supersede
the old-fashioned knocker on the front door and place a bell
in its stead, I am told that Guy earnestly asked leave to
carry away the knocker; so instead of going for old iron it
passed into Guy's museum of sacred relics.
Unfortunately for Smith Salisbury, the ambitious hopes
of Black Rock culminated and collapsed shortly after he had
established himself as its Gazetteer. As the chief mission
of the Gazette had been to wage on the part of Black Rock
a voluminous war with Buffalo on the harbor question, the
decay of the long dispute left it almost without any excuse
for being, at least in that locality. In 1827, accordingly, Mr.
Salisbury removed to Buffalo, and his paper became the
Buffalo and Black Rock Gazette. In April of the year fol-
lowing Wm. P. M. Wood started the pioneer Democratic
paper of this county, under the name of the Buffalo Repub-
lican. In September of that year—1828—the Republican
passed into Smith Salisbury’s hands and the Buffalo and
Black Rock Gazette, which he also owned, died to bequeath
its small modicum of life to the new enterprise.
It was in this paper—the Republican—-that Guy made
his debut as an editor. Many years afterwards, when his
political consistency had been called in question, he made a
confession of faith wherein this first essay of his as a jour-
nalist is alluded to. “I claim to be a Radical Democrat," he
wrote. “My first editorials were written during the great
contest of 1828, when Andrew Jackson was elevated to the
Presidency by the Democrats of the nation. In that struggle
my unpracticed pen essayed to aid the efforts of the little
band of Democrats who stood up in Erie County in behalf
of their principles. In 1829, I was for a time—at the age
of seventeen—editor of the old Buffalo Republican, the orig-
inal Democratic paper in this county. From that period1 I
continued to advocate the Democratic faith by tongue, pen414
MEMOIR OF
and vote, until the removal of the deposits by President
Jackson, in 1834.”
I may sum up, at this point, all that is necessary to be
put on record touching Guy’s subsequent political life. He
boldly opposed the removal of the deposits referred to, and
in consequence became somewhat alienated in feeling from
his Democratic associates. This led him, when a good
opportunity, occurred some years later, to form a connection
with the leading Whig journal of the county, and to act for
some years with the Whig party. Emerging from that asso-
ciation, however, he was soon found hurrahing for Tyler as
stoutly as any Democrat of them all, and he stuck to the
Democracy thereafter, through thick and thin, to the end
of the chapter.
I left Guy a few pages back “spouting Shakespeare” in
the chimney arch, and revealed him to you next seated on
the editorial tripod. This transition from boy’s play to
man’s work may well seem abrupt, but it was actually effect-
ed in Guy’s life just as suddenly as in my narrative. Those
who were in the habit of dropping into his father’s office in
1828-9, could not help noticing “Little Guy,” as he was
called, but they did not really suspect him of holding any
literary character in the establishment. A slender, shrink-
ing, shame-faced youth, as Mr. Steele describes him to me,
he would as soon have pleaded guilty to sheep-stealing as
writing editorials. Yet, by and by, it came to be known
that this and that and the other article which the good folks
of Buffalo were allowed a week to peruse and criticise in
the columns of the Republican, was actually the production
of his pen. Further, that already he was in the habit of
“dropping into poetry,” and that sundry pieces of verse
recently published were likewise his. People were aston-
ished, but thenceforth followed the slim figure of the bashful
boy with their respect. He was getting ready to be the
young city’s laureate.
But Guy’s active career, thus auspiciously begun, was
soon to be clouded and interrupted. Early in the year 1830
his mother died, the record of her burial in St. Paul’sGUY H. SALISBURY.
415
Church dating February 15th. The same year, his father,
grown restless again, sold out his paper to Henry L. Ball and
made his last exit from journalism. Meantime Guy had
fallen into ill health. He appears to have left Buffalo in the
year of his mother's death (1830), and by his contributions
to the press we trace him first to Rochester. I believe he was
for a time connected with one or more journals in that city;
at any rate we find him writing the “Carrier’s Address” of
the Rochester Craftsman for New Year’s, 1831, and during
that year he writes a number of poems for the Gem and
other Rochester publications. It was in this period of feeble
health and clouded prospects that he seems to have experi-
enced his first spiritual trial. A scrap of paper, dated, “Fall
of 1830,” which has been put in my hands, tells the story.
A few unfinished verses are scribbled upon it, at the bottom
of which, in a more mature handwriting, is the sentence:
“Written with the blight of infidelity upon my soul.” But
his faith evidently rallied again soon after, for in 1831 he
writes a poem on “Happiness,” of which the following is
a sample stanza:
Then look above for happiness,
No longer seek below,
Amid this world’s vain emptiness
Her dwelling-place to know.
’Tis but above—’tis but above—
Her blissful realm is found;
And there her faithful followers rove
On pure and holy ground:
Then let us spurn earth’s golden toys
And strive for those eternal joys.
—Nothing could be more eminently proper than this.
Trouble kept crowding poor Guy. Jan. 24, 1832, his
father died, leaving six children younger than Guy and
nothing to support them. The children were named, in the
order of their ages, Frank, John, Charles (afterward the
actor), William, Annette and Nancy. The last two alone
survive. Annette, Guy’s favorite sister, is Mrs. Harris, the
wife of a Methodist clergyman somewhere in Central New416
MEMOIR OF
York; Nancy is a Mrs. Steadman, a widow in Newark,
New Jersey. Immediately after his father's death Guy
removed, sick and low-spirited, to Canandaigua, where he
found a home with his good-hearted half-uncle Amasa. His
brothers and sisters were billeted round among their various
relatives, Uncle Amasa taking the heavy end of the burden.
Again we follow our friend Guy by his poetical trail in
the newspapers. His health was slow in reestablishing itself,
and though he had hoped to be able to go to work in the
summer of 1832, it was the spring or summer of 1834 be-
fore he left the hospitable asylum his uncle had given him.
Once during this time he evidently passed some distance into
the Valley of the Shadow, for one of his contributions to
the Gem, dated June, 1832, confidently predicts his speedy
decease. The Gem editor prefixes a note in which he char-
acterizes the lines as “the knell of an expiring genius/' and
remarks that their author “has been for some time on a
decline and we have feared that he would pass away early."
These dismal premonitions were brilliantly dispelled. On
the 1st of January, 1835, under the name of the Buffalo
Commercial Advertiser and from the office of the Patriot,
issued the first daily paper published in this city, and Guy
H. Salisbury was announced as its editor, his uncle Heze-
kiah being the proprietor. The latter, more persevering
than his brother Smith, had held on to the old aboriginal
Gazette and made a thrifty business of it. In 1819 he bought
out the share which Carpenter had bought from Smith H.
and changed the paper's name to the Niagara Patriot. Upon
the organization of the County of Erie a further change of
title left it the Buffalo Patriot. From this office, then, with
a modest invocation of the good-will of his readers, Guy
launched forth the first Buffalo daily.
But poor health, assisted a little perhaps by his natural
versatility of disposition, again assailed Guy, and in Sep-
tember, 1835, we find him out of the paper and enjoying
rural felicity, interspersed by the occasional composition of
verse, at Franklinville. Next summer, however, he returns
to the Commercial office. His old friend and fellow-printer,GUY H. SALISBURY.
417
Bradford A. Manchester, had in the meantime purchased a
half interest in the establishment, and on the 1st of July,
1836, Hezekiah A. Salisbury disposed of the other half to
Dr. Foote and his nephew Guy. These three conducted the
business and published their daily and weekly unchanged,
till August, 1838, when Captain (now Colonel) Almon M.
Clapp marched from Aurora, surrendered his Standard to
the Patriot, and became one of the editors and proprietors
of the joint concern. Within a few weeks, however, Mr.
Manchester withdrew and the office was carried on by the
remaining partners under the firm name of Salisbury,
Foote & Co., until May, 1839. Then ensued another change,
Elam R. Jewett buying out Messrs. Salisbury & Clapp and
adding to the Patriot the name and prestige of his Buffalo
Journal.
Thus ended another of Guy’s brief sojourns in news-
paperdom. Although he had supplemented 'his journalistic
efforts by pretty extensive operations in real estate, which
of course got him into pecuniary trouble in the crash of 1836,
the three years of its duration had been happy ones. They
comprised the golden period of his courtship and marriage.
On the 1st of August, 1837, he had married, at Sheldon,
Wyoming County, Alta W. Chipman, daughter of Judge
Lemuel Chipman of that place. Notwithstanding its bitter
issue I can say, without fear of contradiction, that the match
was one of genuine love on either side. Furthermore, it
was founded on the principle of the affinity of opposites.
Young Mrs. Guy, when she appeared first in Buffalo, im-
pressed beholders as a large, not handsome, but somewhat
uncouth, country girl. Those who made her acquaintance
discovered speedily that she was a most energetic, practical
and managing woman. The picture is not one of a poet’s
wife. And yet a score of letters and witnesses examined
by me testify that she loved and admired her husband with
her whole heart, and that for many years she tenderly cared
for him and his children. As for Guy, he worshipped the
ground his wife trod on, and their union made all the future
bright before him.418
MEMOIR OF
But Guy was again, to quote the language of a Buffalo
barrister, “adrift on the surface of circumstances/’ His last
position he had stuck to for nearly three years—a long time
for him. It might have been expected, therefore, that his
mind would seek relaxation from the prolonged strain in a
flight of some boldness. It did so. Spurning newspapers,
it sprang to pursuit of the moms multicales. For the benefit
of those here who are as ignorant as I was a week ago, let
me explain. A little over thirty years ago, the idea possessed
this country that th$ royal road to fortune was silk-raising,
and a kind of mulberry surnamed multicales, famed to fur-
nish the choicest food of the silk-worm, burst into popular-
ity as the means of silk production. This idea became a
mania, like the Dutch tulip madness or the craze of petro-
leum. It converted thousands into tillers of the soil and
planters of the mulberry. It filled the whole air with imag-
inary silk and visionary wealth. Small wonder that it made
dear, credulous Guy its easy victim.
Without waiting to settle up his affairs at the Commercial
office—time was precious and the multicales would brook
no delay—he flew to Sheldon, his wife’s old home? and
started a mulberry farm. A year later, he has discovered
that the soil and climate of Painesville, Ohio, are more con-
genial to the mulberry, and is established as a mulberry
planter there. In July, 1841, he writes to his uncle Hezekiah
from Painesville, that, notwithstanding the backwardness
of the season, “we have about 300,000 worms now feeding
and doing well, the greater portion of which will wind up
in about two weeks.” Whether they “wound up” in a double
and different sense, or by what other potent vermifuge Guy
divested himself of his 300,000 worms, I know not, but in
less than three months from this time he was back in Buffalo
again, applying his toil-hardened hands to the scissors and
the quill in the old Commercial editorial room. The mul-
berry bubble had burst, and Guy never tarried to pick up
the pieces of his bubbles. It was his happy fortune that al-
most before one bubble had collapsed another had risen andGUY H. SALISBURY.
419
floated before him, as radiant and iridescent as if it were the
first of its kind.
I have said that he reentered the Commercial office. I
find traces of his work there at different times in 1841 and
1842,	and learn that he became again a regularly engaged
writer on that paper. But the next distinct view we get of
him is nearly two years after his retirement from the silk-
worm business. In this interval he doubtless effected the
settlement of his affairs with his late partners of the Com-
mercial, which he had postponed so long, and perhaps also
made some disposition of the vestiges of his Painesville in-
terest. At any rate, some time in the spring or summer of
1843,	Guy reappears once more, though but for a brief
season, in the editorial profession. His good and tried
friend Manchester, associated with his uncle Hezekiah, was
at this time publishing the Buffalo Gazette as a Democratic,
or rather Tyler paper, and of this Guy became editor. But
a very short time afterwards, the Gazette contained a per-
sonal card in which he states that failing health and the
necessity of less sedentary employments compelled him to
relinquish the chair editorial. His old Whig associates had
not failed to rail at the inconsistency of his appearance in a
Tyler newspaper, and his sudden disappearance therefrom
was not less turned to sarcastic advantage. How the witty
editor of the Commercial accounted for his quick retreat and1
indicated the next tangent in Guy’s changeful career is
shown in the following paragraph, evidently from Dr.
Foote’s pen :
“It is but just to Mr. G. H. Salisbury to say that he has
not 'sufficiently humbled his fine mind to indite Tyler para-
graphs.’ He backed out after a trial of a week or so, find-
ing his mind and conscience not plastic enough for a Tyler
editor. He is about to enter upon the 'cotton and sugar line’
at Fort Wayne, and instead of reveling in those fine fancies,
delicate conceits and eloquent, truthful appeals wherewith
he was wont to regale the public, he is now deep in the mys-
teries of dry goods and groceries. May health and success
attend him, for none are more deserving—but we should420
MEMOIR OF
like to see him some bright dewy morning dealing out cod-
fish and plug tobacco, and chaffering about the price of a
barrel of ‘black salts’.”
From the summer of 1843 till September, 1846, there-
fore, Mr. Salisbury sinks the Buffalonian in the western
merchant. He settled first in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but be-
fore long found it advantageous to remove his stock and
store to Logansport, in the same state. His life out West
seems to have been one of drudgery not unmingled with
fever and ague, and, except the manuscript of “an address
delivered at the organization of the Cass County Temper-
ance Union,” at Logansport, March, 1844, it does not seem
to have born any literary fruit. Guy was happy, however,
and took profound comfort in his home and family. During
the mulberry period his first child, Lemuel, had been born,
and in Indiana two others, Franklin and a junior Guy, were
added to and completed his family circle. The death of little
Franklin, which occurred either in this city or in Sheldon
about the time of his return from the West, inflicted upon
his tender heart the deepest wound, with one exception, it
ever experienced. The death was caused1 by an accident very
shocking in its nature—the child having been literally
scalded to death—and the impression left on the father’s
mind was inexpressibly painful. For over a year after the
sad event, Mr. Salisbury was not known to laugh, or even to
smile, so heavily lay the thought of it on his heart.
In September, 1846, he was back in Buffalo and in No-
vember following he made his next periodic entry into jour-
nalism as the successor of Joseph Stringham in the editor-
ship of the Courier & Pilot, then published by Manchester
& Brayman. In this connection he continued till December,
1847, when he opened an office on Washington Street as a
real-estate agent.
The first years of his career in this business were the best
of Mr. Salisbury’s life. Although as a business man, as well
as editor, he was inveterately given to procrastination, never
doing tomorrow what he could do the day after just as well,
he had some valuable qualifications for his new occupation.GUY H. SALISBURY.
421
Amiable and engaging in his manners, he made friends of
everybody, and he had a certain talent for business details
which stood him in stead for the thorough business habits
which he lacked. At all events, as a land agent he flour-
ished and accumulated property. Thus released from the
pressure of impecuniosity, his mind freshened and eagerly
sought the relaxations to which his fine tastes directed him.
He had already done much to soften and sweeten the in-
tensely practical life of the young city he lived in, but now
he bent himself more systematically to the gentle task. I
do not hesitate to say, for example, that the sentiment of
interest in our local history, of which this society is the ex-
pression, was largely awakened by Mr. Salisbury’s labors
and writings. At the same time it was his pleasure, on all
fitting occasions, to lift into view the poetic aspect of things.
With all his faults and failings let us think gratefully of
him, for in a desperately materialistic community, he taught,
as best he knew, the neglected worship of The Beautiful!
The series of his “Letters from Under a Bank,” published
in 1848, while his land office was under the Patchin Bank,
at the corner of Erie and Main streets, occurs to me in this
connection. In these papers, as in the multitude of others
published in the city press or in the Western Literary Mes-
senger, I claim that he did more than any other man to show
us the ideal side of the rough practical life we were leading.
He was our poet, in a word, sometimes telling of- the
“Streamlet in the City” which had quenched his childish
thirst on its woodland way to the river and which is now
lost in reeking sewers and under rude paving-stones; anon
recalling the vanished meadows and hills and flowers which
the great city has hid forever; and again holding gentle
gossip about the characters of a bygone day and the faces
which once were beautiful but now are seen no more.
Apropos of local history, I notice that his election as re-
cording secretary of the Young Men’s Association, in 1848,
is immediately followed by the formation of a committee cn
local history of which he was made a member. The follow-
ing year he is reelected, and takes this committee’s chair-422
MEMOIR OF
manship. Behold the germ of the Buffalo Historical So-
ciety !
Before this, in 1842 and 1843, he was a manager of the
Young Men's Association and contributed largely, as chair-
man of the library committee, to the growth and good order
of the library. Dec. 29, 1848, he read a paper, in the lecture
course of the association, on “The Speculations of ’36”6—
all of which he saw and part of which he was. In 1850 he
was elected the association's second vice-president.
And now, from this heyday of our old friend's prosperity
and usefulness, we must pass to his clouded afternoon. I
think it was sometime in 1849 that the manifestations of
what is called “Spiritualism" began to be noised abroad, and
in 1850, I believe, the notorious Fox sisters came up from
Rochester and held a seance at the Phelps House, in this
city. Mr. Salisbury attended, and at once became intensely
interested in the new phenomena. At first an eager observer,
he soon became a believer in the claims of the “mediums,"
and the subject of spiritualism speedily engrossed his entire
mind. It is not my intention to cast discredit on any reli-
gious belief, but the truth of biography compels me to say
that the influence of the gospel of the mediums upon Mr.
Salisbury was disastrous. That his business suffered from
his absorption in the new faith was the least of its evil'
effects. That it more or less directly occasioned the break-
ing up of his home and the ruin of his domestic happiness,
is the grave charge I have to lay at its door.
Earnest and affectionate man as Mr. Salisbury was, he
could not rest until his wife had entered with him into the
new fold. With bitter regret he confessed afterwards that
he had shaken his wife's faith in other doctrines, and had
urged her to embrace spiritualism. When it was too late
he would have given the world to restore her mind to its
ancient moorings. Both became earnest spiritualists and
both suffered a hurtful change of nature. The home which
had been Guy's blissful refuge from all storms, and in which
6. This most interesting paper will be found in Vol. IV of the Buffalo
Historical Society Publications.GUY H. SALISBURY.
423
all his* spare hours had been delightfully spent, ceased to be
a happy one. Finally, in the spring of 1862 his wife left
him and Guy was a broken-hearted man. It is not for me
to divide the blame of this domestic shipwreck. Suffice it to
say that never did our dead friend lay aught of its burden
on her he had loved, and whom he continued to love, faith-
fully and tenderly, to the last.
But the time was coming round again when Mr. Salis-
bury must once more dabble in printer’s ink. “Printing runs
in some families,” he was wont to say, and the virus had
certainly inoculated him incurably. In October, 1857, with
the forlorn hope of being able to lift his friend Bristol out
of a sea of financial troubles, he bought out the entire es-
tablishment of the Republic, up to that time conducted by
the firm of Bristol & Welch. Mr. Welch retired, Mr. Bris-
tol continued as the newspaper’s manager, while the finan-
cial load of the much embarrassed institution was securely
fixed1 on the shoulders of poor Guy. His real-estate office
was finally abandoned a year later, or about the close of
1858. The business of the newspaper, which Mr. Salisbury
had undertaken, as ill luck would have it, at the very mo-
ment of the monetary panic of 1857, plunged on from bad
to worse, and from one depth of trouble to a deeper. In
i860 Mr. Salisbury emerged, for the last time, from the
printing business. A harassing load of debt and some scraps
of encumbered real estate were all that remained to remind
him of the comfortable fortune he had sacrificed on the altar
of friendship.
Before this time his confidence in spiritualism had become
greatly shaken. His enthusiasm gradually abated and the
new system failed to sustain the tests his incisive judgment
was then able to apply. But the revulsion of his mind on
this subject did not make him a whit less candid or earnest
in his quest of truth. A gentleman who knew him inti-
mately at this time, tells me that his leading characteristic
was the eagerness with which his mind tendered its hospi-
talities to all pure and true ideas, no matter in what shape
or from what quarter they came. The opinions of others,424
MEMOIR OF
moreover, were always sure of respectful attention * at his
hands. After his house was broken up he sought for a time
to beguile his loneliness by inviting a few friends to his
room on Niagara Street. These little meetings by and by
were held regularly and, as his room very well bore the ap-
pellation of “The Cave,” its frequenters naturally took to
themselves the title of “The Hermits.” Albert Brisbane,
C. C. Bristol, J. N. Lamed', Thos. Kean and Henry W.
Faxon were the leading members of this order, while Guy
was the graceful host, the courteous listener, the Hebe and
amateur cook of the nocturnal sessions. It was in these re-
unions and under the influence of a remarkable article of
coffee distilled in an apparatus known only to the denizens
of “The Cave*” that Mr. Brisbane was wont to deliver, to
delighted hearers, some of the finest of his magnificent philo-
sophical rhapsodies. To the spell of these lofty utterances of
the philosopher Guy always yielded himself an enchanted
captive, and, while he never was a proselyte, he was for
long an admiring appreciator and reflector of the views of
the great socialist.
But how shall I describe, or analyze, or account for the
phase into which Guy Salisbury’s life and character settled
during his closing decade of life ? I have said' that the man
whom during this period I learned to know, was but the
wreck of what he had been, and in a certain sense this is
strictly true. To the eye of the world around him, his was
indeed a broken life. It ceased to keep up appearances—
ceased to make any effectual effort for its external well-
being—ceased to do anything but drift on the current of
the years. And yet, as in an orchard you have sometimes
seen a broken bough exhibit unwonted fruitfulness, so those
who knew Guy well discovered that certain faculties, pow-
ers and graces of his nature received a stimulus from the
shock of calamity. The bough was drawing finer juices
from its fount of nourishment; its fruitage displayed subtle
qualities thitherto latent. Thus, though he had fallen into
circumstances of loneliness and desolation, his native cheer-
fulness, his love of his kind, and of all nature, his exquisiteGUY H. SALISBURY.
425
humor, and, in fine, all that was sunniest and rarest in his
composition, only reached, in the shade of his misfortune, a
fuller development. Disaster had overtaken him at the
threshold of age, but under the stroke there seemed to
spring up in him a principle of renewed and perennial youth.
It was sometime in 1863, I think, that he was led to asso-
ciate himself with a small literary and social club of young
people called “The Nameless.” To the year of his death,
he was the genialest, the most youthful and faithful member
of that organization. The almost boyish ardor of his nature
even became for himself a subject of gentle jest. I have
seen on one of his scraps of memoranda a pencil scribble to
this effect: “A proposition is before the Kansas legislature
to allow all persons over eighteen the right to vote. If that
becomes a law, I’m off for Kansas!” For several years of
his later life the pressure of bitter recollections on the one
hand, and his impulse toward all kinds of youthful demon-
strations on the other, bore him occasionally even into some
of the excesses of youth—to which, by the way, his previous
life had been a total stranger. But this was the extent of our
dead friend’s sins against morality, touching which, as usual,
the Pharisees have had much to say. I happen to know that
during his last two or three years, when his dilapidated per-
sonal appearance was constantly referred to as the effect of
dissipated habits, he lived the life of an ascetic, denying him-
self the luxury of meat and even the marvelous coffee he
formerly took so much pride in preparing.
With the rejuvenation of his feeling which I have tried
to describe, there seemed to well up in his mind thitherto
unsuspected springs of genius and power. I always liked
Guy’s prose better than his poetry, but his conversation, in
his latter days, was worth more than either. It was when
talking, in the circle of his familiar friends, that he had his
best inspiration and did justice to the richness and variety
of his mental gifts and acquisitions. His fancy flagged, his
delicate intuitions were dulled when he put pen to paper,
but they singularly irradiated his speech. His manner and
presence, too, which gave a charm to all he uttered, were426
MEMOIR OF
not transferable to the written page. Some of his Nameless
friends who, on one occasion visited him while illness1 con-
fined him to his chair, have told me how they sat for nearly
two hours, alternately thrilled and delighted by the talk with
which he then entertained them. It was in a strain of un-
conscious and inspired eloquence, sometimes taking the form
of soliloquy rather than address—that he spoke, now re-
calling scenes of the past—memories of old times and de-
parted friends—again traversing subjects of literature,
philosophy or of common life, and on everything he touched
shedding a light as delicate as that of the moonbeam. Who,
of the few who were privileged to sit at the banquet of his
speech, shall recall its varied substance and exquisite man-
ner—who report its fluent, supple rhetoric, its flashes of
poetic fire, its verbal drolleries, its unexpected turns of wit,
its graceful blendings of the grave and gay?
I have spoken of Mr. Salisbury’s amiability and innate
politeness. He was indeed one of nature’s gentlemen—such,
because by birth unselfish, gentle and comprehensively lov-
ing. He could work better for others than for himself. His
active sympathy, notwithstanding his delicacy of feeling,
enabled him to establish friendly relations with all his kind.
It made him, in the broad sense of the word, a democrat, a
man of the people. But his loving nature was not bounded
by the limits of the human world. In his ideal economy the
lower animals also had honorable place and consideration.
I remember that, once, unerring instinct led a little black
and tan terrier, with a broken leg, to the door of my friend’s
room. Guy took it in, nursed its wounds and adopted it as
his inseparable friend and companion. Ponto speedily de-
veloped a wonderful intelligence. When he had done mis-
chief and knew that he deserved punishment, he would hold
up to Guy his broken leg, and plead absolution for his mis-
fortune’s sake. And he always received it. One day the
pair of friends entered the office of a well-known lawyer
who has no toleration for dogs. “I would like to know
what people keep dogs for ?” testily observed the man of the
law. “Well, Mr. G-------,’’ instantly replied Salisbury,GUY H. SALISBURY.
427
“Providence has created dogs, and has evidently designed
that men should take care of them. Now, Fm not going to
fly in the face of Providence!” When Ponto died, Guy
brooded and mourned as if the world had grown darker to
him.
Mr. Salisbury’s love of inanimate nature was also pro-
found, and it deepened as he neared his end. While in the
city he constantly yearned for the rural sights and sounds
amidst which he spent his childhood, but which the aggran-
disement of the city had put to flight. Much as he enjoyed
the society of his friends, it was a greater joy for him to take
long rambles into the country and observe, with the keen
interest of a child, the natural objects he encountered.
From these journeys he would return with a glowing ac-
count of the birds, the foliage and the flowers he had seen.
The grass was always a little greener and softer to Guy
than to common folk. Even when he became exceedingly
infirm, these long country walks were persevered in, and
his very last conversations with friends expressed his eager
yearning to be away from the din and dust of the city, under
the smokeless heaven and upon the unsoiled lap of his
mother earth. He was weary, and longed for rest and the
smell of verdure and the singing of birds.
But I am neglecting to chronicle the few events by which
his later years were marked. In May, 1862, at the first
regular meeting of the Buffalo Historical Society, he was
appointed its corresponding secretary. As such, and as cus-
todian of its rooms and archives, he continued to act till
April, 1864. If the duties of his secretaryship had not de-
manded a certain degree of promptitude and punctuality, of
which, as we have seen, Guy was utterly incapable, the post
would have been exactly suited to him. Even as it was, he
enjoyed its work, and did the society much valuable service.
In June, 1867—the interval between this and the forego-
ing date having been employed by him in a sort of hopeless,
chronic effort to make something of the wrecks of his prop-
erty—he had a fall from which he sustained severe injuries.
His old lameness was greatly aggravated by the accident,428
MEMOIR OF
and he complained ever afterwards of very imperfect sight.
For a considerable time he was confined to his room and de-
barred from the use of his favorite books and pen. While
in this condition, like the exiled Napoleon on St. Helena, he
would plunge himself into the intricacies of the game of soli-
taire, working for hours together to solve its problems, or
abandon himself to dreams and the building of air castles.
He was also of an inventive turn of mind, and employed
much of his time latterly in originating a vast variety of
contrivances, useful and fantastic. His list of inventions,
of which he kept a careful record, comprised pretty nearly
everything, from a new steamship to a bed-bug trap. The
last mentioned article he devised in response to the humor-
ous reproach of a friend that he never had invented any-
thing of practical value. He claimed that in the course of
its construction he had acquired a more intimate knowledge
of the history and habits of the insect in question than was
possessed by any man in America. Another fact about the
trap: it did not contemplate the death of the bug. He was
to be captured alive, and only punished by exile.
With such habits, and busy with such pursuits as I have
thus indicated, Guy H. Salisbury neared his journey’s end.
Although he failed perceptibly towards the last, he had no
fear of death, and indeed no expectation of it. He often
asserted that he saw no reason why the longevity of his
family and his good constitution should not carry him to the
end of the century, and he was constantly dreaming of
restored fortune and the projects which retrieved wealth
would enable him yet to undertake. It is almost superfluous
to say that these plans for the future which never came,
invariably had far more reference to the good and pleasure
of others, than to his own.
A few days before his death his cousin, Elias O. Salisbury
(to whom, by the way, I am indebted for much of the data
of this paper), called at his room and found him in rather
frail physical condition, but in good spirits. He had an in-
terest in some lands on Buffalo creek, some distance above
the Ohio-street bridge, and on the occasion I speak of ex-GUY H. SALISBURY.
429
pressed his confidence that the demands of the coal trade
for additional wharfage would soon make the property im-
mensely valuable. He felt sure that a way was at last open-
ing for him out of his pecuniary troubles. At the same time
he admitted to his cousin that he felt weak and ill, and his
old craving to get into the country was evidently still upper-
most in his mind. He had a tender love for children, and
always found a rare delight in their company. Reminding
his cousin of this fact, he said that if he could only get
away where there were flowers and young children, he
would surely be cured.
On Wednesday, the ist of September, 1868, he started
out to take a walk over the creek lands from which he was
hoping so great things, and also to collect a small bill of rent
from a tenant living thereon. He did not return alive. The
Sunday morning following, his body was taken from the
waters of the creek, at the Ohio-street bridge, to which it
had floated from some point above. Manifestly, while walk-
ing along the brink of the stream, probably in the evening
and while on his homeward way, he had stumbled and fallen
into the water. Considering his defective sight and uncer-
tain footing, the accident was easy of occurrence. On his
person were found pencilled memoranda which he had made
almost up to the hour of his death. And now the busy pen-
cil and the busy mind were still.
A day or two afterwards a few friends followed his re-
mains to Forest Lawn, and poor Guy had his wish at last.
The scent of the flowers is wafted about his resting-place,
and the birds sing in the trees that sway above him. He had
been Nature’s poet and faithful lover, and, as a mother
clasps her long absent son, so she took him and folded him
from the world’s neglect. A man of some failings of char-
acter and many contradictions; yet who among us shall
keep so loving a heart through life, and go so guileless to
his grave?