Flashback
This year marks the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth and the 148th anniversary of his first inauguration. Not unlike the current curiosity about a new president and his family, in the weeks leading up to the March 4, 1861, inauguration, the country was eager for news about the Lincolns.
Large crowds greeted Lincoln and his family as they traveled by train from Springfield, Ill., to Washington for the inauguration. The scene in Buffalo was no exception when they arrived on the afternoon of Feb. 16. The reception was “so tumultuously enthusiastic and ill controlled that he [Lincoln] and his party were nearly crushed,” reported the press. Lincoln, who was photographed a week earlier on his 52nd birthday, addressed the crowd from the balcony of the Americana Hotel at Main and Eagle streets, where he was joined by Buffalo’s first citizen, Millard Fillmore—UB chancellor and former U.S. president.
Fillmore entertained the Lincolns in his home on Niagara Square. The two men attended a reception and services the following day at the First Unitarian Church. While staying at the Americana Hotel, it is believed that Lincoln joined sons Willie and Tad, and young Edward Michael, the son of the hotel’s owner, in a game of leapfrog. Michael, who lived to the age of 101 and repeated this story often, served on the UB Council for more than 50 years and is credited with originating the idea to purchase the site for what is now UB’s South Campus. Michael Hall is named for him.
—John Edens, University Archives
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