White, Gratwick & Mitchell, Inc. v. Empire Engineering Company, Inc. (1923) .pdf

What the court case was about

This is a 1920s dispute between White, Gratwick & Mitchell, operator of two major North Tonawanda lumber docks, and Empire Engineering, which owned the waterfront tract between them.

Empire proposed building two large piers for repairing and storing barges and scows. The problem was that the only channel deep enough for loaded lumber vessels to reach White, Gratwick & Mitchell’s northern dock crossed directly in front of Empire’s property. The proposed piers would have blocked it.

Empire argued that it owned both the shoreline and the adjoining river bottom, had received a state grant permitting improvements, and remained inside the federal harbor line. White, Gratwick & Mitchell answered that ownership did not permit Empire to obstruct an established navigable channel and destroy access to a neighboring commercial dock.

The courts agreed with White, Gratwick & Mitchell and permanently stopped the pier construction.

Why it matters to North Tonawanda history

The court record unexpectedly preserves the assembly and operation of the Gratwick industrial waterfront. It shows that Gratwick was not developed from one large, untouched parcel. The lumber district was created through a series of private purchases, quitclaims, railroad agreements and state grants of underwater land.

It also establishes that John Simson and Benjamin F. Felton were important waterfront owners before William H. Gratwick. Gratwick and his associates gradually acquired or secured rights across their property, joined the docks to the railroad, and extended the usable shoreline outward over the riverbed.

Exactly dated land transactions

• March 16, 1875 — Simson and Felton to Andrew B. Uline.
  John Simson, Benjamin F. Felton and their wives conveyed a riverfront tract in Lot 72 of the Niagara River Mile Reservation to Andrew B. Uline by warranty deed. The court later described this as most of the upland that became Dock No. 1, with a southern 100-foot strip remaining outside the conveyance.

• July 15, 1875 — Simson and Felton to William H. Gratwick.
  Simson and Felton executed a quitclaim deed to William H. Gratwick. A quitclaim did not necessarily represent the sale of an entirely separate tract; it transferred or extinguished whatever interests the grantors possessed in the property covered by it. Its presence shows Gratwick actively clearing and consolidating waterfront title during 1875.

• December 7, 1876 — New York State to William H. Gratwick and Robert L. Fryer.
  The state granted Gratwick and Fryer approximately seven acres of land under the Niagara River. The grant required them to use it for commerce by constructing docks and filling portions of the riverbed within five years. This was not a private land sale, but it was essential to creating the Gratwick dock frontage.

• July 12, 1877 — New York State to John Simson.
  Simson received an adjacent grant of underwater land in front of his upland property.

• July 12, 1877 — New York State to John Simson and Benjamin F. Felton.
  Simson and Felton jointly received additional underwater property adjoining their shoreline. The record contains more than one state patent issued that day involving Simson, Felton and neighboring owners.

• April 5, 1881 — Simson and Felton to Gratwick, Smith & Fryer Lumber Company.
  John Simson, Benjamin F. Felton and Ellen Felton conveyed the remaining 100-foot riverfront strip to the Gratwick, Smith & Fryer Lumber Company by warranty deed for $1,500. The tract became the southernmost 100 feet of Dock No. 1 and included the associated waterfront rights. The deed was recorded on April 20, 1881.

• October 1, 1915 — Gratwick owners to White, Gratwick & Mitchell.
  The Gratwick interests leased Dock No. 1, including approximately 900 feet of river frontage, its yard, buildings and sheds, to White, Gratwick & Mitchell. The lease could be renewed in three-year periods through October 1, 1930. This was a lease rather than a sale, but it explains why the operating company did not necessarily hold title to every part of its dock complex.

• September 10, 1920 — State approval of the Barnheisel underwater grant.
  The Commissioners of the Land Office approved a new grant covering the river bottom between the major Gratwick docks. Earlier underwater rights associated with Simson and other nineteenth-century owners were surrendered so that a consolidated grant could be issued.

• April 30, 1921 — New York State to Frederick R. Barnheisel.
  Barnheisel received approximately eleven acres of land under the Niagara River extending from the old shoreline toward the federal harbor line. He paid the state $11,085.89. The grant required the land to be improved through filling, bulkheading, dredging, substantial structures or piers.

• April 30, 1921 — Frederick R. and Margaret L. Barnheisel to Empire Engineering Corporation.
  By deed dated the same day as the state patent, the Barnheisels conveyed the upland and underwater property to Empire Engineering. Empire assumed a $10,000 mortgage as part of the transaction. The deed was acknowledged on May 13, 1921, and recorded on May 27, 1921.

Related development dates

• 1876 — Simson and Felton reach a railroad-access agreement with Gratwick and Fryer.
  The parties exchanged rights to construct branch tracks across one another’s properties, connecting present and future docks with the New York Central system. The printed index dates this agreement May 29, 1876, while the OCR of the instrument appears to read March 29, 1876; the original page should be checked before publishing the precise month.

• April 20, 1878 — Railroad agreement amended.
  The arrangement was expanded to permit two branch tracks, evidence that the industrial plans were already increasing in scale.

• By 1890 — A continuous working dock district had developed.
  Several neighboring docks were receiving lumber vessels, and the channel had become part of a larger integrated waterfront rather than the private approach to one company.

• 1901–1902 — Dock No. 1 yard opened and channel enlarged.
  White, Gratwick & Mitchell’s predecessors dredged and widened the channel to accommodate larger lumber carriers.

• October–December 1913 — Federal harbor map prepared.
  The Army engineers’ map records the mature industrial waterfront and the nearby Gratwick street grid: Felton, Porter, Stenzel, Washington, Allen and Frederick among them.

Larger historical takeaway

The record documents the physical creation of North Tonawanda’s lumber economy:

earlier private landholders → Gratwick property assembly → state riverbed grants → dock construction → railroad spurs → Great Lakes lumber traffic → Eastern distribution.

It also catches the district at a moment of transition. The nineteenth-century lumber port was still handling immense quantities of white pine, but Empire Engineering represented a newer waterfront economy based on barge storage, scow repair and heavy marine work. The lawsuit arose because the old and new industrial systems needed the same narrow stretch of river.

The Gratwick neighborhood developed immediately beside this machinery. East of the railroad stood the street grid and residential community; west of it lay River Road, rail sidings, lumber yards, docks, steel works and the navigable channel. The case therefore helps explain not merely who owned the waterfront, but why Gratwick took the physical form it did.

Valuable Firsthand Testimony

James O’Connor’s testimony — the most human and anecdotal

PDF pages 139–146; printed record pages 126–133.

O’Connor was a Tonawanda ship chandler, former sailing-vessel sailor, and 32-year waterfront veteran. He describes the river from memory rather than from corporate paperwork.

This is where you get:

• how boats physically threaded through the docks;
• the Weston, Hollister, Ollie & McKean and White & Mitchell properties;
• vessels swinging, backing and repeatedly touching bottom;
• water-level markers near Rumsey Street;
• abandoned or repurposed docks;
• ordinary canal boats still carrying lumber;
• shallow-draft scows carrying apples and potatoes from Grand Island, bound for Buffalo and New York.

That Grand Island traffic is a wonderful little sidebar: not glamorous lake steamers, but produce moving in scows drawing only three or four feet.

O’Connor’s description of vessels navigating past mills, backing between docks and grounding during turns is about as close as this file gets to an eyewitness tour of the working waterfront.

Henry McAvoy’s testimony — how the lumber port physically worked

PDF pages 146–157; printed record pages 133–144.

McAvoy had worked around White, Gratwick & Mitchell’s docks since 1901. He discusses opening the yard, taking soundings, dredging the channel, clearing accumulated material and accommodating increasingly deep-draft vessels.

He gives practical details historians usually never get:

• dock frontage and working length;
• steamboat and barge dimensions;
• where lumber was unloaded along the dock;
• a channel widened in 1902;
• dredging to approximately seventeen feet;
• mud versus rock in the river bottom.

That testimony lets you explain the lumber district not as a row of static docks, but as a continuously maintained hydraulic machine. The usable waterfront had to be dredged, sounded and cleared; it did not simply exist naturally.

Omer W. Blodgett — the Great Lakes lumber fleet

PDF pages 176–182; printed record pages 163–169.

Blodgett was president of the Great Lakes Lumber Carriers Association and had owned or managed a substantial fleet. He testified that the larger share of Great Lakes lumber traffic came to the Tonawandas and Buffalo because this was the principal transshipment point for Eastern markets.

His testimony is gold for your Michigan-pine-pipeline story:

• fleet ownership and management;
• boat drafts;
• navigation during the 1890s;
• grounding and maneuvering problems;
• the former Wisconsin Lumber Company dock;
• named vessels and their owners.

The named-vessel material could support a whole visual feature: Pridgeon, Ralph, Scotia, Pawnee, Miller, Orton, Middlesex and others.

John J. O’Hagen — what the wooden lumber carriers actually looked like

PDF pages 157–162; printed record pages 144–149.

O’Hagen had roughly three decades’ experience navigating at Tonawanda and North Tonawanda. He describes typical lumber carriers as roughly 200–250 feet long, about 35–40 feet in beam, and drawing fourteen to fifteen feet. Most were wooden.

He then begins describing the actual approach:

down the channel outside Tonawanda Island, then into the dock system.

That matters because it connects your Tonawanda Island research to the industrial river routes. His testimony can help you reconstruct what someone standing on the island or mainland would actually have seen: enormous, deeply laden wooden vessels turning and backing through an improbably tight corridor.

James L. Crane — the corporate and commercial picture

PDF pages 113–138; printed record pages 100–125.

Crane was secretary of both White, Gratwick & Mitchell and its affiliated steamship company. He explains that the company’s vessels carried lumber from the head of the Great Lakes and Georgian Bay primarily to North Tonawanda, with additional tonnage chartered as necessary.

Use Crane for:

• the connection between timber lands, steamship operations, docks and rail distribution;
• corporate structure;
• leases and dock ownership;
• annual receipts;
• the economic stakes of losing Dock No. 1.

O’Connor and McAvoy provide the river mud and busted knuckles; Crane gives you the business model.