Maria Love - Table of Contents

Maria Love
The text below is an excerpt from Buffalo's Delaware Avenue: Mansions and Families, by Edward T. Dunn. Pub. by Canisius College Press 2003, pp. 103-105

The last of the family at #l84 [Delaware] was Dr. Walter's sister-in-law, Maria Love, who had been born on a farm in Clarence in 1840. She attended P.S. 10 and Central High and completed her education at Farmington School for Girls in Connecticut.

After her father, Thomas C. Love, died in 1853, thirteen-year old Maria and her younger sister Elizabeth moved into #184 Delaware from the former Love home at Mohawk and Franklin Streets.

Maria starred in the productions of an amateur group of local thespians, sang in the choir at Central Presbyterian and Trinity, and crossed the Atlantic fourteen times.

After Julia, her widowed sister, died in 1917, Julia's place in society and as mistress of #184 was taken by Maria. The primary beneficiary of Maria's time and money was the Red Cross and the Fitch Creche, a four-story home on Swan Street built in 1880 for the infants of mothers who worked during the day, possibly on Delaware Avenue.


Maria's major interest was also that of the Carys:

Perhaps I feel differently about horses than most people. We always had horses. Before I stopped playing with dolls I could catch and saddle my own horse and ride anywhere. One day I remember, there was a great deal of work to be done on the farm - my father's farm in Clarence. My father came to where my sister and I were playing in the garden and asked if we would go to the pasture and bring up the horse. "Five men have tried to catch him," said he, "but they cannot get near to him. " So we went down to the field and Bill came trotting toward us just as he always did, and we brought him up to the barn, just walking along between us, our arms reaching away up so we could reach to pat his nose. Horses have always meant so much to me; it seems sad that we can no longer enjoy having them.

Maria had kept her horse and carriage and sleigh until 1929, but even she had to give them up:

But it is quite impossible. Never before in all my experience do I remember a winter when it was told me that the horse could not go out because of the icy pavement. They are sent to the blacksmith to be sharpshod and it only lasts 48 hours; and they are back again in the very real danger of slipping.

In other days there was heavy snow and the sleigh jingled along merrily, or perhaps there was mud, but at all events, there was a pavement that gave sure footing to the patient beasts. But with the oil from the automobiles on the road all the time and the melting snow, it is just a sheet of ice. The heavier traffic is dangerous too."

Two years later she had accepted the change:

"No, it's not for speed that I am glad I made the change," she said. "It's because a car is so comfortable and convenient. I always had to worry about the coachman and the horses when they were out in the rain or snow, for fear they'd catch pneumonia. The automobile is almost like the inside of a house. No matter what the weather, those within are warm and protected."

She was less happy about other modern developments:

But Miss Love does not accept the other foibles of this era of jazz, as readily as she had the motorcar. She's afraid of airplanes. And then there's the new status of women, for example. There are many things wrong about that in her opinion: their smoking, their pursuit of careers, their restlessness.

"When I was a young woman it was considered disgusting for my sex to smoke," declares this delightful, loved, old person. "Nor did men smoke in the presence of ladies. If a gentleman was smoking indoors, he threw his cigar or cigarette away when he reached the carriage in which his lady was sitting."

Miss Love believes that the new regime in which so many women are working outside their homes means destruction of family life. And anything tending to disintegrate the home is bad for the community," she declares.

With emancipation won, many former abolitionists and their descendants moved on to another reform, prohibition. Maria favored prohibition but not another reform, women suffrage:

Although most of her friends favored women suffrage, Miss Love was opposed to it. In 1914 when a large group of New York State women was working to obtain the representation of women at the constitutional convention, in opposing it she said, "I am interested in all questions of human welfare, but I do not recognize the necessity for women's participation in reconstructing the provisions of the constitution, and firmly believe that the deterioration of the family, the home, the children, the working women, and of all men will follow the entrance of women into politics."

"It is a sad day for womanhood when votes are given to women, and because I respect my sex, and because I realize how vast her domain today, how heavy is her responsibility, how much is left undone by her. I call upon every man in this community to see that no further burden is laid on her, and that the men of the State of New York take charge of its politics."

Maria Love died in 1931. Her estate was valued at $120,000, much less than it would have been before the Crash of 1929. A trust fund was settled on nephew Walter who lived with her, but other relatives were mentioned along with three domestics. Cary Castle became a rooming house and later the Normandy, a steak house. (5.33) The Carys sold it to the federal government in 1964,and a General Services Administration Building was erected on Delaware between Huron and Cary Streets.


Page by Chuck LaChiusa
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