In an obscure corner of Downtown Buffalo, the area's museum of the Great Lakes wants to gain new attention. It's now changing the name from the Lower Lakes Marine Historical Society to the Buffalo Harbor Museum.
The museum is in the former home of a ship chandlery, a company which supplied almost anything lake ships needed. It's on Erie Street, or what's left of Erie Street, which has been cut up over the years.
The museum has everything from records used by genealogists to a growing array of ship models of the boats which have plied the lakes over the centuries.
Volunteer Jack Messmer said one particular piece of the collection stands out to him. It's a builders plate for a naval warship that moved along the Great Lakes.
"What's unique about it is not because it was a naval vessel on the Great Lakes but it was the U.S. Navy's first metal vessel," Messmer said.
The Michigan/Wolverine remains in the history books because it went into the Niagara River in 1866 to cut the flow of people and supplies when Irish-Americans invaded Canada in the Fenian Raid.
