"Q & A: Daniel Bille - NT historian uncovers past secrets" by Kevin Purdy

Suffice to say, few people know more about the history of North Tonawanda than Daniel Bille. The city's official historian knows exactly who's buried in Sweeney Cemetery. He knows where, when and why the boundaries were drawn among the three Tonawandas.

More than anything, however, Bille, along with the board members of the North Tonawanda History Museum, wants to ensure that kind of knowledge is available to everyone living in the city.

"There's no reason there should be secrets. This is our history," said Bille. "History should be available to everybody. People need to know where they come from, why they're here."

Currently, the History Museum exists mainly on the Web, with a site that compiles the historical tidbits and artifacts the group has received so far. If it receives a charter from the state Education Department, however, board members will begin looking for a building to fill with their wares. While not officially a board member of the museum, Bille is one of its more vocal supporters. He recently sat down to talk about the city's history, as well as the nature of his obsession with it.

In a previous interview, you said that North Tonawanda's history is "found in its attics." Is that where the majority of the museum's artifacts would come from?

Lots of them come from people's attics, and people want to have a place to put their artifacts. Frankly, there's a lot of us who are just plain older, and we've got a lot of stuff our kids are not interested in, but yet we know better than to throw it away because it really has value. Now, we're developing a place to actually put the artifacts people find in their house, their attics. People offer me stuff all the time.

What kind of stuff?

One time, I was offered a baby scale. It came from DeGraff, and I can't tell you the thousands of people in North Tonawanda that were weighed on that thing . . . Those are the kind of things we find.

What about people who have moved out of the area? Are they sending you anything?

We receive artifacts all the time from out of town. They want it to be in North Tonawanda, and they want it to be in some kind of museum, some kind of public trust organization that's going to hang on to it and take care of it.

On the museum's Web site, you mention that you were recently contacted by a public broadcasting station out of New York City, looking for information on North Tonawanda's manufacturing during World War II.

They were asking about landing craft production at Tonawanda Island, at the Bison Boat company. In fact, I have a picture of one being pushed in the water here in the Niagara River, and the next picture I have of it, it's landing on Normandy beach during D-Day . . .

We even played a role in the Civil War. Kissel's Barn, on River Road, we just found out that there's a forge that made armaments for the Civil War in that barn. The guy who used to own that barn is in Florida, though, and I'm trying to track him down.

Are there stories you hear that you've tried to track down but just haven't been able to verify?

I have one I've been looking for for five years. I'm looking for the original deed for the Sweeney Cemetery. It came up here in 1919, and it's one of the last pieces of paper I have to find about the cemetery.

Why do you want to find it?

'Cause it's there. It's the last piece I need. You ever have a bur in your sock? You know it's there, but you just can't get it, and it drives you nuts. That's what it's like for me.

Are there any stories you hear about the region that you've chased down but eventually discovered were just rumors?

I was told a story once, about how they got the property lines between the United States and Canada. To get the boundary, they floated a barrel from Lake Erie, and if you look at the map, and how close it runs to Grand Island, you'd think they actually did that. That was a story that I wanted to be true because it was such a great story. But it was actually solved by the Jay Treaty, not a barrel.

What's something that most people don't know about North Tonawanda's history?

A lot of people know that there was a lumber industry around the turn of the century that was one of the biggest in the world. But what they really don't understand is how important the canal was to the development of America . . . That's where a lot of our engineers come from, jobs that needed to be done on the Erie Canal. There were jobs to do that had never been done before.

Why is it important for North Tonawanda to hold onto its history?

There was a man who did a booklet on North Tonawanda in 1965 named Charlie Fleischmann. He made a statement in his book that said, "A city that doesn't remember its past doesn't deserve a future."  I've never read a truer statement. We have no choice, this is our past, this is where we come from. With heritage tourism and history, we can make a living. Not manufacturing living, because it's going to be different, but other cities are doing it, and there's no reason we can't too.