1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/North Tonawanda

NORTH TONAWANDA, a city of Niagara county, New York, U.S.A., on the N. side and at the mouth of Tonawanda Creek (opposite Tonawanda), and on the Niagara river, about 14 m. N. of Buffalo. Pop. (1910 census) 11,955. It is served by the Erie, the Wabash, the Lehigh Valley, the West Shore, and the New York Central & Hudson River railways, by three interurban electric lines and by the Erie Canal. Electric power for its factories is furnished by Niagara Falls. In 1905 the value of its factory product was $6,499,312. The water-supply comes from the Niagara river. North Tonawanda was first settled as a part of Tonawanda in 1809; it became a part of Wheatfield township in 1857; was incorporated as a village in 1865, and chartered as a city in 1897. In 1825 Major Mordecai Manuel Noah (1785–1851), a New York journalist and politician of Portuguese Jewish descent, attempted unsuccessfully to found on Grand Island (area 27 sq. m.; pop. (1910) 914), Erie county, W. of North Tonawanda, the city of Ararat, a temporary refuge for Jews, who should return thence to the Holy Land.

See L. F. Allen in Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society, vol. i. (1879), pp. 305 sqq.