# We have successfully moved and stored Walter Wood’s 1795 law office, which functioned as the first post office west of Canajoharie, New York. Read about the move in:

                    The Little Building Takes a Long Trip: A Serialized Adventure!

# Ely S. Parker, a Tonawanda Seneca who went to school in Aurora, was just admitted to the New York bar—176 years after he was denied admission because he was a Native American. Parker studied at the Cayuga Lake Academy in Aurora, where a fellow student and friend was Lewis Henry Morgan, one of the founders of the discipline of cultural anthropology. During the Civil War Parker became General Ulysses S. Grant’s secretary and was with Grant at Appomattox Courthouse. Drafts of Robert E. Lee’s surrender documents are in Parker’s handwriting. After the war Grant appointed Parker Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the first Native American to serve in that position.

               CNN’s story of Ely Parker’s November 14, 2025 posthumous admission to the New York bar.
                The story of Parker, Morgan, and the “Grand Order of the Iroquois” in Aurora on our website.

Ely Parker’s sister Caroline, an accomplished artist, also studied at the Cayuga Lake Academy in Aurora. The Aurora Ledyard Historical Society recently devoted an exhibit in Historic Patrick Tavern (1793) to her life and work.