Boston Keeps Erie County's Hill-Country Memory Close

Boston gives Erie County a hill-country layer that is easy to miss if the county is reduced to Buffalo and its suburbs. Town history traces settlement to 1804, when Charles and Oliver Johnson arrived, and puts Boston’s formal establishment in 1817. It also points to early church life and Maplewood Cemetery near Town Hall.

That makes the town feel organized by older roads, upland farms, cemeteries, and family settlement memory. The map changes quickly south of the lake plain, and Boston is a good place to notice that shift. Erie County becomes hills, bends, farm edges, and old meeting places.

Maplewood Cemetery gives the history a modest local anchor. It does not try to explain the whole town. It marks a time when people were building churches, burying family, and forming civic habits here long before the county became shorthand for Buffalo.

A drive through the Southtowns makes Boston’s hill-country memory easier to feel. That small shift in terrain changes the mood quickly: more hill roads, more snow feel, and a stronger sense of older rural Erie County.