Hey Swifties: Did you know that Taylor Swift has ties to Western New York?
It’s well known that Swift will be cheering for her boyfriend Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs in the NFL playoffs game against the Buffalo Bills, but apparently her family actually has roots in Chautauqua County.
According to the blog Discovering Buffalo One Street at a Time and confirmed by The Observer, Swift’s great-grandmother Eleanor Mayer lived in Dunkirk, N.Y. in the early 1900s. Eleanor’s parents, Julius and Delia Mayer — Swift’s great-great-grandparents, originally from Bavaria — owned the Mayer Music Store on Central Avenue in Dunkirk, located about 40 miles southwest of Buffalo.
Delia died in 1934 in Buffalo at the home of her granddaughter Bernice Whitney, according to a newspaper obituary published by the Dunkirk Observer. She and multiple members of the Mayer family are buried at Forest Hill Cemetery in nearby Fredonia, the Discovering Buffalo blog noted.
A genealogy expert told The Observer that Eleanor Mayer married Lance Gardner Finlay, of Cleveland, and had two children, including Swift’s grandfather, Robert Bruce Finlay. Robert and Marjorie Finlay, an opera singer, had a daughter named Andrea, who married Scott Swift.
Andrea and Scott welcomed their daughter, Taylor Alison Swift, on Dec. 13, 1989, in Pennsylvania. Swift grew up in Pennsylvania before moving to the Nashville area, where she signed her first major record label deal with Sony at age 14.
Swift today is one of the biggest music stars on the planet, grossing more than $1 billion on her sold-out “The Eras Tour” last year and breaking box office records with her “Eras” concert film. She was also named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2023 and has been partially credited with boosting NFL viewership by 7% this season thanks to her appearances at Chiefs games, cheering on Kelce.
Swift is rumored to be attending this Sunday’s AFC Divisional Round game in Orchard Park, where the Bills will host the Chiefs for a chance to advance to the AFC championship game. Swift previously attended the Chiefs-Bills game at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, wearing red and gold as she watched her boyfriend lose to the Bills, 20-17. (Fun fact: Earlier in the season she wore a Chiefs jacket that was made by a Buffalo company.)
It wouldn’t be Swift’s first time in Buffalo. She performed at the HSBC Arena (now the KeyBank Center) in 2006 as an opening act for Rascal Flatts, plus she headlined at the same venue in 2011 (when it was the First Niagara Center) on her “Speak Now” world tour. (Another fun fact: Swift performed in Syracuse at the New York State Fair on that same tour with Rascal Flatts, which probably explains why she was briefly seen wearing a Syracuse shirt in a 2009 episode of NBC’s “Dateline.”)
The Kansas City Chiefs-Buffalo Bills game is scheduled to kick off Sunday, Jan. 21, at 6:30 p.m. on CBS.
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