Two Old Landmarks Disappear From Humberstone

By

META SCHOOLEY LAWS

              At least two old landmarks disappear from Humberstone Village in connection with the construction of the new Canal.

One, once the home of Wm. Mellanby Esq., has been razed. It was a rambling log house, weather-boarded, and stood just west of the Welland Railway Station (7) on the Fort Erie Road. Wm. Mellanby was a bachelor who was possessed of considerable property along the Grand River below Cayuga. He held the controlling interest in the gypsum mines, operated there in early times and closed shortly after his death. Scarcely a vestige of the enterprise which was his chief interest remains, either in the village where he made his home, or at Gypsum Mines.

             The old wharf is decayed. The timbers of the mine roof are rotting and no one dare now visit them, though a practically inexhaustible quantity of the mineral is still embedded there. The many new uses, which have been discovered in late years, have led to new mines being opened and operated at Lythmore and Caledonia, but the expense of making the old mines under gravel and earth, preclude the possibility of Wm. Mellanby’s life work being carried on by anyone.

             The other landmark is the big stone house west of the present canal bridge.

A beautiful Virgina creeper covered the west wall, clambering over the very chimneys.

             In autumn the gorgeous tints of the vine made the old building one of the beauty spots of the village.

             It was an old homestead home, owned by the late John Kinnaird, but whether it was the Kinnaird Homestead, the writer does not know.

             It was occupied at the time of digging the first canal by a group of the rough workmen, and later for a little while by some Italians, when the Cement Plant was opened at Port Colborne, nearly 20 years ago, according to the back-file column of a recent T.&T.

             But though some of the windows were not barricaded to the door unlocked, the village kiddies never made a playhouse of the place.

             We were driving past the place one day and someone remarked that the place seemed to be shunned, though it was so close to the sidewalk of the main street. Father told us that there was a story of a huge blood-spot on the floor of one of the large rooms downstairs, and that in the old canal days a fight had taken place in this room in which more than one was killed, and that the place had been shunned ever since that time, the memory of the bloody deed practically tabooing the place as haunted.

             Of old-time construction, its timbered roof and thick stone walls seemed as though it would defy time. Even the old roof of hand-made shingles, moss-grown, seemed unbroken until these summer days of 1926.

             The heavy blasts which test the foundation of all buildings in that locality shook the old stone house. The roof caved in, and last week, the walls, now deemed a menace, were destroyed by dynamite.

             Back of the old building the little boys had built a shanty, which they used as a bathing house, disdaining to use the old house, one would have thought so convenient.

             One morning they found a group of men, described by those mystic letters, B.O.T.A. in possession of their shack, so that the old stone house would seem to have been feared by innocent childhood and erring manhood alike.

             Perhaps the vine deprived of its support will cover the unsightly heap of stones which remain as it did the wall of the old house with its checkered history.

             The mill which Isaac Schooley operated is gone. Elias Augustine’s wagon shop is silent.

             The Humberstone Shoe Factory occupies the site of the old Dobbie Foundry, and the once beautiful home of the Dobbies is slowly but surely passing into decay. Here, too, the vines try valiantly to hide the ravages of time and neglect.

             Some few of the homes of the pioneer business men of the village have been kept in good repair by their present owners.

             Old business blocks have been rebuilt; some new ones stand where a few years ago were vacant lots, or worse, shacks.

             The new school, and the paved street attest that Humberstone Village is following the advice of the stage to “Look forward, not behind.”

Welland Tribune and Telegraph

19 August 1926