Results for ‘Fenwick’
[Welland Evening Tribune August 1, 1978]
By DOROTHY RUNGELING
One October day in 1966 I drove past the Fenwick station (at least I drove past the site) but the station had disappeared.
Then I recalled that it was put up for sale when the Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo Railway decided the stop at Fenwick was not necessary any loner. There just wasn’t enough business to warrant this run and so the station building was sold. But how could this possibly be? It had been there too long to suddenly be gone like this.
I had to take a second look to fully realize that it was gone. The site where the old familiar long building once stood was now just a piece of ground.
Immediately my heart did a little flip and nostalgic smells, sounds and sights came flooding to the surface of my memory, which had deeply stored them all these years.
It had been many years since I had entered the station to go on a trip, but I could sense the old excitement which a child feels when going on a train; the look around the waiting room as we entered the door, then walking up to the ticket counter with my parents to purchase the tickets.
The counter was much too high for a child to see over, but the station agent, JIM ROBERTSON and later HUGH ALSOP, could be plainly heard noisily punching the necessary information on the tickets with a flourish, as he used his big metal stamp.
Then there were the lowered voices of other passengers, making small talk as they waited for the train to arrive; the smell of soot and cinders, a delicious smell because it meant going somewhere; and the crackle of the heating system, a pot-bellied, soft coal burning stove which belched obnoxious gases into the room every once in a while.
It was usually a long wait for the train, simply because we had arrived in plenty of time, but in the meantime, I could listen to the telegraph wires clicking out their mysterious dits and dahs until at last a faint whistle was heard.
A bustle in the waiting room and excitement started to rise again at the thought of getting on the train.
But alas! It was not our train, but one going in the opposite direction. It slowed up and ran past the station at a speed which enabled the station master to convey a written message to the engineer on the train by means of a wooden hoop on which the note was fastened and then held up so the man on the train could pick it off without the train coming to a full stop. Then with a roar of the wheels diminishing in the distance, the waiting started all over again.
ARRIVES AT LAST
At last another whistle and this time we knew it was our train.
Hurrying out on the platform we noticed with approval that the arm on the high pole had been lowered by the station agent to let the train’s engineer know that there were passengers to board his train so he must stop.
This whistle grew louder, but we could not see the train yet as there was a curve in the railroad a half mile up the tracks. Then at last the big black engine loomed into sight, rounding the curve majestically.
As it neared, I covered up my ears lest the noise be too frightening. The big wheels slowed down and came to a squeaky stop as the steam let go with a mighty hiss.
ALL ABOARD
The “all aboard” signal from the conductor, always uttered with a rising inflection was the signal for everyone to get on the train. There was soot and dust on the handrails, but the green plush seats looked inviting as we vied for one with a window to press a nose against.
The whistle blew and the chug-chug of the steam engine soon started the wheels rolling again to take us on our journey with that delicious smell of soot, the sound of wheels clicking over the rail joints, the clacking and rattling of the couplings between cars which heightened as the conductor opened the doors to pass from one car to another; the excitement of new faces to look at and wonder where they were all going. And if our journey happened to be westward, the thrill of the conductor lighting all the lights in the car, which heralded the biggest thrill of all going through the tunnel at Hamilton.
In the tunnel, the darkness surged by us and I wondered if we would ever come out in the sunlight again.
Then there was the arrival of the man with the candy, peanuts, cigarettes and magazines who whizzed through the train as it stopped in Hamilton, and then another load of new faces to wonder about.
So part of the past has now been obliterated. The automobiles and airplanes have taken over the job of transportation and we have been happy about the more modern mode of travel.
But it just took a jolt, such as seeing an old landmark of the countryside disappear, to bring back in a flood, all the memories of what a steam driven train meant to a country child some years ago.
{Compiled by “S”}
The Fenwick railway station was on the 104 mile main line, Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo railway.
By March 30, 1896 the line was open to Welland with stops in Fenwick and Chantler. The Fenwick station was located on Church Street north of Foss Road. It shipped freight and passengers. Passengers traveled from Toronto to United States. Most of the freight was from the nurseries and canning factory in Fonthill.
During the war, prisoners of war were shipped through here to camps in northern Ontario.
A.J. ALSOP was a ticket agent for many years, retiring in 1959. WALTER ANGLE was the agent from 1961 until closing. Mrs E. WOODS and husband WES was caretaker agents.
The last train stopped in Fenwick at 10:07 pm February 28, 1966. The station was closed and sold.
Fenwick was named in 1853
By Eleanor Fisher
{Pelham Herald, Progress Edition. Wednesday, April 21, 1982}
As we look back today on the Fenwick of yesterday it is very hard to realize the conditions of the early settlers, many of whom were Quakers who came from Pennsylvania. The name of Fenwick was given to the community on April 1, 1853, and is believed the village took its name from Fenwick the birth place of Dr. John Fraser in Scotland. Dr. Fraser was an important man in the area at that time. He was Reeve of Pelham from 1850 to 1856 and took an active part in municipal affairs throughout the area. He was once selected Liberal candidate for Welland county in a national election. He refused to stand a second time and concentrated his efforts in the separation of Welland and Lincoln county.
Another member of parliament who came from Fenwick was Dr, Henry Haney. He also served as superintendent of schools of Pelham.
Crown grants of farms where Fenwick is located. were made in 1798 and 1801. One of the earlier farmers was Mr. Haney. The old Haney house situated on Maple Ave. N. is now occupied by the A. Lovas Family and is one of the districts oldest dwellings. It is a low, solid brick cottage with fireplaces that have long been closed up. Attached to the house is a long woodshed through which a team of horses, drawing cordwood, could be driven in the old days.
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By Louis Blake Duff
[Pelham PNYX 1933]
“Wick is a common element in names, Norse as well as Anglo-Saxon, and while the spelling of the word is the same in both languages, the meaning is different. With the Anglo-Saxons it was a station or abode on land, that is a house or village.
The settlement of Pelham began about 1790. The Crown grants of the farms where Fenwick is now located were made in 1798 and 1801—two to David Sharpe, two to Martin McClelland and one each to Benjamin Hill and Christopher Bert. The first schoolhouse lot was leased, not deeded in 1844 by Benjamin Corwin of Stamford, to James Disher, Leonard Haney and Simcoe Chapman as “Town Wardens for the township of Pelham in the County of Lincoln in the District of Niagara”. Welland county had not come into being until more than a decade later.
This schoolhouse was to be for the benefit of the inhabitants of Union School District No. 7. The consideration of the lease was five shillings, and it was stipulated that the lease was to terminate if no school was maintained for five years. The School Trustees were James E. Hutt and Joseph Garner.
The “Church corner” was bought in 1860 by Rev. John Wilkerson, Jacob Crow Jr., Abishai R. Crossman, Leonard Loucks, Edward Early, Benjamin Loree and James Swayze—“Trustees of the Chapter of the Canadian Wesleyan Methodist New Connection at Fenwick”. This church deed marks the first use of the name Fenwick so far as Registry Office records show. The name however had been in use for seven years. The place had been known in former years as Diffin’s Corners—and that name dates back to 1845 when George and Benjamin Diffin bought a lot and began the operation of an inn.
The post office was opened on April 1st in 1853 with Leonard Haney as first postmaster. That was the birth of Fenwick. Why Fenwick? That is a question I cannot answer. Local tradition says it was named in honour of a famous military man, General Sir William Henwick Williams, the hero of Kars. Tradition is usually right or nearly right but, I am doubtful in this case. The Reeve of Pelham was Dr. John Fraser, The first Warden of thecounty. He was born in Fenwick in Scotland. It is not unreasonable to conclude he had a part in the naming.
Leonard Haney was succeeded as postmaster by James Brackhill. Mr Brackhill had come to Fenwick in 1858, but soon after joined a large party of adventurers who set out for the gold fields in California. Mr Brackhill never returned for he lost his life when the steamer, Goldengate, in which he was a passenger, was destroyed by fire off the Californian Coast. He was succeeded as postmaster by James W. Taylor, Fletcher Swayze, Pattison and Diffin, Barney Hare, O.A. Stringer, F.W. Hutt, J. Edsall, William Swayze. W.H. Fry and Frank Tunnacliffe. This information I had a decade ago from the late Augustus Hyatt.
The first plan of Fenwick was filed in 1924 and the street names there listed will pass down to the future the memory of former residents of the village. Haney Street records the names of Henry R. Haney,M.D., at one time Superintendent of Schools in Pelham and who was M.P.P. for Monck when he died in 1878 and also that of Capt. A.W. Haney, who recruited a company of volunteer infantry at Fenwick for the 44th battalion at the time of the Fenian invasion of 1866. Garner Avenue commemorates the name of County Warden Joseph Garner, who occupied the Reeveship of Pelham for more than a score of years; Baxter Lane is named for one who spent the closing years of a long life at Fenwick—Rev. Michael Baxter, a retired Methodist clergyman.
[St Catharines Standard, November 26, 1951]
Members of the Fenwick Womens Institute with a number of visitors, heard with absorbing interest an address on the early History of Fenwick, presented by their hostess Miss M. De La Mater, as she entertained the ladies at their November meeting. Typefying many long hours of research on the part of Miss De La Mater,convenor of Historical Research this paper will form the nucleus of a Tweedsmuir village history for the local Women’s Institute.
History of Fenwick
The crown grants of the farms where Fenwick is now located were made in 1798 and 1801—two to David Sharp, two to Martin McClelland and one each to Benjamin Hill and Christopher Bert. The above information said the speaker, I have from an article written by Mr. Duff in our Pelham Pnyx some years ago. Those names are lost to us now, not one appears in the early Township records in Mr. Arbrushs office. In all probability they were early speculators.
However, there are some old farms near the village. To the north was the Haney grant, according to an old Historical atlas I have from Mr. Warren Ker, the Haneys settled here in 1808. From its architecture, I should judge that the old Haney house, where the Lovas family lives now, is one of the oldest houses around here. It is a low solid brick cottage type with fireplaces that have long been closed up. The windows with their many tiny panes and the wide front door with long narrow windows on either side, mark it as being a very old house, as too does the long woodhouse attached through which a team of horses bearing cord-wood could be driven in the old days.
All of four Haney homes were built on this grant—the Lovas, the Ker, the Walker and the Julian homes of to-day.
Nunn Farms
The oldest grave in Hillside Cemetery is that Elizabeth Hamney, 1829.
South west of the village were the Nunn farms. In the early township records, Isaac Nunn’s name appears as an overseer of the highways in 1808. His house, now the Sherwood home is another old type of architecture with wide spreading gables and cornice returns and again the old hospitable front door and tiny window panes. This house has particularly beautiful lines. Isaac Nunn’s daughter married a Mr. Garrold and this was long known as the Garrold property. West across the fields stood the old Samuel Nunn house, now the Van Berkum home, another house of the same type.
Fought With Wolfe
Coming east along the same road on which the Old Isaac Nunn house stands, we come to the old Richard Dawdy house where the Smiths now live. It, too bears the gracious marks of an old house. However, the crown grant of land to the Dawdy family was east of the village of Pelham Centre, adjacent to the cemetery and the township hall which are both on Dawdy land. The pioneer Dawdy house was the present Wicks home.
To the east of the Richard Dawdy house is the old Jennings place were the Maksyms now live, and here we come to the earliest date of all. In 1801 the name Laurence Jennings…..
Mrs Sylvester Keenan(nee Jennings) told me that one of her forebears fought with Wolfe at Quebec.
Going north we come to the Joseph Garner grant. Mr Garner did not come until 1840 so that he is a newcomer compared with the others. He built the low frame building which now forms the back of the present house. In 1873 the brick front was added.
First Sub-division
The property lying within the village was occupied for many years by Mr. and Mrs Jos. Leppert, now the property of Prudhomme’s Nurseries. At the back of the house there stood until a year ago an interesting old stone building with huge stone fireplace and heating oven where Mrs Garner used to bake her bread, and a huge iron pot on a crane in which she used to make soap. Mr Garner had a crown grant of 150 acres on each side of Welland Avenue. His son, Mr. Alymer Garner, with keen foresight donated the road now known as Garner Avenue, and divided the land into lots, Fenwick’s first subdivision.
Continuing north on the Pelham Stone Road we find the old Reece house, built around the original low structure. Next to it stands the James Taylor house, the home of an early nurseryman. This house has the same gracious lines as the Richard Dawdy one,
Two Churches
The village had its real beginning in the building of two churches. Why two churches should have been built within one mile of each other I do not know. One was the New Connection Wesleyan Methodist and the other to the eastward, the Episcopal Methodist, known as the Bethany Church. In 1935 the Fenwick United Church celebrated its 100 th anniversary. Rev, Cropp got out a booklet of the history of the church with the names of all the ministers for the past 100 years. Of the early history of Bethanywehave no records, but it is believed that both frame churches were built about the same time. In 1882 Bethany built a new brick church and only two years later came the union of the Wesleyan and Episcopal Churches in Canada. Each church had a membership of 55. For a time both churches were used, morning service in one and Sunday school and evening service in the other. In 1900 the two churches united forces and built the present edifice in the village. The old frame building was brick veneered, a basement put under it and the pulpit moved from the east to the west and placed in a T-shaped addition. A year or so later the brick parsonage was built and the frame parsonage moved, The Bethany church was sold to the Presbyterians in 1901.
Then the School
After the churches came the school. And here again I quote from Mr. Duff “The first school-house lot was leased (not deeded) in 1844 by Benjamin Corwin of Stamford to James Disher, Leonard Haney and Simcoe Chapman as town wardens for the township of Pelham in the county of Lincoln in the district of Niagara. The consideration of the lease was 5 shillings, and it was stipulated that the lease was to terminate if no school was maintained for a period of 5 years.
The school trustees were Joseph Garner and James E, Hutt.
Mr George Kappler remembers attending this first school built in 1844. It was small framebuilding facing south. As the school yard was small, the children went across the road to play in what is now Mr. Will Boyes yard. There were no traffic hazards in these days. This frame building served until 1874 when a brick one-roomed school was built and the old building moved south east across the road to be made into a dwelling house. Many Fenwick residents of today remember the brick school, especially in the winters when the attendance was so large that the little ones had to get along the platform and the older pupils assisted the teacher in teaching. As the school population increased, a second room was formed by enclosing the two entry’s. Finally in 1910 the large brick two room addition at the front was added.
And the Taverns
After the cultural beginning of the village in church and school came the taverns. In 1845 George and Benjamin Diffin built a hotel either where Mr. John Farr lives today or the Eberts and the place became known as Diffins Corners. It was an excellent location for a tavern where so many roads came together. At this time taverns were as common on the Canboro Rd. as gasoline stations are today. There were two at Boyle, two at Wellandport, two at Attercliffe, two at Canboro and in the other direction two at Fonthill and three at Allanburg, counting the Black Horse built around this time. The Canboro Rd. got its name from Benjamin Canby who bought the whole township of Canboro from the Indians and then linked it with Lundy’s Lane, using the old Indian Trail. It might be well to state that the taverns lost their right to sell intoxicating liquors in 1881, when a vote was brought about by the Temperance people to have Welland county brought under the Scott Act. Pelham gave the local option measure a majority of 86.
Fenwick Arrives
On April 1st 1853 Diffins Corners changed its name to Fenwick when the first post office was opened with Leonard Haney as its first postmaster. I am sure Mr. Duff is right in thinking that our village took its name from Fenwick, the birth place of Dr. John Fraser
In Ayrshire, Scotland. Dr. Fraser was a very important man at this time. He was Reeve of Pelham from 1850 to 1856, and if you read the early township records you will see what an active part he and Mr. Dexter D’Everards took in the deliberations of the municipal council at old Niagara. He took considerable interest in politics being an advanced Liberal. In fact he is said to have thrown up a remunerative practice in Scotland in going against their best interests as he thought, in electing Sir George Murray, one of the Duke of Wellingtons generals, instead of the young Liberal he supported.In 1854 he attained prominence… most precious document to show you lent by Mr Armbrust. It is the record of the vote of 1854, arranged in three columns. The voter simply going in and on signifying his desire to vote, his choice was noted on the list opposite the candidate’s name, with a space given to annotations, 260 names appear on that list. In 1861 Dr. Fraser refused to be a candidate a second time. A doctor whose services were in demand for 50 miles, had no time to contest elections and travel as far Quebec city to represent his constituents.
Dr Fraser took an active part in the separation of Welland county from Lincoln in 1856, and in securing the county town at Welland. As the first Warden of Welland county he laid the corner stone of the Welland County Court House, July 5, 1855, a building which a half a million dollar addition is to be added. Dr Fraser held other positions of honor and trust. And I think it a matter of pride that our village should bear the name of the birth place of a man of such force and talent and devotion to public service.
Another member of parliament who came from Fenwick itself was Dr. Henry R. Haney, M.P.P., for Monck, who died in 1878. He also served as superintendent of schools.
Timber Frame
One of the oldest buildings in Fenwick is Babcock’s store, of timber frame. Mr Brackbill built the store and had as partner Charles Diffin. An old never-failing well alone remains to mark where once stood the Brackbill residence moved away many years ago to become the Stringer home. The oldest dwellings are those of Mr. Armbrust, Mr.Shutic. Mr Gamble and Mr. Ker. These all have timber frames and are of hand hewn timber, and originally were a storey and a half. Mr Armbrust’s house was once the home of Rev Michael Baxter, a retired Methodist clergyman. It was he who gave Baxter’s Lane to the municipality in lieu of the road which originally connected Maple Avenue with Welland Avenue. He too built what today is the Red and White store for A.O. Stringer, an early teacher, who wished to retire to a mercantile business. A little marble altar in Hillside Cemetery marks his grave—1889. Mr Conn lived in the Shutic house. It was he who planted the maple trees which give Maple Avenue its name. Mrs Lew Haney told me that she had often heard her husband tell of the pride he felt as a little boy at earning a penny for each tree he held upright for Mr Conn to fill in.
First With Hall
The Lauren Brown house was the first to be built with a hall.
Mr Sisler rebuilt the old Henry Miller home into what was considered at the time, a very fine house. He also built the Eastman house. In order that the bricks might retain their red color, he had them soaked in beer, an old German custom.
A drill hall, 120 ft by 100 ft of braced timbers and large double barn doors, once stood south of the United Church.
It was here that Captain Haney drilled a company of volunteer infantry which he had recruited for the 44th battalion at the time of the Fenian Raid of 1866. For a long time the men kept their rifles here. Later it was used as a community hall. Mr Tunnicliffe remembers as a boy attending a 12th of July celebration there with speeches and two bands in attendance. Later it held the exhibits when the fair was held here and still later it became a skating rink.
By Marion J. Lampman
One of the affairs that stand out so vividly in the minds of the older folk of Pelham Township is the Fenwick Fall Fair!
People gathered from miles around to browse among the exhibits, look over the livestock, watch the harness and sulky racing—and just visit!
But most of all, it was the Tom Bishop Wild West Show that brought in the gate receipts.
The late Tom Bishop and his brother Bob who still lives with his eighty years of thrilling experiences, opposite Pelham Centre School—came to Canada from Scotland during the last century at a time when the Canadian West was advertised as being the “Pot O’Gold at the end of the Rainbow”.
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