MORE REMINISCENCES

By

META SCHOOLEY LAWS

              What a number of years this warfare over the liquor question covers!

             Wainfleet alone gave Mr. Harrison a majority in the last election, which carries our thoughts back to some of the stalwarts of years gone by.

             Near Forks Road East church there is or was very recently a neat little hall, the temperance hall.

             One of the last S of T lodges in the county met there regularly when the writer taught in No. 6. But likely few know nowadays what S of T meant-“Sons of Temperance”. There were daughters also, but in those days women were not persons-they had no voice in public affairs. But we surely helped to make the lodge meetings interesting.

             There is no doubt whatsoever that these temperance lodges paved the way for the series of temperance laws that were enacted. The Duncan Act, The Scott Act, the O.T.A. and now the question is “Will the legislation which we on December 1 authorized Premier Ferguson to enact, wipe out all the gains of all those years?” as many fear; or will it, as the honorable gentleman asserted in one of his late campaign addresses, merely so amend the O.T.A. as to make the province in very truth temperate. We wait in hope, yes, and in fear, for the outcome. But for the reminiscences, the old stone school house on the Fort Erie Road, it was a new school house then, was well lighted that evening.

             It was an easy matter to gather a “crowd” in that neighborhood for the homes were built quite close together, and the people were very social.

             Old “Uncle John” and a “Doctor” had visited the school that day to see the teacher and Uncle had imbibed at the various refreshment booths on the way down.

He wore a wig and as “Doctor” and Miss H. chatted, Uncle sat on the bench, absent-mindedly twirling his wig round and round on his head. We lived just opposite the school and imagine Mothers’ consternation when one of us children, there were no “kids” then, after vainly trying to twist our hair even a little, proceeded to ask uncle how he managed the feat.

But on the black board for the evening temperance meeting was written in large letters, “Vote for the Scott Act,” and in smaller script, Squire Sloan had written, “He that overcometh shall inherit all things,” not “he that had the temptation removed” which was one of the special arguments advanced that day. How the little girl that holds this pen came to be permitted to go to the evening meeting has long been forgotten, but the discussion, friendly, yet warmly, carried on, comes back to me: The Pages, Sloans, Dickouts, Hauns, Sherks, Ellsworths, Robert Hall and our people, the men folk, only of course, had taken part in the discussion of the evening. Barnes, Johnson_____and some others gleefully listened. “May I rub this off now,” asked the speaker and Squire Sloan asserted and the meeting went on.

Strange that only one of that group of neighbors is left. How lonely she must be, Mrs. Christian Sherk, yet in her old home, with the happy memories of bygone days; with most of her children, wonderfully acute for one of her age, still enjoys life.

Only last year “the little red school house” which Duncan Schooley bought more than 30 years ago, and used as a shop, has disappeared.

J.F. Beam, the pioneer advocate of good roads brought his sister from their home on Black Creek to that little school to teach. Perhaps his experience as a boy on those roads helped to make him such an earnest advocate. How people used to laugh at his ideas, and now how far beyond his thought our present system has developed, and the end is not yet.

But he never seemed to mind the raillery. He followed the advice of the poet: Be thou the first true merit to befriend, His praise is lost who stays till all commend.”

One scarcely recognizes that Black Creek country anymore.

J.H. Allin’s old store is still there. The ’20 year ago” column mentioned that Mr. Allin was the first postmaster there. The office never really went out of the family, for his son-in-law, Charlie Jenks, and later Mrs. Jenks succeeded him.

Barnhart’s blacksmith shop is still there, but the school house dreary and forlorn, the ruins of the Quaker Church, these are all of the past.

Twice daily through the winter, and four times in summer time the whistle of Paddy Miles’ train awoke the echoes of the quiet place.

A group of us went to the Falls one Saturday and the train stopped for five minutes at the Falls View as usual.

There happened to be a passenger to whom the scene was new, that day, and he lingered gazing until Conductor Miles touched his shoulder. “I suppose this is old to you, conductor,” said the young man. “No,” was the reply; “thirty years and more every day we stop here and I always see something new.” “I wouldn’t like another route,” the old man added, “this and the view as we go down the mountain at St. Davids and Queenston , thence to Old Niagara-what a wealth there is for the Historical Society of this and every other county to gather and conserve.”

Near Black Creek, but incorporated into the Glenroe farms was the Baker homestead. Here the three brothers lived for years and tenderly cared for their aged widowed mother until she was laid to rest.

An elder brother lived a little way up the river from the mouth of the Creek, where his son still lives. For years the three lived happily.

No one owned finer cattle, or drove better horses, than they did, but they lived very much to themselves.

Then one day the two older brothers were taken ill, pneumonia developed and John died. Samuel had passed the crisis, but over hearing that John had gone, he fell back dead “of a broken heart,” the neighbor said.

Some there are still living who will remember the great concourse gathered at their double funeral, everyone surprised at the hold these quiet men had upon the whole community.

They were wealthy, and there was no will, but the family gathered. Mrs. Sherk mentioned above, is the only one left now, and quietly and amicably the real estate and personal property was divided among them, no jangling, no lawyers needed to settle disputes which were unseemly thought of.

The younger brother married later, and after his death, the homestead was sold for he had no sons.

How little the tourist, as he rushes along the boulevard, realizes that the ground over which drives, every inch of it is “holy ground,”- for let us repeat, the achievement of today is possible through incessant toil, and far-seeing sacrifice on the pioneers to whom we cannot possibly pay too high a tribute.

The Welland Tribune and Telegraph

16 December 1926