MORE REMINISCENCES

By

Meta Schooley Laws

              Did you ever try to imagine yourself as one of a group of those who wonderful men and women who came into this section of the country in the seventeen–seventies or thereabouts?

             Travel has been made so easy, so safe for us. Every little depression in the road through which water ever flows is bridged. A bridge three feet high must have a railing. As we speed along the highway, every high graded stretch of road is protected by the cable fenced with its white posts. Every curve ahead is indicated by those sign posts.

             Do we ever think of the difficulties the pioneers met when they first pierced the woods?

             The long toilsome journey on foot from Pennsylvania, or Vermont, or New Jersey, or other of the states of new-formed nation, away from comfort and plenty in most instances, toward toil, privation, loneliness, poverty-not a landmark on the route-not a welcome at its close. These men carried the Flag in their hearts. They did not need it to be waved before their faces to know it was; is, there. For the love of it they surrendered all, dared all, won all.

             “A sacred burden is the life ye bear,” all ye in whose veins the blood of these flows.

             A family of three people wended their way wearily, yet hopefully, through the forest away from the land that had thrown off its allegiance to the Flag they loved, toward the new British territory to the north, lately wrested from the French.

             They had heard little to attract them about this land excepting this-that above it, the Union Jack waved.

             They were more fortunate than many other groups who also travelled northward in those days, for they had horses, cattle and money for necessities. They had been preparing for this journey, for they carried with them bags of seed, grain and fruit. The women and children rode in comparative comfort. The men walked and drove the herd which pastured. Speed in travel was an unknown quantity a hundred and fifty years ago.

             They reached the border at the head of the Niagara river. From the Indians they obtained canoes, and loaded their effects into them.

             Warily they paddled down the river to the mouth of the Chippawa creek, and turned into it, for the increasing current and the roar of the falls warned them.

             Up the shadowy stream for some miles they went, not a sound but the dip of their paddles, not an opening in the “forest primeval” which skirted the creeks banks. At last they halted. “This will do for our home,” said the leader. They made camp. Their name was Misener. Two of them with a guide set out for Newark, the “capital” of Canada.

             We know it now as Niagara-on-the-Lake. Here they received patents for their homestead, the allotment which the government made to those U.E. Loyalists. Those deeds were written on parchment and a great seal attached to them. When they returned the walls of a log cabin had been built, a home established.

             If they longed for the comfort-yes luxury-of the homes they left, no one mentioned it. Sturdily they set to work-and now every year hundreds gather at the great Misener re-union-proud, justly so, of their descent from these men and women.

             It must be thirty years ago or longer, since the writer taught at the little “Dew-drop” school____ with that dear old English _and Mrs. Hern.

             Just at that time the “Misener woods, (so called yes, though the title of the property was no longer held by the family) were being _by a Thorold firm. But the then owner reserved the land and a huge oak tree known as “The Bear Tree.” High up in its branches were the remains of a platform which Adam Misener built in the big tree. Here he, and one or sometimes two of his friends, would sit with their old muskets to watch for bears and other big game, and many a bear met death there.

             Doubtless, those woods are covered now with a thick sound growth, and the Bear Tree spreads its wide branches yet. Or was the prophecy of the old man who told the story of the tree fulfilled-“Poor thing,” he said, “how lonely it must be, it will not stand long.”

             One gathereth, another scattereth was certainly true of that wood lot which Adam Misener prized so highly, and guarded so carefully.

             One of the Misener homesteads stood a few miles east of this one, and about half way between Lyon’s Creek and the Chippawa. This home was built on a gravel ridge, and an orchard from seeds brought from New Jersey surrounded the home. Gnarled and twisted though most of these trees were, they still bore fruit a few years go.

             There was a seedling from one of the old trees in the orchard, too. It was a beautiful and delicious fall apple. Large, red and yellow streaked, and so crisp. “The Farmer’s Favorite” Mr. Misener named it for a customer one day on the market. How long ago? Well, when J.F. Beam first got other people besides himself talking about good roads.

             We had “Jip” and the buggy, and had proceeded with great labor on Jip’s part, and the constant fear that the traces would break from her efforts, to Archibald Grey’s. I got out to lighten the load so many pounds anyway, and picked my way along the fence where the sod had been but was not.

             Some one, who, in the township council strongly opposed the “good roads” project, came along with a team and democrat and greeted us. We told him that any one who would talk against “good roads” should be sentenced to walk down the middle of this road right now. He drove on laughing. Do you remember, Lew?

The Welland Tribune and Telegraph

18 January 1927