POINT ABINO AND VICINITY

By

META SCHOOLEY LAWS

              The writer is not quite ready to be classed among the “old-timers.” However, the family to which she belongs was one of the first to settle in the county. One of her choicest possessions is a copy of a letter dated April 29, 1788, written by the Quakers of Hardwick, Sussex County, New Jersey, introducing one Asa Schooley to the commanding officer of Niagara Garrison.        

             The first Schooley homestead is now part of Cherry Hill Golf Links. In the early days a log meeting house was built on this farm. It is a far cry from those sturdy, perhaps somber pioneer folk, clad in Quaker garb to the gay throng who frequent the fields now.

             Stories of these old days have been my delight as long as memory goes back.

             Rehearsing some stories while chatting with “ye editor” a request to put one of them on paper was acceded to promptly. But the pen wanders for stories, grave, gay, tragic, intermingle-and the faces of long ago-the men and women who enjoyed grandmother’s hospitality in my childhood days, and who figured in these events of an all too nearly forgotten time, pass and repass, and one ceases to wonder at the difficulty which old people have in coming directly to the point when recruiting the experiences of their youth.

             Point Abino, our American friends who have taken possession of the beautiful grove and beach for their summer homes will persist in saying “Abino.”

             Their pronunciation grates on one’s ear-Abino-the “a” broad in “father”-is the one always used by the “old folk”-and they surely knew. How different the well-kept road of today, the present approach to the park from the highway from the road through the marsh nearly always under water through which we rode with father as children.

             The marsh had not then been drained though the first attempt toward that had been made in a deep ditch on each side of the narrow road and a cross ditch near the end of the marsh.

             A ride over this road when the water came up to the box of the buggy and father allowed the horse to choose his own footing lest we come to grief in the ditch is the writer’s first memory of Point Abino.

             Cranberries grew plentifully in the marsh. The pickers waded for them. The grove was beautiful. The majestic trees, the clumps of juniper, the wild flowers.

             The road wound among the trees to the beach.

             Here was the stone house where the Sloans lived. A few fishermen’s cottages and shanties for the workers in the sand pit, which was not a pit at all, but rather a cave formed by removing sand from the side of the big dune.

             A long (for those days) pier was built. It is in ruins now. The beach is much wider in these days for one can wade around the last “crib.”

             Squire Sloan was interested in this sand business. We shall speak of him later. A tall erect man, with glowing beard, white as snow and piercing eyes was an associate. “What’s the matter with folks,” he complained, one day. “They call me “old man Wells,” and I’m only 70,” and he tightened the rein and raced his beautiful chestnut team down the road to vent his annoyance, at the insinuation for his heart was young and the years were no weight.

             Even in those early days a few Buffalo families spent the summer at the lake; the Pildens and Seals-these joined in the social life of the community for the rush of the twentieth century was not in evidence. People had time to enjoy each other’s society in the country even in summer time.

             West of the point on the bread level beach was one of the first prize fight arenas. These fights were arranged in Buffalo and the crowds came over in tugs. There were no paid managers; no admission fee to this open-air arena-“60 years ago”-said the old man who told the story.

             There was plenty of betting and big crowds. It was “fight to a finish”; no “rounds” agreed upon; first blood courted, and the fighters were bare-handed.

             The old gentleman recalled one fight between Price and Kelly in which one of these was killed or died of wounds. The last big fight was between Bradley and Raukins. They were Irishmen. The Buffalo and Goderich railway was building then and all the Irishmen working in the big gravel pit near Ridgeway, on the left hand side of the Fort Erie road just west of the village threw down their shovels and “cleared” for the Point, the day of the fight. Whiskey was plentiful and free and soon every one was fighting. Sheriff Hobson came over from Welland with a “posse” and stopped the fight.

             On the same beach an evangelist used to come over from the city, and he, too, gathered crowds around him by his fiery eloquence; standing on a rude platform at the foot of the dune and surrounded by a great crowd who sat on the sand or on rude benches of driftwood, he thundered against the sins of the people and hurled at them the judgment of the Almighty if they persisted in iniquity. These meetings followed the “dark day”-the solar eclipse of 18-(?) which struck terror into the hearts of these simple, earnest people.

             Contrasting these scenes with today, our thoughts turn to Bryant’s beautiful lines:

             Are they here, the dead of other days,

             And did the air of this fair solitude

             Once stir with life and burn with passion.

             With winter, passes the present solitude of Point Abino, the beach, the grove, the sand-works.

Instead of the pioneers and the “Paddies,” the construction gangs, of those days, are the restless, pleasure seekers of this twentieth century, seeking in this beautiful spot recreation as did the crowds of the “dear old days”-for though time hurries on, people, now as then, continue the unceasing quest for thrills, excitement, pleasure-or is it content?

The Welland Tribune and Telegraph

25 March 1926