POINT ABINO AND VICINITY

By

META SCHOOLEY LAWS

 Margaret Alexander Sloan

              So many with whom the writer chatted on a recent visit to the home neighborhood, expressed their pleasure that old times, old scenes and old friends had been brought vividly before their mind’s eye through these “Point Abino letters.”

             A friend who, like myself, was in childhood a frequent visitor at the Sloan home, said “I could just see Washington Sloan as I read the article.”

             The accompanying picture of the Alexander home was taken by a nephew.

             Mrs. Zachariah Teal (Nancy Alexander) and one of Mary Alexander Schooley’s sons are the persons standing at the corner.

             The house had been sadly modernized. Too bad these old houses could not be preserved in their natural state. There are few, indeed, of them left now.

             West of Port Colborne, near Morgan’s Point, is another almost a duplicate of the Alexander home. It is the old Fares homestead. The lake had encroached upon the shore at this point, for the well is now some twenty rods from shore. It, like the Sloan home on the Point, of which we hope to have a snap some day, has not been inhabited for years.

             The Alexander home, on the other hand, has seldom been unoccupied. What stories those old walls could tell of the days when Robert Alexander and his family lived there. It was the social centre of the neighborhood, for the proverbial Scotch hospitality was true to traditions in that home.

             After their marriage two of the girls lived in Ridgeway; Annie (Mrs. Wilson) and Mrs. Teal, whose daughter passed away recently. Annie’s grandchildren still live in the neighborhood I believe-the last of the race. Her only daughter, Jean, was a beautiful singer and her voice strong and clear as a silver bell, and sweet withal, is one of my early memories of Ridgeway church.

             Another daughter was Mrs. Lee Haun, whose husband, in partnership with Archibald Dobbie, operated a large foundry at “The Bridge,” as Humberstone village was then called. Only one of the girls, Clara, Mrs. Stoddard, spent her life out of the neighborhood entirely.

             The other picture of “Auntie Sloan” and her brother John was taken on the porch of the Sloan home on the Fort Erie road, which was easily the prettiest place around. Beautiful trees and shrubs were (are still) around it, and a vine-covered arbor in the front yard was most inviting, for almost any summer afternoon Washington Sloan with a book sat there expecting company, and rarely was he disappointed.

             A Presbyterian clergyman, resident in Ridgeway, often walked the 2 1/2 miles for a chat with him, and considered himself well repaid for the effort. The squire could talk fluently and well (for there is a difference) on the topic of the day, and was well read, almost an authority on British and American history. Auntie’s suppers were a drawing-card, too. We children often wandered into the arbor, too. He was very fond of us, and always had a story to tell. When I was ready to go home often he would put a book into my hand with “the rest of that story and more like it, is in that book.” Once he marked several pages in “Knight’s History of England” for me. He always asked questions when the book was returned, to assure himself that it had been read.

             The snap-shot is very like Auntie. She outlived her husband many years. Once when cousin and I visited her she looked up at his picture on the living-room wall and said to us, “Every night brings me one day nearer to meeting him again.” And at another time wished us “happiness like her’s-but not so many lonely years.”

             Her brother John never married. After years of wandering all over the New England States he came home-to Margaret-to die. The snap was taken one beautiful afternoon-the next morning he was “away,” and Auntie was again alone.

             It required a great deal of persuasion to induce her to leave the farm home where she had worked so hard and been so happy, but she spent the last winter of her life with her sister Nancy.

             Few indeed of the old faces greet us in Ridgeway church today, and it is surprising how many of those best remembered were connected with the old lady whom we all called Auntie.

             Rain or shine, the little bay team and the high old democrat wagon drove by Maple Grove Farm. Often have I climbed up on the front seat beside Uncle, for he seemed to expect to pick me up at the gate of Maple Grove Farm.

             Their niece presided at the organ; her husband was choir leader; another niece and their adopted daughter sang in the choir, and every pew was filled with their friends.

             The dear old days! We cannot go back to them. Perhaps-no surely, it is well that we cannot-but one wonders what will give to the young people today the inspiration that those people gave us. They were never hurried. Sometimes, looking back, their lives seem monotonous, yet they were not without purpose, and achievement. We know that they bequeathed to us something. What was it?-that stimulates us to our best effort and gives us courage to persevere in these days when life, social and economic, is so complicated. And again we ask, have we, this something to pass on to those who shall follow us? Are we, in these days of keen competition, holding fast to the Beacon by which their lives were charted. We travel in a faster craft, but our goal is the same as theirs.

             “Auntie” always had a light in her window. In the old home on the lake shore it guided the ship-wrecked sailors on that wild night of which we write some time ago to food and warmth and shelter and loving care. Other windows might be darkened as we drove homeward on cold winter nights, but from her’s the bright shaft beamed across the road, and father would say, “See! We’re almost home, now.”

             All through the mist of years the lights of those homes twinkle, or is it the light from the Long Home which they have reached and to which they beckon us-they who served “their day and generation”-one of their loving phrases-so well, that you and I must do and be our best to maintain the high standard they reached and kept. M.S.L.

The Welland Tribune and Telegraph

6 May 1926