REMINISCENCES

By

META SCHOOLEY LAWS

              This time we will go to the county west of this one-Haldimand-for our story of the old times.

             Perhaps no county in the province, certainly none along Lake Erie, is richer in pioneer history, other then military history.

             It must ever be remembered that while the heroes of the wars especially that of 1812, protected the rights of the land-these same men as they hewed from the wilderness their homes and ours, established their rights.

             Canada-the empire-owes much to her military heroes, and they receive due recognition. She owes more even to the pioneer civilian, and too often his exploits are “unhonored and unsung.”

Haldimand

             Up the Grand river the Indian U.E. Loyalist, Joseph Brant, led his tribes of dusky warriors. Through forest and swamp that then bordered the river they travelled, on and on. At last they came to a shallow place, and Brant forded the river. We call the city situation at that spot Brantford. One of the great factories there issued a calendar depicting the scene a few years ago.

             Six miles on either side of the river was granted the great chief in perpetuity, hence settlement of the whites along was deferred. Hence people here of the writer’s generation remember pioneer times and ways.

             The farms all along the river are held, not by deeds, but by 999 year leases.

             The town of Cayuga, whose boundaries extend east and west and south, much farther than the apparent limits of the burg, was a gift. It and the townships were named after the Indian tribe. So also the townships of Seneca and Oneida.

             Only a few evenings ago a guest in our home related how as a little boy he had seen the Indians gather in a council house on the Thompson estate, the right to meet there having been retained by the tribe when the present owner’s father received the grant of land.

             Near it was built the first Presbyterian church in this district. The building was torn down and forms a barn on the Wadel property her in Cayuga.  The bell is in the tower of the town hall.

             There was also a large R.C. church. It, too, was razed, and St. Stephen’s at Cayuga replaces it.

             A few stones remain of the foundations of the old woolen mill at Indiana, two miles up the river from here.

             Seventy years ago it was a thriving town with breweries, distilleries, saw mills, and the first offices of the Grand River Navigation company. Hon. Rich-that company. 

             Now not a vestige of the town is left. Some ten or twelve children attend the little school house where once a (for those days) imposing two-roomed school stood.

             The woolen mill came down the river forty-eight years ago or thereabouts in the spring freshet. It struck the bridge over which the Airline railway crosses the river, and was broken to some extent. A few rods down the river it came in contact with the Talbot road bridge and moved it six feet on its abutments, then floated down in fragments. Pieces of the machinery of the mill jut up the shallows even yet.

             Driving along a weed-grown ditch, on one spot a green depression in “the flats” marks the course of the canal.

             Old “Bill” Mellanby of Humberstone had a controlling interest in the gypsum mines, which employed fifty men. Twenty years ago these mines were still operated but on a smaller scale than in the old days.

             Recently a company has been testing the locality. Gypsum of fine quality abounds, but the clay “roof” necessitates too expensive operations. In the old days timber was not specially valuable.

             The little town of Selkirk was founded by the earl who afterwards founded the Red River settlement in the west, where Selkirk, Manitoba commemorates his work.

             The first settler in this section of country was one “Captain” John Dochstader. His wife was a squaw, and with her he obtained from Brant a grant of 1200 acres of land, still known as the “Fradenburg” tract. He was a roamer and crossed back to the American side soon after his marriage, but returned with his wife and child in 1799. They crossed Lake Erie in a canoe hewed out of a log, and paddled up the river to the site of his grant of land.

             He had some difficulty to renew his title; indeed 400 of the 1200 acres had to be given to those who aided him. His daughter married an American “skedaddler,” Fradenburg, and he finally got the title clear, so that the tract is named for him.

             Most of this land is still in the possession of his descendents. He had three sons, all of whom played an important part in the development of this section of the country.

             What volumes could be written of Lachlan MacCollum, Senator, of “old” Doctor Harrison, who still successfully practiced medicine qt 90, who thrice refused a senatorship; of the days when Wm. Lyon MacKenzie was candidate for the riding, successful, too; of T.C. Street who played his part in Welland county too. You will find them interesting I know.

             Welland county was settled then. To Chippawa they went for supplies, and as a previous letter remarked, their mill was at Windmill Point, until the one at Indiana was built.

The Welland Tribune and Telegraph

28 June 1927