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John Gore
[History of the Village of Fonthill The Fonthill Women’s Institute, 1944]
John Gore of U.E. Loyalist stock was born in Digby, Nova Scotia in the year 1800. When a young man he went to New York at the earnest wish of his uncle, Captain John Gore, one of the founders of the Sailor’s ‘Snug Harbor’ as it is called, on Staten Island, a retreat known to sailors the world over.
In New York he fell in love with and married Miss Asenath Crowell: at the age of twenty-six he and his bride with all their worldly goods traveled from New York to Buffalo by way of the Erie Canal. It took them three weeks to make the journey in small boats towed by slow moving mules.
In Buffalo he established a furniture business which he later removed to Fonthill and conducted there for many years, dying at the advanced age of ninety-three.
During Mr Gore’s residence in Buffalo, Dexter D’Everardo, then teaching school there, met and fell in love with Eliza Brown, a young and charming widow, cousin of John Gore, and it was from the latter’s home that the wedding took place in 1843. The same year Mr. D’Everardo and his bride moved to Fonthill and six years later in 1849, Mr Gore followed him. On his arrival at Fonthill, he lived for a time in a low rambling house at the top of the hill, adjoining a Government Observatory, from which on clear days a splendid view of both Lakes Ontario and Erie could be obtained.
In 1851, Mr Gore built the home where he spent the rest of his life and from which Dr. J.O. Emmett, who married his only daughter, Kate Gore, carried on his practice of medicine.
In politics Mr Gore was a Reformer {now called Liberal} and in religious belief a Universalist, who took an active part in providing a church for that Denomination, which was afterwards sold to the Methodists, and the site is now occupied by their place of worship. John Gore was a Cabinetmaker and Undertaker, and was known far and wide as a craftsman of no mean ability. You will find, as you go through the Niagara Peninsula, many pieces of furniture to which the owners proudly point and say “this was made by John Gore of Fonthill” At the time of his death in 1893 he was known as one of the oldest residents in this part of Canada, and ended the life of one of Fonthill’s pioneer citizens, loved by many and respected by all.
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