HIS 100TH BIRTHDAY

ADAM MISENER, OF TROY, ARRANGING TO CELEBRATE HIS 100^TH BIRTHDAY

The Centenarian is Still Active and Healthy-Remembers the Battle of Lundy’s Lane-Sketch of His Life

[Welland Tribune, 14 January 1898]

An event of some interest to residents of the Province, and of especial significance to Welland county, will take place on the 20^th of next month, when there will be commemorated at Troy, a village near Harrisburg, the fact that Adam Misener or “Uncle Adam,” as he is more familiarly termed, has overstepped by thirty years the Psalmist’s allotted span, and has reached the day which makes him a centenarian.

THE YEAR OF HIS BIRTH

Adam Misener was born during one of the most momentous periods in the world’s history. His natal year is infamous as being the one in which Nelson struck so great a blow at the maritime power of Napoleon at the Battle of the Nile, and in which the Irish rebellion of 1798 was quelled, two events now become almost ancient history. In those days the eastern world w in arms and it may be that the centenary has been mde possible by the birth of the subject amid the peaceful scenes of Canada, away from the bellicose manifestations of Europe, with their accompanying difficulty of existence.

HIS ANTECEDENTS

In a log hut in the township of Crowland, Welland county, built upon land which his father cleared, the centenarian saw the light of day. His grandfather was a Hollander, who settled in New Jersey about 1720. His father, Nicholas, towards the close of the revolution, married an Irish woman named Jane McLean, and in 1793 started for Canada with a yoke of oxen, a cow and a mare. His wife and child, the latter being ten weeks old, were mounted upon the mare, which was harnessed to the cow. Arrived at Oswego, they sent the animals by land and took a boat for Niagara, which they reached on July 4^th, 1793. Shortly afterwards they settled in Crowland township and Adam No. 1 walked to Toronto, then Muddy York, to swear allegiance , and obtain a land patent. It was then upon the land then occupied that Adam No. 2 was born, on February 20^th, 1798.

HEARD THE BATTLE

The house was not very far from the battlefield of Lundy’s Lane, and Adam, who was sixteen years old when the victory was won, remembers to this day with revival of the warlike feeling of the moment, the fierce cannonade and musketry fire which began shortly before sundown on July 25^th, 1814, startling himself and his sisters, then in the fields. After the fight the children visited the scene; saw the blood-stained ground and a fence-rail with forty-two bullet holes, and carried home quite a store of empty cartridge cases. Uncle Adam lost the sight of one eye when a small boy while playing knife with companions; but, strange to say, has only recently commenced to use spectacles.

In March, 1818, three years after the Battle of Waterloo, the old man went to Beverley township, then covered with forest, and containing a population of seven families, with sixty-three names on the assessment roll. In company with a friend he started a saw-mill, like everybody else in those days, but at the end of the month the place was burned down with the result of a month’s work.

HIS DESCENDANTS

Three years afterwards, Uncle Adam married Mary Miller, who died in five years. He remained a widower for five or six years, and then married Lena Coleman, who died in April 1895, at the age of ninety-five, the two having lived together for the remarkably long period of sixty-four years. Only one out of their ten children has died up to the present time. The longevity of the Misener stock may be judged from the fact that out of twelve brothers and sisters, all but two passed the age of eighty. One of these two died in infancy and the other at seventy-nine years of age. The old man’s sister Elizabeth died in January 1897, aged ninety-three, leaving him the last of that branch of the family. It will not die out with him, however, for at the approaching celebration no less than five generations will be represented. The old gentleman is still comparatively strong and hearty. He splits the daily supply of wood for his home, attends to his garden and is so active as to give on the impression that he may go considerably beyond the century mark.

There are five families in Toronto who will be represented at the contemplated family gathering. Mrs. Chapman, of 262 Sherbourne street, wife of School Inspector Chapman; Mrs. Ellington of 185 John street; Mrs. Galer, of 328 Spadina avenue; and Mrs. Bookless, of 14 Widmer street, are all nieces of the old man, and Mrs. Beamer, of 57 Garden avenue, Parkdale, is a granddaughter.