DOWN MEMORY LANE – McCABE HOUSE, Circa 1850

Part 1

By Lara Blazetich, from the files of her grandfather George “Udy” Blazetich

*Information courtesy of Marguerite Shefter Diffin

[Welland Tribune, 1991]

Shown to the right is the McCabe Hotel in the late 1850s, just before it was demolished. The original structure was built in Crowland in 1850 by James Tufts, Miss Addie McCabe’s great –grandfather.

The hotel was operated by Tufts and his wife, Charlotte (Brailey) for many years. Three generations have been born within its walls. The hotel was located at 25 Canal Bank in Crowland Township, just south of the railway tracks adjacent to the railway bridge spanning the canal.

When the hotel was built it had a six-post veranda, upper and lower, across the front on which was draped a large sign lettered “The Travellers Home.” On one end of the sign was printed a picture of a stage coach and horses, and on the other end a picture of the Tow Horses. These horses were used to pull the barges in the canal. A large ballroom on the second floor was a popular haven for residents who attended dances and other functions held in the hotel.

Tufts owned 1,000 acres of land, 500 acres of forest, and 500 acres of marshland. He employed 10 escaped slaves from the South as woodcutters, selling the wood to passing boats and trains.

One of the slaves was Jim Wilson, who was later married in the McCabe home. Many hunters stayed at the hotel during the hunting season and hunted in the nearby marshland. James Tufts came from Mallorytown near Brockville. He descended from Peter Tufts, who was born in England in 1616 and came to America and lived in Charlestown prior to 1638. He married Charlotte, daughter of Elia and Leah (Morris) Brailey, who moved to America about 1686 from York, England.

The Brailey original homestead was located at Doans Ridge in Crowland, and they operated a hotel that was situated just west of Diffins Coal Dock (now a seniors centre).

The demolished hotel was actually on the canal waterway, before the canal was widened.

The Tufts family name was, and still is prominent in the history of Crowland. James Tufts married Charlotte Brailey. And son Wallace married Maria Hanna. Wallace and Maria had eight children: Emerson, George, Beatrice, Addie, Rena, Elva, Stanley and Curtis.

J.C. Diffin, mayor of Welland in 1921, married Elva Tufts and she was the mother of Harry Diffin, who was also the mayor of Welland from 1948-50. Diffin was also selected as Man of the Half Century in 1987.

He served 31 years and six months on Welland city council.

Sarah Tufts, daughter of James, married J. McCabe, and their daughter Addie, who never married, operated the McCabe House for many years.

DOWN MEMORY LANE – CROWLANDS’S MISS ADDIE McCABE (1954)

Part II

By Lara Blazetich, from the files of her grandfather George “Udy” Blazetich

*Information courtesy of Marguerite Shefter Diffin

[Welland Tribune, 7 February 1991]

The following is an exclusive interview conducted by Norman Panzica, former Tribune staff reporter, with Crowland’s remarkable citizen, Miss Addie McCabe.

The tiny old lady sat perfectly still as Addie put the finishing touches on her regular chore of hair combing. In the next room several men sat smoking, some of them not moving or speaking.

Just off the room where they sat, a blind man enjoyed the music from a radio from his room.

In the living room, a cerebral palsy victim sat as though in silent conversation with an old gentleman across from him. Upstairs in a bedroom, a man who had been on crutches for nine years waited patiently for the time Miss McCabe would bring a full dinner tray to him.

The guests, 25 in all, and all pensioners reside in McCabe House, a building more than a century old at 25 Canal Bank Rd., just south of the subway under the New York Central Railway.

For the lodging and care, they pay what works up to $8.30 a week. Each gives Miss McCabe his or her monthly $40 pension cheque and $4 is returned.

McCabe House is a huge structure containing many remnants of an era when gentlemen drank sherry, from dew drop-shaped decanters, and canal horses were stabled between periods of pulling boats along the canal.

“Travellers Home,” as it was known, boasted specially-made walnut furniture, and its patrons rested their elbows on a solid walnut plank more than 10 feet long and four inches thick. The cupboards, which held liquors on display, are now carry-alls. The shirts and underclothing of pensioners hang from the lines in the ballroom where gala dances were held before the day of the phonograph.

Where fashionable hunters once tossed reins to a stable boy, a 1954 transient asks for and gets a night’s lodgings and a substantial meal. At least four radios, a piano, and an organ entertain the residents. In one of the sitting rooms a Bible rests open on a stand.

From this point, prayer meetings are held each Thursday evening for those interested.

In nearly all of the 22 rooms, clean cots and beds of various sizes are to be found. Everywhere cleanliness is pronounced.

Miss McCabe, who does all the cooking, employed two house-keepers. Evening snacks among the “guests” were quite common.

Miss McCabe during the early 1930s, was employed as a cook at the Station Hotel operated by the Fred Kilgour family. This was confirmed by Katie Kisur Martin, who also worked at the hotel. Miss McCabe is a truly remarkable woman and surely deserving of the warn gratitude of the community for a noble aim in life-that of doing good unto others.

A labor of love and with devotion-at the old McCabe House.

Miss McCabe’s two sisters, Jessie Niger, from New York City and Charlotte Twomey, were regular visitors at the McCabe House. A relative, Kevin Twomey, resides in Fenwick.

Miss McCabe was born in 1879 and died in 1963 at the age of 84.