PIONEER DAYS – Getting around was tough back then

A business trip to Toronto and back could take as long as five days

By Robert J. Foley

[Welland Tribune, 7 April 1992]

Getting from one place to another in the Niagara Peninsula is fairly simple for us today. A 30-minute ride from Welland puts us just about anywhere we would wish to go. We can leave home at 9 a.m., drive to Queenston, transact our business and be home for lunch. Even business in Toronto can be wrapped up and we can be home for dinner.

Travel in the 1820s was not as easy. Road conditions were subject to the whims of Mother Nature. Two days of driving rain turned hard-packed roads into quagmires of impassible mud. A trip to York (Toronto) was a major undertaking.

The sun had not yet made its appearance when young Abraham Stoner said good-bye to his father, Christian. Abraham was going to York on family business and he was meeting a friend at Cook’s Mills who was going to Chippawa with his boat for supplies. The first leg of his journey was to catch the four o’clock stage to Queenston. The stage ran on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Fortunately, the weather was good and the Portage Road would be reasonably good for travelling.

Abraham had never been to Chippawa and after the isolation of the farm he was awed by the hustle and bustle at this southern terminus of the Portage Road. Schooners and barge-like, flat-bottomed boats were transferring goods to and from wagons that seemed to be strewn haphazardly along the docks or lined up along the road.

He searched out the stage office and purchased his ticket on the Chippawa-Newark coach. The clerk informed him that he was the fourth passenger so the coach would leave as scheduled. If four passengers did not buy tickets by four o’clock the stage was held over until seven the next morning.

The coach rolled out of Chippawa on time and even though the stage seemed to find every pot hole, rattling Abraham’s teeth, he felt growing sense of excitement. They passed rumbling wagons and carried goods around the Falls of Niagara for shipment on to York, Kingston and Montreal. An occasional caliche, a two-wheeled gig that seated two people, would flash by at incredible speeds, or so it seemed to Abraham.

The stage arrived after dark and he found himself a room at the inn and attempted to get some sleep.

The next morning, the sight that greeted his eyes left him speechless. If Abraham was in awe of Chppawa he was flabbergasted by Queenston. He counted 60 wagons lined up at the docks to unload merchandise onto the ships moored there.

Having found the “Annie Jane”, the vessel that was to take him to York, and ascertaining her sailing time, he headed off to get some breakfast. The crossing would take eight or nine hours depending on the wind and he wasn’t sure if he could eat aboard. Friends teased him about sea sickness and he hoped that it was only teasing.

The crossing was fairly smooth and Abraham found that as long as he stayed on deck his stomach remained relatively calm.

After docking he went off to find accommodations for a least two nights and prepared to go to the government buildings the next day to settle his family’s business.

Abraham Stoner finished his business and spent one more night in York’s boarding schooner for the return trip. By the time he reached home he has been gone for five days. There is a good chance that he walked most of the way from Chippawa to Humberstone unless he was lucky enough to hitch a ride with a farmer on the Chippawa Creek Road.

Freight moved through the peninsula to and from the Northwest. Many fur traders moved along the Portage Road between Queenston and Chippawa patronizing the taverns that dotted the landscape. The trip from Queentson was slow and tedious. Although two oxen could easily pull a ton of cargo from the top of the escarpment to Chippawa, it took four or five to pull the load up from the Queenston docks to level ground. The wagons used on the road were supplied by local farmers who supplemented their income by hauling freight.

Growth along the Portage Road in Stamford Township became inevitable. The intersection of Lundy’s lane and Portage Road saw a fledgling community emerge right after the war that eventually became Drummondville. Stamford Village was laid out near the Stamford Green and St. John’s Church.

Freight destined for points in the interior was moved most often by water. The Chippawa was a busy waterway that was navigable up past *Browns Bridge. Lyon’s Creek was also of major importance. The creeks along the Niagara such as *Street’s, Frenchmen’s and Black all had small ribbons of settlement along their banks and were used extensively to move the goods of the farmers to their homesteads.

William Hamilton Merritt was beginning to flex his muscles again about this time and the Welland Canal was to change the transportation system in the peninsula and in Canada forever.

*Brown’s Bridge was s small settlement built around the bridge that once crossed the Chippawa at the foot of Pelham Road in Welland.

*Street’s creek is now known as Usshers creek. Its name was changed to honor Edgeworth Ussher, a militia officer, murdered during the rebellion of 1837-38.