Results for ‘Meta Schooley Laws’
By
META SCHOOLEY LAWS
As we travel eastward from Port Colborne, along the county provincial road, which connects with provincial highway No. 3, we leave the old Fort Erie road, at what the old people used to call, “The Come-in.” A dilapidated old shack, the ruins of a hotel, or rather Wayside Inn, still stood within the writer’s remembrance. Over the door hung the inviting sign which gave the place its name-“Grimm’s Tavern,” too was a hostelry noted, and perhaps somewhat notorious hostelry in those days, on the old Fort Erie Road.
I happened to overhear two elderly gentlemen who, in their youth, drove horses to Buffalo for sale, tell of an evening’s experience there. Of a mirror so placed, that the general proprietor had no difficulty in winning at cards, no matter how well his opponents played; of an invitation accorded one of them to put on the gloves and box with a daughter of the house. He complied, to his sorrow, for the maiden was an expert, and gave him no quarter. He had been too “gallant” to attack her, as if she were a man-but my! oh my!-and he rubbed the side of his face at the recollection.
What quaint names those old roadside inns boasted! “The White Pigeon,” where a side road crosses Lyons Creek, a few miles east of Cooks Mills, and “The Black Horse,” at Allanburg.
But these are not very close to Point Abino, or were not in the days of which we are speaking, for the auto had not then almost annihilated these distances as now.
The new road from “The Come-in,” is almost in line with the old Garrison Road. But we will pursue the old road, through the Sherk settlement.
To our right is Shisler’s Point, where one of the first lime-kilns was built and operated by the old gentleman some whose family still reside in the neighborhood.
The quality of the limestone there then came to the notice of the firm of Carroll Bros. of Buffalo. After tests had been made the brothers approached the old gentleman with a view to obtaining the property.
There were a few sandy acres in the little farm and from them and the small kiln, the family eked out a none too luxurious living.
Yes, he was willing to sell. Asked to name a price, he did so, but Mr. Carroll demurred, “You do not understand what we want the place for. We could not possibly take it at your price. It would not be honest. Whereupon the agreement of sale was drawn at a price exceeding many times the old gentleman’s estimate and reservation for homes for the Shisler family also included.
How many business men of today would have so emphatically refused to take advantage of inexperience and lack of information on the part of the party with whom they were dealing?
But the golden rule, rather than the modern parody of it, seemed to have governed Carroll Bros. business life. Fine, unassuming cultured men they were, true friends of the younger members of the family.
As was to be expected the business prospered, but the ruins of the little old kiln and the old gentleman’s home were still there a few years ago.
Past the old Mennonite Church in the grove, surrounded by its silent city of the dead, we drive. Past Auntie Sloan’s old home under the shadow of the maples, Squire Dickout planted. Past Maple Grove, a few of the great old maples of “the forest primeval,” still standing-the school-the Edsall homes and the Baxter homestead, too.
At the left the road leading to the old Quaker meeting house, past Ellsworth’s and Abraham Sherk’s, whose wife, Rebecca Law, came from the Grand River country where as a child she had come from Nova Scotia with her mother and step-father, the latter a cousin of Sir John A. MacDonald.
The Reverend John Baxter, whose farm is, or should we say, was, just where we leave the Fort Erie road to go to Crystal Beach.
Old Mr. Baxter preached to the Indians on the Grand River Reserve for many years, and could tell many interesting stories of his sojourn among them.
He used to tell of the convert who came to him, with a hymn of his own composition which he wanted sung at their next meeting. It was:
“Go On, Go On, Go On,
Go On, Go On, Go On, Go On.”
I hear there were eight stanzas of eight lines each, and the lines were all like these two.
The monotony of the life among them and perseverance required to pursue it were well exemplified in the “poem.” Doubtless a few of Welland’s oldest residents may remember the tall, spare form of the old pioneer preacher, and his wife. They spent their declining years in the home of their son-in-law, Dr. J. W. Schooley.
The First Methodist Church in that section was built of logs, on the hill not far from the cemetery.
The present structure long known as “The Memorial Church,” from the tablet to the victims of the Battle of Ridgeway, June2, 1866, succeeded this.
One of the features of those early days were the singing schools. Almost any of father’s generation in that section would be to mention Elon Tupper and the “schools” he conducted in those days. Ridgeway church had a good choir in those early days, and one of the first organs, a tiny one of course, but mind you, there was music in them, nevertheless. Elon Tupper’s scholars all learned to sing by note, and to sing the grand old hymns and anthems with expression. Every word sung either by soloist; quartette or chorus had to be distinct.
The quartette of Ridgeway church, two of the Gorham girls, Elmon Dickout and Frank Schooley, were quite famous, even singing at Brantford, a long way from home in those days. They sang the beautiful old ballads, as well as sacred music, if indeed those old folk songs may not also be classed as “sacred.”
Sometimes Uncle George Morgan would bring his choir down from Port Colborne. It seems as if as I write I can hear his tenor sweet and clear, as a silver bell. My father’s baritone-it seems as if they carried the melody of the other voices. To attend one of the practices they conducted was surely educational, Over and over again, each stanza of a hymn would be sung, changing the expression till so that the words and music harmonized. How angry Uncle George was at some of the choir when they sang “Antioch” and in the repeat be heard, “And won, and won-ders of His Grace.” Are you folks singing English, or what? he asked mildly; then over and over they sang the strain, “And wonders, wonders of His Grace.”
Some of these old-fashioned anthems were taboo to him, because of their disregard of this matter, and one could fancy the story which “Josiah Allen’s Wife” tells of how the juvenile choir shocked the congregation by repeatedly and emphatically announcing that “Even Solomon, in all his glory was not arrayed,”-could never have been told of his choir for that anthem would not have been included in their “repertoire.”
Beyond the pretty little village of Ridgeway, just a short mile is the battlefield. The bullet marks may still be seen on the Athoe house. Along the lake shore is the ruins of the old Windmill to which the early settlers brought their tiny grists of precious wheat, for miles through the forest, or down the lake in canoes, hollowed from big logs from as far east as Long Point.
The old Alexander home is, I believe, a kind of summer hotel.
Crystal Beach Park has replaced the sand dunes and swamp, the valueless “lake front,” of the farms of old times.
Few-ah so few-of the descendents of the brave, true simple kindly men and women who hewed homes for themselves, and as they hoped their families, remain on those old homesteads.
Do we all hear the voice which bids us remove our shoes from our feet, of this ground whereon we stand is holy-made so by the toil, the privation, the courage, the love of these whose blood flows through our veins.
A battlefield-aye, verily.
And why we do honor, and rightly so, to the brave who counted, not their lives too dear a sacrifice for their country’s safety-our soldier dead-let us not forget that this fair land owes a debt, thus far in our history, too scantily acknowledged, to those whose whole life was a sacrifice, in order that we might enjoy the fruit of their labors.
The Welland Tribune and Telegraph
20 May 1926
By
META SCHOOLEY LAWS
Margaret Alexander Sloan
So many with whom the writer chatted on a recent visit to the home neighborhood, expressed their pleasure that old times, old scenes and old friends had been brought vividly before their mind’s eye through these “Point Abino letters.”
A friend who, like myself, was in childhood a frequent visitor at the Sloan home, said “I could just see Washington Sloan as I read the article.”
The accompanying picture of the Alexander home was taken by a nephew.
Mrs. Zachariah Teal (Nancy Alexander) and one of Mary Alexander Schooley’s sons are the persons standing at the corner.
The house had been sadly modernized. Too bad these old houses could not be preserved in their natural state. There are few, indeed, of them left now.
West of Port Colborne, near Morgan’s Point, is another almost a duplicate of the Alexander home. It is the old Fares homestead. The lake had encroached upon the shore at this point, for the well is now some twenty rods from shore. It, like the Sloan home on the Point, of which we hope to have a snap some day, has not been inhabited for years.
The Alexander home, on the other hand, has seldom been unoccupied. What stories those old walls could tell of the days when Robert Alexander and his family lived there. It was the social centre of the neighborhood, for the proverbial Scotch hospitality was true to traditions in that home.
After their marriage two of the girls lived in Ridgeway; Annie (Mrs. Wilson) and Mrs. Teal, whose daughter passed away recently. Annie’s grandchildren still live in the neighborhood I believe-the last of the race. Her only daughter, Jean, was a beautiful singer and her voice strong and clear as a silver bell, and sweet withal, is one of my early memories of Ridgeway church.
Another daughter was Mrs. Lee Haun, whose husband, in partnership with Archibald Dobbie, operated a large foundry at “The Bridge,” as Humberstone village was then called. Only one of the girls, Clara, Mrs. Stoddard, spent her life out of the neighborhood entirely.
The other picture of “Auntie Sloan” and her brother John was taken on the porch of the Sloan home on the Fort Erie road, which was easily the prettiest place around. Beautiful trees and shrubs were (are still) around it, and a vine-covered arbor in the front yard was most inviting, for almost any summer afternoon Washington Sloan with a book sat there expecting company, and rarely was he disappointed.
A Presbyterian clergyman, resident in Ridgeway, often walked the 2 1/2 miles for a chat with him, and considered himself well repaid for the effort. The squire could talk fluently and well (for there is a difference) on the topic of the day, and was well read, almost an authority on British and American history. Auntie’s suppers were a drawing-card, too. We children often wandered into the arbor, too. He was very fond of us, and always had a story to tell. When I was ready to go home often he would put a book into my hand with “the rest of that story and more like it, is in that book.” Once he marked several pages in “Knight’s History of England” for me. He always asked questions when the book was returned, to assure himself that it had been read.
The snap-shot is very like Auntie. She outlived her husband many years. Once when cousin and I visited her she looked up at his picture on the living-room wall and said to us, “Every night brings me one day nearer to meeting him again.” And at another time wished us “happiness like her’s-but not so many lonely years.”
Her brother John never married. After years of wandering all over the New England States he came home-to Margaret-to die. The snap was taken one beautiful afternoon-the next morning he was “away,” and Auntie was again alone.
It required a great deal of persuasion to induce her to leave the farm home where she had worked so hard and been so happy, but she spent the last winter of her life with her sister Nancy.
Few indeed of the old faces greet us in Ridgeway church today, and it is surprising how many of those best remembered were connected with the old lady whom we all called Auntie.
Rain or shine, the little bay team and the high old democrat wagon drove by Maple Grove Farm. Often have I climbed up on the front seat beside Uncle, for he seemed to expect to pick me up at the gate of Maple Grove Farm.
Their niece presided at the organ; her husband was choir leader; another niece and their adopted daughter sang in the choir, and every pew was filled with their friends.
The dear old days! We cannot go back to them. Perhaps-no surely, it is well that we cannot-but one wonders what will give to the young people today the inspiration that those people gave us. They were never hurried. Sometimes, looking back, their lives seem monotonous, yet they were not without purpose, and achievement. We know that they bequeathed to us something. What was it?-that stimulates us to our best effort and gives us courage to persevere in these days when life, social and economic, is so complicated. And again we ask, have we, this something to pass on to those who shall follow us? Are we, in these days of keen competition, holding fast to the Beacon by which their lives were charted. We travel in a faster craft, but our goal is the same as theirs.
“Auntie” always had a light in her window. In the old home on the lake shore it guided the ship-wrecked sailors on that wild night of which we write some time ago to food and warmth and shelter and loving care. Other windows might be darkened as we drove homeward on cold winter nights, but from her’s the bright shaft beamed across the road, and father would say, “See! We’re almost home, now.”
All through the mist of years the lights of those homes twinkle, or is it the light from the Long Home which they have reached and to which they beckon us-they who served “their day and generation”-one of their loving phrases-so well, that you and I must do and be our best to maintain the high standard they reached and kept. M.S.L.
The Welland Tribune and Telegraph
6 May 1926
By
META SCHOOLEY LAWS
The writer is not quite ready to be classed among the “old-timers.” However, the family to which she belongs was one of the first to settle in the county. One of her choicest possessions is a copy of a letter dated April 29, 1788, written by the Quakers of Hardwick, Sussex County, New Jersey, introducing one Asa Schooley to the commanding officer of Niagara Garrison.
The first Schooley homestead is now part of Cherry Hill Golf Links. In the early days a log meeting house was built on this farm. It is a far cry from those sturdy, perhaps somber pioneer folk, clad in Quaker garb to the gay throng who frequent the fields now.
Stories of these old days have been my delight as long as memory goes back.
Rehearsing some stories while chatting with “ye editor” a request to put one of them on paper was acceded to promptly. But the pen wanders for stories, grave, gay, tragic, intermingle-and the faces of long ago-the men and women who enjoyed grandmother’s hospitality in my childhood days, and who figured in these events of an all too nearly forgotten time, pass and repass, and one ceases to wonder at the difficulty which old people have in coming directly to the point when recruiting the experiences of their youth.
Point Abino, our American friends who have taken possession of the beautiful grove and beach for their summer homes will persist in saying “Abino.”
Their pronunciation grates on one’s ear-Abino-the “a” broad in “father”-is the one always used by the “old folk”-and they surely knew. How different the well-kept road of today, the present approach to the park from the highway from the road through the marsh nearly always under water through which we rode with father as children.
The marsh had not then been drained though the first attempt toward that had been made in a deep ditch on each side of the narrow road and a cross ditch near the end of the marsh.
A ride over this road when the water came up to the box of the buggy and father allowed the horse to choose his own footing lest we come to grief in the ditch is the writer’s first memory of Point Abino.
Cranberries grew plentifully in the marsh. The pickers waded for them. The grove was beautiful. The majestic trees, the clumps of juniper, the wild flowers.
The road wound among the trees to the beach.
Here was the stone house where the Sloans lived. A few fishermen’s cottages and shanties for the workers in the sand pit, which was not a pit at all, but rather a cave formed by removing sand from the side of the big dune.
A long (for those days) pier was built. It is in ruins now. The beach is much wider in these days for one can wade around the last “crib.”
Squire Sloan was interested in this sand business. We shall speak of him later. A tall erect man, with glowing beard, white as snow and piercing eyes was an associate. “What’s the matter with folks,” he complained, one day. “They call me “old man Wells,” and I’m only 70,” and he tightened the rein and raced his beautiful chestnut team down the road to vent his annoyance, at the insinuation for his heart was young and the years were no weight.
Even in those early days a few Buffalo families spent the summer at the lake; the Pildens and Seals-these joined in the social life of the community for the rush of the twentieth century was not in evidence. People had time to enjoy each other’s society in the country even in summer time.
West of the point on the bread level beach was one of the first prize fight arenas. These fights were arranged in Buffalo and the crowds came over in tugs. There were no paid managers; no admission fee to this open-air arena-“60 years ago”-said the old man who told the story.
There was plenty of betting and big crowds. It was “fight to a finish”; no “rounds” agreed upon; first blood courted, and the fighters were bare-handed.
The old gentleman recalled one fight between Price and Kelly in which one of these was killed or died of wounds. The last big fight was between Bradley and Raukins. They were Irishmen. The Buffalo and Goderich railway was building then and all the Irishmen working in the big gravel pit near Ridgeway, on the left hand side of the Fort Erie road just west of the village threw down their shovels and “cleared” for the Point, the day of the fight. Whiskey was plentiful and free and soon every one was fighting. Sheriff Hobson came over from Welland with a “posse” and stopped the fight.
On the same beach an evangelist used to come over from the city, and he, too, gathered crowds around him by his fiery eloquence; standing on a rude platform at the foot of the dune and surrounded by a great crowd who sat on the sand or on rude benches of driftwood, he thundered against the sins of the people and hurled at them the judgment of the Almighty if they persisted in iniquity. These meetings followed the “dark day”-the solar eclipse of 18-(?) which struck terror into the hearts of these simple, earnest people.
Contrasting these scenes with today, our thoughts turn to Bryant’s beautiful lines:
Are they here, the dead of other days,
And did the air of this fair solitude
Once stir with life and burn with passion.
With winter, passes the present solitude of Point Abino, the beach, the grove, the sand-works.
Instead of the pioneers and the “Paddies,” the construction gangs, of those days, are the restless, pleasure seekers of this twentieth century, seeking in this beautiful spot recreation as did the crowds of the “dear old days”-for though time hurries on, people, now as then, continue the unceasing quest for thrills, excitement, pleasure-or is it content?
The Welland Tribune and Telegraph
25 March 1926
By
META SCHOOLEY LAWS
Two minutes silence pervades the whole civilized world this morning; two minutes cessation of the busy whirl of life-for contemplation –of what? Of the greatest boon for which the weary world may hope-Peace-greatest? Yes, for peace is a love in activity.
How seldom has peace reigned over all the earth. Perhaps never, since, to hear the Angel’s song:
Unwilling kings obeyed, and sheathed the battle blade,
And called their bloody legions from the field.
In silent awe they wait, and close the warrior’s gate.
Nor know to Whom, their homage thus they yield.
Even today, the clash of arms breaks the silence that we feign would maintain.
Peace-what is it?
Is it simply a negative quantity? Does it merely mean cessation from war? Is it because we hold that to be the meaning of the word that we celebrate today as Armistice Day rather than Peace Day?
Because an armistice is only a cessation of hostilities, and often agreed upon and maintained in order that opposing forces may prepare for more vigorous onslaught.
Is that all the meaning of the day? God forbid.
Yet, all we dare hope for is to prolong the armistice from day to day, from year to year-while the nations learn that peace is as virile, as powerful as is war. That with the same ardor that we, calling ourselves followers of the Prince of Peace, bend our energies toward the preparation for war and its prosecution.
The Great War whose toll of life and property was so enormous that we continue year after year to celebrate its close, opened the eyes of the world, nor only to the horror but to the futility, in large measure, of all the heroism and sacrifice and sorrow.
It was fought as “a war to end wars,” yet the combined force of the League of Nations has, again and again, been strained to the utmost to prevent another cataclysm-and has been thus far powerless to prevent war.
Yet the increasing influence which that great league possesses, gives to us a brighter ray of hope as we celebrate today.
But of Peace, for which we all yearn, is to be realized there must be direct effort made to attain it.
As a nation, we must educate ourselves in the pursuit of peace.
Suppose that, with the same singleness of purpose, governments should direct the wealth of the nations and the energies of their people, for even one year to developing the arts of peace, as was expended in those awful years, 1914-1918-what benefits would accrue. How poverty and distress would disappear before the progress of Peace and her train!
But alas! Every nerve is strained in the effort to rebuild war’s devastation, and the Arts of Peace, the industrial life of the world lies crippled under the feet of the God of War-the insatiable pitiless god to whom we have sacrificed our best.
But from the hearths of the desolated homes, dearer and more defined is rising the demand that wars shall cease.
More and more forcefully and logically the men and women are working for Peace.
They are discovering that a peaceful attitude of mind on the part of the nation has not been cultivated, for the people are the nation: the boys and girls of today, the citizens of tomorrow.
Our histories pass over with a paragraph or two at best, the great legislators, philanthropists, inventors, and all their ilk, and devote page after page to the great military heroes of the nation.
What has made Britain great? War or commerce? Does the Anglo-Saxon race occupy the van of civilization because of prowess in war, or because of its great scientific discoveries, revolutionizing as it has the industrial life of the world.
Do the textbooks of Ontario sufficiently emphasize the social and industrial leaders and their work?
Did the War of 1812-15, a war whose supposed cause has really never been settled-did that war play the prominent part in building this country that the relative number of chapters devoted to it, in comparison with all other happenings in our history, would indicate?
The battlefield of Ridgeway is marked that future Canadians may know of the sacrifice made there, and it is well.
Is the site of the first pioneer home in Bertie Township so marked? And yet, who shall measure the heroism, the sacrifice which not for a day, but for a life time, those men and women, the builders of the country, yes, of the nation, endured.
So, on this Armistice Day let us, while we give to those who sacrificed so much during the war, the close of which we celebrate, all the honor due them. But if our thoughts are led more and more exclusively to the pursuit of the peace for which they struggled, their sacrifice may not have been made vainly.
“If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep,
Though poppies blow
In Flander’s Field.”
The Welland Tribune and Telegraph
11 November 1926
By
META SCHOOLEY LAWS
At least two old landmarks disappear from Humberstone Village in connection with the construction of the new Canal.
One, once the home of Wm. Mellanby Esq., has been razed. It was a rambling log house, weather-boarded, and stood just west of the Welland Railway Station (7) on the Fort Erie Road. Wm. Mellanby was a bachelor who was possessed of considerable property along the Grand River below Cayuga. He held the controlling interest in the gypsum mines, operated there in early times and closed shortly after his death. Scarcely a vestige of the enterprise which was his chief interest remains, either in the village where he made his home, or at Gypsum Mines.
The old wharf is decayed. The timbers of the mine roof are rotting and no one dare now visit them, though a practically inexhaustible quantity of the mineral is still embedded there. The many new uses, which have been discovered in late years, have led to new mines being opened and operated at Lythmore and Caledonia, but the expense of making the old mines under gravel and earth, preclude the possibility of Wm. Mellanby’s life work being carried on by anyone.
The other landmark is the big stone house west of the present canal bridge.
A beautiful Virgina creeper covered the west wall, clambering over the very chimneys.
In autumn the gorgeous tints of the vine made the old building one of the beauty spots of the village.
It was an old homestead home, owned by the late John Kinnaird, but whether it was the Kinnaird Homestead, the writer does not know.
It was occupied at the time of digging the first canal by a group of the rough workmen, and later for a little while by some Italians, when the Cement Plant was opened at Port Colborne, nearly 20 years ago, according to the back-file column of a recent T.&T.
But though some of the windows were not barricaded to the door unlocked, the village kiddies never made a playhouse of the place.
We were driving past the place one day and someone remarked that the place seemed to be shunned, though it was so close to the sidewalk of the main street. Father told us that there was a story of a huge blood-spot on the floor of one of the large rooms downstairs, and that in the old canal days a fight had taken place in this room in which more than one was killed, and that the place had been shunned ever since that time, the memory of the bloody deed practically tabooing the place as haunted.
Of old-time construction, its timbered roof and thick stone walls seemed as though it would defy time. Even the old roof of hand-made shingles, moss-grown, seemed unbroken until these summer days of 1926.
The heavy blasts which test the foundation of all buildings in that locality shook the old stone house. The roof caved in, and last week, the walls, now deemed a menace, were destroyed by dynamite.
Back of the old building the little boys had built a shanty, which they used as a bathing house, disdaining to use the old house, one would have thought so convenient.
One morning they found a group of men, described by those mystic letters, B.O.T.A. in possession of their shack, so that the old stone house would seem to have been feared by innocent childhood and erring manhood alike.
Perhaps the vine deprived of its support will cover the unsightly heap of stones which remain as it did the wall of the old house with its checkered history.
The mill which Isaac Schooley operated is gone. Elias Augustine’s wagon shop is silent.
The Humberstone Shoe Factory occupies the site of the old Dobbie Foundry, and the once beautiful home of the Dobbies is slowly but surely passing into decay. Here, too, the vines try valiantly to hide the ravages of time and neglect.
Some few of the homes of the pioneer business men of the village have been kept in good repair by their present owners.
Old business blocks have been rebuilt; some new ones stand where a few years ago were vacant lots, or worse, shacks.
The new school, and the paved street attest that Humberstone Village is following the advice of the stage to “Look forward, not behind.”
Welland Tribune and Telegraph
19 August 1926
By
META SCHOOLEY LAWS
Most of us remember the furore created by Mrs. Pankhurst and her daughters, and the “militant suffragettes” movement which they so energetically aided and abetted.
The agitation for “votes for women” in the cities and towns of the neighboring republic, and in some few of our own cities is also well within our memory.
One of the active workers for the enfranchisement of women was visiting her country aunt.
It was a busy day, butchering, and Aunt Em was trying her best to do two or three women’s work. She had helped with the milking, and with other outdoor chores. She had the afternoon before turned the grindstone while Uncle Joe ground the knives.
She had heard, “Em, where it this?” or “Em, would you mind helping me with that?” until her stock of patience generous though it was, was exhausted, and sat down for a “breathing spell.”
Aunt Emma, said her visitor looking up from the newspaper letter she was writing, “Don’t you think women should vote?” and Auntie replied more forcibly than elegantly, “For the land’s sake, no. If there is one thing in this world that men can do alone, let ‘em do it.”
If the number of electors who fail to exercise their franchise be noted, one is forced to conclude that there are still many “Aunt Ems” among our women.
One woman who has been somewhat prominent in public life, since women were enfranchised, was asked why she had never been associated with the suffragettes. Her reply was that there were so many doors wide open for service, that the closed one never concerned her, but she hastened to add, “since it is open, I shall accept as I may the responsibility and privilege offered.”
Many women agree with her. The arguments used were so shallow. Why should women make the fourth class of non-voters.
“Idiots, criminals, minors, women.”
Subject to the laws, working with men in establishing the nation’s chief institutions, the homes, active in social service, proving herself man’s intellectual equal in college and university, there was no logic whatever in depriving her of a share in the government, to which she must submit.
Still weaker was the contention that woman’s vote would only lead to duplication since, of course, she must vote with her husband or boss, father or brother. The “Lord of Creation” theory.
But one still hears this latter sentiment of course Mrs. Brown will vote as “he” does! But why, “of course.”
Which brings us to this question is the franchise-the epitome of all the civil rights of a free people, merely an instrument by means of which Mr. Brown “kills Mr. Jones’ vote.”
Is this ballot a mere scrap of paper, upon which you and I put an X once in four or five years, with no more personal thought than a child give to the marks he makes in his sand-pile with his chubby fingers?
Is it fair that this precious heritage bought, as it has been, by blood, should be in the hands of men, or women, who have neither thought nor care for the land and whose destiny they, with the ballot in their hand control?
“With a great price obtained in this freedom,” most of us realize, or think we do, and yet, what petty trivial circumstances sway us, in the use of it! How little we study at first hand the questions involved!
The outstanding lesson of the great war was this. Not one of us belong to ourselves or our family, but to the nation, to the great empire, of which Canada is no mean part. No right, however sacred, but must be subservient to the right the nation has to claim our service, even unto death.
Theoretically, at least, personal interests and party advantage was lost in the great issue of national achievement.
The fires of patriotism burned high and because women gave so unselfishly and so unreservedly not only her time to war service, but her husband, sons, dearer to her than her own life, she was entrusted with the franchise, that in the days of reconstruction she might serve her country still.
But, in her first use of the ballot, the most personal of all sentiments was emphasized to her mother love, and she could not and did not see but one side to the issue-upon which she was asked to pronounce.
Indeed, to her there was no issue, she just voted, everyone did, blindly.
But the din of battle no longer resounds in our ears.
We are beginning to think, to ask questions-what mean ye, by those things?
Why is John a Conservative, Jim a Liberal, Joe an “Independent,” and it is not enough for the woman of to-day and her sons and daughters that John’s forbears were always conservative, and Jim’s grandfather was a follower of George Brown, and Joe’s family voted for the man?
Why? Well, either for a reason he will not tell or one which he can give clearly and concisely according as he is a part of the ballot market or non-partisan.
We ask today, we women, what is Conservatism? or Liberalism? What part have these parties played in the up building of Canada? What is their policy for her development?
Questions which surely can be answered, but can John or Jim answer them? And, if not, why not?
We boast of our educational system, but what is there in the curriculum of the public school in which 70 per cent of our boys and girls get all their education as we say, what is there to say to them-This course is but to fit you for the great School of Life? What to impress upon them their duties as citizens?
Certainly, there are a few pages at the back of our history text books dealing in a very inadequate way with our system of government, but not one word which says: “You, Tommie, you, Mary, have your part to play.”
We would not dream of setting Tommie to drive a binder, or Mary to use the sewing machine, without instructing them in the management of these, but we set them at work in their part in the great machinery of democratic government without any conception of the importance of the part they play.
Yet the part the people play is the most vital.
Democratic governments are inadequate or unsatisfactory largely because mainspring of the whole machine, the will of the people, is weak, inadequate, unsatisfactory.
John and Mary get their introduction to citizenship when father, an ardent partisan sees to it that their name is on the list a year or so before it should be.
The ballot market has been established and Dame Rumour insists that it plays no small part in determining issues.
The birthright of the citizen sold for a mess of pottage. Who was most culpable, Esau who sold, or Jacob who bought, a good subject for debate.
The best argument ever advanced to our knowledge against women participating in politics is this: “It is no fit place for women.” Well, if that is true, it is no fit place for men, either, and the sooner men stand aside and let women clean house the better. Men seem to be as averse to national housecleaning as they are to the periodical upheaval in which we women delight to plunge our homes, when fresh air and sunlight come in contact with every household article and moth and rust are eliminated.
To us women, personal and party advantage must be subservient to national advancement.
We weigh national questions not as they affect parties or leaders but as they affect homes. Today, we ask not so much is this man’s right or the other as “What is the bearing of this great moral question on my home.” My home is one of the units, the sum total of which comprise Ontario. We, the inmates of that home and those like it, are the nation.
Has the O.T.A. been a source of uplift or degradation to these homes?
People are saying all sorts of things. We women are not blind. We know whether our boy has “a bottle on the hip every time he goes out” or not. We know whether our daughters are drinking, etc, etc, etc.
We will shut our ears to all the “they say” and use our own facilities given for that purpose.
We must, because even the leaders differ. Who shall decide when doctors disagree. We must.
The Welland Tribune and Telegraph
18 November 1926
By
META SCHOOLEY LAWS
Last week the Christmas number of the paper was published. This is a fast age is it not? But in the midst of Christmas preparations, we women are in no such hurry for the day to come and go. We are not pessimistic enough to agree with those who declare that the spirit of Christmas-the real old idea that prevailed the day in the “yesterdays” is lost.
Yet we must admit that too often the day is commercialized. That the monetary value which few set upon nearly everything does sometimes mar the enjoyment of the day, Christmas time of all times of the year ought not to be a dread. Yet one hears, now and again, this very thought expressed. Far too often to our children, we allow the day to centre upon Santa Claus, as the embodiment of the Christmas spirit, rather than around the babe in the manger with the wondering shepherds, the adoring magi-the guiding star and the angelic song.
This year in many of our Sunday schools, especially in the cities, the children brought gifts for those less favored than they. Thus they are brought closer to the real meaning of the day-the birthday of Him who is our greatest gift, and who “though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich.”
Preparation for Christmas with us seems the same as we remember in the days of childhood-but have we lost in these days of hurry and rush and enforced (?) self-seeking, that which makes the day stand out in our memory so clearly as does no other time of the year?
In the old homestead so often referred to in these letters, Christmas was the family gathering day, but it was the children’s day. Christmas eve we were seldom alone, but always before-“The stockings were hung by the chimney with care
In the hope that Saint Nicholas soon would be there.”
Mother told us the wonderful story. She had a gift in that direction, and as we leaned against her knee, we could see how
“The cattle around Him all slumbering lay
The little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay.”
` The whole scene was real to us. Then we sang a Christmas carol to the accompaniment of the little melodeon, and stole away to bed and dreams. Ah, these are the happiest dreams today, and the chief joy of childhood is once again to be in imagination and listen. It is not a personal experience-it is common to us all. Will our children have such memories to cherish?
Then we used to hear the stories of the old-time Christmas’. Of the feasts when the nearest grocery store was at Chippawa, and was visited once a year. When around the big fireplace in the log house, the Yule log of the home across the sea was recalled, or stories of the journey through the forest and in the canoes were told by our U.E.L. ancestors. They had nothing else than the great gift around which to centre their enjoyment of Christmas day.
Nor have we, aught else worth while, aught else that shall endure. So in the midst of the struggle in which we find ourself, and through the din and mists which the complex and often unsatisfactory conditions of this year of our Lord, 1926, we too catch a glimpse of the star, and from afar follow its guidance to the Babe “wrapped in swaddling clothes and cradled in a manger,” and we present our gifts, as we worship or we stand with the shepherds on the lonely hillside, and catch a glimpse of the angels and hear their song, and as we listen, join in the carol which re-echoing down through the ages has cheered and comforted and inspired all who wait for the complete fulfillment of the prophecy of the angels strain-
“Glory to God in the highest-
On earth, peace and goodwill.”
The Welland Tribune and Telegraph
23 December 1926
By
META SCHOOLEY LAWS
The stone fireplace of the kitchen in the big hewed- log home that was the second house built on the homestead remained when we were children-indeed it fell but a few years ago.
The iron crane was in place-the big fire-irons, two of them, were intact, and grandmother still used some of the smaller pots and kettles, and the long-handled spider, that were a part of the culinary equipment of those far-off days.
It was Thanksgiving eve-let me see-more than forty-five years ago! Can it be possible that we, too, are growing old.
The Thanksgiving dinner had been prepared-the fowls were ready for the big oven, rows of pies, big sponge cakes and fruit loaves, jellies, sauces, pickles, brown and white bread-a big batch of each. Mrs. Apartment Dweller of today would be sure she had entered a bakery could she have entered that pantry!
But grandma pushed her “specs” up on her forehead and shook her head-“They are not like the old bake oven used to make them,” she remarked-and no oven can roast fowl like we used to cook them on “the spil” before that old fireplace.
We children, were always ready for a story of the old days, and grandma in a reminiscent mood, so we crowded around her while she told us how the Thanksgiving dinner was cooked when father and his brothers and sisters were children; of how the fire was built. Grandfather burned the brick for it himself. Then the coals raked out, and bread and pies and “stir-cakes” were baked. Maple sugar or syrup was nearly always used in her bakery then; but at Thanksgiving or Christmas some of the cakes were made with loaf sugar-scraped, of course. (Who does not know that Sugar Loaf Hill, the big dune just west of Port Colborne was so named because its shape is similar to an old-fashioned sugar loaf.)
Cranberries from the near-by marsh, dried fruits stewed with maple sugar – these were the bill of fare. There was no canned fruit in those days, though the wild berries and other fruits were preserved, or as grandma said, “put down in big stone jars for occasional treats.”
We could see its long deal table, with its home-spun linen cloth, the benches on each side of it-a few wooden chairs-while nearby the old crippled uncle rocked in his arm chair until the feast was ready. Then his quavering voice repeated the opening verses of the great Thanksgiving Psalm,-“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits.” And we children used to wonder if the old man, whom we had never seen but whose chair is still in our home as this is written, feeble and crippled as he was, unable to move without help, could have been, as grandma described him-cheerful and thankful.
Indians were frequent visitors in those days. They made baskets for the settlers and on this day an old squaw came to the door and shared the feast. She would not sit at the table, but crouching in front of the fireplace ate, and with an “ugh” of satisfaction, picked up her load of baskets and went her way.
In the evening the boys and girls gathered from far and near-the Ellsworths, Haines, Edsalls, Sherks-and who not, and the rafters rang with their merry laughter. Someone was sure to bring a fiddle, and the evening sped away to the music of Money Musk or The Irish Washer Woman, and others of those old time dances-father, a little boy, watching them.
We heard steps on the front verandah, and hurried with mother and grandma to greet them-aunt and cousins, who came to the old home for Thanksgiving-the evening and its stories in the big parlor decked with pressed autumn leaves, and the bright red berries of mountain ash or the bar-berry shrub. Then we children listened to the Thanksgiving Psalm as grandma read it, and father lead in a hymn, “The Lord’s my Shepherd.”
It is Thanksgiving time again. The dear old home has passed into stranger hands. In the quiet Ridge cemetery grandfather and grandmother have long been sleeping. Their children and their friends, who used to share with them their feasts, have followed too.
We gather- we, the third generation of this pioneer stock, the men and women who laid the foundation of this banner county of the banner province of the Great Dominion. And we gather around the table laden with the day’s feast, we, too, bow our heads and repeat reverently, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits.
Chief among these is that our lot is cast in this great land, of whose wealth of possibilities, but the fringe has been touched, but the chiefest of all that in our veins flow the blood of the pioneers; in our hearts are their ideals; in our keeping is the land they loved and cherished.
The Welland Tribune and Telegraph
4 November 1926
By
META SCHOOLEY LAWS
Just at the fork of the Fort Erie Road and the road to Point Abino, is the farm, still known as the Schooley Homestead, though, alas no longer in the family’s hands-the old story.
In 1820, grandfather took his bride to the small log house, which was for many years their home.
There was a third member of the family, an old crippled uncle who sat in a chair with high rockers and broad arms.
For years he sat there, until the rockers wore down to the floor, and his elbows actually wore holes in the arms.
That chair is in the youngest grandson’s home today, the original rush seat still intact.
Furniture manufacturers long since discovered that it does not pay to make such furniture. It is “in restraint of trade.”
Although of Quaker extraction, grandfather gave the site for a little Anglican Church that was built in the maple grove. However, the necessary funds to pay for the building were never raised, and it was never dedicated, though services were held in it for a few months.
Eventually he bought the building and it served as his son Burton Schooley’s first home and afterwards degenerated into an implement shed.
Burton Schooley taught in the “Garden Ward” school in the then little town of Welland for many years, and will be remembered by the “old timers.”
The first school house of the neighborhood also was built on that farm. One of father’s early teachers was Miss Bethiah Beam, whose brother, J.F. Beam, was Welland County’s most prominent pioneer advocate of a good roads system.
Fifty hears ago the present stone school house was built and equipped.
It was provided with plenty of (for those days) of good blackboards, space maps, globes, and some other pieces of “machiner”, one illustrating the relative position of the planets and their place in the solar system, was especial marvel to us children.
There was even a small library of well selected books.
Elmon Dickout and W.F. Schooley were mainly responsible for this complete (for those days) equipment.
Inspector Ball, after the various classes had given him an exhibition of their skill (?) in simultaneous reading (his pet hobby) and a few minor accomplishments, would seldom fail, in the little address he gave us at parting to compliment the teacher and pupils of No. 12 Bertie, on their advantages.
The scene is very vivid as I write.
Miss Mary Cameron was the dignified teacher, and seventy pupils filled the seats to overflowing.
How many of that “Fourth Class” who filled the long platform at the back of the room, where we always stood for recitation, remember those days? The three girls have never lost trace of each other. One lives in Hamilton, one on the old Dickout homestead and the other holds the pen.
Some of the “first things” of Bertie Township still centre in that neighborhood. The creamery on the Sherk farm is one of them.
By the way, the first “creamery” in Welland County was built on the John Misener Farm, along the Forks Road, a mile north of Marshville. Like many other ventures, it was a few years ahead of time, and failed.
It was a small building and is still standing. The rusty old boiler is the only thing to suggest that it was ever anything but a shed.
The Ellsworths, Zavitzs and Cullers and one family of Wilsons were the prominent Quaker families of the Point neighborhood. The Edsalls and Ellsworths came to Bertie about the same time, as did our family.
Vague stories of meetings in the old “Quaker Meeting House” referred to in the first of these letters, tease-they are so vague.
Every “First Day” they gathered –the little devout band.
One morning they sat there-the men on the rude benches on one side of the room, the women on the other, quiet, solemn, waiting for “The Spirit” to move someone to address them.
The door was ajar, for the day was hot. At last a wandering dog sniffed at the door, pushed it open wide and ran up to the front.
“Put him out, and give him a good kick that he may stay out,” solemnly ordered one of the Ellsworth men.
The spell of silence having been broken, the gathering rose and went to their homes.
But oftener, one or other of these grave pioneers would be “given” a message ere they dispersed.
Thirty-seven years ago, some few representatives of the old “Quaker” stock still gathered occasionally at Black Creek in the little old meeting house on the bank of the Niagara River, but the meetings were discontinued entirely shortly after that.
There is still a group of these splendid people in Pelham Township and the county has not worthier residents.
It would be well if the integrity which characterized these folk-their “yea was yea, their nay, nay”-had descended in larger measure to us, who with just pride, point to our connection with them, Birthright Quakers. Ah, me-we have sold our birthright too many of us and for less than “a mess of pottage.” But these were also the days of the “itinerant” Methodist preacher.
There was no church near, but services were held in one and another of the little log homes of the settler.
Grandmother would take the baby in her arms and putting two other children, one before and one behind her on the saddle, ride to MacAphies (that spelling may not be correct) or to the little church on Lyons Creek, along the bridle paths for “quarterly occasion”.
MacAphie’s was situated near the river at Bridgeburg.
Sometimes they would go to Lundy’s Lane, but she never ventured that far alone.
Their nearest store in the early days was at Chippawa. Once a year that trip was made. Sometimes chains were dragging behind the sleigh to frighten the wolves. On one occasion the wolves came to the end of the long chain. How we children liked to hear that story! Tea was a luxury for occasional use. Herb teas were the usual drink, and grandmother often remarked that our health would be better if we adhere to those old-time drinks.
She often told us too, of a funeral procession meeting the sleigh of Governor Simcoe whose residence was near the Falls. The great man’s equipage drew off to the side of the road in the deep snow, and he and his party sat with uncovered heads till the last sleigh passed them.
By the way, the Governor’s Welland County Home was in a good state of preservation until 1887 or “88. It was then in possession of a man named “Bell” Henry, and was totally destroyed by fire about that time. The Henry’s lived in the gate-keeper’s lodge for some little time after that, but there are no traces of the building at present. The city has swallowed it up.
How far we have wandered from Point Abino!
Two of grandmother’s daughters went west when they married, not to Manitoba you know, but to Middlesex, which was almost farther from Point Abino then, than Winnipeg is today, for modern conveniences of travel have almost annihilated distance.
On one of her rare visits to them, she travelled by boat from Buffalo to Port Stanley where “Uncle Isaac Sherk” met her. His brother Abraham lived in the vicinity we are talking about. That Sherk homestead has passed into other hands, too, but not into the possession of strangers.
On the return trip, chatting with the Captain, she told him that her home was just a mile from Point Abino, and the Captain offered, if the weather was propitious, to send her ashore there.
The wind was fair when they arrived off the Point, and the vessel lay to, while a boat conveyed grandmother and her baggage ashore.
This was not the Twentieth Century, and time schedules must have been very elastic.
On her way home, she passed the homes enumerate in the last letter, the first one being Auntie Sloan’s house and then Page’s. A few days ago a member of that family informed me that the first settler of the Ot-way Page’s was High Sheriff of the district and travelled to and fro from old Niagara to his little log home in the “wilderness”.
The Welland Tribune and Telegraph
27 April 1926
By
META SCHOOLEY LAWS
What a distinct disadvantage it is that the days of which we are attempting to write, are not emphasized more in what we call history!
For history purports to be the record of a nation’s development. Should not, therefore, the factors which have been most potent in national life, receive mention proportionate to their value?
Driving along a country road in Elgin County one day, a small monument at a cross-roads attracted my attention. Upon enquiry, I found that this stone marked the site of the first public building in the vicinity, a registry office. Why should not such places be so identified and how seldom is their memory perpetuated!
With this thought uppermost, these letters are penned. For the writer would fain pass on, if possible, the influence which has given to her own life a deeper interest and a broader perspective –the associations which cluster around Point Abino and the people who made the early history of that portion of Welland County.
When people talked of late springs, father always recalled, that on the 18th of April, 1870, his father drove across the lake to Buffalo, on the ice from “the Point,” and that two days later neighbors, the Sherks, made the same trip. “But they had to jump the horses over a four-foot crack in the ice, and so came back by the road.”
That winter closed in quite early in November, for it began to snow November the 10th and the snow stayed till late spring.
That date is accurate for it was the year of his marriage and he could make no mistake.
There was little formal entertaining in those days. But social intercourse seems to have been attached to as much of the work as possible.
Sheep-washing time early in May was a sort of picnic.
The men drove the sheep in one great flock to the mouth of the little creek that lazily crept into the lake. Once I remember some of the women accompanying them and we children went too, of course.
But, to return to the landmarks. We spoke of the old stone house. There are two of them in the vicinity. The big one just east of what is now “Crystal Beach” known generally as “The Clause House” which was the Alexander home. A sturdy Scotch pioneer was Mr. Alexander. His family are all gone now. The girls, all but one, married neighbor boys. The one son drifted away, but came back to die among the scenes of his boyhood.
Perhaps no woman was better known or loved in the neighborhood than the oldest of the Alexander girls, Margaret. “Auntie Sloan” she was, to all the countryside.
The Sloans lived in the stone house at the Point for many years after their marriage, and a volume might be written of them. It would be fascinating, too, if it aid justice to its subject.
He was an American, tall, with a rather straggly grey beard reaching nearly to his waist, and kindly, merry eyes. “The Squire” he was very fond of reading and owned by far the best library in those parts. But for “Auntie,” his business, after he left the stone house for the more pretentious farm home on the Fort Erie road, would have suffered severely, for she was the more energetic of the two.
There was always a light in the window of the stone house when a storm raged on the lake.
The story of how “Auntie” cared for one group of ship-wrecked sailors was told in these columns not many months ago. She stayed at home the day of the Battle of Ridgeway and fed and sheltered a group of the weary boys who fled from the Battle-field that day.
One of them was sorely wounded, and he remained in her care until his recovery. Afterward he opened a drug store at Port Colborne, and “Auntie” could never pay for anything at Charlie Lugsdin’s, and many a surprise parcel she found in her basket on arrival home; for she always had a chat with “her boy” when she made her infrequent trips to “The Bay” for the old people never went to Port Colborne, but to Gravelly Bay.
A younger sister of hers, Mrs. Jack Teal, was the only woman who stayed in Ridgeway June 2, 1866, and Grandma Schooley refused to leave her baking that day to go with the other frightened women. She, too, fed a group of the boys.
Even if it is a depression, perhaps it would be well to mention that the Fenians were frightened that day by the cattle breaking through the underbrush near the battlefield and ran back toward the Niagara River.
They imagined it was cavalry, else the tablet in the “Memorial Church” at Ridgeway which commemorates those who gave their lives in defense of their country that day, would have been much larger.
Visiting preachers sometimes made touching references to the names recorded on the simple marble slab. One grey-haired old man spoke with trembling voice of his chum “Malcolm McEchran, and we could almost see the stalwart young man cut down in his prime. Another referred to his intimacy with “Willie Temple” and we saw a gentler lad, winsome, clever, brave.
The memorial has been removed to the entrance Hall of the Church now, and near it hangs one, larger and more imposing-to the memory of those of the neighborhood who sacrificed their lives in the Great War. “Their names liveth forever.”
And in the Ridgeway Cemetery, in the old Quaker burying ground, and in other sadly neglected “God’s Acres,” lie the heroes and heroines of a life-long battle, fought and won against privation and loneliness and hardship beyond the imagination of us, who reap the benefit of their toil.
Too often we fear their heroism is forgotten, or lightly passed over, but their monument endures and shall endure, in fertile field and in the legacy which they have handed down to us who cherish their memory-a legacy of noble character of unselfish life-long devotion to the stern duty of laying truly and well the foundation for this fair county, in the banner province, of the great Dominion, the proudest possession of the British Empire.
“And are they dead whose noble arms
Lift thine on High?
To live in hearts we leave behind,
Is not to die.”
These words of the poet, Campbell, part of the inscription on the tablet in Ridgeway Memorial Church, may well be applied to these pioneers, as to the volunteers of ’66, and those of the Great War, for they all of them served to the uttermost the needs of their “day and generation.”
The Welland Tribune and Telegraph
1 April 1926
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