Results for ‘Historical MUSINGS’
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
By
META SCHOOLEY LAWS
The first volumes which the County Historical Society have published lie open before me as I write.
They are most interesting and should have a place in the library of each of us, in whose veins flow the blood of the men and women who wrestled this beautiful fertile country from the forest; who faced and overcame untold hardships, privation, danger, toil, loneliness-that you and I might reap the fruit of their labor in peace and plenty-yes, in what they would term luxury.
For, let us bear in mind, that the Battle of Ridgeway, June 2, 1866, was not only the only battle, was not even the most important battle fought on the soil of this fair country. Even Beaverdams, Lundy’s Lane and Chippawa, spectacular though they were, and important, playing their part, and no small one, in the history not only of this section but of the whole great Dominion, pale as in memory or imagination we recall or visualize the men and women whose whole lives were one long warfare; who enlisted, not under the glare and excitement of drum and fife and martial glory, but who-came in two’s and three’s; in families, in clans; sometimes, though rarely, in communities, and footsore and weary marched to and encamped in the wilderness which they purposed to conquer. Few indeed were they who lived to see their aim accomplished; but through the horrors of the hungry years-the fear of hostile Indians, and fierce wild beasts-they persevered, and we live in these beautiful surroundings, the site of their struggles. Shall we forget them? God forbid.
It is with this thought that the life-story of one such woman comes to pen today. She was not alone, but typical of those in her day, and many who may read this sketch owe, as does the writer, much of the best in them to her influence. It must be that we inherited qualities of mind and character, as well as the contour of our faces and the color of our eyes, from those who have gone before.
It was early in 1812. Some few years before that the McKays, among others, came to Humberstone. The Geady farm was their homestead. A little log cabin stood in the clearing, and a few stumpy acres were under cultivation. The mother was Christine Metlar; her people had settled in Pelham. How the acquaintance was formed, unfortunately, is not recorded. But perhaps the solder-pioneer had aided in building the military road which passed through that section and now forms a part of Provincial Highway No. 3, or one of its feeders, the old Canboro Road, the eastern section of Talbot Street, which in those early days connected this section with the far east-Detroit.
At any rate they married and around them was a family of sturdy boys and girls. But the war-cloud loomed up and Gilbert McKay buckled on his sword and bidding goodbye to wife and little ones, some of them mere babies, answered, as did all the men of his day, to his country’s call. He lived for his country-remember all these pioneers did that-and he went forth to die for it, if need be.
It was a last goodbye. After the war his sword was returned to the family and is now in the possession of a great-granddaughter.
Anna McKay was but nine years old, the oldest of the girls.
The mother and children struggled on for a few years, then she married John Steele, whose grandsons, Jefferson, O.L. and Chas. E., are well known in the county.
Anna kept house for her brothers until she was seventeen, then married J.B. Schooley, whose home was across the Fort Erie Road, little more than a trail then connecting the lake settlements. More than once has reference to her been made in these articles.
The little two-roomed cabin with its big stone fireplace and swinging crane, which J.B. had in readiness, was reached by ox cart. The old crippled uncle sat in the high home-made rocker awaiting them. The furniture, a few chairs and benches and tables, were home-made. Rough planks made the floor, but there was one luxury-glass windows.
The section was quite thickly settled and grandma told the hardships so casually and stressed the happiness of the sociability of those days, when real necessity bound people together in a sociability which was genuine. From the Indians who came to her home she learned the medicinal value of herbs, a stock of which she always dried and labeled.
The doctors were few and far between and her skill and knowledge was known for miles around. She grew flax and wove it for household linens. She carded and spun and wove the wool for dresses for herself and daughters, and made full-cloth for grandfather and the men. She helped rake and bind the grain. The little cabin in a few years was replaced by a huge-hewn log house, whose fireplace stood in the writer’s childhood just back of the “new house” built seventy years ago.
She was always interested in what she termed “the Lord’s work.” To her the minister towered head and shoulders above other men. For seventy-five years she was a member of the Methodist Church, and many a tale she told of the old circuit riders who were her most honored guests. Her home was the scene of many a service and she thought nothing of going to Morgan’s Point or MacAphie’s or even Lundy’s Lane with the baby in her arms and one child before her on the saddle and two others behind holding to her skirts. We make no such effort to go to “Quarterly Occasion” now.
When regular service was established at the Ridge, she rejoiced. Dear Grandma! Her eyes never got too weak for her to read the Psalms, or Revelations, or Wesley’s Hymns.
Well do we remember the occasion when she prescribed for the case of nerves with which she came in contact. “Dearie,” she said, “I can give you a cure, neverfailing, for I’ve tried it again and again-the Ninety-first Psalm: “He shall cover thee with his feathers and under His wings shall thou trust.” You knew the grand words. They were not mere words to her but the source of her strength through which in the toil of her early life, the sorrow and disappointment so much of which filled her later years, she kept serene and peaceful-just as the face in the picture taken fifty years ago or thereabouts.
Two of her daughters passed away in early womanhood. The rest of her children, four daughters and six sons, lived to grow old. Gilbert and Benjamin were among the first business men of Humberstone village. Two of the daughters pioneered in the west, now Middlesex county. The McKay brothers had sold the homestead and pioneered there some years before.
One of the girls knew by experience the early history of Humberstone township. On her 90th birthday, Grandma followed this daughter to her grave in the Overholt cemetery. She lived to be nearly ninety-five and in full possession of her mental facilities fell asleep. She had a personal interest in us all, her grandchildren and great-grandchildren-33 of the former and 27 of the latter then. She even knew the birthdays of most of us. Nor did she ever lose interest in life. She wanted to examine every piece of new machinery that came on the farm. Many years she had helped thresh with a flail. She could and did “rake and bind as fast as he could if the baby didn’t need to be looked after.” The cream separator was a marvel. She was always ready to admit the superiority of a new idea, demonstrated by this or that appliance, or to criticize its weak points, and she could find them if they existed.
She would contrast our winter supplies with her’s-vension and bear hams and pigeons. She cared little for squirrel, though she served it for dinner once to a visiting minister and his wife. The minister didn’t eat game of any kind, so grandfather was cautioned and warned to serve chicken from the platter. He did so the first and second helpings, but when the plate came back the third time with “yes, just a very small bit, if you please,” his memory lapsed and his guests were amazed to learn that they had eaten with too-evident relish the despised food. Grandma often laughed when she told how ill they were all afternoon, and never quite trusted grandfather with a culinary secret after that.
Then they made hundreds of pounds of maple syrup. She kept a few “loaves” of sugar for special occasions. Of course every one knows that “Sugar-loaf hill,” just west of Port Colborne was so named because it resembled in shape one of these sugar loaves.
Dried fruits or preserves in huge stone jars. She was one of the first to use glass jars, but was never wholly convinced that canning was the best method of keeping fruit for winter use. Her cheese would rival that of best factory grades of today. Her butter was always golden and firm, and kept sweet packed in stone jars in June for winter use.
Every grandchild had a quilt of her piecing. There could only have been the same number of hours in her day that we have, but how then did she do so much-bake and brew, milk and churn, sew and knit, spin and weave-and yet have time to respond to every call of a sick neighbor, for visiting and help in the field too, but not much after the boys grew up, she hastened to tell us.
Aye, there were many like her. Many of my readers could tell a similar life-story that illustrate so well the poet’s lines that –
| “A simple love and a simple faith |
| And a simple duty done- |
| Are truer torches to light to death |
| Than a whole world’s victory won.” |
Laura Secord was one of these. Her niece in telling the story of her memorable walk to Beaver Dams as it came from the heroine’s own lips, said in closing: “Aunt Laura never could understand why people should make such a “to-do” over her, because any woman of the neighborhood would have done the same; it came her way, that was all.”
All!! Their lives were so full of difficulties that they met and surmounted them quite as a matter of course. These women, and the husbands whose help-meets they were, made this country. We would not seem to belittle the part the men played, but by their own admission their wives were a never-failing source of inspiration to them in their work, and it means more to a woman to face life under pioneer conditions than it does to men. If you doubt it, meet in our own New Ontario or far Western Canada the pioneers of today, linked to civilization as they are by railroad, telephone, telegraph, and the latest wonder, radio, and learn. Then think back to your forbears, who cut themselves off willingly from all the meagre means of communication which then existed, and gather your family history, and teach your children who they are. Give to the Historical Society all possible aid as it seeks to secure and preserve these priceless records.
The Welland Tribune and Telegraph
15 July 1926
By
META SCHOOLEY LAWS
It certainly seems difficult to realize that bridle-paths were the thoroughfares in this county within the memory of any person living. Yet such really is the case.
The following incident occurred some seventy-odd years ago, and might have made a part of one of the “Point Abino” stories, since in that locality it happened.
The county-it was not a county then-was still heavily timbered.
There was a little hamlet at Ridgeway and a smaller one at Stevensville. These and the small clearings of the settlers with bridle paths connecting them were the only breaks in the forest. Deer were plentiful; wolves and bears common.
Late in the autumn six little boys started out to gather nuts. It was a beautiful day and they wandered on and on till their sacks were full. But night was overtaking them and they realized that they were lost. They had eaten all their lunch at noon and were so tired and hungry but no lights could be seen. The oldest was only twelve and the youngest eight.
On they trudged until at last they came to a small clearing with a shed. They crept into it, and in spite of their fears slept till early morning.
Then they saw near them a little cabin. The settler and his wife gave them bread and milk. One of the boys, Burton Schooley, who taught so many years in the Welland of old days, and was afterward Collector of Taxes in the (then) town, often said he never tasted anything so good as that breakfast.
They were near Stevensville, eight miles from their home, and there was no path on which to direct them. The settler had no horse.
Meanwhile the parents became alarmed, and search parties were organized. All night long they hunted and shouted.
John Cherry, tall and spare, led one party. Two of the boys were his sons. Elbert, afterward a merchant in Dunnville, was one of them.
Weary and disheartened, the men returned to the cabins in the morning where the mothers waited, hoped, feared, prayed.
“God knows-God knows where they are. May He protect them,” was all the word John had.
And the boys?
The settler took them to Stevensville. Two men were coming to Ridgeway by the bridle path and they took the boys on the saddles with them. The horses were well loaded but the boys enjoyed the ridge.
Ridgeway was nearly three miles from the home of the Schooley boys, two of whom were in the party and from there they essayed to walk home; but they were still bewildered and started in the opposite direction. However, they were put on the right trail, and reached home just at nightfall.
The parents had gathered at the Schooley cabin after a day of fruitless searching and one can imagine how the tired little wayfarers were welcomed as they stepped across the threshold.
Nearly all the boys lived to be old men, but they never forgot the experience, the terror of the night, the breakfast, the ride, the home coming.
The little boy, who was afterward Dr. Schooley, wandered off one day with his sister, Matilda-afterward the wife of George Morgan, into the woods. He was nearly frozen when they found him, for he had taken off coat and muffler to wrap around the little girl who had fallen asleep. She was too big for him to carry and too tired to walk; so he shouted and waited until he was found. They were not far from home-but the woods were deep.
Yet those mothers didn’t have “nervous break-downs.” We women of today wonder why.
When the Doans first came to the county they crossed Niagara River in a little boat and scouted around a few days and returned.
They were wanted for military service. It was the days of the American Revolution and the border was watched pretty carefully. Therefore when they decided to take their families into Canada, they decided not to trip the “easy” way, but crossed the open lake in a big birch bark canoe and landed somewhere near Loraine.
The father climbed to the top of the tallest tree to make a survey, and from there selected a knoll which he decided would be the site of their new home.
With a woodsman’s true instinct, he reached the spot and built a rude shelter of branches.
His grandson, who lives on a part of the homestead thus located, told the writer this story.
The first house in that section-a little log cabin-was built by the Doans on the site known as the “Tice Steele Farm.”
Mathias (Tice) Steele took his bride there, and their grandson resides there now.
Across on another little knoll the Springers lived in those early days. Harry Kramer is the third of his generation to occupy that farm. The Springers were related to the McKenney’s of Crowland. Melinda was Burton Schooley’s wife. She passed away only a few years ago.
Near there was another knell where the Overholts settled. Their name is preserved in “Overholt’s Cemetery” just across from the little Bethel Church in Humberstone Township.
The Chippawa Road followed an Indian trail in and our through the forest from Gravelly Bay to Chippawa.
The Garrison Road or as the western end of it came to be called “The Fort Erie Road” joined it just east of “The Bridge” or “Stone Bridge” as the old people used to call Humberstone village. I do not think the old maps so designated the little place. They called it Petersburg.
Daniel Near, the last honest-to-goodness farmer M.P.P. of Welland, lived along this road. The home is still in the family’s possession, I believe.
Father and some of the other “good Tories” had a kind of parody they used to sing, based on the old song “Dare to be a Daniel.” One stanza they thought needed no change:
“Many giants great and tall,
Stalking through the land
Headlong to the earth must fall,
If met by Daniel’s Band.”
And certainly if all our public men were as staunch and true and absolutely honorable as was Daniel Near, this land would need fear no evil days. Men like him flout the cynical British statesmen who declared that “Every man has his price.”
What splendid men and how many of them come to our minds as we write and read (?) these sketches. Perhaps not so many of outstanding or extraordinary ability or attainments, but men who compiled with Burns’ standard of nobility and greatness: you remember he says:
“A king can mak a belted knight,
A Marquis, duke and an’ that;
But an honest man’s aboon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna for ‘that!
And Again:
”The honest man, tho e’re sae poor
Is king of men for a’that.
So Welland County has had-has still her “kings and queens,” and these we honor above all others.
The Welland Tribune and Telegraph
1 July 1926
By
META SCHOOLEY LAWS
These articles would not really be complete without some special reference to the pretty little village of Ridgeway. It would seem to owe its name to its situation on the Ridge way, or road. Until about 1870, the post office of the village was called Point Abino, and much later the G.T.R. station was Bertie.
At the south end of the main street of the village there used to be a double curve, one, as at present to the west, the “Fort Erie Road;” the other wound in hap-hazard fashion south-easterly to the lake.
Just at this curve was the old Disher home, whose walls covered with vines still stood well within the writer’s remembrance.
The new house, still the home of a grand-daughter, was built on higher ground, a little north of the site of the old house.
There were always pretty shrubs and flowers about that home.
Ridgeway fifty years ago was never the bustling little place that its summer visitors make it, for a few months of these present years.
But it was always a dignified, prosperous little hamlet.
B.M. Disher, whose wife was Squire Dickout’s daughter, Eber Cutler and Joseph Zavitz were the general merchants, “Charlie” Girven was the tinsmith and built the block which is still used for a “tin shop.”
Zach Teal had a tiny confectionery shop, though there was perhaps more talk than business within its walls. J.A. Beeshy opened a little jewelry shop about this time.
Lambton Bowen was the harness maker. Squire Peter Learn operated a little foundry and someone had a “wagon shop.”
John McLeod, genial and upright, was the popular landlord of the McLeod House. It was his boast that he conducted his business strictly within the law. Certainly no man of the locality was more generally respected than he.
Charley Avery and Charlie Matthews, one at each end of the town, made the boots and shoes for nearly everyone.
Old Dr. Walrath was still practicing then, and Dr. Brewster, a veteran of the Grand Army of the Republic, had established a practice and opened a drug store.
Eber Cutler owned the mills, a grist mill and a saw mill and his employees lived in the little brown cottages he built.
Cordwood was the fuel for these mills, and also in the early days for the railroad engines.
With a fine agricultural country on three sides of it, Ridgeway bid fair to become a town. But the organization and centralization of industry closed the foundry, and practically closed the mills as well.
There is still a little planing mill, but the big cities have drained all such places as Ridgeway of practically everything, but the memory of what was, and the speculation as to what might have been. Those lines of Longfellow aptly describe it:
“One of those little places, that have run,
Half up the hill be neath the blazing sun,
And then sat down to rest as if to say,
I climb no farther upward, come what may.”
But in memory I sit in “our” pew in the Memorial Church, and I see them all. Rev. James Mooney, the genial Irishman whose sense of humor was so keen as to embarrass him at times, as for instance when the group of fun-loving girls presented one of the congregation with a “widow’s cap.” She just didn’t like the appearance of the contraption, and consulted Mr. Mooney as to the propriety of wearing it to church. Of course, not having seen the said cap, he assured her that it was quite proper to wear a widow’s cap to church or anywhere else. Whereupon she appeared, and her head dress could only be described as the Psalmist described the human body as being “fearfully and wonderfully made,” and the pastor found himself unable to preach in the presence of the cap and had to request the widow to retire. What legitimate excuse his ready Irish wit enabled him to give her for his request is forgotten.
Or perhaps Rev. R.J Elliot is in the pulpit, a little man, intense and active. Both men beloved by the whole congregation they served. But like so many of those who worshipped with them, sleeping their last sleep.
There were not so many “country people.” Most of those attended the “Baxter Appointment” on the Ridge, but the Sloan’s, J.J. Moore’s, the Brackbills, Sara Brackbill gave her life to China; Abe Sherk’s family, the Hauns, Quaker Wilsons and the Schooleys were almost sure to be there. Though as Grandma used to observe, “It was strange how much wetter the rain was on Sunday than on a week day.”
Then the village people, the Cutlers, Squire Peter Learn, the Disher’s, Wilson’s, Mrs. Teals, Dr. Brewster.
The M.E. Church had its congregation too, but we were “Wesleyans.” Grandmother was a member for 75 years.
Perhaps some of the faces have forgotten, these belonged to our Social Circle, as well as to the church- perhaps that is why their faces are so clear through the mist of years.
It must be nearly fifty years since A.H. Kilman brought his bride to Ridgeway and took charge of the school. He was a real teacher, and his memory is revered, we know, by many many of his old pupils.
Eber Cutler had no family of his own, at least none that survived babyhood.
But beneath a stern and somewhat forbidding exterior lay the kindest heart possible.
No one ever appealed to him for aid and was refused especially if children were in want. All one winter he fed and clothed a certain family, carrying baskets of food at night or sending his wife; for he never paraded his charity.
In the spring he offered the “feckless” father work, but the man complained of not feeling very well and added that “The Lord had provided for his family all winter, and he hoped would continue to do so.”
That day at dinner Eber told his wife that those folks must not be helped any more; but in a day or so went searching the cupboard with a basket in his hand.
When Mrs. Cutler smiled and reminded him of his “threat” he said, “Yes, yes, but those poor children must not be hungry.”
He was certainly a father to this only sister’s family, and James Morin was a protégé of his, really an adopted son, in all but name.
A volume could be written about these people, and it would make good reading, too, though it would be only a homely story of a people who in the main “did justice and loved mercy and walked humbly with their God.”
The Welland Tribune and Telegraph
27 May 1926
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