Results for ‘Historical MUSINGS’
By
META SCHOOLEY LAWS
In our last article we discussed the subject of citizenship from a general standpoint.
Shall we this week inquire as to the part of woman’s chief organizations play in furthering our influence in the national sphere which the franchise opens to us?
We are quite accustomed to divide our lives into two distinct sections-the secular, and the sacred interests.
Yet, as a Christian nation, we, its citizens, must not stress this division too strongly, because only so far as Christian principle pervades our whole lives, are we true to form.
We will but mention the church organizations, to whose success women contribute in so large measure.
We must, however, keep politics out of religion, though perhaps few will question the assertion that a little more religion would not be detrimental to our public life.
But aside from these various religious organizations, what other organizations have we stressing the fundamental duties of citizenship.
One of the most far reaching women’s organizations is the National Council.
With it, nearly every other worthwhile organization is affiliated to some slight degree at least.
Indeed, the very work which it pursues makes it impossible for any other organization to be complete outside its influence. For the weight of the National Council is brought to bear upon all worth while endeavor or projects of a national scope, which any of us essay.
Every five years there is an international council meeting held at which women’s civic problems are discussed from the widest possible angle.
The last meeting of this sort was held in Washington in May 1925. Such questions as Women and World Peace, Personal Naturalization of Woman were fully discussed.
Educative campaigns were inaugurated. But through the discussion like a thread of gold, the relation which all these questions bear to the greatest institution in any nation, its homes, was ever in evidence.
Women and home’s home and country. Or may we say women make or mar homes; homes make or mar nations.
It is significant that at least two of the great women organizations of Ontario centre all their work around this idea. The W. L. whose motto is “For Home and Country,” the U.F.W.O. whose declaration that politics is truly defined as “the science which deals with everything which touches for good or evil, your home and mine.”
These organizations systemize their work by committees dealing with the various phases of home life. But they keep in mind always this thought, that our communities are just your homes and mine; our country the sum of all the communities. Their work is directed toward helping every home to make the needed contributions to community life; toward translating into action the theory that national ideals, national interests are but the sum total of the ideals, the interests of the people who form the nation. The interest of the individual, must, of course, be subservient to the nation. The interest of the individual, interest of the nation as a whole, yet the whole as Euclid remarked is “the sum of all its parts.” You, I are only one of these parts but we are each of us, one.
Tennyson said, “The individual weakens, and the whole is more and more”-but that does not mean that the individual may “weaken” in moral or intellectual fibre if “the whole” is to grow “more and more” worthy. Quite the contrary.
There are other great women’s organizations too, the W.C.T. U.’S the I.O.D.E’s the woman’s section of the labor movement, and others.
What is their value, any, all of them, to us women as citizens.
They must, of course, be constructive in their aims. There is an old saying that “any fool can pull down faster than ten wise men can build.”
Yet there is a constructive destruction, too. We women rip the garment which we propose to remodel. We destroy only the worn-out, useless parts. The rest we use. Men pull down a useless or unsightly building, clear away the debris, salvage all that is of value and on the site of the old, and perhaps incorporating into itself much of the material of the old, the new structure is reared.
But to destroy as a conflagration destroys, wantonly, ruthlessly, is worse than valueless.
Organizations if such there be, working on that principle will die of themselves, in any enlightened land.
Nearly everyone in this county has seen the erstwhile suspension bridges across Niagara river. The supporting cables form a splendid illustration of the value of organization. Each cable is composed of tiny tested wires. Each one separately weak; all placed side by side, no matter how closely inadequate; but woven together, the individuality of each separate wire intact, the cables supported the bridge.
Women’s work as citizens is the bridge. Each worth while organization a cable.
Many, ah, so many of our women are the tiny loose wires of splendid material, the same as that of the wires in the cable, but useless because only individual.
There is another lesson for us in these bridges.
The first suspension bridge was a wooden structure.
It became unsafe for the great traffic which crossed it- trams, vehicles, foot passengers. It had to be replaced by an iron structure.
A master mind directed the workman, and piece by piece the wooden bridge was replaced by one of iron traffic never interrupted. A wonderful triumph of constructive destruction.
But a much greater task was accomplished when around and beneath the suspension bridge the great steel arch bridge was built, with only a few hours of cessation of traffic at the completion of the work, though a complete change of principle was involved.
So may any constitutional change which comes to our beloved land be wrought.
May we women, through our organizations equip ourselves fully for our part in the work of national development.
But after all no woman’s organization is complete unless another principle which few of them make prominent is kept in view.
Woman, alone, men alone, are neither of them competent to rightly build homes, communities, nations. It is not a question of superiority. They must work together, each supplementing and complementing the work of the other.
“As the string unto the bow, is,
So unto the man is woman
Useless each without the other.”
The Welland Tribune and Telegraph
2 December 1926
By
META SCHOOLEY LAWS
What a number of years this warfare over the liquor question covers!
Wainfleet alone gave Mr. Harrison a majority in the last election, which carries our thoughts back to some of the stalwarts of years gone by.
Near Forks Road East church there is or was very recently a neat little hall, the temperance hall.
One of the last S of T lodges in the county met there regularly when the writer taught in No. 6. But likely few know nowadays what S of T meant-“Sons of Temperance”. There were daughters also, but in those days women were not persons-they had no voice in public affairs. But we surely helped to make the lodge meetings interesting.
There is no doubt whatsoever that these temperance lodges paved the way for the series of temperance laws that were enacted. The Duncan Act, The Scott Act, the O.T.A. and now the question is “Will the legislation which we on December 1 authorized Premier Ferguson to enact, wipe out all the gains of all those years?” as many fear; or will it, as the honorable gentleman asserted in one of his late campaign addresses, merely so amend the O.T.A. as to make the province in very truth temperate. We wait in hope, yes, and in fear, for the outcome. But for the reminiscences, the old stone school house on the Fort Erie Road, it was a new school house then, was well lighted that evening.
It was an easy matter to gather a “crowd” in that neighborhood for the homes were built quite close together, and the people were very social.
Old “Uncle John” and a “Doctor” had visited the school that day to see the teacher and Uncle had imbibed at the various refreshment booths on the way down.
He wore a wig and as “Doctor” and Miss H. chatted, Uncle sat on the bench, absent-mindedly twirling his wig round and round on his head. We lived just opposite the school and imagine Mothers’ consternation when one of us children, there were no “kids” then, after vainly trying to twist our hair even a little, proceeded to ask uncle how he managed the feat.
But on the black board for the evening temperance meeting was written in large letters, “Vote for the Scott Act,” and in smaller script, Squire Sloan had written, “He that overcometh shall inherit all things,” not “he that had the temptation removed” which was one of the special arguments advanced that day. How the little girl that holds this pen came to be permitted to go to the evening meeting has long been forgotten, but the discussion, friendly, yet warmly, carried on, comes back to me: The Pages, Sloans, Dickouts, Hauns, Sherks, Ellsworths, Robert Hall and our people, the men folk, only of course, had taken part in the discussion of the evening. Barnes, Johnson_____and some others gleefully listened. “May I rub this off now,” asked the speaker and Squire Sloan asserted and the meeting went on.
Strange that only one of that group of neighbors is left. How lonely she must be, Mrs. Christian Sherk, yet in her old home, with the happy memories of bygone days; with most of her children, wonderfully acute for one of her age, still enjoys life.
Only last year “the little red school house” which Duncan Schooley bought more than 30 years ago, and used as a shop, has disappeared.
J.F. Beam, the pioneer advocate of good roads brought his sister from their home on Black Creek to that little school to teach. Perhaps his experience as a boy on those roads helped to make him such an earnest advocate. How people used to laugh at his ideas, and now how far beyond his thought our present system has developed, and the end is not yet.
But he never seemed to mind the raillery. He followed the advice of the poet: Be thou the first true merit to befriend, His praise is lost who stays till all commend.”
One scarcely recognizes that Black Creek country anymore.
J.H. Allin’s old store is still there. The ’20 year ago” column mentioned that Mr. Allin was the first postmaster there. The office never really went out of the family, for his son-in-law, Charlie Jenks, and later Mrs. Jenks succeeded him.
Barnhart’s blacksmith shop is still there, but the school house dreary and forlorn, the ruins of the Quaker Church, these are all of the past.
Twice daily through the winter, and four times in summer time the whistle of Paddy Miles’ train awoke the echoes of the quiet place.
A group of us went to the Falls one Saturday and the train stopped for five minutes at the Falls View as usual.
There happened to be a passenger to whom the scene was new, that day, and he lingered gazing until Conductor Miles touched his shoulder. “I suppose this is old to you, conductor,” said the young man. “No,” was the reply; “thirty years and more every day we stop here and I always see something new.” “I wouldn’t like another route,” the old man added, “this and the view as we go down the mountain at St. Davids and Queenston , thence to Old Niagara-what a wealth there is for the Historical Society of this and every other county to gather and conserve.”
Near Black Creek, but incorporated into the Glenroe farms was the Baker homestead. Here the three brothers lived for years and tenderly cared for their aged widowed mother until she was laid to rest.
An elder brother lived a little way up the river from the mouth of the Creek, where his son still lives. For years the three lived happily.
No one owned finer cattle, or drove better horses, than they did, but they lived very much to themselves.
Then one day the two older brothers were taken ill, pneumonia developed and John died. Samuel had passed the crisis, but over hearing that John had gone, he fell back dead “of a broken heart,” the neighbor said.
Some there are still living who will remember the great concourse gathered at their double funeral, everyone surprised at the hold these quiet men had upon the whole community.
They were wealthy, and there was no will, but the family gathered. Mrs. Sherk mentioned above, is the only one left now, and quietly and amicably the real estate and personal property was divided among them, no jangling, no lawyers needed to settle disputes which were unseemly thought of.
The younger brother married later, and after his death, the homestead was sold for he had no sons.
How little the tourist, as he rushes along the boulevard, realizes that the ground over which drives, every inch of it is “holy ground,”- for let us repeat, the achievement of today is possible through incessant toil, and far-seeing sacrifice on the pioneers to whom we cannot possibly pay too high a tribute.
The Welland Tribune and Telegraph
16 December 1926
By
META SCHOOLEY LAWS
So “Oliver Underwood” cannot locate “The Basswood.”
In the old days whose partial return is hoped for, or dreaded, according to the viewpoint of the individual, public houses, scarcely to be dignified by the term “hotel,” were situated every few miles along the main roads.
Those were the days when hucksters were the main “middlemen” between the farm women and the consumers of the product of dairy or poultry yard.
Buffalo was perhaps the chief market for these itinerant merchants in this section of the country and there were two routes. The Fort Erie road, through Port Colborne and “Stonebridge,” the present Humberstone village, Sherkston, Ridgeway and thence to the Garrison road, and the Forks road, whose eastern extension passed through Stevensville.
These wayside inns each had its own distinctive name. For instance “The Travellers Rest,” “Grimm’s” and “The Come-in,” (pronounced as one word with the accent on the first syllable) were situated between Stonebridge and Ridgeway.
The latter has been mentioned in a previous letter. The well, is, or was very recently still in use. The pump was on the wide platform of the old building which filled the angle where the two roads met.
Just how many places of refreshment existed on the route a few miles north of this one, the writer cannot say, but “The Basswood” was one of them. It was situated in Humberstone township, half a mile, and half a quarter east of the Welland-Port Colborne county road, at the Wabash crossing.
The first house was of logs, and was built on the corner; the “new house” built perhaps forty years ago is a little south.
Some of the inns were famed for the excellence of their dining room fare. That section of the country was known as “The Basswood.”
The last person to use the name was the late James R. House, whose widow and daughter carry on the little general store which he established, where the “Chippawa Road” crosses the Wabash railway.
The “hotel” is, and has been for years a private dwelling.
Fortunately those roadside places have ceased to function for many years.
But they will not be forgotten. Some of them like the Black Horse, still doing business, The White Pigeon, long since flown away, had in those old days swinging signs, such as one reads of in old country stories, and took their title from those.
The basswood trees in the vicinity gave the title to this particular one.
Some of them had names which must have grated on sensitive ears: “Dogs’ Nest” on the old plank road to Port Dover, and “Dirty Corners” for example.
However, they had their part to play in those days of indescribable roads, when the huckster needed a stopping place every few miles, for nearly, if not quite, seven months of the year.
Speaking of these “merchants” of early times, reminds us of the days when E.E. Fortner, twice mentioned in recent “twenty years ago” columns, bought sheep, cattle and sometimes horses in “the West” which in those days did not mean Manitoba et al, but perhaps Norfolk, Elgin or at farthest Middlesex counties.
Many a drove of sheep have he and W.F. Schooley driven for miles. The railways did not have the facilities for shipping which now exist.
I see his genial face now. He always had a funny “that reminds me” story to tell and never did he fail to find a bit of blue sky, no matter how heavy life’s clouds hung above him.
He loved horses, and in the last years of his life made a hobby of them. Not one but would race to him from the farthest side of the pasture at his call.
How we children loved him, for no guest was more welcome than he and his good wife, who in a loneliness that those of us who knew him best can dimly understand, awaits the summons to join him in “the other room.”
The Welland Tribune and Telegraph
24 March 1927
By
META SCHOOLEY LAWS
One’s thoughts go back some forty years (1886). Welland had a model school then. The building is now occupied by the Y.M.C.A.
Robert Grant was the principal. Miss Jessie Foster was one assistant. Miss Jennie Foster another and the third was a Miss Ryan. All that I recollect about her was the manner in which each little boy and girl bobbed his or her head as each formerly bade her “good-night.”
There was a little school on the West main street, just opposite the old high school where Principal Dunn still ruled supreme.
There was, too, a little one-roomed school in the garden ward. The Presbyterian Church was over there then also-a small old building. J.W. Rae who immediately preceded the Reverend Findlay McCuaig was the minister. The Salvation Army had just come to the little town.
There was no resident R.C. priest. The “new” Methodist Church had been recently built.
Only a few of the people so familiar then remain when we visit the church occasionally now, and most of those, like the writer, are grey-haired. One scarcely realizes it, but 40 years have passed since then.
H.A. Rose and The Ross Co., and “The Golden Lion” were Welland’s dry goods emporiums, and The Morwood Co. had a general business. It seems to me that some of the grocers used to give credit slips to the farmers’ wives for their produce, which were good at the dry goods stores. There was no regular market, and the farm women took “trade” for butter and eggs.
Such a thing as a creamery was unheard of, though of course, there were cheese factories, one at Welland.
Long after that we attended picnics in “Asher’s grove” which should have been but is not, a city park.
But these were not the things of which we intended to write.
Recently the Premier of Canada came to Welland.
Of course, he was accorded an enthusiastic reception, but there was not the enthusiasm that met the great Tory Chieftain, who visited Welland 40 years ago, Sir John A MacDonald. He came by special train and was met at the G.T.R. station, the old one, by the best cab in town drawn by four horses. Sir John was accompanied by Sir Geo. Foster and one other of the cabinet, and these and one man specially honored, for people honored public men then with a capital “H,” seated themselves in the carriage and started. But that was the Welland of past days, and East Main street was not paved. The mud reached the hubs of the carriage. The shouting multitude frightened the horses. They jumped, and lo, they wore free from the carriage. But that didn’t matter. A long rope was found and attached to the front axle and a dozen of willing hands grasped it, and regardless of the fact that they wore their “Sunday clothes” and the mud was deep and sticky, oh, so sticky, the carriage was drawn to the hotel.
The meeting was held in the old rink on East Main, afterward a canning factory, now removed for more imposing if less historic building.
Long before six, the street was thronged. We, twenty or more girls, got up through one of the stores, and found perhaps two or three hundred there. By and by a great shout announced Sir John’s arrival. After he and his suite were seated, the big front door opened, and a veritable wave of humanity filled the hall in much less time than one could tell it.
Miss Addie Teskey, her white dress trimmed with maple leaves, presented the Chieftain with a huge bouquet.
In thanking her, Sir John expressed his hope that one day the women would have a real place in political life-40 years ago.
Why is it that no one since his time has ever possessed so fully the hearts of the people?
Is the difference with the people or the leaders? Upon whom has his mantle fallen? We look around in vain, for to him, dear as was his party, Canada was infinitely greater, and we knew it.
Some day, some time, perhaps his like will arise, but not yet-not yet.
The Welland Tribune and Telegraph
25 November 1926
By
META SCHOOLEY LAWS
Last week mention was made of an item of ticket selling for the marsh in the “Looking Backwards” column of the paper.
A present-day advertisement was also noted in the same issue.
Driving, either on the “new road” north of the marsh, or on the road that used to skirt the southern boundary of it, one can scarcely believe that the well-tilled farms with their comfortable buildings were ever waste land.
John Misener, whose father, Leonard, pioneered on the Forks Road, just north of Marshville, told the writer, that his father believed that the one field he had cleared north of what is now the Forks Road, marked the boundary of the marsh.
The beautiful Misener homestead is still in possession of the family, though it is rented to strangers.
By the way, many farms of that particular neighborhood are still, as they should be, owned and tilled by the descendents of those who wrestled the fertile acres from forest or marsh.
But to return to the huckleberries.
The incident that comes to my mind occurred some 46 or 47 years ago.- circa 1880
The marsh was then either government property or unvalued by the owners of the farms bordering it. Berries were abundant and people drove miles to get them.
Thos. Boles was station agent at Ridgeway in those days. His wife and mother were great friends, and the two of them often drove the eight miles to “Stonebridge” and put their horse in at Uncle George Morgan’s, in the early morning. He would take a load of women and little boys out to the marsh and come for them toward evening, meeting them out on the path to help them carry their berries.
The two women enjoyed the jaunts and the berries immensely, but Mrs. Bole’s trips were ended when her husband lured by her accounts of her pleasure in them, came up on a train one evening and went to meet the women. He was used to the system of his office and its surroundings, tried to find the women, got on a bad path, lost his bearings and his temper, and vowed when he got out, that the place was fit neither for man nor beast, nor to be even mentioned to women.
But mother was not to be deterred. Many times she and Hugh went, always returning with all the berries they could carry. It sounds unbelievable, but mother always took two 12-qt. pails. Hugh had a 10 qt. and 5 qt. Each had a small pail to pick in and the pails were always filled.
Well, Aunt Mary came down from Arkona, as usual, to spend the summer, and it was agreed that on August 30th they would all go to the marsh. Oat harvest kept the men home, of course.
But an extra lunch was packed and early in the morning, Uncle George took his wife, mother, Aunt Mary, and the two little boys, Hugh and Watson.
They had not gone far from the path when they spied a big rattler, and a few steps further on, its mate. Though frightened, they kept on their way with the usual success. About four, some bewildered women came to Aunt Morgan. She directed them to the path and they came out without incident.
It was time to leave, but Aunt Mary’s pails were not quite full-berries were abundant and they stayed to get all they could carry. One of them made a bag of her apron.
Then they started for the edge, in haste, for Uncle would be awaiting them.
The path forked, and the west branch was difficult to follow. They had logs to walk on, over some boggy places, and when they reached a path, Aunt Morgan insisted that they were south of the fork in the path and must strike across the marsh to the good path. They parleyed, but finally followed her lead.
But they didn’t find the path and darkness came on. The little boys, tired and frightened, began to cry.
Uncle had been a little late and decided that they must have come out and found some other way home.
He had been up at the farm that day; so he went on home.
But the berry-pickers had not arrived, and he started back, men with lanterns accompanying him.
The women plodded on. Mother suggested throwing away their load, but the others said, no indeed. They hushed the little boys crying by inducing them to shout with them.
After each shout, they paused and listened.
The moon came out. Nothing could be seen but the dark fringe-the impassable border of the marsh.
At last they fancied they heard a faint answer to their cry. Again they called. This time the answer was certain. But in what direction? They could not be sure. So they stood still and kept calling. Then lights appeared and the replies to their shouts were clear.
A few yards further and their feet struck a path.
Mother used to say that she did not ever expect to be happier, on earth, than she was at that moment. The berries did not seem so heavy, either. In another moment they were relieved of their loads by the anxious men.
It was then nine o’clock. When they reached Port Colborne, a search party was being organized.
That ended our family’s huckleberrying. When huckleberries were on the table, father always referred to their COST, but mother always laughed and insisted that they were worth a great deal of trouble.
“But I wouldn’t want to live those two hours again for all the berries in the world,” she would add, and Hugh never failed to echo soberly: “You bet!”
The Welland Tribune and Telegraph
2 September 1926
By
META SCHOOLEY LAWS
“What is more rare than a day in June?” asks the poet. Perhaps an October day when the sun, shining through the filmy grey-blue mist that envelops the landscape, bring out the glories of the autumn woods, when the drowsy south breeze lays its spell on mother earth, so completely that the dropping of a nut to the ground by the busy little squirrels makes a noise; when the luscious grapes on vine, and rosy cheeked apples in the orchard invite. June, the month of roses; the month of promise beautiful indeed.
“Then, if ever, come perfect days.” But October, whose beauty is that of fulfilled hopes, of the completed work of Nature and her assistants, she, too, makes good her claim as June’s closest rival.
Fortunately, the great plowing match was favored with one or two real October days.
We took advantage of one of them, in the early morning, for the drive was a long one, and one ought not to hasten on days like this. Some folk drive as though speed was the only thing to enjoy!
Lundy’s Lane-and the international plowing match.
Side by side the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes floated, so close that often the breeze entwined their folds.
Side by side the cars of American and Canadian officials were parked.
Out in the fields, wearing the same uniform, the khaki overalls, once again in Lundy’s Lane, representatives of the two nations strove for mastery. But, today it would seem that here, at least, was the partial fulfillment of ancient prophecy, for “their swords were beaten into plowshares.”
Later in the afternoon we drove up the Boulevard to note the progress in the construction of the peace bridge-a fitting closing of the day.
Surely “peace hath her victories.” May no cloud ever shadow the amity which pervades the two nations: each with a great destiny to fulfill; one forging alone; the other one of a great sisterhood of nations blended in the world encircling British Empire. Yet together representatives of the Anglo-Saxon race charged with a great task of bearing what Kipling called “The white man’s burden.”
But the plowing match-
Some of men wondered dubiously whether they would ever have gotten their acres ready for seed had match methods been pursued.
But in the main, the crowd seemed to regard the work of the contestants as a demonstration of plowing, as a fine art. One woman remarked that this plowing bore the same relation to everyday work as embroidery bears to our sewing.
In the big tents, one traced the development of farm machinery, the sickle, scythe and cradle, mower, reaper, binders; the old wooden plows, and the big tractors and all the steps between; the flail and the complete individual threshing outfit; the up-to-the-minute silo filler.
The attention of the crowd was quite evenly divided between the plowing and machinery exhibits.
Then the hydro tent was very interesting, though most farm women, men also, regarded the machinery wistfully.
Why do not more farm people install hydro? my city sister asked; and someone behind us answered the question: Because the whole province pays for Toronto’s hydro.
Put hydro on a flat rate basis and see then what would happen.
“Huh,” said a pompous looking individual near, “that would mean the ruination of Toronto.”
“Possibly,” chimed in someone else, “but it would also mean industrial development in smaller centres, Welland, Niagara Falls and their ilk.”
But we didn’t wait for the rest of this “political” discussion, for we wanted to see Jesse Morningstar and his oxen. So did others. The crowd pressed so close that the patient beasts had scarcely room to walk. They drew the plow almost without effort.
We were disappointed just a wee bit, because the animals had collar and hames and bridles. They were hitched to a 1926 plow-just a wee bit incongruous. We had seen oxen working, but the young folk who had accompanied us had not.
On our return the man drew a picture of the yoke and explained how one animal was trained to stand for it to be placed on his neck and the other to come under at the word.
It so happened that he had driven the last yoke of oxen in these parts, big red and white animals weighing 2600 lbs. each. Their arched horns were about two feet long. When he came into town with grain, all the children climbed on the wagon or sleigh and rode to the warehouse. Those children are grown men and women now-for that was thirty years ago, or more. Our young guests scented a story, and waited.
I was just thinking said “the man” of the time when we had the engine for the first time to thresh our grain. Those engines were drawn by horses and some of the grain was stacked in the middle of the field we had plowed to be resown. The team got stuck in the soft ground, couldn’t draw the thing another inch, so I went for the oxen, Buck and Bright. The thresher said, “go on, but they can’t budge it, either.” Well, we unhitched the team and hitched the oxen with heavy chain traces. Then the thresher blew the whistle shrilly and the oxen having never heard such a fearsome noise before, gave one leap. The thresher jumped off the engine and rolled out of the way. Every man gave the frightened plunging beasts a wide berth as they galloped across the field, dragging the engine behind them. Then they got to the fence they leaped it; the tracts broke from the whittletree; the engine rolled on its side. The oxen were stopped one on each side of a big tree in the next field.
But no one ever doubted again that those oxen could draw.
What became of them at last? and almost sheepishly he confessed that they ended up in a butcher’s stall. Beef was low then, but the two brought nearly $300.-a lot of money in those days.
If the writer is correctly informed, Jacob Perlet drove the last yoke of oxen in Humberstone Township. They were not a matched yoke as were Buck and Bright of the story above, but perfectly trained and reliable.
But “the old order changeth.” Few indeed of the farm boys and girls of today ever saw oxen work.
Cradling grain is a lost “art” and Dame Rumor says that many of our young farmers could not make and tie a band.
However, there are many things they can do and the farm is, as he was, and must be, the mainstay of the nation-yes, of the world.
The Welland Tribune and Telegraph
21 October 1926
By
META SCHOOLEY LAWS
In the early spring, before other flowers of its kind blooms, though planted in well-cared for gardens, a clump of daffodils show bright golden at the edge of the ridge which forms a part of Pine Hill Farm, on the Chippawa Road, near the Overholt cemetery.
An old disused well, and a straggling bush or two remain too-these marking the spot to which Solomon Steele brought his bride in Humberstone’s pioneer times-before the county was organized as now.
Remains of the big stone oven were there too, when as children we played in the woods on our occasional visits.
Solomon Steele had three sons, one who died in early manhood; Jonas, who kept a store at what is now Ridgeville, then Steele’s Corners; and William, who lived on the homestead.
There were two daughters, Miranda, who became the wife of Charles Carter, and Mary Ann, an early-day teacher.
William Steele was in his younger days quite prominent in the life of the community. A quiet retiring man of sterling integrity. His wife was Lavinia Schooley of Maple Grove Farms.
He built the house, which is still as plumb as when it was built some sixty odd years ago.
An active, useful life seemed opening before him, but it was ordered otherwise, for a disease which baffled the medical skill of his day seized him. With mental health unimpaired he gradually lost the use of limbs. I can still see him as I write, a powerfully built man, tall and broad shouldered, and until the last few years sitting erect with evident effort in the wheeled chair to which his illness chained him.
For nineteen long years his wife fed him, for his sinewy arms were powerless. A platform was built from the north door to the top of the picket fence which enclosed the yard, and every fine afternoon old Alexander, his faithful servant, drove old Dick and the phaeton up and Uncle William was lifted into it and taken for a drive; sometimes to the other farm, sometimes on township business; sometimes to call at the door of an old friend.
His mother lived in the old house with Mary Ann, who cared for her despite the fact the disease which attacked her brother, marked her too for its victim. She went round the house on her hands and knees after she could no longer work, and did not lose the use of her hands until shortly before her death. She was of a literary turn, and some of the verses she composed may still be in the possession of some member of the family. I have read them-pathetic, brave words voicing hope and disappointment, of love of Nature, or in one of them, seeking half blindly for the solution of the problem of human suffering.
William Steele had no family, though an orphan niece and nephew made their childhood’s home there. But the merry laugh of childhood could never seem to drive away for one moment the cloud which hung over the home-and we always ran to the beautiful pine woods as soon as the greetings were over. There we felt free, and though I never remember being forbidden to play indoors, I have no recollection of a single joyous moment. The very air seemed heavy with resignation to weakness and uselessness on uncle’s part, and ceaseless, unremitting thought for him on auntie’s.
The last visit stands out so clearly though long years have elapsed. The daily rides had been given up. The wheeled chair stood empty. “Perhaps tomorrow,” he would say with a sigh. Brother and I tiptoed into the room where he lay, and to my father he said, “The end of the road is in sight; it will be a release to me and to her.” (William: 28 February 1879).
For many years his faithful wife outlived him, but the habit of years was hard to break. Seldom indeed did she leave her home. The books she had read to uncle, the topics in which he had been interested still filled her life. Every expressed wish of his was sacred to her always. When she passed on we could not sorrow, for she had again-who shall gainsay-her heart’s desire.
On part of the old farm groups of merry children hold high carnival. But each succeeding year the golden daffodils speak to us who can understand their language of hope and cheer and enduring achievement, despite frost and storm and all the untoward circumstances which seem to encompass some lives-and give rise to “Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”
The Welland Tribune and Telegraph
24 August 1926
Subscribe..
