Results for ‘Historical MUSINGS’
By Robert J.Foley
[Welland Tribune, Early March 1992]
The years 1818 and 1819 were the toughest that William Hamilton Merritt would ever face in his life. The rejection of his canal proposal put his various business ventures in extreme difficulty. Hamilton’s family life was prospering at the beginning of 1818 even if business wasn’t. His pride and joy was his first born son Thomas, named for his paternal grandfather, who had been born in 1816. A little girl born in late 1817 added to the happy household.
Hamilton sat at the back of the store pondering the pile of invoices stacked in the middle of his desk. The demands for payment were becoming more adamant as the months rolled by. With the financial crisis in England and the scarcity of cash in the country there was little he could do to satisfy his creditors. The mills sat idle for lack of water and barter was the only way goods moved in and out of the mercantile.
He was sitting in idle thought when he heard a frantic calling of his name from outside the store. One of the hired hands from the mill burst through the door. “Mr. Merritt, Mr. Merritt,” the breathless man shouted, “There has been a terrible accident, come quickly.”
Fear gripped Hamilton as he rose from the chair. “A terrible accident come quickly.”
“What is it man,” Hamilton asked impatiently.
“It’s young Thomas, sir, come quickly,” he said, a mixture of fear, sorrow and horror in his eyes.
Hamilton locked the store and ran out into the cold, crisp winter night. As he approached his house he could see all the lamps ablaze and the sound of weeping rushed out to meet him.
He found Catherine, his wife, almost hysterical with grief and the rest of the household in tears. It seems that one of the hired girls had boiled some water and had set it on the table. Young Thomas came toddling along and pulled the pot over scalding himself from head to foot. He died within minutes.
The death of his son affected Merritt. A few months later the grim reaper struck once more with the death of his daughter, probably from a fever brought on by teething, which was a common cause of death in those days. We can only imagine the consternation that Hamilton and Catherine felt at his double tragedy.
With all his personal problems Merritt struggled to save the business. The farmers, who had brought goods on credit until the harvest, were unable to meet fully their commitments to him due to the poor prices of produce. Wheat only returned 50 cents a bushel at the Queenston market leaving the farmers with little or no profit. A large quantity of lumber had also been cut but lay in the yard for lack of buyers.
At the end of 1819 his partner, Charles Ingersoll, returned to Oxford County and the mercantile business closed. His father had obtained a township grant, called Oxford-on-the-Thames, on coming to Canada in the late 1790s. The township grant was revoked because Ingersoll and his partners failed to produce the 40 families stipulated in the deed, however, Charles had reacquired the old homestead.
Merritt was determined to survive and to that end he put one of his mills up as collateral to one of the Montreal merchants to whom he was indebted. Fortunately the Merritt family was a close-knit one and his uncle Nehemiah from St. John, New Brunswick gave him some assistance. His father sold the old family homestead of 200 acres for $6,000 and gave part of the proceeds to his son to help him carry on the struggle.
The year 1820 saw a turn in Merritt’s fortunes. At the opening of navigation he shipped 300 barrels of flour to Montreal assigning the proceeds to the mercantile company, Forsythe, Richardson and Company to whom he still owed money. He soon was able to clear his debts with the Montreal merchants.
At the same time he was busy drilling a salt well on his property. A chemist by the name of Dr. Chase had recently moved to the area and his knowledge soon improved the quality of the salt production. Unfortunately cheap salt from the United States made the venture unprofitable and it was soon abandoned.
The store, which had been closed since Ingersoll had left, reopened with Dr. Chase adding a drugstore to compliment the mercantile side. Uncle Nehemiah and his father-in-law, Dr. Prendergast backed Merritt in this fresh venture and it was successful beyond all expectation. Merritt was able to purchase back the mill that has been given a collateral to the Montreal merchant. With a general upswing in business things began to look up for him and the entire Niagara Peninsula.
Dr. Chase turned out to be, not only a good chemist but an excellent businessman. When Merritt was forced to assist his father who had become entangled in the failure of the Niagara Spectator, a newspaper founded in 1817. Chase went to Montreal in his place and purchased the goods for the following season.
On June 1, 1820 the family grief over the loss of the children was lessened somewhat by the arrival of a son, Jedediah, named for his grandfather, Jedediah Prendergast. On July 5, 1822 a second son was born, William Hamilton Jr. bringing more consolation to the Merritts.
With the return of prosperity Hamilton again turned his thoughts to his ditch. He began to solicit support for a second survey.
HISTORICAL NOTE: The township of Oxford-on-Thames eventually became the townships of North, East and West Oxford. The city of Ingersoll, Ontario is located at the site of Ingersoll’s grant.
By Robert J. Foley
[Welland Tribune, 8 April 1992]
William Hamilton Merritt discussed the ongoing shortage of water on Twelve Mile Creek with some of his friends, fellow millers, over a pint of local ale.
George Adams owned a mill on the Twelve as did Merritt, and George Keefer and John DeCew worked mills in Thorold. William Chisholm, a St. Catharines merchant, and Paul Shipman, the tavern’s owner, rounded out the group.
“Gentlemen, we now have raised sufficient funds to commission a proper survey for a canal from the Chippawa to the Twelve,” Merritt said. “Mr. Tibbits will come on May 6th and draw up plans. If we can achieve our goals the canal will be navigable for the numerous bateaux that ply the lakes. Also, gentlemen, our seasonal water problems will be solved.”
“How does Mr. Tibbits propose getting over the escarpment?” asked Keefer.
“He is suggesting an incline railway to move boats up and down the escarpment similar to those used in Britain,” replied Merritt.
As these sober businessmen lit up their clay pipes, an uncharacteristic sense of excitement, perhaps brought on by the unknown, the prospects that they could not foresee, gripped this small group of visionaries.
Tibbitts arrived on schedule and he and Merritt inspected the Twelve Mile Creek from its mouth. “Well Mr. Merritt, I quite agree that the Twelve is well suited to navigation and I would suggest that we also use Dick’s Creek for our approach to the escarpment,” said Tibbitts.
The two stood looking up at the escarpment and the climb that would be necessary to the top. Tibbitts scratched his chin and said, “I fear that an incline railway may not be practical to climb this mountain. Locks may be the only answer available to you.”
They were joined by George Keefer at the top of the escarpment and together they walked the proposed route to the Chippawa. Satisfied with the information gathered, Mr. Tibbetts worked up a rough plan in anticipation of a proper survey.
While the survey was being completed Merritt went to inspect the Erie Canal to get a first-hand perspective of what they were about to embark on. He left for Lockport, New York on the 19th of July, 1823, and met with Roberts the head engineer on the Erie. Roberts gave him a certificate of efficiency for Tibbitts that reinforced his own opinion of him. He spent several days inspecting freight boats and construction methods.
The more he waw, the more the feasibility of their project became apparent. The timing was also excellent as many of the contractors were winding up their portion of the Erie Canal and could begin work on the Welland Canal almost immediately.
On Jan. 19, 1824, the Act passed the Legislature Assembly incorporating the Welland Canal Company with William Hamilton Merritt, George Keefer, Thomas Merritt, William Hamilton’s father, George Adams, William Chrisholm, Joseph Smith, Paul Shipman, John DeCew among others as director. Plans for financing the project got under way immediately.
Meetings were called throughout the district to sale the shares in the company. The fundraising ran into problems from the onset. People in Niagara (Niagara-on-the-Lake) would gladly purchase shares if the canal began at Niagara. The merchants of Queenston insisted that the entrance would be best there. Because of this bickering the shares did not sell well in the peninsula. The company decided that it would have to go further afield to finance the project.
It was at this time that tragedy struck the Merritt family. In early February, Hamilton’s older sister Caroline and her 13-yer old daughter along with a Miss Stephens arranged to go across to Lewiston, N.Y. on the ferry. The ferry was just a large rowboat and as they crossed the river a large ice flow struck the boat capsizing it. Miss Stephens and the girl were swept away and never seen again. Caroline was rescued but died of cold and exhaustion shortly afterward.
Mourning the loss of his sister, Merritt headed for Montreal and Quebec City in March to set up committees to solicit shareholders for the company. On his way, he stopped in York and received a pledge to buy stock from the Receiver-General of Upper Canada. J.H. Dunn, who also agreed to take on the position of president of the company.
Despite all the well-wishes and praise for the project, funds were slow in coming in. Added to that was the engineer’s disturbing news that too deep a cut would have to be made to use the waters of the Chippawa forcing the building of a feeder Canal from the Grand River. The feeder was to cut 27 miles through the Cranberry Marsh and carried via an aqueduct over the Chippawa near the Seven Mile Stake. These circumstances forced the company to postpone construction until all the shares were sold. In the meantime the surveyors completed their work from Thorold to the Chippawa and began the survey of the feeder.
In June, George Keefer was elected president of the company in place of Dunn and Hamilton was authorized to seek funds in New York City. The New York financiers were more than interested but insisted on a change in the plans. The canal was to be designed to carry larger steamers as well as the smaller bateaux. The New York trip was a rousing success and on Nov. 15th the first contracts were let. The great enterprise was about to begin.
HISTORICAL NOTE: The nature of the name Seven Mile Stake is uncertain, however it may have been the surveyor’s stake marking the northeast corner of Wainfleet Township.
By Paul Bagnell
Tribune Staff Writer
[Welland Tribune, 29 April 1987]
WELLAND- The future of the 145-year old Price Cemetery is still in doubt, despite a recently completed search of its ownership.
The cemetery, on the bank of the Welland River off Colbeck Drive, is the burial site of at least eight descendants of David Price, said to be the first white settler in Welland.
City solicitor Barbara Moloney has presented the results of title search on the cemetery and has concluded it is split between two owners-the Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo Railroad Company and Lindel Investments Ltds., a Welland firm.
However, Anthony Whelan, a local amateur genealogist, disputes Moloney’s reading of the title search and says he plans to continue pressing the city to restore the cemetery from its unkempt and neglected condition.
Whelan says the cemetery belongs exclusively to Lindel Investments. Lindel is willing to sell it to the city for $1, and Whelan says the Ontario Cemeteries Act obliges the city to take over the cemetery and maintain it.
The surveyor’s document produced by the title search shows the area of the cemetery once bounded by a wire fence to be entirely on Lindel’s property. Moloney and Whelan differ on a small triangular section of land between the fence line and the road, owned by the railroad. Moloney’s report to council says it is part of the cemetery. Whelan says it is not.
The issue hinges further on differing interpretations of the Cemeteries Act, which makes municipalities responsible for cemeteries within their boundaries “where the owner of a cemetery cannot be found or is unknown or is unable to maintain it.”
A spokesman for Lindel Investments says the company “isn’t in the cemetery business,” and is willing to give the small plot of land to the city.
Ald. George Marshall, chairman of the parks, recreation and arena committee, says the cemetery “will be maintained,” but isn’t so sure the responsibility falls to the city. He said the committee will decide its position after discussing the matter in an upcoming meeting.
If the city decides it has not responsibility to maintain the cemetery, it will urge its owner-or owners to do so, he said. Marshall calls the possibility of dual ownership “the worst case scenario,” from the city’s point of view.
The Lindel spokesman, who asked not to be named, said the firm offered to give up its interest in the cemetery 10 years ago. The city expressed interest but never followed through.
“It’s not the guy who bought the land,” who is responsible for the upkeep of the cemetery”, the spokesman said. “We never buried anyone there.”
Marshall, however, felt the act was clear in stating that an owner capable of taking care of a cemetery must do so. He also said the committee is reluctant to set a precedent in this case that would force it to take on other, larger cemeteries in the future.
The city has been asked to maintain the Smith Street Cemetery by the cemetery’s board of trustees, but has resisted in doing so.
“We’re not in the business of looking around for more things to keep up,” he said. “It’s my understanding that the (Price) cemetery will be kept up-it’s just a matter of who.”
Whelan agrees with the Lindel spokesman that the company is not in a position to take care of the cemetery. He says the fact the cemetery is abandoned makes it a municipal obligation.
The cemetery sits on the west bank of the Welland River, on Colbeck drive south of Webber Road. The only visible headstone bears the name Sarah Hutson, a member of the Price family who married a man named James Hutson.
Whelan has investigated the cemetery’s history and says at least eight and possibly ten members of the Price family are buried there.
The first recorded burial on the site, Whelan says, took place in 1842. He suspects, however, that Elisha Price-the first member of the family to own the property on which the cemetery sits, is also buried there, along with his wife.
David Price himself is not buried there. In the mid-1960s, his tombstone was found near Denistoun Street and the Welland River. Whelan believes his body may have been moved for the Colbeck Drive site at one point.
The Welland Historical Society is also concerned about the cemetery’s condition. Whelan has visited similar tiny cemeteries in Ancaster and Clinton which are maintained by municipal authorities. Neither are accessible by road, he says.
By Cathi Bruno
Tribune Staff Writer
[Welland Tribune, 6 May 1983]
WELLAND-It is a small unkempt cemetery on the north bank of the Welland River near the old railway bridge in Thorold and it just might be a landmark in the history of this part of the Niagara Peninsula.
Why is it so unkempt? No one knows who the owner is. But under the provisions of the Cemetery Act, the municipality has the right to take over the property.
Section 62 of the Act reads: “Where the owner of a cemetery cannot be found or is unknown or is unable to maintain it, the council of the local municipality in which the cemetery is situate shall maintain it and the corporation of the local municipality shall for the purposes of this Act be deemed to be the owner of the cemetery.”
So what’s the big deal about this cemetery?
For starters, it’s a link to the price family, and in particular, the first white settler in Welland, David Price.
A look around the cemetery shows overgrown weeds, a broken fence, sunken tombstones and sodden trenches. There’s no evidence that human hands have touched this parcel of land in many years, yet the Cemetery Act clearly states that the duties of the owner of a cemetery are: to keep and maintain fences about the cemetery sufficient to prevent dogs, cattle, and other animals straying there in; keep the cemetery and the building and the fences thereof in good order and repair…
The Act goes on to say that it is the duty of the local board to see that “every cemetery is properly fenced, kept clear of weeds and otherwise cared for in a proper manner…”
A look through the collection of Dr. W.G. Reive on cemeteries and graves in the Niagara District done between 1920-1930 gives clues as to who was buried in these forgotten plots.
Several members of David price’s family lie here, but Price’s tombstone was unearthed at an excavation site at the northeast end of Denistoun St., just past Welland High back in 1968. His epitaph reads: “In memory of David Price of the Township of Crowland, who departed this life 26th February 1841, aged 91 years.”
An historical account states that David Price, his wife Margaret Gonder, and his family were buried on the original Gonder farm near Welland, later to be known as the Stoner farm. Was this farm located in the vicinity of the high school? Nobody knows.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Consumer Relations, Cemeteries Branch, says there has been a lot of discussion as to who the owner of the abandoned tract is, but no names have turned up as of yet. “But we can’t just let it disappear, we have to find out who the owner is.”
He says that under the Cemetery Act, if no owner can be found, the property becomes the responsibility of the municipality it is located in. However, he says, in the rightful owner can prevent the city from initiating repairs. “This cemetery is on private property and we can’t decide who owns it.”
“All we can do is make sure we are aware of the cemetery and so is the municipality. And make sure nothing happens to it,” he says. “I’m just afraid in cases like this that someone forgets about it and ploughs over while building.”
A Welland Tribune article headlined “Who Owns This Cemetery?” (20 March, 1975) states the provincial consumer relations ministry had ordered the city to “maintain and clean up” the abandoned land parcel. In that same article, Dan Ryan, city parks superintendent at the time said,” We don’t know if we own it or not. But we must take over any abandoned cemetery and we don’t know where the boundaries are.”
He also said the city could not be expected to maintain the cemetery grounds if the boundaries could not be found. It was suggested to have a land survey be conducted, but it was never carried out.
Attorney Jim Swayze who was city solicitor in 1975 agrees with the Cemetery Act. He says that by law the city should have taken over all cemeteries and Ownership of the land can be traced to the Price family as far back as 1814 when it was owned by a Joseph Price, said to be the uncle of David. Land registry records have shown that various lots on the land off the Welland River have belonged to different Price family members but trying to find anything recent leads to a dead end.
Robert Funk, a land surveyor in Welland, says the city owns the property because of the Cemetery Act. He says he bought some of the property in that area some 40 years ago and owned the land for a long time before the Lincoln Street extension was constructed. But Funk says he sold the property quite a while ago.
So, who owns it now?
Maybe we’ll never know…
(Welland Tribune Date Unknown)
WELLAND (Staff)-Old Niagara was the gateway of entrance to the early pioneers, mostly disbanded Butler’s rangers and United Empire Loyalists, and of course the traders and merchants.
An interesting historical note: until 1792 Lincoln County was Township No. 9, District of Nassau, in the province of Quebec. It wasn’t until the British North America Act came into being that we became Upper Canada, then Canada east with the Act of Union and in 1867 we became known as Ontario.
So where does Welland fit in? At one point in history not one white man had set foot in our fair city-that is until David Price.
David was born about 1750 of Welsh parents in the Mohawk Valley. About 1771, while walking through a field near home with his brother, he was taken captive by a ban of Seneca Indians.
His companion was ransomed from the Indians by the British, but David was kept by his captors for two years, after which time, on his promise not to leave them, they gave him a gun and trusted him on many occasions with important missions. The chief of the band was called Little Beard and had adopted Price.
Although he was held captive and treated as such, he was allowed to go among the whites at the British forts. Price accomplished the Senecas on several occasions when they took prisoners to Fort Niagara and sometimes saved them from severe punishment.
After seven years with the Senecas, he finally severed his connection with the tribe at the British post of Oswego, where he remained a clerk and interpreter until the end of the war.
Price then moved to Niagara and stayed for a time at Fort Niagara.
When the War of 1812 broke out he moved to a farm in the present city of Welland, on Chippawa Creek (now the Welland River). Price died in 1841 and left his wife, Margaret; daughters Margaret, Neff, Catharine, Caroline and Juliann; and sons, David, Daniel and another whose name can’t be clearly read in Price’s will.
Men Make a Business of Searching for Bodies
Thrilling Moments in the Awful Swirl of the Waters-How the Brave Men do their Work.
[People’s Press, 27 December 1898]
[The following much of which will be news to our readers of Niagara Falls, we clip from a U.S. exchange. How true the old saying-“Go way from home to learn the news.”]
There are men at Niagara Falls who make a business of searching for dead bodies of victims of the ruthless waters. They are thus described in an article in an American paper:
The men who follow this weird call are almost the only inhabitants of the lonely and mysterious section of the shore known as the “Unknown Niagara.” It is a wild stretch that lies at the base of perpendicular rocks, and at whose feet the waters that whirl and whirl eternally, that have never ceased for a single moment, never calm, and where the debris and the wrecks of life have been known to float around for days, and even weeks, with that same continuous, monotonous rotary motion. This sketch is somewhere just below the whirlpool proper on the Canadian side, and few and hardy are the tourists that venture down those Alpine sides to taste the
WILDNESS AND GRANDEUR
of the spot. It is here, however, that this curious class of men, with their few hardy wives, live from day to day, dulled to the fearful roar of the water, and but little impressed by the spectacle about them. Here they lie in wait, and watch the turbulent tides like hawks or eagles watching for their prey, and no upheaval, no relic of tragedy, nothing vomited up by the submarine eddies of that unrestful stream ever escapes their eager attention.
By a system of daring on their own, by a series of evolutions by which they have long studied to laugh and mock at death, they enter the very clutches of that grim element and bring out entire the thing for which they entered. It may prove to be log worth nothing, or it may prove to be a body laden with wealth. But whatever it is they grasp it, and back again they leap through the buffetings of death and upon the shores where the perpendicular rocks rise sheer to the skies.
HOW IT IS DONE
And this is how they do their work, what they have done for years, and will continue to do, and think nothing of the awful daring of the thing and the fearful risk they run in the weirdest of all callings:
One man, bolder and more daring than the rest, stands ready on the shore with the stoutest of ropes about his breast, waist and portion of his limbs, and so arranges as not to interfere with his movements when he takes the leap into the whirlpool. And that leap! Those who have seen him say they hold their breath and their hearts beat as he disappears beneath the raging surface. Seven strong men hold that rope, away-in shore, and then when he rises, to be tossed and buffeted about, they take a double grip and shut their teeth. More than once, the rope strains and every face is anxious and pain is plainly visible in the features until the swimmer is seen above the surface again. And when he appears again it is only for a moment, and the face is white a gasping, but even then plainly showing the grit of this strange race, as they might be called, who hazard life and all in this weird way.
But for the object which they are striving. It has been seen by the man on the lookout but a few minutes before the swimmer took the leap. He has indicated in what part of the whirlpool, and the swimmer is now
IN THE SAME CURRENT
in the same eddy, and finally the two bodies –the warm and the cold, the pulsating and the lifeless, the quick and the dead, life grapples death, and the two are hauled in. It is a long and strong pull, a pull altogether, and with a shout the daring swimmer is strained away up on shore and out of the rapid whirl.
Then the bold-swimmer man that he is-faints, and a drink of whiskey is brought. It is poured down his throat, and he quickly recovers, When he is able to move about, in a moment or two, he is the most active in the work of preparing the remains for inspection. The body is then put in shape for the reception of relatives, and if that of a rich man, the daring rescuers are made the recipients of a handsome compensation. It may be a body laden with treasure-rings of value, costly jewels, of money in dank soggy wallets and if no one calls, the money is held awhile, and then divided.
Stopped at St. John’s and Cook’s Mills
Interesting Reminiscences of Mr. D. G. Holcomb
[Welland Tribune, 8 January 1909]
The following brief but intensely story of the escape of William Lyons Mackenzie during the troublous times of 1837-8, is from the pen of D. Grove Holcomb, who was then a lad. Mr. Holcomb is now a resident of Power Glen, a few miles from Welland. He says:-
It was early in December, 1837, that MacKenzie’s force at Toronto was broken up. He went from there to Lafferty’s and asked Lafferty to protect him, and he did so. It was about eight o’clock in the morning and Lafferty had just begun to tramp out peas with his horses. He (Lafferty) dug a hole in the centre of his stack, put MacKenzie in, and covered them with peas tramping them down. In about an hour a squad of men came along looking for the fugitive. They said, “Where is Mackenzie?” The answer was I don’t know. They pulled up the stable floor, looked under the barn, and then went out to the stacks and jabbed down their bayonets, striking MacKenzie in the side so as to draw blood, after which they left and went west. MacKenzie went from Lafferty’s to Reynolds’ where he got a horse and went down to the house of Thomas Hardy, who lived east of Hamilton on the mountain. Mr. Hardy was not at home, but Mrs. Hardy said he would be back in less than an hour. She then hid him and took care of his horse. In something less than an hour Hardy was back, and they went to Samuel Chandler’s at St. Johns. Chandler went with him to Cook’s Mills, crossing the Welland River west of Welland, then to the Junction where Mr. Carter kept a hotel. His son, Charles Carter, a young man about 18 years of age, went with them to Cook’s Mills. They arrived at D. Holcomb’s about eleven o’clock, and went to bed and slept about 2 ½ hours, while John Hardy and others were fixing to take him to Wm. Current’s, putting the horse that MacKenzie rode in J. Wilson’s barnyard. Current took him to Mr. Macafee’s, getting there about eight o’clock in the morning. Here MacKenzie went into the house, got on Mrs. Macafee’s dress and bonnet, while the others were getting the boat ready. The river was guarded by soldiers from Niagara to Point Abino, some of them being kept in Macafee’s house. MacKenzie got in the front part of the boat, Current in the back part, while a Dutchman pulled at the oars.
Soldiers ordered them to come back but a man on shore said Mrs. Macafee was going to Buffalo to do some trading, so they let them go. So that is the way MacKenzie got to Buffalo. This was related to me by my mother, who also told me MacKenzie had lodged at our place the preceding night. My father went to Chippawa about ten o’clock, and the word came in that Mackenzie was captured. Mr. Jas. Cummins had the cannons fired off. My father told him that MacKenzie had passed through about four o’clock. Mr. Cummins came to my father and told him that MacKenzie was in Buffalo. By the way, Cummins was a friend of Mackenzie. This ended for a time, in Canada, the career of one of her greatest men. His friends were all true, and God protected him and got him through safely.
D.G. HOLCOMB
Power Glen, Jan. 4, 1909
[Niagara This Week, 23 June 2011]
Courtesy of Welland Museum
Welland will be saying goodbye to the former Welland High School as a fire las weekend gutted the building: its history however will not be lost.
The History of the County of Welland published in 1887, described it as a structure “which stands in the midst of spacious grounds…of red brick trimmed with white, It is two stories in height, with a basement used as a caretaker’s residence. The building is well furnished, and is heated throughout by hot air from a huge furnace in the basement.”
An echo of what this original building looked like could still be seen before the fire in the large exterior staircase leading up to the second story at the corner of Main and Denistoun.
As Welland expanded, so did Welland High. More land was purchased in 1907 and construction of the new Welland High was completed in 1915.
Night classes and vocational training were begun in December 1916 with courses in home economics, dressmaking, woodworking and welding. More land was purchased between the school and the Welland River in 1926 and a new vocational and commercial department was added.
The grand opening of the expanded Welland High and Vocational School was held on Oct. 22, 1930.
In 1955, seven rooms and a new gymnasium were included in a $400,000 addition designed by architect Norman Kearns. That year there were 46 teachers staffing the school under Principal H.A. Snelling.
The baby boom generation of the 1960s brought about the need for another addition, this one on the West Main side. In 1968-69.
The school temporality became Westbrook Secondary in 1989, but the name reverted to Welland High in 1995.
Sadly the school was closed in 1998.
Time-worn tombstones can tell us a lot about our past
By Debra Ann Yeo
[St. Catharines Standard, 16 July 1988]
In 1843, a British author writing about graveyards likened them to books-able to instruct in history, biography, architecture and sculpture, even good taste and morals.
The unusual military motif of a soldier resting on a reversed musket decorated a soldier's grave in St. Make's churchyard.
Glen Smith of Niagara-on-the Lake would agree that graveyards, and in particular tombstones, have something to say to those who view them
Six years ago, as exercise for a newly-healed broken leg, he visited 28 burial grounds in Niagara-on-the-Lake, ranging from tiny one-family pioneer plots to the first community burial place, St. Mark’s churchyard.
Today, some of the stones Mr. Smith admired and photographed are illegible, slowly being obliterated by airborne pollutants and weather. Others fall prey to vandals, falling branches or other accidents.
Mr. Smith, backed by the Niagara Foundation, has begun a quiet campaign to ensure that some of the older and more unusual specimens survive for future generations. .
In a town whose bread-and-butter is its history, Mr. Smith, a historical contractor, calls tombstones “one of the overlooked” facets of our heritage.
The broken stones piled against trees in the town’s churchyards give mute testimony to his words.
He told the town’s recreational committee last spring that a dozen of the town’s oldest and best stones should be removed, replaced with granite markers and stored in a safe place for future display in a museum.
The Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations has given permission for the stones to be removed, but it wants to know which markers are involved.
Through the foundation, which promotes the preservation, restoration and maintenance of historic sites, Mr. Smith has begun collecting stones from private and individuals. If the town agrees to salvage monuments from the nine abandoned graveyards, it manages, Mr. Smith then plans to approach the churches.
“People would be quite flattered that their gravestones 200 years later are such a focus of attention. And the people who made their living carving gravestones-their work is commemorated and their skills judged,” he said.
He considers the markers works of art, an opinion shared by Carole Hanks, author of Early Ontario Gravestones.
“Of all the early Canadian artifacts, tombstones are the ones most certainly created to endure,” she writes.
She said gravestones a century ago “were objects of pleasing form and decoration, meant to be enjoyed by the living and, as well, pay respect to the dead.”
Ironically our ancestors’ desire to beautify their memorials has hastened some stones demise.
Marble was the stone most used by the mid-1800s because its softness allowed detailed carvings by hand, yet that very quality also allows rapid weathering. The stone’s granular structure is loosened by water, causing it to fall away bit by bit, especially at the edges of the carving.
Sandstone and slate, also soft stones, were sometimes used and, in Niagara, harder and cruder limestone was available from the escarpment.
Yet even harder stone is vulnerable to pollution. On a tour of several graveyards, Mr. Smith pointed out many examples of what he believes to be acid rain, sulphides and other pollutants turning the surface of monuments into powder to be washed away by rain and snow.
Mr. Smith, whose work as a historical contractor includes research, restoration, collections management and public education, has visited about 200 Ontario cemeteries. He has never seen a stone older than that in the wall of the vestibule at St. Mark’s Church.
It reads: LEONARD BLANCK
DESEACED, 5TH
AUG. T. 1782
The earliest stones contained no decoration but the inscription.
The lettering was often crude, full of spelling letters with uneven spacing and words squeezed over the top of other words if the carver ran out of room.
An example of this early type, the gravestone for Archibald Cunningham, can be found in St. Mark’s churchyard. He died in 1804.
By 1815, decorated stones began to appear in Niagara-on-the-Lake cemeteries. The earliest were engraved symbols. Later, motifs were sculpted in relief as skilled professional monument carvers emerged in the 1820s and 1830s, some of them leaving their names and addresses on the stones.
The commonly-used symbols comprise five main categories, according to the Hinks book-classical revival (willows, urns, columns and obelisks). Flowers, hands (as in the hand of God), animals and angels.
They formed what Mr. Smith describes as a subtext of grief, each with its own meaning. The weeping willow tree, for instance, one of the most popular ones, represented mourning and the tree of eternal life, as well as the Gospel of Christ.
Two of the symbols, lambs and doves, were used almost exclusively on children’s stones, the lamb representing Christ, youth and innocence and the dove, purity and peace.
Undoubtedly, the most grim motif in Niagara can be found in St. Mark’s where a slithering snake and the words, “Upon thy belly shalt thou go,” appear on an 1839 tombstone.
Besides being decorative and commemorative, gravestone symbols could also reveal something of the religious beliefs of the deceased and the kin.
A broken chain, for example, is one motif that might be chosen by a person who believed “you’re just going to rot in the ground,” Mr. Smith said.
The trumpeting angel Gabriel, sometimes accompanied by the words “Arise ye dead,” is one of the more obvious symbols of resurrection. Yet, according to one book, this motif is rarely found on 19th century stones in either Canada or the United States.
However, a variation of the angel Gabriel can be seen in the Field burial ground on the Niagara Parkway where members of the Field, Brown and Vrooman families are buried. What makes it so unusual is that Gabriel, commonly thought of as a male angel, is portrayed as female.
The angel and a willow decorate the double headstone of Joseph Brown, who died in 1821, and his wife Rebecca Johnson who died in 1808.
It is part of what Mr. Smith calls “the three best stones in the entire Peninsula.” The latter two of the trio commemorate Rebecca Brown, a daughter who died in January 1808 and Nancy Vrooman, who died in April 1808.
Both monuments feature a symbol which is extremely rare in Ontario, the winged face of an angel, representing the soul in flight.
All three markers face east-another peculiarity of early gravestones-and the Joseph Brown marker contains a common, though sobering, epitaph:
Remember men when thou pass by
As you are now so once were we,
As we are now so thou must be,
Remember men that all must die.
Tombstones often reveal history, both of the textbook and the personal and the personal kind, said Mr. Smith.
“You can almost spot immediately when cholera was in the area,” he notes. He has seen stones in St. Catharines that tell of an entire family wiped out within a week.
“The odds were that a guy could get married two or three times. Chances were that the wife died at some point giving birth. The odds were that 50 per cent of the kids died before they were six years old,” he says.
“Her days on earth were few. She passed away like morning dew,” declares a tiny stone with a sculpted lamb for an 11-day girl named Korah in the Warner family cemetery.
War also claimed its victims. A stone just inside the main doors of St. Mark’s commemorates four soldiers who died the day the Americans took the town in the war of 1812.
A vault-like stone in the churchyard also attests to the insanities of war, not so much by its lettering (now illegible) as by the scars on its surface. It was used as a butcher’s block by the Americans occupying the town.
According to Janet Carnochan’s booklet, Inscriptions and Graves in the Niagara Peninsula, it commemorates Charles Morrison, who had lived in Michilimackinac and was on his way to Montreal, via Niagara when he died on Sept. 6, 1804, aged 65 years.
By Robert J. Foley
[Welland Tribune, April 1991]
With the British defeat at the battle of the Thames, Sir George Provost ordered the evacuation of all of Upper Canada west of Kingston. Fortunately Major General Vincent, who had resumed command in that theatre of operations, felt a withdrawal to Burlington would suffice.
The Americans were quick to take advantage of the withdrawal from the Peninsula and reoccupied Queenston and Chippawa. Joseph Willcocks and his Canadian Volunteers also wasted no time in exacting a price from the loyalists who had been left behind. Farms were pillaged and buildings burned by those who had once been neighbors and friends. Willcocks arrested prominent loyalists and had them sent to prisons in the States. Among them was 80 year old peter McMicking of Stamford who had been High Constable of Lincoln County, a coroner and a town warden.
Upon hearing of the arrests and raids, Colonel John Murray convinced Vincent that a small force should be moved back into the Peninsula to protect the inhabitants. Subsequently Murray led a force of 378 regulars of the 8th Regiment and some volunteers including Merritt’s Dragons and established a base at Forty Mile Creek (Grimsby).
Captain William Hamilton Merritt cautiously led his troop east away from their base at Forty Mile Creek. Where were the Americans? The Indians had been in contact with their pickets the previous evening, but now they were nowhere to be found.
A signal from an advance scout brought Merritt forward at the gallop and the tail end of the American column was sighted tramping toward Twenty Mile Creek. Merritt sent his dragoons charging down the road scattering the American infantry and fighting a sharp engagement with some American cavalry who quickly withdrew from the scene. Some of the infantry tried to resist but many quickly surrendered and were marched off as prisoners of war.
With the American Army in retreat Murray pushed his force forward to Twenty Mile Creek and then to Twelve Mile Creek (St. Catharines). The Americans, meanwhile, had pulled back to Fort George. The American commander, Brigadier General George McClure, was in a precarious position. The enlistment of many of his troops was expiring and his force began melting away. Willcock’s raids had further alienated the local population and when one of Murray’s outposts soundly defeated a probing force McClure decided to withdraw to Fort Niagara.
December 10th dawned cold and blustery with snow drifting in the lee of the well-kept picket fences. Joseph Willcocks had been beside himself when told of the plans to abandon the Peninsula. He had at least wrung the order to burn the town from McClure on the pretext of denying shelter to the advancing British troops. Willcocks was determined to punish his former neighbors for slights, real and imaginary; he had suffered since going over to the Americans. The Canadians Volunteers and American militiamen went door to door giving the inhabitants one hour to get out what they could. At dusk the destruction began.
Willcocks mounted the steps of the Dickson house, fire brand in hand, followed by two of his men. The younger of the two had explained that the woman was ill in bed and couldn’t get up. Willcocks ordered the two to carry her out and lay her in the snow. He had arrested William Dickson and had him sent off as a prisoner to the United States and was determined to destroy whatever property he could. The tow lads wrapped her in blankets as best they could and put her in a snow drift while Willcocks fired the house and its contents. He walked away leaving Mrs. Dickson in the snow to watch her home burn to the ground.
Weeping women and children looked on as their world was turned into a pile of ashes. Their immediate concern was shelter. There were 400 refugees who would die of exposure if cover could not be found quickly.
Captain Merritt reported to Colonel Murray. The glow in the eastern sky could only mean one thing and with Merritt’s dragoon they rode off to investigate.
The troop approached Fort George from the south and cautiously reconnoitred the area. The Americans were pulling out and the only troops remaining were the rear guard, which consisted of some of the Canadian Volunteers. Merritt signaled the charge routing the enemy, killing two and taking a number of prisoners.
The scene that greeted them in the town was beyond belief. Every building except one was a pile of glowing embers and the streets were littered with furniture that some had been able to save before their homes were torched. People were desperately seeking shelter. Some moved toward the fort and Butler’s Barracks, which had been spared for some inexplicable reason, others began the bone-chilling trek to farms in the neighbourhood.
The dawn brought the misery of the town to full bloom. Many a snow drift yielded up the frozen bodies of women and children who could not find their way in the bitter cold darkness of that December night in 1813.
*General McClure was relieved of his command and dismissed from the army for his part in the burning of Newark.
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