[Welland Tribune January 9, 1947]
The funeral of the late Margaret Hughes, widow of John F. Hughes whose death occurred at the Moyer Nursing Home, Humberstone, on Monday, in her 79th year, was held Wednesday afternoon from the Dell and Merton Funeral Home to St. James’ Anglican church, where service was conducted by Rev. H. G.L. Baugh. Interment was in Overholt’s Cemetery.
The pallbearers were George H. Smith, George Aikens, Robert Blackhall, Harold G. Foote, George Peterson and Robert Williams.
Among the floral tributes were those of St. James’ Women’s Auxiliary; St. James’ Parish; employes of Port Colborne Dry Cleaners; Port Colborne Lions Club and the Bowling Club.
Friends and relatives attended from Niagara Falls, Lockport and Kenmore, N.Y.; Toronto and Brantford.
[Welland Tribune January 3, 1947]
The death occurred on Wednesday, January 1, of Paul Franklyn Roloson, infant son of Mr. And Mrs. Paiul Roloson, Wainfleet township. Death occurred at the family residence.
Surviving are his parents, Mr and Mrs. Paul Roloson and his grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Dickout, Wainfleet, and Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd Roloson, Burford.
Interment took place at Morgan’s Point Cemetery this afternoon
[Welland Tribune January 6, 1947]
Toronto, Jan 6-Prominent teacher and minister, Rev. Jacob J. Baker, 92 died in hospital here Saturday. During his long career he was at various times, on the staff of McMaster University, Hamilton; principal of Harding Hall, London, Ont., and pastor of churches in Fonthill, Belleville, Sparta and Saint John, N.B.
Born at Baker Hill, Ont. Mr Baker attended Woodstock College and the University of Toronto.
Surviving are his widow, Mrs. Ida Emma Fetch Baker, Toronto, and three sons, Dr. P. Baker, of Troy, N.Y.; Dr. A.C. Baker, of Mexico City, and Prof. A.W. Baker, of Guelph, Ont.
[Welland Tribune February 21, 1947]
The death occurred this afternoon at her home, 121 Bald street, of Mrs. Fannie J. Wade Skitch. She was the widow of the late Alfred Skitch, well-known clothing and shoe merchant in Welland, who passed away in 1930. A member of Central United church, deceased came to Welland 37 years ago. She resided for a number of years in Port Hope. She was born in Durham county.
Surviving relatives include the following children: Winnifred, Mrs. William Whittle; A.L. Skitch, and Miss Sybil Skitch, all in Welland; T.M. Skitch of Detroit, and Mrs. James Scott of Toronto.
The funeral, which will be private, will be held from the late residence, 121 Bald street, to Woodlawn cemetery, at 2 p.m., Monday, February 24, and Rev. L.R. Ballantyne, pastor of Central United church, will officiate.
[by - WellandHistory.ca, 2022]
Little is known about this cemetery except what could be seen on a recent visit. There appears to be seven tombstones. It is documented that Jane Park, 27 March 1825 and the other Captain Shubael Park, her father, 13 February 1826 are buried here. According to Ancestry, Huldah Skinner was the wife and mother who passed on 4 July 1864. It is recorded that the couple had twelve children, but the lone tombstone pictured here is without any clear acknowledgement of who is buried in this plot.
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
[Welland Tribune, 22 January 1909]
Homer Buchner of Fullerton, who was committed to the Northern Ohio hospital, Newburg, Nov. 18, died in that institution of paralysis of the brain, de. 15. Funeral services were held in the Briar Hill church, Russell, Ohio, Thursday, Rev. H.A. Vernon, officiating.
Homer A. Buchner was born in Welland county, Ontario, March 11, 1852, and was aged 56 years, nine months and four days.
He was the youngest of four children born to Lewis and Margaret Buchner, two of whom survive him-Brock Buchner of Crowland, Ont., and John Buchner of Russell, Ohio.
On Nov. 14, 1875, he married Hulda A. Case of Ripley, N.Y. Three children were born to them: Wesley L. of Perry, Mae, Yent of Seattle, Wash., Warren M. of Chesterland. His wife died March 21, 1881, at Ripley. After a few years he came to Ohio and purchased land near Fullerton Station, and built thereon in 1890. H ran a huskster wagon sixteen years.
In 1900 he closed his Fullerton house and went to Cleveland to work remaining there two years. He returned to Fullerton and on April 12, 1901 was united in marriage to Elizabeth V. Painter of Chesterland. August 2nd he received a shock which left him insane, causing his committal to the hospital.
[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.
[Welland Telegraph October 29, 1903]
About 6.30 Friday night a most deplorable accident occurred at Falls View in the family of Mr. and Mrs. G. Brooks, who have just moved to the Crotty homestead from Wilson, N.Y. Their little daughter, Bessie aged ten years, was horribly burned from head to foot by her clothing catching on fire, her body being one mass of burns and blisters, the clothing falling from the poor child’s body along with pieces of charred flesh. It seems that the child was playing near the stove downstairs with a younger brother, while the rest of the family were upstairs. The first intimation of the terrible occurrence was from the screams of the child, who came rushing upstairs enveloped in flames. An elder brother realized the awful danger of the child and seizing a light mattress threw it around her and also dashed water on the cruel flames, eventually extinguishing the blazing clothing, but not before the grim truth was too evident to the panic-stricken and agonized family that a pitiful tragedy had been enacted before their eyes.
Dr. Kellem’s hurried arrival and examination of the terrible nature of the poor child’s injuries confirmed the worst fears that the child could not live, and notwithstanding his skilful treatment brought temporary relief, the child lingered in agony until about 10.30 o’clock Saturday morning when death ended her sufferings.
The exact details leading up to the heartrending affair cannot be learned, as no one was near the children at the time the little girl’s clothing caught fire.
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