By
Meta Schooley Laws
Did you ever try to imagine yourself as one of a group of those who wonderful men and women who came into this section of the country in the seventeen–seventies or thereabouts?
Travel has been made so easy, so safe for us. Every little depression in the road through which water ever flows is bridged. A bridge three feet high must have a railing. As we speed along the highway, every high graded stretch of road is protected by the cable fenced with its white posts. Every curve ahead is indicated by those sign posts.
Do we ever think of the difficulties the pioneers met when they first pierced the woods?
The long toilsome journey on foot from Pennsylvania, or Vermont, or New Jersey, or other of the states of new-formed nation, away from comfort and plenty in most instances, toward toil, privation, loneliness, poverty-not a landmark on the route-not a welcome at its close. These men carried the Flag in their hearts. They did not need it to be waved before their faces to know it was; is, there. For the love of it they surrendered all, dared all, won all.
“A sacred burden is the life ye bear,” all ye in whose veins the blood of these flows.
A family of three people wended their way wearily, yet hopefully, through the forest away from the land that had thrown off its allegiance to the Flag they loved, toward the new British territory to the north, lately wrested from the French.
They had heard little to attract them about this land excepting this-that above it, the Union Jack waved.
They were more fortunate than many other groups who also travelled northward in those days, for they had horses, cattle and money for necessities. They had been preparing for this journey, for they carried with them bags of seed, grain and fruit. The women and children rode in comparative comfort. The men walked and drove the herd which pastured. Speed in travel was an unknown quantity a hundred and fifty years ago.
They reached the border at the head of the Niagara river. From the Indians they obtained canoes, and loaded their effects into them.
Warily they paddled down the river to the mouth of the Chippawa creek, and turned into it, for the increasing current and the roar of the falls warned them.
Up the shadowy stream for some miles they went, not a sound but the dip of their paddles, not an opening in the “forest primeval” which skirted the creeks banks. At last they halted. “This will do for our home,” said the leader. They made camp. Their name was Misener. Two of them with a guide set out for Newark, the “capital” of Canada.
We know it now as Niagara-on-the-Lake. Here they received patents for their homestead, the allotment which the government made to those U.E. Loyalists. Those deeds were written on parchment and a great seal attached to them. When they returned the walls of a log cabin had been built, a home established.
If they longed for the comfort-yes luxury-of the homes they left, no one mentioned it. Sturdily they set to work-and now every year hundreds gather at the great Misener re-union-proud, justly so, of their descent from these men and women.
It must be thirty years ago or longer, since the writer taught at the little “Dew-drop” school____ with that dear old English _and Mrs. Hern.
Just at that time the “Misener woods, (so called yes, though the title of the property was no longer held by the family) were being _by a Thorold firm. But the then owner reserved the land and a huge oak tree known as “The Bear Tree.” High up in its branches were the remains of a platform which Adam Misener built in the big tree. Here he, and one or sometimes two of his friends, would sit with their old muskets to watch for bears and other big game, and many a bear met death there.
Doubtless, those woods are covered now with a thick sound growth, and the Bear Tree spreads its wide branches yet. Or was the prophecy of the old man who told the story of the tree fulfilled-“Poor thing,” he said, “how lonely it must be, it will not stand long.”
One gathereth, another scattereth was certainly true of that wood lot which Adam Misener prized so highly, and guarded so carefully.
One of the Misener homesteads stood a few miles east of this one, and about half way between Lyon’s Creek and the Chippawa. This home was built on a gravel ridge, and an orchard from seeds brought from New Jersey surrounded the home. Gnarled and twisted though most of these trees were, they still bore fruit a few years go.
There was a seedling from one of the old trees in the orchard, too. It was a beautiful and delicious fall apple. Large, red and yellow streaked, and so crisp. “The Farmer’s Favorite” Mr. Misener named it for a customer one day on the market. How long ago? Well, when J.F. Beam first got other people besides himself talking about good roads.
We had “Jip” and the buggy, and had proceeded with great labor on Jip’s part, and the constant fear that the traces would break from her efforts, to Archibald Grey’s. I got out to lighten the load so many pounds anyway, and picked my way along the fence where the sod had been but was not.
Some one, who, in the township council strongly opposed the “good roads” project, came along with a team and democrat and greeted us. We told him that any one who would talk against “good roads” should be sentenced to walk down the middle of this road right now. He drove on laughing. Do you remember, Lew?
The Welland Tribune and Telegraph
18 January 1927
By
META SCHOOLEY LAWS
This time we will go to the county west of this one-Haldimand-for our story of the old times.
Perhaps no county in the province, certainly none along Lake Erie, is richer in pioneer history, other then military history.
It must ever be remembered that while the heroes of the wars especially that of 1812, protected the rights of the land-these same men as they hewed from the wilderness their homes and ours, established their rights.
Canada-the empire-owes much to her military heroes, and they receive due recognition. She owes more even to the pioneer civilian, and too often his exploits are “unhonored and unsung.”
Haldimand
Up the Grand river the Indian U.E. Loyalist, Joseph Brant, led his tribes of dusky warriors. Through forest and swamp that then bordered the river they travelled, on and on. At last they came to a shallow place, and Brant forded the river. We call the city situation at that spot Brantford. One of the great factories there issued a calendar depicting the scene a few years ago.
Six miles on either side of the river was granted the great chief in perpetuity, hence settlement of the whites along was deferred. Hence people here of the writer’s generation remember pioneer times and ways.
The farms all along the river are held, not by deeds, but by 999 year leases.
The town of Cayuga, whose boundaries extend east and west and south, much farther than the apparent limits of the burg, was a gift. It and the townships were named after the Indian tribe. So also the townships of Seneca and Oneida.
Only a few evenings ago a guest in our home related how as a little boy he had seen the Indians gather in a council house on the Thompson estate, the right to meet there having been retained by the tribe when the present owner’s father received the grant of land.
Near it was built the first Presbyterian church in this district. The building was torn down and forms a barn on the Wadel property her in Cayuga. The bell is in the tower of the town hall.
There was also a large R.C. church. It, too, was razed, and St. Stephen’s at Cayuga replaces it.
A few stones remain of the foundations of the old woolen mill at Indiana, two miles up the river from here.
Seventy years ago it was a thriving town with breweries, distilleries, saw mills, and the first offices of the Grand River Navigation company. Hon. Rich-that company.
Now not a vestige of the town is left. Some ten or twelve children attend the little school house where once a (for those days) imposing two-roomed school stood.
The woolen mill came down the river forty-eight years ago or thereabouts in the spring freshet. It struck the bridge over which the Airline railway crosses the river, and was broken to some extent. A few rods down the river it came in contact with the Talbot road bridge and moved it six feet on its abutments, then floated down in fragments. Pieces of the machinery of the mill jut up the shallows even yet.
Driving along a weed-grown ditch, on one spot a green depression in “the flats” marks the course of the canal.
Old “Bill” Mellanby of Humberstone had a controlling interest in the gypsum mines, which employed fifty men. Twenty years ago these mines were still operated but on a smaller scale than in the old days.
Recently a company has been testing the locality. Gypsum of fine quality abounds, but the clay “roof” necessitates too expensive operations. In the old days timber was not specially valuable.
The little town of Selkirk was founded by the earl who afterwards founded the Red River settlement in the west, where Selkirk, Manitoba commemorates his work.
The first settler in this section of country was one “Captain” John Dochstader. His wife was a squaw, and with her he obtained from Brant a grant of 1200 acres of land, still known as the “Fradenburg” tract. He was a roamer and crossed back to the American side soon after his marriage, but returned with his wife and child in 1799. They crossed Lake Erie in a canoe hewed out of a log, and paddled up the river to the site of his grant of land.
He had some difficulty to renew his title; indeed 400 of the 1200 acres had to be given to those who aided him. His daughter married an American “skedaddler,” Fradenburg, and he finally got the title clear, so that the tract is named for him.
Most of this land is still in the possession of his descendents. He had three sons, all of whom played an important part in the development of this section of the country.
What volumes could be written of Lachlan MacCollum, Senator, of “old” Doctor Harrison, who still successfully practiced medicine qt 90, who thrice refused a senatorship; of the days when Wm. Lyon MacKenzie was candidate for the riding, successful, too; of T.C. Street who played his part in Welland county too. You will find them interesting I know.
Welland county was settled then. To Chippawa they went for supplies, and as a previous letter remarked, their mill was at Windmill Point, until the one at Indiana was built.
The Welland Tribune and Telegraph
28 June 1927
By
META SCHOOLEY LAWS
Welland County played no small part in the life of the whole district in early days.
Of course, it was not “Welland County,” then, but a part of “Niagara District.”
Haldimand County formed a part of Long Point district.
The history of Haldimand does not date back quite so far as does that of Welland, because so much of the county was held by the treaty which gave to Brant’s Indians, a territory extending six miles on each side of the Grand river.
But the progress made by Welland aided the pioneers of Haldimand some of whom, at least, came from that county.
For instance, Adam Fralick’s brother, John, took his family up the Chippawa creek, and settled somewhere near Wellandport. One of his descendents was the District Deputy Grand Master who officiated at the I.O.O.F. installation in Welland recently.
Adam Fralick as young man was in business, teaming on the Portage road between Queenston and Chippawa.
B.F. Canby, whose wife was a sister of Col. “Billy” Buchner, was a grandson of the B.F. Canby who laid out the township of Canboro which he named for himself. That township never was surveyed by the government. The three roads which Canby laid out converge at the sleepy little hamlet of Canboro which its founder dreamed would be an important town some day.
One road, still known as “The Canboro road,” was a part of Talbot street-a second meandered along Oswego creek, then busily turning the wheels of a grist mill and a saw mill; now all but dry in summer time. This road led to the Chippawa creek, near the mouth of the “Oswego.” The third road led to the little hamlet of Dunnville and is now part of provincial highway No. 3.
Driving down the south-east side of the Grand river from York to Cayuga, we pass the Harcourt homestead-a beautiful home overlooking the river. Here Hon. Richard Harcourt was born. He was the first superintendent of schools in the county. For years he represented Monck in the Ontario legislature and during that time held the portfolio of education in the Ross government.
The old “Davis” home is near York. An old atlas lies open before me in which is the business card of A.A. Davis, Miller, York.
This road once led through the thriving village of Indiana, whose very ruins have disappeared.
Yet we talk with men who remember when there were distilleries, breweries, mills, at this spot; when a two-roomed school was required.
Wild grape-vines cover and tangled Virgina creeper cover completely the few crumbling stones left of the foundation of one of these buildings.
But near-by is Ruthven Park, where Colonel Andrew Thompson spends the summer months in the beautiful home built by his grandfather. One relative of this family lives at Port Colborne-a woman who certainly possesses the gift of growing old beautifully-Charles Carter’s widow.
She could throw valuable light on the pioneer history of this district, and doubtless Welland County’s Historical society with much valuable data.
But the intention of this letter was to speak of the important part the old windmill at Windmill Point played in the life of the early settlers of this Grand river district. But the letter is already too lengthy.
Hiram MacDonald, a cousin of Sir John A’s, was one of the early settlers along the river.
He and his stepsons have made the journey from their home, 20 miles up the Grand river from Port Maitland to this mill more than once. Their canoe was hollowed out of a big log and provided with a rude sail.
Rafts of timber, and scow loads of cordwood, or grain, found their way down the river and lake to Buffalo in those days.
The Grand River Navigation company, whose ancient papers, the Six Nation Indians are bringing into the limelight again, in an attempt to prove that they were defrauded by the company, or government, or both, did a thriving business then.
Reminders of the “canals” they constructed are to be seen in the ditches nearly overgrown with reed and rushes, as we drive along the river road.
Remains of the locks they built still exist.
Every spring freshet brings some of the great timbers down. The River road drive is beautiful now as then.
Folk from the nearby cities are just beginning to learn this and are invading the silence which has settled over the once busy scene.
Instead of the scows and occasional schooner of fifty years or so ago, the canoe of the fisherman is seen. Here and there along the bank are the tents of the campers.
Some one will buy the hermitage or some other of those beautiful old homes and a summer hotel will be established. There could be no more beautiful spot.
But the dreams of the pioneers of an ever increasing commercial importance attaching to the district have not, and will not be fulfilled.
Yet, who shall measure the national influence and worth of those who won from the wilderness, these fertile farms, and of their successors, the farmers of this banner section of Canada’s banner province?
The Welland Tribune and Telegraph
17 February 1927
A REMINISCENCE
By
META SCHOOLEY LAWS
That was a very interesting article in a recent issue of The Tribune and Telegraph relating to the five (four) survivors of the Q.O.R. who fought at Ridgeway, June, 1866.
What a peculiar friendship must exist between them!
Dr. Brewster of Ridgeway was one of the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic.
One day he told us how year after year the number that met in their annual gathering grew smaller, and the bond between each of them stronger. How in the last years the once great gathering was but a small meeting of close, close friends.
Doubtless the same feeling exists among these five (four).
How often as a child sitting in the pew half-way down the church, have I looked at the white marble tablet which gave the Memorial church its name.
One morning father took me up to it after church and read the names and the stanza of Thomas Campbell’s inscribed on it:
| “To live in hearts we leave behindis not to die.”
is the closing line. |
We drove home that day the “long way round” by the Athoe home, whose porch pillars were marked by the bullets.
How often he told us the story for we never tired of it of how grandfather took the horses and cattle back to the marsh, which then extended for miles, just a little north of the Maple grove and its adjoining farms. Grandfather wanted his wife to come with um, but she refused. She “had her bread started” and father and Uncle Duncan stayed with her, of course.
Auntie Sloan too, stayed in the stone house on Point Abino alone. They were the only two women of that neighborhood who did not leave their homes.
Mrs. Zachariah Teal (Nancy Alexander) was the only woman who stayed in Ridgeway.
About four in the afternoon, father told us, the firing was so distinct that he and his brother went to Ridgeway. The five (four) survivors spoken of in that article could not have been among those whom grandma fed, as they retreated she gave them all she had prepared in the house. When she told us the story she never failed to say, “The poor tired boys! I was glad I had stayed at home.”
Charlie Lugsdin, whose name was mentioned, was left in Auntie Sloan’s care by his comrades, who carried him that far about five miles.
Father used to tell that cattle in the near-by bush wood frightened the Fenians, who thought the noise was the approach of cavalry, and turned and fled after the Q.O.R. had retreated.
Years after, while the writer taught at Ridgeway, a white-haired old clergyman visited the church.
He stood a few moments before the marble tablet, and when he rose spoke first of one whose name we had so often read-Malcolm MacEchren, sergeant, who died of wounds.
“He was my classmate and chum,” the old man said, and he described the stalwart young Scot to us, and then preached on “Sacrifice,” not the sermon prepared for the occasion, he said afterward.
A few weeks later Rev. Mr. Dobson, now gone “home” too, occupied the pulpit and he told us of “Willie Temple,” whose name is also engraved there-“ a delicate winsome lad who gave his all.”
“To what purpose is this waste,” was the text he chose.
In the entry of the remodeled Methodist church that tablet has been placed, and beside it another bearing the names of those who made the supreme sacrifice in the last great war.
Ah me! How many “boxes of alabaster, very precious,” have been broken-Sacrifice.
Not long ago another story of this time came my way. The House’s lived in the vicinity but north and east of the battlefield. Mr.House took the horses back into the country, but his wife and the children stayed home.
Toward evening little Charlotte and her brother drove the cattle to the pasture, for everything seemed quiet.
They had some distance to go, and had just reached the “bars” of the field when a group of the Fenians came out of the woods near them. The poor children were dreadfully frightened and began to cry.
The cattle had been shut in all day and were impatient to get to their feeding ground, and the little ones could not manage them.
The leader of the Fenians halted his men and asked the boy what was wrong, told him that men didn’t cry, let down the bars and helped them drive the cattle in.
Long afterward Charlotte (Mrs. Shrigley) lived at Maple Grove farm, and her niece, Mrs. John White, told the story to me as she had heard it
You young people are missing a great deal of enjoyment if you do not cultivate the acquaintance of the few-so few old people who could tell you stories of these old days.
History-is it not?
In June ‘96, I think, the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Ridgeway was observed. The lieutenant-governor unveiled a monument on the battle ground.
Elgin county has, through the efforts of their Historical society, marked by stone tablets the first registry office, which was a small log structure, They have a fairly accurate record of the first families who settled there.
Norfolk county, too, is systemically searching out early records.
Welland county should give the Historical society there more appreciation. There should be a branch in every township, and the fragments of pioneer history should be gathered quickly and pieced together. For every township had its great men and women, whose life story would be a tale of romance, adventure, yes, and accomplishment.
They, too, like the heroes of the Q.O.R. fought, and won, and died. Few of them saw the result of their heroic sacrifice. Most of them would, like the old soldier in Tennyson’s poem, scorn praise for their valor, in his words-
| “I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do.” |
Not even five nor one of them is left but we in whose veins their blood flows; we who owe to them the best we have and are; we bow our heads by the too-often neglected churchyard where their ashes lie and whisper of them, too, that-
“Their name liveth forevermore,” for of them, as of the soldier dead, it is true that the words inscribed on the memorial tablet are true.
The Welland Tribune and Telegraph
4 June 1927
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
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