UNDERGROUND SILVER CREEK
In the early days of Silver Creek, confidence ran high that underground
resources could be expected to make an appearance. One person who held this
optimistic view appears to have been the young blacksmith who built the rambling
old home now occupied by Mrs. Daphne Cole Wilde on Main Street.
At one time the lot on which this house stands extended to Walnut Creek
and “p the slopes of present-day Alfred Heights, so that both creek sides
were owned by the blacksmith, Lyman Howard. Lyman Howard was not only a blacksmith,
but he was possessed of an acute scientific interest and curiosity. Rocks
fascinated him and much of his free time was spent examining the rocks and
shale of his creek
Mr. Howard felt certain that along the banks of Walnut Creek there were
large deposits of bituminous coal. So certain of this was he that in 1826
he went to the expense of having an expert from Pittsburgh come to Fayette
(Silver Creek) to examine the creek banks.
This expert admitted that the black stone in the bed of Walnut Creek bore
a strong indication of cannel coal but he advised against attempts to mine
it until coal became more valuable. At that time, the cost of mining would
have been more than the value of the product. Coal had to be mined in great
quantities to be a paying investment, and the Walnut Creek bed did not indicate
coal in any such scale.
It was gratifying to Mr. Howard to have his scientific conclusions confirmed
qualitatively if not quantitatively, and so the dreams of coal mines operating
day and night while iron foundries and blast furnaces belched their flames
into the skies along the creek banks faded.
A few years after this dream had faded, Mr. Howard found a mineral substance
in the form of cobblestones in a ravine on the hillside which he felt quite
sure was a rock deposit of iron ore. He sent some half dozen of these lumps
weighing fifty pounds to Buffalo for examination, but it was decided that
while the samples did confirm iron, the amount once again was not sufficient
to warrant working. Again Mr. Howard had the satisfaction of knowing he was
right, but the visions of an industrial bonanza in the new settlement remained
unrealizable.
One hundred and forty years later (in 1966) local interest and excitement
was once again in evidence during the sewer excavation. This time the discovery
appeared to be a vein of coal on Central Avenue near Mechanic Street on the
banks of Silver Creek. It would appear that the village has been sitting on
a bed of minerals all through its lifetime.
****************
Another episode in the exploration of Silver Creek’s underground resources
is contained in the following story:
Every spring when Mrs. Ward was still able to take long walks, she with
her paring knife in hand accompanied by the three Thomas grandchildren would
walk back over the farm (now Ward Avenue) to strip off bark from the young,
wild cherry trees to be used in the making of cold syrup for the winter to
come. In the depression between knolls, water which had settled there would
intrigue the little girls because of the many colors on the surface thereof.
To their questions and comments, Mrs. Ward regularly replied “I’ll never live
to see it, but some day oil will be discovered on this land”.
As yet, oil has not been discovered but gas has. The first experimental
gas well was drilled behind the Motor Boat Club (now Firemen’s Hall) close
to the railroad embankment, where it did yield gas to some degree. It established
the fact that gas was to be found in this general area.
Promptly, the Ward farm was leased and a well driIled which proved to be
very productive. This was in 1909 and led to a transformed way of life with
gas heat, lights and cooking. After sixty years of faithful production, this
well is still serving the community along with the wells that have followed.
Published September 1966
FAYETTE’S FIRST PLANK HOUSE
The year of 1815 was an epoch-making year for the straggling little log
cabined community of Fayette which bordered the only highway, the Erie Road.
In that year the first permanent mill was set up and giant timbers were sawed
into sturdy planks. From these emerged the first plank houses.
The summer before, Elijah Holt of Vermont had pushed on to the new Northwest
Territory to inspect its prospects. He returned to Vermont, so enthusiastic
over the waterpower available and the locality in general that he easily persuaded
his brother-in-law, Mr. Kidder and the latter’s partner, Mr. Heaton, both
experienced millwrights, to emigrate to this wilderness. By December they
had disposed of all their property and were ready for the journey into the
new Bounty Lands beyond Cattaraugus Creek in western New York. Before leaving
they were joined by Heaton’s brother-in-law, Asa Gage.
The three arrived in Fayette early in the new year and found the location
even more richly promising than they had dared anticipate. Walnut Creek and
its flats offered the perfect location for the mill, while the dense black
walnut forest guaranteed a wealth of timber. The millwrights lost no time;
and by June 1815 their dam was completed, the machinery was set up, and the
first timbers were being sawed. The first planks were for the enclosure of
the machinery and comprised the first permanent mill, which was to stand for
the best part of a century on the banks of Walnut Creek on upper Main Street.
The earliest plank houses were to mark the beginning of a new community more
or less centering around the mill.
Asa Gage articled a wide stretch of property on the east side of the Erie
Road north of the bridge, and his was the first plank house to be built. This
early home still stands, the basic structure unchanged, except for the addition
of clapboards over the aging planks.
This historic house is the rambling story and a half, old-time building
which stands well back from the street between the Forestville Road and Knight
Street, facing present day Main Street, the Erie Road of long ago. The low
eaves, the heavy cornices, one wide gable with its one-sashed square windows,
the low, long, one storied kitchen, the adjoining woodshed stretching out
to the rear, the heavy Christian doors and the small windows, once many paned,
are all seen to better advantage from the Knight Street side. To grasp the
real feeling of its age one has but to see the heavy beams inside, the very
low ceilings and the wide floor boards of varying widths. The present owners,
the George Mohart family, boast of one floor board twenty-seven inches wide.
Some of the original hardware still exists, and the atmosphere is heightened
by the clattering of latches on doors having no more uniformity in size than
the floor boards.
From the standpoint of early homes this should be rated as “Exhibit A”,
not only as the First Plank House but as the house in which the most original
features have been preserved. It is a truly important landmark in the history
of Silver Creek’s Fayette days.
After the death of Asa Gage, who was Fayette’s first blacksmith and whose
shop once stood across the street from his home, all his property was purchased
by Charles Knight whose three children grew to maturity in the old Asa Gage
house. In after years when the elder Knights were gone, this property came
into the hands of one son, Henry. Here he lived out his none too exemplary
days with his amiable little wife, Minerva Doty Knight and their very pretty
and popular only daughter, Pearl.
Theirs was a very cozy home with its bright figured Brussels carpet and
floor-length Brussels net curtains. The dining room was especially cheery
with a little glass conservatory of sorts extending from the south wall toward
the creek where the afternoon sun poured in and Mrs. Knight’s blossoming
plants flourished.
Pearl Knight had everything that heart could desire in that superficial
day; blond curls, little feet, a sweet singing voice and winsome ways. She
danced prettily and had all the little graces that made her perfect for all
the Cantata leading roles. She had her pony and cart in which she jaunted
and jounced around the park, and later she had her own driving horse and carriage.
She had a diamond ring, a Chatelaine bag, a gold watch and chain and taffeta
petticoats that swished. Yes, she had just everything as befitted the cherished
only daughter of the successful livery stable owner and hotel keeper, for
Hank was the proprietor of the old Main Street Hotel, if none too savory
a reputation.
In the Knight home was an Amos Wight portrait of Pearl, the pretty child
that she was, life-sized, all in white with a nosegay in her hand. This was
heavily framed in gold and stood on the floor against the back wall of the
sitting room opposite the front door. It couldn’t be hung as it was almost
as high as the low ceilinged room.
Pearl had many beaux from childhood but her stand-by was Cliff Taylor, the
shy and handsome neighbor who lived with his widowed mother in Virginia Bennett
KolIig’s house (84 Main Street) and was famous for his figure skating. Somnetimes
Cliff and Pearl skated together to a waltz tempo while onlookers marvelled
and envied. Pearl, however, didn’t marry any of these skating or dancing partners.
She was won by a young man, Herman Anderson, who came from the outside world
and was associated with the Eureka shop. For a period of years, hiring which
their son Rollin was born, they lived with Mrs. Knight. Ultimately all four
moved to California.
This house has known many rental periods and has housed numberless people.
Peggy Smith Langer was born in it while it was the home of John and Effie
Smith. In time it was sold to Harry Ehmke and for a number of years was rented
by his son, Basil. During that period Pennsylvania Dutch touches were added
to the kitchen giving a new flavor to an old scene. It is now the property
of the George Mohart family, and its old features are not only being preserved
by them but are being appreciated to the full.
Published November 1959.
GATES-WARD-THOMAS HOMESTEAD
Just as it is a recorded fact that the Knight house was the first plank
house in Fayette, so it is an historical fact that the Thomas house was the
second. The Asa Gage house (now known as the Knight House) was followed by
that of Elijah Holt (now known as the Thomas House). These first planks
were all turned out in 1815.
The beams and sills were all hand-hewn from native timber and put together
with hand-made pegs. These beams in the Thomas home are from ten to sixteen
inches thick and are of various woods. Walnut was, of course, the prevailing
timber of this locality but red cedar would seem to have been a close second;
most of the beams and all the pegs in the parts of the house taken down from
time to time were of red cedar, still very red and definitely pungent. Electricians
have found some of the walls and partitions to be double, and in some cases
the space was filled with broken plaster. This last, it seems, was to discourage
mice. The sturdiness of these earliest houses cannot be overestimated; they
were built to endure and endure they have.
The main part of this house was originally almost identical with the Gage
house the same story and a half gabled structure with the broad side toward
Erie Road. In addition, an ell extending to the west comprised the kitchen,
woodshed, and carriage house. Whether it was built at one time or whether
sections were added as needed is not known, but it would appear to have been
in this form since 1832.
How long the Gateses lived in this house is not known, but it is a matter
of record that they were living in it in 1824 and had it directly from Elijah
Holt. Elijah Holt has long since become little more than a legendary figure
with little recorded of him. That little is of definite significance, however,
for in 1815 he was elected the first representative to the New York State
Legislature from this area.
Since that time, there has never been a break in the family succession.
Abiatha Gates, Jr., an only child, had it from his parents and Helen Gates
Ward had it after him. She bequeathed it to her only child, Harriet Wells
Ward Thomas who, in turn, bequeathed it to her three daughters, the Thomas
girls, who still retain the ownership and the occupancy. The seventh and
eighth generations visit in this house frequently, but Marion Clark (Mrs.
George Ebenhack of Pittsburg) is the only seventh generation member to have
actually lived in it. She lived with her Aunt Marian for the seven years
she taught in the Silver Creek High School (1935—1942).
In 1832, Helen Mar Gates was nine years old and had come on the Erie Canal
with her nine brothers and sisters and her parents, Abiathar Gates, Jr. and
Harriet Wells Gates, from Morristown, New York. The Morris family and the
Gateses had chartered a canal boat on which they and all their household possessions
were transported to Buffalo and from there by ox cart to Fayette. Helen Mar
was old enough to remember well the ox cart trip to Utica and the two weeks
trip on the canal; the relief and the fun it was to run up and down the towpath
when the boat was tied, the excitement of gathering the fire wood, building
the fire there by the tow-path and cooking the supper over it. They sat around
the fire after eating, sang and watched the stars come out and drop into
the Erie Canal as they supposed.
The Morrises pushed on to the county seat of Mayville, but Abiathar Gates
had come to take over his father’s farm and carry on in his stead. Helen Mar
remembered the house as she first saw it, among the tall trees and overlooking
the Erie Road; the huge stump of the famous giant walnut tree on a line with
the front door. She remembered her first day at school in the little building
farther up the road (the present address of 150 Main Street). The teacher
was the youthful Chalon Burgess before he went to Hamilton College. She remembered
her awe at finding a graveyard, the first in the new settlement, behind the
schoolhouse.
The Gateses were very community minded; for the name of Abiathar Gates is
found as a member of the school board in the early school records, a pew holder
in the Presbyterian Church in 1832, a member of the village board when Silver
Creek was incorporated in 1848. In addition to farming, he was a peg manufacturer
and set up his shop in his pasture by the brook side (Ward Avenue) where
its water power was best available. To have supplied his large family with
the niceties which they left behind them, he must have turned out shoe pegs
at an incredible speed.
Those early years after the Abiathar, Jrs. took possession must have been
grievous ones. For four successive years, a little coffin was carried out
the heavy front door, borne under the old trees and up the Erie Road to its
burial place. Four little white stones still stand in an unbroken row in the
cemetery to the right of the sandstone monument bearing the name of Gates.
The dates read 1832, 1833, 1834, 1835— Rufus, Murray, Perry, Lois -- four
of the happy little people who had skipped so blithely along the tow-path.
It was with little heart that the Gateses went about their daily tasks.
Mrs. Gates grew increasingly frail with each grief, but the growing girls
took on more responsibility, making the tallow dips and cording wood, while
Mr. Gates continued to make his shoe pegs and work his farm with even greater
diligence. When the crop was heavy, he was known to work all night with such
helpers as he could get, harvesting with sickle, by moonlight, the grain on
the level stretch at the top of present (lay Ward Avenue, later the Silver
Creek Airport.
The remaining Gates children grew up, married and left home -- all but the
third daughter, Helen Mar, who took care of her failing mother and kept the
home for her father after her mother’s death. When Helen Mar was thirty-three
years old (a frightful age for an unmarried girl) romance came her way, and
she was married to Dr. Spencer Ward, the very successful physician and sheep
raiser, an older man and a widower. This marriage was performed before the
bay window of the old home in 1856.
A housekeeper was found for Mr. Gates, and Helen Mar moved to her new home,
the house built in 1837 by Dr. Ward for his home and office. This was removed
for Dr. Barresi’s office in 1945. Here, as Mrs. Spencer Ward, she enjoyed
a full and busy life; and after four years of marriage, she became the mother
of Harriet Wells Ward, the liveliest and most irrepressible child the town
had ever known, according to all accounts. Little Hattie, outlandishly petted
by her staid, elderly parents, grew up on the streets, an uninhibited soul
if ever there was one. She did just what she wanted to and when. She swung
on gates, perched on hitching posts, straddled fences, went everywhere and
knew everybody, pumped and pumped until the village horse-troughs were running
over, rested on saloon steps with unsavory village loafers, behaved terribly
in church, and was, withall, an irresistible force to be reckoned with. She
rode everywhere on the front of her father’s saddle and, when she was old
enough, had her own saddle horse and a riding habit in which she practically
lived.
But what of the old house meanwhile? Mr. Gates had died and the house was
sold to Dr. Ward as a gift for his wife and as an additional farm on which
his sheep could graze. Each Sunday morning he, with Hattie on the saddle in
front of him, rode up to the old house, interviewed the installed overseer,
then salted the sheep. Though not living on it, the old Gates place was an
integral part of the Ward family life. Dr. Ward’s sheep interest alone would
have made it so. He owned from three to five thousand sheep and a circuit
of farms over which he moved them as the grass was cropped. Once a year it
was necessary to bring the sheep through town in order to start the circuit
over again. On this occasion each year, the school was closed for the afternoon
so the children could share the excitement.
This was an unforgettable sight. Mrs. Nellie Stewart, in the last year of
her long life, would still describe the dramatic scene: the suspense of the
waiting children, the cleared streets, the sound of the padding feet long
before any creature was in sight, finally the tall, stately figure of Dr.
Ward on his tall black horse and then the sheep, a veritable river of sheep,
a foam of wool flowing as far as the eye could carry with busy attendants
herding stragglers in from the edges with their long staffs, Down the Main
Street they flowed, around the Park, up Dunkirk Street (Central Avenue), disappearing
around the bend above the hill, enroute to the Fred Ward Lake Shore Farm
(beginning at Sorge’s building today).
Then came the doctor’s death in 1873 and all was changed. Helen Mar chose
to live in the childhood home which her husband had so generously bought for
her. There with her thirteen year old daughter she found comfort and a new
way of life in the old setting.
This was all a very sobering experience for Hattie whose whole life until
then hid been much more bound up with her father than with her mother. It
was a far cry from the life in a doctor’s office home at the four corners,
but Hattie came to love it. She loved the expanse and the freedom, loved to
ride over the rolling acres and watch Amos Wight painting his bird’s eye-view
of the town. One of these paintings, which hangs in the Anderson-Lee Library,
shows her with her horse “Black Dan” painted in the foreground.
The old house came alive again: each year bringing more young people, beaux,
moonlight riding, parties, and more dancing in Curson’s Glen. Hattie’s years
spun past full and happy with time out for boarding school, and summers at
Chautauqua. Then came the handsome Welsh tenor, lately arrived in this country
and sent by H. H. Best and Company of New York as an accountant to their experimental
brokerage office in Buffalo. A nephew of Mr. Merritt, the pharmacist of the
town, was induced to come to Silver Creek to sing at a Methodist Church concert.
Hattie was in the choir; they met at rehearsal; and that was the end, the
very end of Hattie. The romantic stranger with his black hair and eyes, knew
instantly he had met his fate. It was the love match of the ages! Harriet
Wells Ward and Frederick W. Thomas of Haverfordwes, South Wales, were married
October 18, 1882 in the same bay window as her mother was before her and
as her daughters would be in years to come.
All was in readiness in the parlor and sitting room for the evening wedding,
and strict orders had been given that no one was to go in there. No one! However,
an inquisitive cousin from Dunkirk, Florence Sherman, couldn’t stand it very
well, and by late afternoon couldn’t stand it at all. She just had to have
a peek at the wedding setting! She slowly, softly, turned the knob of the
door from the dining room into he living room. No one heard. She got the
door open, noiselessly slipped in, and there was the pet calf which had been
staked out in the back yard, sucking a tidy on easy chair. Never was a bad
little girl so lauded and rewarded!
After a year of life in Buffalo, the young couple realized that Mrs. Ward
could not be left alone on such an extensive property and that some arrangement
would hive to be made. Mr. Thomas realized that Silver Creek was an open field
for the insurance business, for which his training and experience in accounting
in the old country were particularly adapted. He opened his insurance business
in the fall of 1883. Not too long after Mr. Speer, who had started a local
newspaper, closed up shop; the town was distressed without a paper. Mr. Thomas
took over the equipment and became owner and publisher of the Hanover Gazette
for many years, combining the editorial office with that of his insurance
office on the second floor of the Stewart Block (now Ludeman’s). All this
made it possible for the Thomases to make Silver Creek their home.
This seemed to be the logical time to make some changes in the old house,
adding to its comfort, convenience, and attractiveness. The small paned windows
in the front part were replaced by modern, two-paned upper and lower sash
windows curved at the top as was the prevailing vogue. The stoop was discarded,
and a long veranda in its stead stretched not only across the entire front
of the house but down the north side as well.
The north side was a cool spot to rock or swing in a hammock of a Sunday
afternoon. To rock and visit, nod, and wave to the occasional passerby was
a luxury and a joy. The hours that were rocked away on that veranda; Mrs.
Ward with her friends of a lifetime: Maria Mixer from her stately mansion
nearer town, Mars Eggleston Mckee from Florice Robson’s house, Laura Babcock
from the late Mrs. Clement’s house, and Mrs. Ewell from the present Ralph
Erdle home. What pleasant summer hours they sedately rocked away in their
black bombazines with real lace and choice breast pins at their throats and
full skirts with pockets well down towards the hems in which they fished and
fished for elusive hankies, coin purses, and peppermint lozenges which seemed
to be their stay of life.
In not too many years there were three little girls to enjoy that veranda:
Helen, Anne, and Marian Thomas. On it they learned to walk, to play games
on rainy days and in time to sew blocks and make doll clothes each in her
own pint size rocker. The veranda of the eighties and nineties was an institution
not to be underrated; it bade for sociability and family contentment, both
of which the old home could justly claim.
***************
The Thomas home was one of great family contentment, much laughter and,
genial hospitality. There were endless church socials, Shakespeare Club “open
nights”, Jesse James pow-wows in costume (all day quilting parties), children’s
birth day parties, surprise parties, house parties through the high school
and college days of the three daughters. This home was one of music; many
were the musical occasions. The Welsh tenor who had so romantically wooed
and won Hattie Ward was never divorced from his first love -- music.
Mr. Thomas had not only sung widely in his own country but had sung in two
of New York’s best known churches and in Buffalo. He led the Silver Creek
Methodist choir for years, sang in every entertainment of a musical nature,
and gave much time to a male quartet composed of Jay Brand, Sandy Brooks,
and Newton Beebe. No day was complete until Mr. Thomas had run through some
new music or gone over some of his old numbers, such as, arias from Martha,
and II Trovatore.
On Sunday afternoons when the naps were over, the singing began. Oftener
than not Cap Lanphere and Arthur Merritt were to be found in the group, singing
with such abandon and turning the pages for Mrs. Thomas on the piano stool.
Then came the apples with Mrs. Thomas paring, and popcorn -- provided it popped.
It was a house of guests. In that day of no phones and slow mail service,
it was no unusual thing for a person or two or three or four to arrive on
the eleven o’clock train ahead of their letter of self invitation. “Didn’t
you get my letter?” would be the familiar cry at seeing the amazed expression
of whoever answered the door. These might come for all summer or for only
a week-end. One cousin came for his vacation and stayed nine years. The final
Welsh guest was Mr. Thomas’ sister, “Aunt Nellie”, whose stay lasted twenty
years.
It was anything but a lonely life that the Ward-Thomas house knew. It was
also anything but unprepared. This house was provisioned as if for a seige.
No onslaught could disconcert Mrs. Ward or her daughter for long. A slab of
bacon hung in its place on the back of the cellar door; a ham hung from a
rafter with the meat saw beside it. A hundred pound milk can was filled with
flour, another with sugar. A fruit cake rested serenely in its usual place
in a stone crock in the cellar with an apple to keep it moist. Frozen mince
pies stood in a row in the back pantry in winter. Home-dried corn and apples
were hung in bags from the cellar rafters. All it required was a little fast
thinking and a few minutes for preparation. Countless people have been served
and tucked away under the eaves of this house.
**************
The second change in this aging house came in 1896 when it really seemed
as if additional sleeping quarters were imperative and when the kitchen gave
every evidence of collapsing. It was decided to dispose of the open woodshed,
to tear down the sagging kitchen and erect a new two story section between
the carriage house and the main house.
This inserted addition proved to be a very high, steep bit of graceless
architecture which was as incongruous and out of keeping with the house proper
and the carriage house it connected, as mind of man could conceive, but it
did add two second story bedrooms for the girls, a fine all maple kitchen,
a commodious washroom, and a summer kitchen.
By 1910, water had been brought above the bridge, so the little out-house,
vine covered and luxuriant with bloom, was no longer a necessity without alternative.
The time had come to really remodel the house and provide it with modern
conveniences.
The whole ell was removed and the “new” part, high and steep was moved over
onto Ward Avenue (which Mrs. Thomas had opened up to the brook) and was made
into the present home of Mrs. Reuther (6 Ward Avenue). The carriage house
was moved to the rear where it still stands serving as a garage. This building
is probably as eloquent an example of the early plank building as any in existence
today. The hand-hewn timbers, warping planks, hand-made pegs are all there
in evidence to speak for themselves and all they represent in time and toil.
All the long, low, one-storied part was torn off the house and discarded.
All was gone but the main, original structure, the story and a half, one-gabled
section with its broad side facing the street. The roof was raised and three
bedrooms with their clothes closets and a bath were made out of the one large
room and a tiny room hardly larger than a compartment which had comprised
the whole upper region in the old house.
Probably Alice Beck is the only person alive today to remember that little
room occupied by so many different helpers in turn. The original structure
which had been the front was now the rear, for a whole new two-storied front
was added with a broad colonial pillared veranda making the house what it
is today -- the “new” part reaching the half century mark with the year 1960.
The new part is typically 1910 architecture, in no way early American, but
beamed ceilings were in vogue in that year, which with white enameled woodwork
throughout made a happy blending point. Only the dining room beams are the
authentic real ones, simply encased, and the hardwood floors are only a thin
layer over the genuine old cherry and walnut wide floor boards with their
perilously widening cracks.
Gone was the lamp shelf with all the lamps to be filled and chimneys to
be polished each day; gone were the wash bowls and pitchers and wash stands;
gone were the base-burners, the coal hods, pokers, Plymouth Rock chicken wing
which brushed off the fine dust after the ashes had been emptied thrice daily;
gone were the wood box, the reservoir, and the water pail, all of which called
for much filling each day; gone was the dark, spooky dirt cellar, with its
flat slate stones on which to step from one to the other to get to the apple
and vegetable bins. Gone was the gurgling spring tinder the cellar stairs
where the butter and cream were kept cool in the days before ice refrigeration,
and gone were the hanging shelves. The rafters and overhead beams are all
there still, rough, hand-hewn, bark still showing on some just as in the
days when the house was built, Elijah Holt’s house, the second plank house
in the village.
The old and the new have become happily fused. The old living room hasn’t
minded being the dining room since it could keep its same old beams, sunny
bay window, woodwork and openings. The little parlor hasn’t minded being the
book loom since it was changed in no way. The parlor bedroom hasn’t minded
being the kitchen; there is something very cozy about a kitchen. The old part,
the new part -- it’s all old now!
The new part was finished, and the family, back from the Wight house on
the adjoining lot, was well settled and established for Anne’s wedding on
Flag Day, June 1911, when Anne was married to Reverend Chester A. Clark of
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was the first event in the new-old house, a
perfect setting under the old, old trees.
What happy years the house was coming into! Everyone well, anxieties few,
irandchildren to give new incentive, Marian’s college friends to add life,
automobile lays to bring exciting new diversion and travel opportunities,
and the Motor Boat Club with its festivities to add pleasant hours of social
intercourse and gayety.
The whole house teemed with interests. Mr. Thomas was busy with his church
iffairs, his innumerable boards, and his new-found hobby, his car. Mrs. Thomas
was husy with her real estate, her new D. A. R. chapter, Shakespeare Club,
and the Red Cross during the First World War. Marian, when she was not on
trips or visiting chool friends, was busy picking up the threads of her local
life: supplying in the lot~l schools and in Dunkirk and helping to organize
a county Y. W. C. A. During the First World War she was Y. M. C. A. secretary
at Camp Meritt, New Jersey. upon her return, she became a member of the faculty
of the Dunkirk High School is head of the English Department, which position
she held for ten years, commutrig by trolley.
55
Then the sobering years came creeping on; declining health, a slowing of
tempo, a moderating of activities. Robert N. Erdle was taken into partnership
in Mr.
Thomas’ insurance business. The old house recognized the deepening shadows.
Mr Thomas was buried from this house in 1925, the oldest insurance agent in
years of service in Chautauqua County, his name a synonym for integrity.
in the ten years to follow, Mrs. Thomas found more and more solace in the
oh home that enfolded her, at one in their shared memories. Harriet Ward Thomas
wa buried from her ancestral home in 1935, the fifth generation of the Holt-Gates
line She was a forceful, stimulating, original character whose life was highly
colorful, ar mated always, dramatic often.
The following year, 1 936, brought the death of Roy C. Gates while vacationir
at The Maples with his family. He too was buried in Glenwood Cemetery from
the old house, making the bond between his family and the old house even stronger.
The house entered upon a new era: that of the two Marions. Marion Clark
w teaching high school English for her first year; Marian Thomas struggling
to rise to the responsibilities of a property owner, learning the intricacies
of business, and
supplying in school any time, anywhere. But they came through, and the seven
years together made an unforgettable chapter in the annals.
The old house fairly zoomed with life; the parties, the showers, the cook-outs
the clubs, the bridge foursomes, the Fortnightly celebrations, the weekend,
snow bound house parties, and endless out of town guests. The be-jittered
old house settled down to a semblance of its old time peace and tranquility
when Marion Clark departed for marriage and a home of her own.
What a full, full life this old house has known with its eight generations,
their lives, their loves, their traditions! How stately it still stands and
how benign, with the dignity of its many years and the mellowness of its affection.
How admirably it comports itself in a new century and a new world, this second
plank house in the one-time village of Fayette!
Published December 1959.