Note: some minor changes have been made to the article to eliminate the poor grammar and repetition. A full copy of the article can be read at the Archives.
Continuing a series of local history as recorded in newspapers this is the first about Carlisle, written by T. J. Patton, Dominion Land Surveyor, Little Current, Ontario.
From The Hamilton Spectator, February 2, 1935
“One of the first incidents that I can remember was my father, Andrew Patton, switching me gently with a bit of the last year’s corn stalks which he had picked up in the field beside me. I was about 4 years old, and had picked my way across the bridge over the mill-pond near our house (on lot 5, concession 8, East Flamboro), to go exploring a bit on my own when discovered. The spring freshet was on, and the floor of the bridge almost afloat in many places; the water was going pretty freely over the stones on the approach at the father end of the bridge.
What was in my childhood and youth a wide, open mill-pond, a typical ‘swimmin’ hole’, about 70 yards wide has dwindled since the doing away of the dam to a very small creek (the 12 mile creek), bordered on the side by thick bush, as originally.
In my exploring, I sometimes got to my father’s grist mill, about 50 or 60 rods down the stream, and would be lost in wonderment watching the turning of the huge waterwheel, which was enclosed in a house joined to the mill. It was likely an undershot wheel, as there was not much fall in the stream. When at the Old Boys’ Reunion at Carlisle in 1928, a party of us old boys and girls, and friends, wandered along the old road beside the site of the mill, and the only trace of the tail-race from the wheel is a shallow groove across the road. In the spring of 1873, while the old mill and the flume to it were being repaired, the heavy freshet got on the rampage, and undermined the heavy stone foundation and basement of the mill, which wrecked nearly the whole structure.
The saw-mill on the same stream, not far away, also owned by my father, was destroyed by fire a few years afterwards. It was more modern, and had an up-to-date turbine wheel.
I have a faint recollection, too, of a log cabin on the same lot, beside the creek, which served as a dwelling until my father built a very comfortable frame house about 80 to 100 yards farther upstream. Beside the log cabin stood the brick oven in which big batches of bread were turned out.
In the early 50’s, my father, who, by the way, was a justice of the peace, employed James McIntosh, a provincial land surveyor, of Strabane to lay out some lots.
About 1858 my father commenced a more pretentious dwelling of stone between the log cabin and the frame one mentioned (this stone one was burned about 1824). It was very nicely designed by an architect in Toronto, about 30 by 50 feet, two storeys and a large attic, a fine example of the Colonial style.
Where what is, or was, known as the Mill road to Progreston, the road laid out on the line dividing the north and south halves of the lots on concession 8 leaves what is known as the Centre road into Carlisle, there was, when I was a little fellow, a little old, rickety frame building, in which Miss Ryerson, a niece of the Rev. Dr. Egerton Ryerson, taught a school which was jointly supported by some of the nearby residents. Miss Ryerson was married to Thomas Galloway, of Carlisle, and in about 1871 for a time taught a private school in Carlisle. One winter, a Miss Yenney, of Waterdown, taught a school in Progreston in a little house belonging to James Kievel. A Mrs. Paynter, wife of the miller employed by our father, in the summer of 1862 taught a small private school in their dwelling near the grist-mill. I remember being at that school.
The Wesleyan Methodist Church building of 1852, a large frame one near Carlisle village stood just where the present fine brick church stands beside the cemetery, not far from where the Centre road crosses the Twelve-Mile creek and which was built some time in the 90’s.
About this present brick church, it was noticed while at the Old Boys’ reunion in 1928 that the stairs leading up to the main auditorium were quite narrow, for two to walk comfortably together on them, and winding, which made them worse. When asked for the reason for this defect, some one explained that the minister in charge of the congregation at the time of the building of the church had overruled construction of the stairs – the idea being that it should be next to impossible, at a funeral, to allow the casket to be taken up them.
In connection with the civil war in the United States, the only thing that I can remember was that an old darkey, named Boyer, and his typical “mammy” wife and two sons lived in a small cottage in Carlisle. They had come to Canada and freedom by the “underground railway”. In the neighbourhood were widows of Canadians who had gone as substitutes for the conscripted United States citizens, and fought in the war. James Ryerson, one of the neighbourhood, a brother of the Miss Ryerson mentioned, had returned from the war minus a leg below the knee, and was a pensioner.
The old-fashioned tea meeting was given every winter in the old Methodist church. A clothes-line would be strung on nails along the women’s side of the building, on which the women and children would hang their wraps and bonnets. That was years before an organ was installed in the building, and a little old melodeon in the home of the writer was folded up, wrapped in a blanket and hoisted onto the stage-like platform of rough boards around the pulpit.
During the refreshments the feasting was accompanied by much throwing of conversational lozenges and occasional cookies well soaked in tea, which splashed on some unwary one. Some so-called hardened wretch who wouldn’t come to the penitent bench at protracted meetings, went shooting on Sundays, was sometimes slighted during refreshments by being served with bare bone on his plate, which nearly provoked a fight.
It was the custom in those days in that community at services for the men to sit on the left side of the building, and the women and children on the right side. Newlyweds would sit during the honeymoon on the women’s side.
The second part of this Heritage Paper will be published next week.
© The Waterdown-East Flamborough Heritage Society 1999, 2023.
