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- Port Dover Maple Leaf, June 15, 2005
Gone for now but will be reassembled some day
200-year old Port Dover house removed board by board.
Stan Morris
From its vantage point on Highway 6 at the western outskirts of town a white frame house has been witness to the evolution of Port Dover since its earliest beginnings. It stood there watching the passing of horse-drawn traffic along a dirt trail to a paved highway from the early 1800s to June 2005.
The house is gone now…for the time being. It was purchased by Mel Shakespeare of Port Hope and dismantled one board at time, each piece of wood meticulously marked and numbered. The owner intends to rebuild it to be a “modern” house with an historic skeleton, look and feel.
When I visited the site two workers were on the job. There were timbers stacked neatly beside the laneway, darkened by age but still very sound. Bricks which had been carefully taken down and cleaned of mortar were neatly placed on skids, all of which was in preparation to be transported to another building lot somewhere to be reassembled as the same house. All that old building material will certainly experience déjà vu.
A few metres away, still undisturbed, was the wooden foundation of the house. Those thick hand hewed beams, probably 10 inches thick, were quite badly decayed. However, they supported the hand hewed logs which formed the floor beams and these seem to be as solid as the day they would have been laboriously placed there about 200 years ago. With their preservation in mind, those log beams had been placed quite a distance above ground level so were high and dry.
The style of construction is called post and beam.
One of the workmen told me they found a coin which was dated 1802 under the threshold during the dismantling.
Jack McBride grew up in that house. He is now retired and lives in Burlington. He told me on Friday during a phone call that it was his grandfather’s house, John Aaron McBride, then his father’s, Albert McBride. Jack was an only child and lived there until about 1934 when the family purchased the property directly across the highway. As a youngster he walked to school from the old two-storey house, which was heated with a wood-burning stove in the kitchen. He recalled it had one bedroom downstairs off the kitchen and two bedrooms upstairs. In the backyard was a well and pump and, of course, an outhouse.
Old records indicate that James McCoy was first deeded the property in 1821. It was described as Woodhouse Township Concession 1, Lot 9, west half, 100 acres. He had come to the new world from County Down in Ireland. He was born in 1815 and died 92 years later in 1907. He is buried nearby in St. John’s Anglican Cemetery.
Maple Leaf newspaper files of 1922 report of McCoy Woods on the outskirts of town which church groups used for camping. Later land was sold off for the Lake Erie & Northern Railway line which crossed the property.
In 1933 Miss Maria McCoy sold the property to John Aaron McBride. She had resided in the house for many years. Miss McCoy died in March 1934.
Evelyn Waters told me this week that her father, Arthur Leitch (a widower), married Aleta McBride, widow of Albert McBride, and they resided in the McBride house for a short time.
Mel Shakespeare informed me that the banister and fireplace mantel had been removed from the house by someone. He was able to trace where the mantel is and it will be returned. The old house restorer is not too concerned about the banister as a portion of an upper section was left so he can reproduce exactly what it was like, saying, “that is something we do all the time.”
Mel Shakespeare’s address is RR 3 Port Hope. He owns a company called Traditional Homes – Historic Homes and Cottages To Go. He specializes in dismantling old houses and rebuilding them on lots elsewhere. The company has an inventory of old houses which are for sale and can be, as he says, “transport them to wherever you want them and reassemble them, preserving the charm of the past while adding all the modern conveniences.”
Three pictures with the following information:
These 200-year-old bricks, logs, and timbers shown above will experience déjà vu when reassembled to be a duplicate home of the original.
A rendering of what the home will look like when it is reassembled and restored at some time in the future.
The solid logs which form the house’s floor beams still remain solid with 200-year-old bark still intact.
Norfolk Marriages, Townsend - John A. McBride, Aged 34 Years, Resides Victor, Born Victor, Bachelor, Agent, Son of James and Isabella McBride, Jemima E. Aiken, Aged 27 Years, Resides Victor, Born Victor, Spinster, Daughter of James and Anna Aiken, Witness Mrs. D. Boyd, Townsend, May r20th 1891, Groom Advent, Bride Methodist, Solemnized by Rev. D. S. Boyd, by License, Registered May 30th 1891, S. Cunningham Division Registrar of Townsend
From John Cardiff's Nornet
Victor - location undetermined. The 14 Mar 1888 British Canadian newspaper reported the Victor post office had revenue of $66.95 and salaries of $11.50 in the year ending 30 Jun 1887.
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Rainham Builders
1856 - 1951 (95 years)
, d. 3 Oct 1911, Woodhouse Township, Norfolk County