| Notes |
- In 1901 William McVean is found living right next door to the widow Sarah Hughes nee Prangley (qv).
The following notes were copied verbatum from an on-line family tree:
McVean Hub and Spoke factory Dresden Ont. Born Yarker Ont--
school in Le Roy NY? (raised by Aunt Jane???)
As young man--great duck hunter. People loved him
He and brothers Sandy and James hunted Peelee Island
Had big house Dresden Ont--now owned by dentist--(Paine?)
His Father set he and brother Osgood up in biz in Dresden=="O and W McVean' (Hub and spoke mfg)
Later--spokes for early cars(Ford)
Then sports stuff--hockey sticks and croquet sets
Factory built aircraft in 1930's "McVean Valkyr"
Bill McVean (grandson) remembers seeing A/C and talking to people who flew it. (3 modles were built? (Pics in Bill's family files.)
Baseball diamond in Dresden on site of factory now
4 brothers--Sandy (miller) James (Hardware) John ? Osgood (partner)
(AN INSERT FOR AN ART BOOK WRITTEN BY His Grandson Bill
Ms. Elsie Thoonan
RR 2 Blenheim Ontario
N0P 1A0
Phone ( 519-676-5761 ) January 23, 1995B
800 words
THE WILLY MCVEAN HOUSE IN DRESDEN
In 1901 my Grandfather, William Mattice McVean, carried his one-year-old son Ernest,
my father, down the new cement walk from the barn to the back door of his newly
purchased home in Dresden and pressed the tiny foot into the wet cement. I regret now
that I didn't carry that print off when Aunt Helen, the last McVean to inhabit the old
house, gathered the family and announced she was selling and moving to a nursing home
in Chatham. "Come and carry away those things which you love," she said. Aunt Helen
wanted my wife Catherine and I to move the Lilliputian play house that Grandfather had
built behind the house for his daughters, to our Oakville home, which she felt was it's
preferred retirement setting, but we felt the little house had taken root and left it where it
was along with father's footprint.
The things we did remove from the old house remain tangible memories of an age
of gracious Victorian clutter. A set of dishes from the pantry is now a reminder of 25
assorted aunts, uncles and cousins who gathered at the expansive dining table while
Grandfather carved a massive roast. They also remind me of the kitchen, awash with
helpful aunts while the uncles rested with loosened belts on each of nine chesterfields. I
also took the century old wooden work bench from the tool shed to remind me of
Grandfather teaching me to make hickory bows and arrows. There's a picture from the
wall of the tiny upstairs bedroom furnished with child size furniture, where the smallest of
us slept on visits. A pair of cast iron fire dogs from the cavernous many chambered
basement where Grandmother used to supervise the canning and the laundry in pre
technology days when such things were done by real people. An antique muzzle-loading
rifle and a dress sword, relics of some bygone war, came from the labrynthian attic where
there was a ghost said to be a relative of "Uncle Tom", which is quite possible, as Josia
Henson's granddaughter was my father's nurse. An old cast iron dog which cracked nuts
with it's mouth when you pumped it's tail reminds me of a library full of books
autographed by their authors to my Grandfather. I also took the books.
Grandfather William McVean was born in 1865 in Yarker Ontario, where his
father, Alexander, a good friend of Sir John A. MacDonald, operated a grist mill.
Alexander walker all the way from Yarker to Dresden to find a new home for his five sons
and a daughter. His wife Sara Hennery had passed on. Alice, his only daughter, died in
Dresden during the 1918 flu epidemic. Alexander set each of his 5 sons up in business:
James in hardware, Sandy and John in milling, and Osgood and William in the O. and W.
McVean Hub and Spoke Works, which became the town's principal employer. That was
in 1883 when Willy was only 18 years old. The factory site is now a baseball diamond
which would have pleased my father who once had a chance to try out for the Detroit
Tigers.
Shortly after Grandfather's first wife Emily Rush died he bought the home, where
he was to spend the rest of his life, from the original builder, his brother John. It was a
large, wandering red brick Victorian house on a corner, surrounded by fruit trees and
beautiful gardens. Grandfather moved in with his two daughters Jessie and Helen, and
married Maggie Henderson of Sparta. Willy and Maggie produced two boys, Ernest and
Gerald, and three daughters, Marion, Maude and Katherine. Willy died in 1939 and
Maggie in 1953.
The Willy McVean house, as it became known, was a hugely happy boisterously
busy place to a small boy and his many cousins. Exciting too. Grandfather was one of the
first in Dresden to own a car. It was a Model T Ford and my 12-year-old father taught
him how to drive it in the Dresden Fair Grounds. Later came a 1920ish Buick in which
we would all careen down gravel roads to the cottage on Walpole Island, where the aunts
would cook chicken while the uncles fished.
Willy and Maggie traveled a great deal after retirement so Willy always bought two of
everything, leaving the extras packed in trunks in the attic so he'd be ready if suddenly
overtaken by the wanderlust. Once he rushed into one of Grandmother's very formal tea
parties and announced, "Maggie, I'm going the South America and the train leaves
Chatham in an hour. If you're going, be ready. " She was. Maggie was always ready.
There were tears when the old house finally left the family but Aunt Helen died comforted
in the knowledge that the new owner had been one of her piano students and shared many
of the memories.
/30/
Bill McVean Associates Limited
Head Office: 245 Watson Avenue
Oakville, Ontario CANADA L6J 3V2
Phone: 905-845-6584
Studio: 204 Richmond Street West (405)
Toronto Ontario CANADA M5V 1V6
Phone: 416-599-0490/ Fax 416-351-1308
|
1865 - 1939 (74 years)
