BeeLines - June 8, 2017
By Marybelle Beigh, Westfield Town & Village Historian
Along Lake Erie & Chautauqua Creek – History, Mystery, Myths & Dreams
Born as Marybelle Mildred Blackburn in a farmhouse on Persons Road in December 1940, your Westfield Historian grew up in Westfield, attended WACS from Kindergarten through grade 12 (except for 5th grade at Sheridan #3), graduating with the class of 1958. In December 1949, the Blackburn family – father Don Blackburn (1911-1969), mother Frances (Dibble) Blackburn (Anderson) (1917-2014), brother John Rankin Blackburn (b. 1944), and “yours truly” moved from Persons Road to 169 N Portage, and in 1954, to 221 N Portage, both homes just a long stones-throw from Big Chautauqua Creek near where Hawley Street crosses it.
So, Lake Erie, Barcelona, Chautauqua Creek, the Barcelona Lighthouse, Indian arrowheads, and smoked fish were near and dear to my heart and activities. While attending Albany State Teachers College (now SUNY Albany), from 1958-1963, the summers of 1959, 1960, & 1961 were spent in Westfield, during which I worked as a “bus girl, dining room waitress, and bar room waitress” successively each summer, at Lathrop’s Lakeview Restaurant (now “When Pigs Fly BBQ”) in Barcelona.
During the WWII years, childhood memories include watching the Dirigibles (Blimps) fly back and forth along the lake between Buffalo and Chicago or Detroit; riding the trailer behind the tractor down to Persons Beach for picnics featuring smoked whitefish, where we picked up shells and colored beach glass, and wooden bobbers from the fishing nets, and the older kids lighted the bubbles of natural gas in Spring Creek, so we “young-uns” could watch water burn; growing Victory Gardens, and 4-H Club projects, and square dances at Volusia Grange Hall; evenings catching fireflies, watching the “northern lights” and milky-way and big dipper and man in the moon; and hearing the church bells and Welch whistle, and fire horn from all the way up in the village in 1945, and asking Mother “why?” and her telling me the War is Over!!!
Pre-teen and teen year memories include collecting Indian arrowheads with my best friend and giving them to the new museum in the big old mansion in the park; Miss Betts’ local history lessons about the three ways to tie grapes (umbrella-shaped, parallel along the TWO wires, and U-shaped, and Grace Bedell & Lincoln’s whiskers, and so much more; release time walking from school for piano lessons on the second floor of the YMCA, or Bible school classes; swimming and fishing in water holes near the Hawley Street bridge, or picking up fossil rocks along Chautauqua Creek, pitching tents in the woods on top of the cliff above; my first jobs at age 16 – clerk in the Westfield Bakery where they made “Hungarian Coffee Cake” cinnamon sticky bun pull-aparts, and organist at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church (summer 1956-spring 1958); lying in Simon Monroe’s field on the hill learning the constellations and watching comets and then Sputnik (USSR’s first satellite) passing over (after I got glasses at age 16 and could finally see leaves on trees and zillions of stars in the sky, and be able to recognize my classmates’ faces on the new school stage, when sitting in the first row of the auditorium!).
What a special opportunity, when after getting married in January 1962, living in eastern NY state, western MA, moving to the Bay Area and Northern CA for 11 years, and up to Oregon for another 24 years, I returned to Westfield in 2003 to help my aging mother and step dad, and spend time with the Garden Club, the Historical Society, the Genealogy Society, being musician the local Episcopal Churches (St. Peter’s in Westfield, St. John’s and Cristo Rey in Dunkirk, & St. Paul’s in Mayville) and especially spending time with my relative, Billie Dibble, who was the Westfield Historian, in her office at the Patterson Library. When she retired, she encouraged me to study hard to be her successor.
Two of my first clients as Westfield Historian, when I was appointed in 2007, became and still are truly wonderful friends, and were the “instigators” of the direction for my local historian research activities and writings. The first, Scott “Falzguy” Ensminger, involved me in exploring the falls and mills and dams and bridges along Big and Little Chautauqua Creeks as well as the Lake Erie shores, which of course included delving deeply into the history of Barcelona Lighthouse. This connected me to Devon Taylor, Mayville Village and Chautauqua Town Historian who is probably the prime expert on the Chautauqua Creeks’ and the Gorge. The second client, John Slater, who was met at a CCHS meeting at the Fenton, started with assisting his research for a planned history of the Lake Erie Concord Grape Belt industry from 1850 to 1950, and continued into another of Slater’s historian projects, the Nickel Plate, and for me into local railroad history, and meeting many more wonderful rail-buffs.
Recent BeeLines, and Great (and Greater) Things About Westfield photos and posts, have renewed my interest and enthusiasm for a project started several years ago – researching and writing a history book called “Along Chautauqua Creek” that is morphing into something even more extensive as indicated by the title to this week’s BeeLines. To restart this project, I decided to just “open a can of worms” to “fish” for responses and memories and feedback and questions and suggestions to “feed” it.
Among the next BeeLines will be the conclusion or follow-up regarding the old Westfield Waterworks including the early dams on Chautauqua Creek. Also, by popular request, the myths and legends about “lost gold” and caves along Chautauqua Creek will be revisited along with any recent discoveries.
And so, dear readers, please contact Westfield Historian, Marybelle Beigh, via email: westfieldhistorian@fairpoint.net; or cell phone # 716-397-9254 – please leave message and phone contact; or message me on Facebook – either my home page of Marybelle Beigh (with the black flowered outfit on my picture) or Westfield Historian page which is a sub-page of my home page, (with a bluish and white checkered shirt on my picture there.) I do have a new historian office in the Electric Department building on English Street, but am only there by appointment, so contact me before trying to find me there, please and thanks.