Hoping to discover something that will explain the
unexplainable…
The research into my small parcel of land began
with my contacting a clerk at the office of the Recorder of Deeds of Erie
County, Pennsylvania (recorder@eriecounty.PA.gov). The clerk I reached was most efficient and
helpful – sending me, for a small fee, 39 pages of deed information on the
landowners through time as far back as 1874. I then took the landowners’ names and moved to
the United States Census records available on Ancestry.com. These records, although
at times sketchy and somewhat hard to follow, do indicate names, occupations,
etc. There were other difficulties in this research process as well. For
example, the 1890 Census of this area was totally destroyed by fire. There was
also courthouse fire that destroyed all books, papers and land records of Erie
Country before March 23, 1823. I was able to discover, however, that few of the
land owners after1823 actually lived on what is now my land. I have no way of knowing about inhabitants
before that. It was, as far as I can
tell, land used solely for business. The owners’ occupations vary.
One landowner is listed as a florist, nurseryman,
garden market farmer (1874); the next was a carpenter who passed the land onto
heirs who sold it in 1922. For a short
time after that, the land was owned by a butcher and meat marketer which
explains the ominous looking equipment in my little red barn which was
originally a slaughter house apparently. An electrician and then a Christmas
tree farmer/furniture store owner follow – thus explaining the boxes of receipts
in the attic of the little red barn.
From that point on was my Dad who, was a car dealer, but liked also to think
of himself as a gentleman farmer - owning and pasturing horses and cows on the
property. (His cousins owned a livestock
auction and he would summer cows, feeding them well, until they were ready to
become milking stock on dairy farms. The
horses were for fun. He rode them until
he could not, and then he enjoyed watching them.)
From what I have been able to determine, there was no home on
the property until it was purchased by Lloyd (Dutch) Meerdink and his wife,
Gerry, in1947. (I am thinking that many
of my local readers will remember the Meerdinks fondly.) Dutch and Gerry converted
the milk house in front of the large barn into a home by adding a huge addition.
In addition, they had a nice furniture
store in the upstairs of the large barn there, and also a Christmas tree farm
in what is now just pasture land and the land on which my home was built in
2001. My Dad and Mom purchased the land
and home from the Meerdinks in 1969 – adding yet another addition to the
original milk house and having a basement dug under part of the house. What a mess that was. A fun side note … for years after they
purchased the land, my Dad would hang three hand saws on the fence and let
people cut their own "untrimmed" Christmas Trees for a couple of dollars which buyers would deposit
in a mailbox that he had attached to the fence near the saws. It was an “honor
system” that worked flawlessly. Although
I was in college by this time, when I was home for the Christmas break, I do
remember families trudging through the snow to find a tree. What used to be used as a furniture store in
the upstairs of the large barn, my parents converted into a party barn complete
with a bar, bumper pool, ping pong table, table shuffleboard, television, and
even a bathroom that my mom decorated to look like an outhouse. They did love to host barn parties. My sister and I sold a small portion of the
land, the large barn and home to the current owners a year or so after my
parents had passed. And – so ends a sweeping summary of the usage of the land
as far back as I could go with the early records available.
As interesting as the landowner deeds are, I did
not find anything in the landowner history that might explain unusual
happenings on seemingly haunted land. I then
contacted eriecountyhistory.org. The
only helpful thing they offered was the detail that they had no records of
settlement of the Wayne Twp. area any earlier than 1795. There is, of course, a lot of information on
the Waterford area being so significantly historical and on the city of Erie. I may make an appointment to visit their
archives at some point – post the damncovid.
So it was that after sorting through deeds and
census records, I began to research maps, personal journals of people who lived
in the area throughout time as well as other online historical information. It is there that I found very interesting tidbits
of information with potential for forming theories about the haunted land. More
on the maps, personal journals and online historical accounts to come… some of
the info is rather amazing… especially the information on the Andaste tribe of
Native Americans …. (I have learned a lot in this process.)
Note: After
contacting one of their nieces, (Hi, Paula …) I may have more information to
add to that of the Meerdinks. Apparently
at some point, there was a small cabin on the land as well. It would have been located on the eastern edge
of the property as best as I can tell. It disappeared sometime between 1947 and
1969 - perhaps when the Hillcrest Drive area was developed. There is nothing
remaining today to indicate its existence, but at some point, maybe I will be
able to find a photo or something. Hope
you all find this as interesting as I do.
It is just one small bit of history of what is now known as Northwestern Pennsylvania, but is packed with
the untold stories of many. I am thinking that is the case with all land ... not just in Wayne Twp., Erie County, Pennsylvania , but ... throughout the world.
Next week:
the conclusion of “Unexplainable, but interesting…”
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