State trooper divers from Athol Springs came down and the car was eventually pulled out inch by agonizing inch. It almost ran over my cousins who are playing on that embankment. The family was visiting from Buffalo on a 25 foot Chris Craft docked at Middleport.

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We worked on Saturdays too in those days. Someone realized that I didn’t have my working papers. I got sent to old Doc Wilmont. He gave them to me and I went right back to work in the machine shop.

In 1925, I began working at Niagara Sprayer as an adult in the sales department. I got a job there because I had helped out on the Niagara Sprayer farm.

George Thompson, who was President of Niagara Sprayer, ran for the Governor of New York State on the Prohibition Ticket. He was an officer in the power and light company in Lockport too.

After Bill O’Shaunessey burnt his legs on steam, he asked me to run the Basket Factory for a while. I worked there for a few months. The steam was used to bend the wood to make baskets. Logs for the baskets came down the canal sometimes. Pretty much after World War I, the logs were trucked in.

From 1951 until 1977, I went into the insurance business with the Jackling and Shaw Insurance Company. We built the building that is now the Credit Union.

In 1951, I built my house on Vernon Street on the first lot available.
In that same year, I was appointed to Secretary of the Middleport Savings and Loan Association. In 1977 I was the President of the Savings and Loan. I retired from that position, but stayed on the Board until I maxed out at age 75 in 1980.

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This is how the Basket Factory look in about 1908. Seated on the delivery wagon is Paul McClew of Watson Ave. how is about to leave to deliver 5,000 four-quart baskets to some farmers.

Standing beside the wagon are Ray Harrington, John O’Shaughnessey and J.C. Jackson. Mr. O’Shaughnessey and his brother, Tim, ran the factory at that time.

McClew tells of how often he left the factory at 7 a.m. to deliver baskets and didn’t return until 9 or 10 p.m. Sometimes when he got sleepy, if he was close enough to home, he would lay at the bottom of the empty wagon and let his team or horses bring him home to Middleport.

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There were horse sheds behind all the churches. People used them on Sunday and also when they took the trolley to Lockport and other places.

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The last play put on by the Middleport High School was performed there in 1924. It was called, “She Stoops to Conquer.” I (Bill Shaw) was the manager of scenery for the play.

This photo shows the inside of the Opera House.

At one time, there were two telephone companies in Middleport, Home and Bell. The Home office was over the drug store, which is now Dan Seaman’s building on the corner of Main and State St.

On Saturday nights back in the day, Main St. in Middleport was lined with cars. Farmers came into town to spend the evening. They’d shop at the butcher, go to the grocer, to the saloon or maybe to the Fenton Hotel on the corner. A chicken dinner would cost you 65 cents in 1934.

by Bill Shaw

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After the milk was processed in Lockport at the Gascoyne Dairy, Shaw would deliver it in the Village of Middleport. He sold homemade ice cream there too. At Shaw’s Dairy it cost 5 cents for a double dip cone in the summer. He had chocolate milk in the winter. He sold the milk to the school. The kids especially liked the chocolate.

Shaw’s son, Donald Shaw, ran the dairy later on and then sold it to Frank Houseman. Competition was tough and it went out of business.

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Before my family farmed it, William Van Horn raised the hay for the mules that drew the boats on the canal there. I was born on this farm site and lived there until 1980.

The bricks that were used to build the big house and the carriage barn on the farm were made at a brickyard, which was north of the Van Horn Farm on the Stone Road. The bricks used to build the United Methodist Church also came from that brickyard.

Willis J. Mather is an old Middleport resident. He now lives in Sarasota, FL.

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I was born in 1941 at 25 Francis Street. I spent the first 25 years of my life there.

I have been reading over the information on the Erie Barge Canal but there was no information on the old Lamp Lighter.

I remember that in the 1940s, there was a small tugboat parked at the old Basket Factory pond that was used to fill the old kerosene lamps along the canal.

As young boys, my brother, Robert, and I would go there from school to fish. The man who ran the tugboat would let us ride up and down the canal with him while he filled the lamps.

I do not recall the man’s name but he worked for the State of New York, and the tugboat was painted in the State’s colors. They phased out the kerosene lamps later on.

Editor’s Note: In the Village’s Centennial book published in 1959, there it is noted that on April 1, 1875, “village lamp-lighter (Van Spalding)to be paid at the rate of 12 ½ cents per lamp per week.” And also noted on May 21, 1883, “lamp lighter Charles Armstrong instructed to get his instructions from Trustee Linus Freeman as to lighting lamps on doubtful nights.”

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John O’Stewart, Plaquemine, La.

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I still have and display the two commemorative plates from 1959 even though I live in Lockport now.

I remembered more of the establishments that no longer grace Main Street. There was J & J’s, the after school hangout, the Fenton Hotel that my friends and I used to explore, hoping not to get caught. Then there was Germain’s Grocery, and the Middleport Theater, which Holy Cross used for services for a few years. Now we can’t forget Litchfield’s next to the dry cleaners that had been the Middleport newspaper before that. Last but not least, Plowies and Mike’s barber shop.

R. Douglas Voelker

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