End of the oldest house in St. Catharines
Only a historic plaque marks the site of May-Clark-Seiler homestead
The burnt out building in our old photo this week was generally known as the May-Clark-Seiler house, and at the time of its destruction was believed to be the oldest house in St. Catharines and vicinity.
The building’s name reflects three of its important owners during the 200 years that it stood out in the former Grantham Township, just south of today’s Ontario Street-Lakeport Road intersection.
William May, a descendant of German immigrants to America, served in the Indian Department and later in Butlers Rangers during the struggle to preserve British rule during the American Revolution. The battle lost, in 1783 he migrated to what is present day Ontario and for his loyal service was granted 700 acres of land in Grantham Township. May built a sturdy wood frame house for himself and his family in about 1784, and cleared and farmed the rest of the adjacent property. May himself died in 1827; his family continued to occupy the house until 1838.
In that year the house and substantial acreage around it was purchased by Lt.-Col. John Clark, then the Collector of Customs at Port Dalhousie. He was another Loyalist refugee from the United States, was an officer in the Second Regiment of the Lincoln Militia, had fought in the Battle of Queenston Heights under Major-General Sir Isaac Brock, and had later served in the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada. Clark dubbed his new property the Walnut Dale Farm.
After his death in 1862 and that of his wife two years later, the May-Clark homestead passed into the hands of a series of other families as the decades passed, and the original 700-acre grant around it was slowly, steadily whittled down to the size of a normal urban residential plot, which is what Hermann Seiler and wife Inge found when they purchased the house in 1961.
By this time the house, then some 180 years old, was showing its age, and by the end of the 1970s the Seilers built themselves a modern house next door to the old homestead and declared their intention to demolish the old building. This caught the attention of local heritage advocates who researched the history of the building, concluded that it was likely the oldest surviving residence in the city, and urged that it be saved — ideally to be removed to another location and turned into a local heritage museum.
The Seilers were willing to co-operate with these plans, and work began to refurbish the old structure and find a place to which it could be moved. However, all that ended on Oct. 30, 1984, when the old house was gutted by a fire, believed to have been the work of an arsonist.
If you go out to Sparkes Street today you’ll find an empty space between the homes at 3 and 5 Sparkes. That’s where the old house used to stand. Opposite it, in a small traffic circle at the end of Sparkes Street, there’s a historic plaque outlining the history of the May-Clark-Seiler house and its ultimate fate.
Dennis Gannon is a member of the St. Catharines Heritage Advisory Committee. He can be reached at gannond2002@yahoo.com