Decew House holds two claims to fame
In the background of our old photo this week may be seen the burnt out shell of a building commonly known as the Decew House. It’s located on Decew Road, a mile or so south of the Brock University campus.
When this photo was taken in 1938, it had two claims to being considered one of the most historic houses in the Niagara region. First of all, it had been constructed in approximately 1808, still very early in the life of this province, built as the home of John Decew (DeCou), a Loyalist refugee from the American Revolution who arrived in this country in 1787 and ultimately settled southwest of Thorold. There he constructed first a saw mill and later a grist mill at what we know as Decew Falls — predecessors to today’s Morningstar Mill.
DeCou settled in comfortably here in this British territory, built his house in about 1808, and during the War of 1812 served in the 2nd Lincoln Militia.
At one point, while Decew was out defending his country, his home was used by the British authorities as a supply base and temporary headquarters for Lt. James FitzGibbon. It was to this house that Laura Secord found her way in June 1813 to warn FitzGibbon of a planned American attack into that area west of Thorold. This is the second basis for the building’s claim to historic importance.
After his return from the war John Decew returned to milling, and also became an early supporter of William Hamilton Merritt’s Welland Canal project.
However, when he found out that the canal was not going to be a boon to him, as he had hoped, but would actually harm his mill by diverting from it much of the water on which it depended, Decew sold his shares in the canal and ultimately, in 1834, pulled up stakes and moved out to Haldimand Township.
Decew sold his house to Richard Griffiths in about 1834, and it remained in the Griffiths family from then until it was taken over in 1942 by the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, whose Decew Falls generating station had stood nearby since 1898.
At the time of the fire documented in our old photo – April 8, 1938 – the Griffiths were able to escape uninjured, but only the stone walls of the house remained. Virtually all its contents, including numerous antique furnishings, were destroyed in the flames.
A second fire, in June 1950, reduced the building to what it is today — the footprint of the old house defined by the remains of its outside walls, standing little more than waist high.
Today those remains are the focal point of Thorold’s Decew House Heritage Park.
Last year saw an important addition to that park — the dedication nearby of the First Nations Peace Monument, designed by noted Indigenous architect Douglas Cardinal, designer of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.