by Mary Wakefield Buxton –
URBANNA —
My hometown, Vermilion, Ohio, took down Grandfather’s home this month. Built in 1906 in the heart of town, it overlooked Lake Erie and the harbor of the Vermilion River. It was home to my grandparents and their nine children, one of whom was my father. After my grandparents’ deaths, it served for many decades as a Great Lakes museum to which relatives added a two-story annex to the original home and built an exact replica of the 19th century lighthouse on the property that had once stood at the end of the western pier on the Vermilion River.
The museum moved to Toledo with all its artifacts some years ago when money ran dry. My favorite relic was a piece of keel from Admiral Perry’s flagship, U.S.S. Niagara, that defended Lake Erie from the British in the War of 1812. After the museum left town the complex stood empty and in a state of rapid decay.
Although the second generation of the family had been raised in the home and endowed it over the years, they had long passed away. We in the third still generation were left to suffer as the old home comes down.
It had served as a landmark in town for 115 years. But the sad reality was the museum complex was in dire need of repair and, without continued support, museums close. A cousin wrote she saw snow in the attic level on her last walk through, in the old bedroom which my father and his two younger brothers had once occupied. Professionals said it would cost millions of dollars to restore, but only $500,000 to raze. Such disparate numbers usually boil down to the end of historic buildings.
But there was some good news. The lighthouse standing on the property and the massive flag pole that flew the stars and stripes, and, in honor of Grandfather’s home country of England, just below the American flag, an occasional glimpse of a Union Jack could be seen, would be retained and the land turned into a public lakefront park. (Talk about the Confederate flag today, how would we want the Union Jack flying in America today!)
But Grandfather was an immigrant from the old country and an Englishman through and through. Like millions of Americans today who have descended from immigrant families settling in the new world, I am proud of my ancestors who braved great perils and hardship to pick up stakes and leave the old country and come to America. They did this in hopes of finding more freedom and opportunity. Many immigrants brought with them not only their families but special talents. My grandfather brought the secrets to making brass fixtures to America and started that industry over here.
I never knew Grandfather, F.W. (Frederick William) Wakefield as he died of cancer in 1933 at age 63 and I was not born until 1941. But I heard much about him as he was a family icon having arrived in America in 1872 on the “China” with his parents, William and Sarah Wright Wakefield. They settled in Cleveland, Ohio, where Grandfather built a business as a pioneer electrician (he wired John D. Rockefeller’s mansion.)
He was an avid sailor and one week he sailed from the Lakewood Yacht Club to the port of Vermilion on his sailboat, “Unique” and it was said that he took one look at the undeveloped harbor and said, “This is where I will build my brass factory and establish my home.” He immediately bought land on the lake and riverfront for his home and land on West River Road for his factory.
F.W. had already earned the money to invest in such ventures from a simple invention that he patented that would convert gas lamps to accept Thomas Edison’s exciting new electric light bulb. Edison had changed the world almost overnight from gas lighting to electricity in the same way Bill Gates and others later revolutionized the world with computers.
It was this patent that built the big house, sent all the boys to college and established a manufacturing business in town that offered employment to Vermilion families for many decades and kept a Great Lakes museum alive for many years in my hometown.
F.W. not only raised his family out of the poverty it had once known in England, but he also brought a number of cousins here, too. He was the epitome of the American dream that so many immigrants experienced after leaving repressive rigid class systems in the old world.
However, today Americans are mindful that immigrants coming into America have had great advantage if they were white, spoke English and were willing to work hard.
( The “End of an Era” series continues next week.)
© 2021
