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Page 4 NORTH LEEDS LANTERN Last month we featured Cheney's Corners, the village that never was. This month we salute Crosby, the village that al- most isn't any more. At one time Crosby was a centre of activity. It had a grist mill, blacksmith shop, church a hall, 2 general stores, barber shop, shoe repair shop, garage, butcher shop, post office, railâ€" road station, service station & lunch room & cheese factory. And what do we have today? A general store, 2 service staâ€" tions, a car dealership, Deâ€" partment of Highways sheds, a farm supply dealer, and a hall full of china painters. When the Brockvilleâ€"Westport railway was built, this com- munity really flourished. There was one difficulty, however. The railway station was called "Crosby" (meaning near the crossroads)StationJ and the Post Office, "Single- ton's Corners”. Confusion developed. W.T. Singleton be- gan a petition for the name of the station and village to be Singleton's Corners. However, he was outnumbered by a petâ€" ition for it to be called Crosby started by Charles Leggett. The latter won out. The following interview with Mrs. Blake Merriman gives us a good impression of Crosby's history. Last April Mrs. Blake Mer- riman, long a resident of Crosâ€" by, celebrated her 90th birthâ€" day and 200 well-wishers crowd- ed into Forfar Community Hall to offer their congratulations. Older people are sometimes said to be lonely because they have outlived their friends. Mrs. Merriman has no such cause for complaint_ L Crosby, Ont. Cowleyâ€"Brown. Mrs. Merriman's recollections of Crosby go back to September, 1917. Her brother, Will Freeman, was the station agent at Crosby and that summer, with the First World War on, the school board had been unable to find a teacher. Miss Millicent Freeman, after 10 years of teaching, had plans for a year off - until the trustees persuaded her she was needed,in Crosby at an annual salary of $550.00. That fall the new school mist- ress boarded with Mr. G Mrs. George Church. The Churches, with daughter Grace, lived in the same house as Mrs. Winnifred Welch now does, and they had other boarders besides Will Freeman 6 his sister. There was Elma Welch, later Mrs. James Gillespie, and Lucy Brown (maiden name of Mrs. Hugh Hull). The Church family made an imâ€" portant contribution to the com- munity. Mrs. Church ran a store (it burned in 1922) on the corner where Harold Proud has his ser- vice station. George Church was a blacksmith and his forge was kept busy shoeing farm horses and mending farm machinery. His shop occupied the corner across from his wife's store. Later the family moved to the white house beside the shop. Singleton's General Store dom- inated a third corner, and its opposite number was Harrinton's Butcher Shop. "The Corners", Crosby was often called, as if it was the crossroads of the world. It looked the part on Saturday night when farmers' rigs were tiedto every posg and farm families'filled the little square. Inside the stores, you could hardly move. Often it was the women who did the week's trading. They'd leave ibgmizll ‘2 ‘ (top left) A picture from an early postcard. At 1 the bottom it reads: i "Erected by G.Stout 1818, (bottom left) An oil painting of Crosby Public School by Ottawa artist, Patrick Owned by Harold & Etta Proud. (right) Crosby United Church, 1967. babies on the counter while they gathered up the mail and carried out the bags of storeâ€"bought goods. The men sat outside on the steps, yarning about the crops. With the school, the railway station, the church, the post office, the cheese factory, the stores and the smithy, it was a busy centre. Some of the build- ings remain, but all of the services are gone, except the Singleton store, now owned and operated by Frank and Norma Bauer. Mrs. Bauer is a niece of Mrs. Merriman. As it happened, the 4 young people who roomed at Church's that fall never went very far away. Will Freeman married Elva Moore in January, 1919 and setâ€" tled in Delta. Millicent was invited to dine at the home of Mr. a Mrs. Norman Merriman and met their elder son, Blake. He had bought the old Preston place beside his father's farm, and there, halfway betWeen Crosby and Forfar, they took up residence after an Easter wadding. Soon Lucy Brown and Elma Welch followed their roman- tic example. Not everybody stayed. Some of the people Mrs. Merriman remem- bers as being there then are Dowsetts and Leggetts, Knowltons and Toppings, Cannons and Churcm and Mustards and Prouds, Merri- mans and Stouts, Bakers and Bark- ers, McCanns and DeWolfes, Sing- letons, Whalens, Harringtons, Pynes and Kerrs. Many of the names are still familiar to the current Crosby resident. "What was your house like?", we asked Mrs. Merriman. "It seemed beautiful to me as a bride", she answered. "Of course we didn't haVe electricity or ‘ w‘w- . ‘» fl.