Old stone house remains a mystery

All I wanted to do was knock on the door.
But I couldn’t find the right door.
I had already rehearsed what I was going to say.
I would introduce myself and explain that my great-great grandfather, who emigrated to Canada from Scotland in 1834, had settled in Ontario and had — in 1853 — built a stone house on a farm in Glen Morris. That house, I would explain, had been added onto and added onto but was still standing about 25 years ago when one of my uncles had painted a watercolor of it.
What I wanted was to take photographs of the stone portion of the house so I could share them with cousins all over the U.S. and Canada.
It was a cool idea, but I couldn’t find the right house. At least I couldn’t be sure I had found it.
We’d taken a long weekend to enjoy some theater up at the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario. As a couple and as a family, we’ve made the pilgrimage to Stratford more than a dozen times over the years. But it wasn’t until recently that — thanks to genealogical detective work by some Saskatchewan cousins — I’d located the site of the old stone house and realized how close it was to Stratford.
So on a Saturday morning, with no theater on our agenda until that night, the two of us set out for the little village of Glen Morris, not far from Kitchener. With a printout of photos of the house and a nearby pond (taken who knows when) and a note about my great-great grandfather, we set out.
The thumbnail version of the family history goes something like this: Hugh Ronald left his home in Kilmarnock, Scotland, for Canada to seek his fortune. Aboard the ship, he met a young woman by the name of Jane McKie, who would soon be his bride.
They had several children, though far too many did not survive to adulthood. Among those who survived was James Ronald, my great-grandfather. James moved to the Marlette, Michigan, area as a young man and married a woman named Margaret Gillespie. They had two sons, one of whom was my grandfather Hugh N. Ronald Sr. He and his wife, Kate Bair Ronald, had eight children. My dad was Hugh N. Ronald Jr.
(Apparently the family wasn’t particularly inventive when it came to names.)
Our information was that the stone house was built at the corner of Highway 24 and Glen Morris Road.
Trouble is, Highway 24’s route has been moved a couple of times. And Glen Morris Road has been moved about a bit as well. A huge, modern bridge built in the 20th century also complicated things.
So did vinyl and aluminum siding. Many bits and pieces of old stone houses have been masked and aren’t visible from the road.
After driving around a bit, we stopped at the Glen Morris Library where some sort of open house was taking place. The woman at the desk said she’d be no help; she wasn’t from Glen Morris.
“You’ll want to talk to Glenda,” she said. “Or to Jim.”
But Glenda and Jim were upstairs listening to a speaker on some sort of nature topic.
There was no choice but to wait. Finally, hearing the chairs scoot and conversation commence upstairs, I went up to track down Jim and Glenda.
I found Jim first, and he was a fount of information. But none of its was relevant.
Glenda wanted to help, but she was drawing a blank.
“Maybe it’s out by Hetty’s place,” another woman ventured.
That might have been a good idea, but she didn’t know Hetty’s last name or the fact that she’d moved away a year ago to move into assisted living.
By the time I stumbled downstairs, I was hopelessly confused. But I had a few leads.
One of them took me across the bridge. I pulled into the drive and was greeted by two men, one old and one young. Behind them was a rambling old house that had been added onto several times. One portion of the house was stone, and the chimneys had a distinctive look that matched the photo.
But the old guy insisted it wasn’t the right place, and he wasn’t particularly friendly about it. He’d moved to Glen Morris in 1964, he said, and was especially proud that in all that time he hadn’t bothered to learn the names of most of his neighbors.
He did know one guy, though, that he thought might help.
“You should ask Earl,” he said, sending us down the road a bit.
Earl was friendlier, though when he greeted me at the front door wearing boxer shorts and an undershirt, I was caught by surprise.
Earl offered two leads, one just across the road and the other back to the house we had just visited. Rather than go back to the grumpy homeowner, we tried the other lead.
It took us down a winding lane to a stone house that was much bigger than the one we were looking for. The lane ended at a ramshackle house where I expected to encounter a shotgun. So we beat a retreat.
We’d given it a try, but the door I wanted to knock on couldn’t be found.
The cemetery, fortunately, hadn’t been moved.
And near the church, we found a long line of old headstones for the Ronald clan. Both Hugh and Jane rest there in their adopted homeland. Too bad they couldn’t help us find that old stone house.