Victorian Gothic elements in the McQuesten family’s tale: “We can add a wicked stepmother, a madwoman in the attic, a tragic heroine, inherited mental disorders, institutionalization, social stigma and secrecy.”[13]
Those walking through the beautiful gardens are said to feel an intensely powerful emotion — and not just that from the sheer beauty and majesty originally instilled under Mary Baker’s hand. There is a lingering sense of the powerful and important family that once called Whitehern their home, of their various hopes, highlights, and hardships through multiple generations.
This historically significant and picturesque home, which sits at 41 James Street, is certainly no stranger to incredible struggles and intense emotions, all of which can lead to echoes of the past randomly exerting their presence on the here and now.
Chapter Eleven
Mount Albion Falls
Alma Dick-Lauder opens chapter 15 of her book, Pen and Pencil Sketches of Wentworth Landmarks, with the following: “There’s a fascination frantic in a ruin that’s romantic.” She goes on to describe an area that is most impressive when the nights are moonlit, and she writes of a half-hidden pass filled with strange, lurking figures and a suppressed murmur of voices:
We know the figures are only shadows cast by the sombre swaying pines, and the voices are the voices of nature embodied in the trees, and running water; yet heard in connection with the idea of a fortress, they make us think of soldiers preparing for the attack, in obedience of orders passed along the line. Aided by imagination the sounds take meaning and grow distinctly on the ear. A ray of moonlight flashes on some bright object among the shadows. Firearms surely! And instinctively we turn, half expecting to hear an awful salute from the fortress. An owl hoots dismally that weird note which turns the thoughts to death and disaster. The grey bird flits past the face of a rock that rises to a height of 80 feet, and from the top of which a young girl cast herself to death, rather than face desertion on the part of her lover, who, when the wedding feast was ready, failed to appear. Out of the gloom where the bird has vanished comes another mournful cry and the gorge is filled with ghostly echoes.[1]
Alma was, of course, writing about Albion Falls, a classical cascading waterfall of just under 20 metres (62 feet) in the Red Hill Valley in Hamilton.[2] The cascading steps of the waterfall begin on Mud Street and the lower end is found at the south end of King’s Forest Park. The falls and the area are stunning in their picturesque glory. But beneath the postcard-perfect glimpses of natural beauty lie shadows that crawl out from the pages of history and up the spines of those who stand nearby and reflect on the tragedy and horrors that occurred there.
The drop of the ravine has been dubbed “Lover’s Leap” due to the legend of a young Jane Riley, who, disappointed by the unreturned love from Joseph Rousseau, flung herself from the steep cliff at the top of Albion Falls.[3] Her love and the extreme disappointment she faced was known throughout the village of Mount Albion, which was an important community, as it featured a gristmill, blacksmith shops, taverns, a church, and a general store.[4]
The village owed its existence to William Alexander Davis (1741–1843), a United Empire Loyalist who left North Carolina to fight alongside the British in the American Revolution. Davis was granted 2,300 acres in Barton and Saltfleet Townships, including five hundred acres around Albion Falls. The Davis estate consisted of a tannery, an orchard, a general store, a distillery, taverns, a church, a sawmill, and a gristmill. The two names lent the area the name Albion Mills (Albion being the poetic name for Britain). In 1880 the village was renamed Mount Albion.[5]
Legends of the Lover’s Leap aren’t the only things that haunt the picturesque ravine at Albion Falls.
Courtesy of Stephanie Lechniak.
The Hamilton Spectator archives note an incident that took place in 1897 near a house not far from the falls. A gentleman and two ladies were driving in a horse-drawn carriage, when the horses suddenly snorted in fear and stopped in their tracks. There, alongside the carriage, they saw a ghostly figure appear. Out of either fear or in an attempt to protect the ladies he was travelling with, the man lashed his horsewhip into the air toward the figure, but the whip passed right through and the ghostly image faded. They then proceeded on their journey and they saw nothing more, but it frightened them enough to share their eerie tale.
About half a mile down the valley from Albion Falls, two streams join together. One is from Buttermilk Falls and the other from the Albion Falls, or the Mill Falls as it was called at the time. Below this merger of the two streams there was a dam and a primitive sawmill. When a quarrel broke out among some of the workers, one of the men was killed. Local legend holds that for the fifty years following his death, his home was haunted. People continued to report seeing his ghost wandering about the house, hovering over the stream near where he died, travelling along the road, or flitting about the woods.
Years later, in the height of these legends, a woodcutter who lived in that very house spent the day drinking at Mount Albion’s Black Horse Tavern. While he was out, his mischievous neighbours slaughtered a pig, dressed it up in some clothes, and then hung it in a tree adjacent to his home. At midnight, when the inebriated man returned to the dwelling, he saw the hanging pig. His mind immediately flashed to the stories of the ghost reported to have haunted the building and the area, but rather than take flight, the alcohol in his system gave him a bout of courage, and he stormed up to the “ghost” and struck it with all of his might. He ended up breaking his right arm and putting an end to both the ghost stories and that particular type of prank, at least on that spot and in that era.
In 1907, the owner of the old mill, Robert Grassie, fell to his death in the wheel pit near the falls. The mill, which was eventually torn down in 1915, was never run again after he died.[6]
The aforementioned tragedy of Jane Riley took place in the early 1900s. Jane and Joseph Rousseau were said to have been childhood friends who fell in love with one another. It was Joseph’s mother, however, who did not like the young girl and was against their courtship and plans for marriage.
Heartbroken and devastated that she could not have the man she so loved, on a fateful moonlit night in September 1915, Jane threw herself into the dark depths of the ravine. It is rumoured that on some nights, perhaps similar moonlit nights to the one in which she took her life, you can hear her soft cries echoing from the gorge below.
A poet known only as Slater commemorated the events of that tragedy in verse:
Alas, poor Jane Riley
For Joseph she did die
By jumping off that dizzying brink
Full sixty cubits high[7]
It was reported that Joseph’s mother said of the event, “Let the blame rest on my shoulders.” Some years later, the still-healthy woman suddenly shrieked, “Jane’s hand is on my shoulder!” and collapsed to the floor, dead.[8]
Another interesting aspect of the area involved organized
