When Robert and Christy Belle Ferguson arrived in Niagara-on-the-Lake from Matapedia, Que. in 1925, they brought their seven children and enough belongings to fill an entire train car.
What they found was 70 acres of opportunity on McNab Road.
A century later, the farmhouse at 1399 McNab Rd. is still in Ferguson hands — lived in, loved and rooted in family history.
This August, more than 30 Fergusons will gather to celebrate 100 years on the land. A custom banner — eight feet wide and three feet tall — showing what the property once looked like and reading “100 years of Fergusons” will hang proudly along the fence.
Cousins Christina Ferguson, named after Christy Belle, and Deste Kuhn, the home’s current owner, are part of the five-generation family that has called the McNab Road farmhouse home.
Both are daughters of Robert and Christy Belle’s sons, Marvin and Andy, and spoke with The Lake Report about the house and the legacy it holds.
“There has always been a Ferguson in that house, for the last hundred years,” said Kuhn.
Christina and Kuhn are two of the last remaining first cousins of their generation in the Ferguson family, along with one other — John, the son of Randolph, the youngest of the original seven siblings. John now lives in British Columbia.
The Ferguson story in NOTL began in 1925 when Robert, a merchant, decided to become a farmer. To learn the trade, he brought a farmer with him to live on the property for a year, staying in what the family called “the cottage” while teaching him the ropes of fruit and cattle farming.
Christy Belle died in 1942 and Robert in 1948, so neither Christina nor Kuhn ever knew them.
“Just from what we heard of them,” said Kuhn. “The only thing I remember, unfortunately, is my dad taking me to his bedside.”
Christina added, “The same thing happened to me with my dad.”
Kuhn said the original property stretched from the farmhouse to Lake Ontario.
“I believe our grandfather had 70 acres,” she said. “Then the five boys divvied it up in a sense and they became farmers.”
The farmhouse was later converted into a two-family dwelling, with eight rooms in the front and seven in the back. Kuhn now lives in the front half and her daughter, Deste Blair, lives in the back.
What the family calls “the barn” is actually a drive shed that stored equipment like tractors and plows — the original animal barn was torn down in the 1950s after sitting vacant for years. That portion of the land was later sold off and has since been home to several other families.
The property also once included a small ice house, where blocks of ice were cut from a nearby creek and stored to keep food cold before refrigerators were common. Kuhn said it was likely gone by 1948.
Kuhn moved into the farmhouse with her parents, Andy and Deste Monro Ferguson, in 1948 as a child. Aside from about six years spent living down the road by the lake, she has called it home ever since.
“Prior to us living there, Chris’s parents lived there for a while,” she said.
Christina lived there briefly around 1944 as a baby with her parents, Marvin and Bernice, and again around 1970 while her own home was being built. She said just about every branch of the family has lived there at some point.
“I think everybody did,” she said with a laugh.
One memory still makes them both laugh. Kuhn’s mother, who lived to 98, used to sit at the dining table and point to a crack in the window.
“‘That crack that’s in that window is all because of you,” she’d say to Christina — she broke it when she was a kid.
“And it’s funny,” Kuhn added, “they didn’t replace it.”
This August’s reunion will mark the Ferguson family’s first full-scale celebration of their legacy.
“This is the first,” said Christina. “So this is big.”
To help the younger generation connect with the past, Kuhn has planned a scavenger-style activity where kids will search the home for features they’ve likely never seen — like metal floor grates and China and glass doorknobs.
“Things that they do not have in their house and maybe have never seen,” she said.
A long-standing tradition will be honoured too: the ringing of the old barn bell.
Once rigged to the house by rope, it was used by Kuhn’s grandmother to call the family in for lunch. Over time, it was used as a signal for special occasions — a birth, a wedding, a death, an anniversary, or even the last day of school.
“Story has it that eventually, the horses would know enough: when they heard that bell, (they would) turn around and go into the barn,” Kuhn said.
The reunion will feature a Ferguson piper playing Scottish tunes, old family photos, storytelling, food — and of course, children ringing the bell.
Kuhn said the family is more spread out today. “Whereas my dad’s people were right in one square,” she said.
But they’ve managed to stay in touch nonetheless, she said.
There’s never been disagreement about what to do with the farmhouse, but Kuhn said she believes she’ll likely be the last Ferguson to live in it.
“If I decided to move, I don’t think any of the children would move in. One lives there now — it would be a huge place for one person,” she said.
Two realtors recently toured the property and told her it’s a “teardown,” Kuhn said.
“When you live in a place for so long, you don’t see stuff like that,” she said. “But these realtors, they were in and out like that — they knew exactly what to look for.”
But this is a reality she accepts, she said.
“I don’t feel sad about letting it go,” said Kuhn. “If that’s what has to be, it has to be.”
