Tour of the Bell Homestead, Brantford
An article from CTGA of Toronto Newsletter
By Heather Nochomovitz
We were met at the Bell Homestead National Historic Site by the curator,
Brian Wood, who gave us a short talk on Alexander Graham Bell and his work.
Alec, as he was called, emigrated with his parents, Melville and Eliza, from
Scotland in 1870 after he started showing early signs of tuberculosis, the
disease which had killed his two brothers.
They went to stay with friends in Brantford. Soon
after, Melville bought a 13 ˝ acre working farm for $2,600.00. The farm
consisted of a farmhouse, 60 animals, an orchard and a horse named Polly.
Later, one of their housemaids was called Polly, and they also had a hired
man to help on the farm.
The property was four miles from the town, quite
isolated, and the house, close to the river, was secluded. In 1935, because
of erosion, the house was moved 80 feet away from the river, bringing it
closer to the road. Outside the house today is a large stone cairn with a
plaque indicating it is a National Historic Site.
The family named the house “Melville House” and
this name can still be seen on the front door.
The original building which housed the first telephone office in Brantford
has been moved from its original site in the town, and now stands next door
to the farmhouse, forming part of the National Historic Site. Inside are
displays of early telephone equipment and exchanges.
Melville Bell was a professor of speech and elocution. He was particularly
interested in people with speech impediments. In his attempts to help deaf
people communicate, he had developed a phonetic alphabet which he called
"Visible Speech," using symbols to show the position of the tongue in the
mouth.
Brantford, with a population of 10,000, eventually
became the 3rd largest manufacturing centre in the area, but Alec hated it
and considered it backward. He got a job in Boston teaching the deaf, using
his father’s system of Visible Speech.
Although he always considered himself primarily a
teacher of the deaf, his interest in telegraphy led him to think about an
instrument which would transmit the human voice over wires.
He spent his summers on the farm, visiting his
parents, canoeing on the river and sitting in a clearing on the riverbank
reading and thinking. He called it his dreaming place, and it was here, in
July 1874, that he first conceived the idea of the telephone.
The following year, in the summer of 1875, he came
back and wrote the first patent specifications for the telephone in
Brantford.
He always said the telephone was conceived in
Canada and born in America, because it was there that the first
transmissions of speech over electric wires were made.
CTGA members approaching the Bell house, known to the family as Melville House.
We pose with Curator Brian Wood (in light-coloured trousers) on the front steps of Melville House.