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History of the Ritchie Family
By Mae Ritchie Macauley
Edited by Dawn Hook
This is the history as it has been told to me and as I have gathered it from someone or another.
I have in my possession a Sampler which was worked by our Great-grandmother (Anne Davie) when she was a small child. In Scotland the small children were taught in what they called a "Dama School", that is, on the big estates there would be usually a maiden lady who was a relative and a dependent of the Lord of the estate. To repay in some measure...
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History of the Ritchie Family
By Mae Ritchie Macauley
Edited by Dawn Hook
This is the history as it has been told to me and as I have gathered it from someone or another.
I have in my possession a Sampler which was worked by our Great-grandmother (Anne Davie) when she was a small child. In Scotland the small children were taught in what they called a "Dama School", that is, on the big estates there would be usually a maiden lady who was a relative and a dependent of the Lord of the estate. To repay in some measure for her board and keep, would, if she were educated (as many were) she would take the small children of the master and of the servants of the house and teach them to read and write.
Our great-grandmother, Anne Davie was one of those fortunate children. The letters and words on the Sampler are worked in fine homespun yarn on hand woven linen. There are the initials of the Davie family and other initials that I presume are those of her mothers family, the date and name of herself, and that of Montrose where she was born, with a border of what looks like little spruce trees. These samplers served a double purpose, they taught little ones their letters and also taught them needlework.
When our great-grandmother was sixteen she went from the estate of the Duke of Montrose, where her father (John Davie) was one of the Dukes retainers, to Aberdeen as was usual in those days. There she met a sea captain, John Still, and at the age of sixteen married him on April 26, 1829. Anne's parents were John Davie and Jean Hanton. Anne was born in 1813 and James was born in 1790 to William Still and Jane Sinclaire. He had at least one brother, Alexander born in 1792. William Alexander Still, James' father, was the son of Alexander Still and Jean Anderson they were married October 2, 1762. Anne died in Scotland and at some time James must have joined his family in Canada because he died in Ontario in 1885. When or how Anne died is unknown, but she bore six children, three boys and three girls, Jean, William, Hannah, Agnes, James and David. After the death of their mother there was great news arriving in Aberdeen about the wonderful changes in Canada, and they, living in a great seaport like Aberdeen, heard it all. It was very easy for the four youngest Still children to get a ship and come out to this wonderful new place.
At this time they were all very young. They were accompanied by an aunt who was more or less an invalid and who died shortly after they settled in Canada. After coming to Canada James and Davis Still came to what was then known as Upper Canada. They settled in adjacent townships in Ontario, one in McIonshton and one in Carabaranta which was where Uncle Jimmy was located and where Ellen, William James, and John Ritchie were born. Davis succeeded in getting a much better setting for his home, so far as scenic beauty was concerned, than James. It was situated in a small vale with a stream near by and was known as Glen Grove. It must have reminded him of his beloved Scotland. Jimmy's place was on the uplands, and was very good land, too. Both prospered. Agnes, the younger sister, kept house for Davis, and Hannah kept house for James until he married. Agnes married Thomas Hammond Whiley in 1856 and they had nine children, Ann, Ellenor, Mariagh, Agnes, Thomas, David, William, Emily and Mary. They moved to the United States sometime after 1865 and their three youngest children were born in Missouri.
Hannah stayed with James and it was there that she met the tall dark Irishman, Joseph Ritchie, who had emigrated from Ireland with his brothers and sister, father and mother. His forebearers had been Scotch Protestants who had fled from Scotland to the North of Ireland and settled in Armagh, to escape religious persecution. Your great-great grandfather Ritchie (name unknown) was master of the Orange Lodge there. Val (I assume this is Valentine Wilman) has half of his sash that he wore. These means nothing to most of you now, but believe me, it means a great deal to an Orangeman. There is also an Orange Lodge near Shelburne that contains his signature on the first charter issued in that District for a Lodge. He was the founder and master.
Our great-grandmother Ritchie (name unknown, Joseph's mother) was a very pious woman and wrote a good many hymns. Uncle Jimmy's wife (Rosilla Ritchie) told us about her. She said she was a very lovely person. The Ritchies were a tall, dark people. Dad (William James) was very like great-uncle William, whom I saw was when he was a very old man.
I have not so far told you of the children that the Still family had. Jim married a girl of eighteen, a Miss Nancy Ann Madill. He had fourteen children, twelve girls and two boys. Nancy was also an immigrant from Ireland. I shall give you the names of some of the children, beginning at the oldest. Lizzie, Annie, Maggie, Jamima and William Davie (twins) Maggie, Adelaine and Rosella (twins), James, Emma and Sara. I could tell you whom many of them married but it would be very monotonous. Lizzie, the oldest of the family, died in Calgary at the age of 96. She was 94 when I saw her and had all her faculties, she was as bright as a dollar, Sara, the youngest lived in Lethbridge, and she died in Calgary in May of 1967. Adelainde lived in Port Calborne and died in 1967. Rosella lived in the State of Washington and died in 1972.
Now I will tell of Davis who settled in the glen. He married an Orangeville girl her name was Ellen Moore. They had a family of six, two girls and four boys: John, Davis, Alex, and Alfred. The two girls were Bella and Margaret. John married late in life and had two children. Davis never married. Alex had four. I know nothing of Alfred, only that he married. All took up farms in the township of Garafram, the township adjacent to Shelburne and their children lived there for many years.
Now I shall go on to our grandmothers (Hannah Still) history. As I said before, our grandmother met Grandfather Ritchie while he was working for Uncle Jimmy Still and she was keeping house for him, as was the custom in those days. The courtship was short and they both lived and worked for Uncle Jimmy but from what information I could obtain grandfather was not fond of farming and left that to go into the building business as new towns were springing up and pay was better. Grandmother Hannah was still with her brother. Aunt Ellen was born and then eighteen months later, in 1857, dad (William) was born. After dad was born Uncle Johnny was on the way, work was scarce. Grandpa (Joseph) heard from a friend who had gone to Montreal that there was a situation there for him as a driver for a doctor who needed a coachman, grandfather, being very fond of horses and a capable driver went to Montreal. (I fear that our grandpa had an itchy heel, too.) He was there a short two months when word came back that he had been kicked to death by one of the horses. Our grandmother was left a young widow of about 30 or less, (this happened in 1859) with very little means of support, only that her brother could furnish her, and he was contemplating marriage. Shortly after Uncle Johnny was born, Robert Sim arrived on the scene. He had known the Davies in the old country, in fact, Anne Davie was his second cousin. He was a navy man and when the British man-of-war landed in New York in September of 1859 he jumped ship, or to put it plainly, deserted the navy and made his way across the country to Orangeville where he knew the Stills were located. He was a recent widower like grandmother having left his life in Arbpeath, Scotland where he had an infant son (Ned) which his mother (Isabella Hill Sim) was looking after. Perhaps he had got word of Hannah's widowhood and that was the reason he came. He did not say but he told me he had always cared for her. They were raised together as children. At any rate he came with the result that they were married August 18, 1865, and as he had some money, was able to provide for them. This took the burden off Uncle Jimmy's shoulders, and left him free to marry. He married Ann Madill.
In the spring of 1866 Robert Sim left for Sarnia where he purchased a small schooner and made a living by carrying people who were going north to settle. On one of those expeditions he took settlers to Michael's Bay and promptly fell in love with the Manitoulin and decided to move his small family up to the bay. They had three more children, Davie, Ann, and Robert Edmund Sim. Auntie Ellen was ten and one-half and dad (William) was nine when they came to Michael's Bay, Sim still kept his boat and in the summer, freighted settlers and their freight from the Bay around the island to their new farms. In the winter he worked in the pine woods or the mill and he was a good worker and made a good living as living was in those early years. He was a man of very violent temper and being used to the iron hard discipline of the Navy endeavored to use it on dad, which did not go down.
You will remember that I mentioned the drowning of the Wilnana and the loss of their vessel the "Sea Horse". The old folks were left with just a small sailboat that had been used for fishing purposes but was of no use to carry the loads of salt fish and furs purchased from the Indians so market had to be found nearer home. Great-grandfather Wilman was taking care of the financial end of it so the young people had to assume the burden under the surveillance of the hired man, Sam Clark, who know all about the work. The two boys had to forgo their school in the summer and take the place of the men, as the business did not pay enough to hire all the men needed. The work was hard and the hours were long and they were only boys of thirteen. Uncle Val (Valentine Wilman) was three months younger than dad. They did not do much fishing that fall. They went to school at Michael's Bay that winter and Clark took the team of oxen that the Wilman's (Simon and Caroline) had and started for La Cloche Island where timbering was going on and he could get the oxen fed and earn some money. He was to sell the oxen before he left the camp and come back home, which he did. Sam came home and stayed with the boys and helped that summer and the following one. As he could get better wages elsewhere than the old gentlemen (Simon Wilman's father) could pay and as he felt that the boys who were now 15 could run the fishing rig themselves, he left.
They had not only to lift the nets and care for them but they had also to deliver the fish to Killarney where they sold them fresh instead of salted. They took the nets out and got them then lifted the others and went on to Killarney, cleaning the fish and boxing them while on their way. Valentine's sister, Lavina Wilman, was thirteen and capable of steering and handling the boat, went along to look after the boat while the boys attended to their catch. On their way back they took the nets in and reeled them up and made ready for the next trip. Twice a week they did this. If their nets were not far out they took them ashore and grandfather had them ready to reset when they came back. They did this for two years or so. Then having discovered a better harbor in South Bay they decided to move there. In the meantime Lavina reached the mature age of fifteen and dad having reached eighteen they decided to get married the following year, having built or having had built (Mr. Neil Mcmartin and his sons were the builders) a house, they moved in. As soon as Dad's house was built they built Uncle Val's and late in the fall of 1876 both families moved to South Bay Mouth. South Bay Mouth was called that because of the mile long half mile channel which divided the west side of the Bay from the Indian Peninsula from the unused part that the Indians reserved for their own when they sold the rest of the Island. It runs the whole width of the Island being held to the larger part by a mile wide isthmus that divided Manitowaning Bay from South Bay.
The firm of Wilman and Ritchie now really launched out. The first purchase was a larger fishing boat then the Mackinac fishing boat. The new boat was about twenty feet long and about seven feet wide, square sterned, called the "Ellen May". They could run more nets and hired a man as it took three men to run her. I do not know what was done with the small boat but no doubt they put her to good use, as I heard my father say she was a good boat. During the winter Dad and Uncle Val worked in the bush cutting ties and logs and posts as they were in great demand down East, so many railroads were being built. During the day my mother and her grandfather mended the nets for the summer's fishing.
Our home and grandfather's were about the width of the road apart. Close enough that Mother could go there to mend the nets and see that they were all right while Uncle Val was away in the woods. Both the old people were over eighty.
The next August, Rossilla, my sister was born and my mother did very little work at the nets after that, as great-grandmother was a constantly increasing care as her heart was very bad. The little hamlet was doing very nicely and that following summer the Buffalo Fish Company sent fishermen to the new station some three Mackinac skiffs and my father boarded the men. Dad's sister, Aunt Ellen came from grandmother's to help her. The "Sir Alderon" called once a week with cars of ice and the fish were packed. The Company put a man in and he did the packing, mixing the ice with salt to make a freezing mixture thereby taking a good deal of labor off the fisherman's hands. Before the Company left that fall, Dad and Val were hired to build an icehouse and have it read to cut the ice in the winter. The company brought all the tools for filling and cutting the ice, ice plows and saws. They were to get the teams and men from the outlying farms. Uncle Val did not take part in the contract for filling the house, only for building it, thought he always helped to put it up. I do not know the capacity of the icehouse but it was a very large building about 60x100 feet. I should judge and at least 20 feet high and held hundreds of cakes. The cakes were twenty-fours inches square and sometime not that depth. The depth depended on how cold the winter was.
I was always greatly interested in them putting up ice when I was a small child. I liked to watch them raise the blocks of ice from the water and put them on the sleigh. It was necessary to have a large heavy man to load the cakes up. For a number of years my father employed a man by the name of Miles Young who weighed 300 lbs. One of the other men pulled the cakes of ice up to the unplowed ice on which a stand had been built the height necessary to place the cakes on the sleigh. A derrick had been built with steps up it. The men then fastened the large ice tongs on the cake. Miles then ran down the steps and swung the blocks onto the sleigh. Each sleigh held a dozen blocks and there were four sleighs to load. As each was loaded and left, another swung into place, so you see the man on the lever had not only to be large but strong as well. The ice was drawn to the icehouse where the ice was put in tiers. The first tiers were put in and, as the slide was lower at the icehouse end, they just ran down there of their own accord. As the ice built up it became necessary to have a horse and tackle which was fastened to a three-foot plank and dropped over the block. The horse pulled it up to the slide. Inside there were three or four men, one to unfasten the block, one to draw the cake with tongs to another who chiseled the block and fitted it into the tier. The man outside drove the horse. When the block reached the icehouse the man outside hooked the rope from the whiffle tree. In a very short time the horse could tell by the loosening of the tension on the rope or by the sound of the ice hitting the top when to stop. My father always used on of his own horses and they became quite proficient in hauling up the blocks. Dad put up the ice as long as he was in South Bay, consequently he became like his horse, very good at the job. There were no quirks that he did not know about it and no one came after him who could do it quite so quickly.
In the summer of 1879 a son was born to the Ritchie family, Herbert. He now had a daughter and a son and there was great rejoicing among the male members of Dad's family. My uncles and aunt have told us what a sturdy bright little fellow he was. The little fishing village flourished and there was an increasing number of fishermen and boats coming to the "Mouth" as it was now called. Some brought their wives up if the children were small and did not have to go to school. Others boarded with Dad. Aunt Ellen Ritchie now stayed with mother to help her in the summer months.
Then in the winter of 1881 the death of my mother's Grandmother occurred. She died very quietly, sitting by the stove. She was over 80. Mother was alone with the two children and her grandfather, auntie having gone to her mother's. Dad and Uncle Val were busy out near Pool Lake cutting timber. As grandfather was nearly ninety he was unable to go after them so she had to go nearly three miles through the only path the men had. She got very wet and as she was again pregnant she got a severe cold which later was to cause her death. In those days they had to take the corpse some twenty miles down the ice on the Bay. They had to get a team from a farmer some two miles out in the farming country to get to my father's mother (Hannah Sim) where they took her. Then they had to take her out to a burial ground near Manitou Lake. Even death and burial was no simple matter in those early days. Mother was quite ill after it. I suspect she had pneumonia. They called it a bad cold in those days.
That summer the Booth Fish Company, who had established a fishing station at Squaw Island a year or two before, wanted Dad to go and look after the station for them as they were having difficulty getting a manager. No doubt the isolation of the station was the reason as this was very good fishing and the runs to the nets were shorter and there was a chance to make a little more money. Dad and Uncle Val decided to go for that year. They went down in the early spring returning later for mother, auntie, grandfather and the children. No long after they went down, in the early spring or summer, Herbert took sick with convulsions and just went from one into another until Auntie said he had take 36 and died. They took the body home by way of Mantowaning bay and he was buried beside his great-great grandmother at Lake Manitou. Mother who was not feeling very well anyway was shortly taken ill afterwards. A daughter Mary was born prematurely. She lived only a short time. Mother was never again to be well after the shock of Herbert's death and the loss of her little daughter.
In August of that year Dad send Mother to Orangeville to visit Uncle Jimmy Still and to receive further medical attention. She was away a month and Auntie said she came home seemingly better. Her cough had nearly ceased but she again became pregnant and the third of April 1882 I was born a seven-month baby. Again she had a relapse and was quite ill for awhile but later on grew stronger and was fairly well the fall and winter of 1882 and 1883. The summer when I was a year old, they again went to Squaw Island as the fishing was better there than at the Mouth. Mother seemed to keep in fair health or so they thought but in the late spring she seemed to be worse. Then her little son, Robert, was born. He lived only a short time and in two months Mother herself was dead. She was about 24. She died on Dad's birthday, the 27th of October and she had crowded into her short life enough sickness and sorrow to last a long one. So had Dad, his health was always good but he saw hard times, and just when things were growing brighter financially he was left with a young family to raise. Auntie Ellen Still stayed on with him and kept house for him. She was a very good cook and a wonderful housekeeper so that part of his life was well provided for. In 1885 my sister Rosilla went down to Dad's mothers (Hannah Sim) to go to school and i was left alone with Dad and Auntie and Uncle Val who still continued to board with Dad and sleep at home. Great-grandfather Wilman lived with us, as there was no one else to look after him.
That summer 1885 Dad and Uncle Val hired a man and his wife to help them with their work. He had two sons, one near my own age. I was three and he was five. The result was that we were always getting into mischief.
As I said before great-grandfather lived with us for the next two years and life went on very smoothly. The one day in the summer of 1887 there came a strange tug to the dock and a strange man came to the house and asked for Grandfather Wilman. He made himself known as great-grandfather's son, Phillip. He had long been mourned for dead, killed in the U.S. civil war but he had been living in the State of Washington and had married. He now came to see if any of the family was still living. You can judge Grandpa's delight to find his son had really returned and wanted him to go back with him though I judge that Phillip was as surprised as Grandpa to find his father living. As Grandpa was now 96, Phillip wanted both Uncle Val and his father to go back with him but Val was now engaged to a girl who later became his wife (Martha last name unknown) and refused to go but Grandpa went. He just lived for two years after he went. Towards the last his mind went and he constantly fretted for Val and Jim. He was 98 when he died.
That summer my Dad met a young woman by the name of Susan McKim. She was the daughter of a farmer who had taken up a bush lot some two miles out in the Slosh five years previously. She had remained in Shelburne when the family came to the Island, with her brother who was married and had small children. Now they did not need her and she had come home for awhile. My father promptly fell in love with her, much to grandmother relief. She had been afraid that William James was not going to take another wife. Susan was very good looking, a great worker and a good housekeeper. Grandmother was very pleased at Dad's good fortune and to think the William James was getting such a good wife.
They were married on December 19, 1888 and now Rosilla and I had a new mother. One of the first things she did for me was to cut off my drinking tea. I had been in the habit of getting up in the morning to have breakfast with Dad and had cultivated a habit of drinking tea. She said I was the color of tea. Mother had received a cow from her father and promptly put me on milk with very good results. I can still drink milk right from the cow and relish it.
The fall of 1889 something very important happened, that is, to our family a baby brother was born. Bert arrived on the 16th of December and what a proud and happy man Dad was. As he was the first baby boy I had ever seen, I was thrilled too. My oldest brother was born and dead before I was born and the youngest was born when I was too young to remember him. My uncle Val who had married the year before Dad had a baby girl. Dad called his new son after the first little son he had, William Herbert Reid Ritchie. I suppose with the feeling that he had got him back again. When he was six months old I had him so spoiled that he would not go to sleep unless I held his little hand through the bars of the crib in which he slept.
The year went by very quickly and the fishing business was still very good. In November of 1890 Stan was born and my mother had her say about naming him and he was called "John Stanley Reid Duke Ritchie" after her favorite brother and a small playmate of my whose mother had assisted at his birth. Both boys have a third name Reid, Grandma McKim's (Rachel Reid) maiden name, and Stan's "Duke" after the midwife who assisted at his birth. Dad was very proud of his two sons. Mother was not so well after Stan's birth and had to have a maid to help her, or as she was called in those days, a hired girl.
The summer of 1891 the Booth Fisheries had their pond nets, which were set in South Bay, up for sale and Dad and Uncle Val bought them. The reason for the sale was that the manager was so busy with the packing of fish that he could not manage both. Now began a very busy time. Uncle Val and Dad had to attend their gill nets and set stakes for the pond nets so they hired an additional six men then as they had secured a license for pond nets at Michael's Bay. The found they needed something faster than the sailboat so decided to buy a tug. The heard of a very good tug called the "Anderson" for sale at Owen Sound and went down and bought her. Dad said her engine was very good but he did not think much of her hull but as they would not be putting her to any strenuous work and the price was right, they took her. The still used the "Ellen May" for the gill net fishing and they had the "Pirate" as part of the pong net rig. She was called the "Pirate" because she was so black with tar as the pond nets had to be heavily tarred. The boat was painted black so the tar wouldn't show. The firm was very busy that summer and did very well with their gill and pond nets. Next year they hired an engineer, as they both needed to be looking after things. They had an offer from the Reid Towing and Lumber Company of Saginaw, Michigan to pick logs for them along the Manitoulin shore. You see, the U.S. was at that time buying a great many saw logs from Canada, putting them in large rafts and towing them across lake Huron. Of course, many of those logs escaped from the rafts and went ashore on the Manitoulin. They offered a contract to Wilman and Ritchie of twenty cents a log. The price appealed to them and as they had much longer runs to their gill nets and fish was not so plentiful, they decided to sell the gill net rig and still keep the pond nets. The fish in the pond nets were always alive and would suffer no harm even if they missed lifting it for a week.
So in 1892 the firm was very busy with a gang of men, eight of them, sometimes more. Uncle Val was captain on the tug and Dad was shore boss as Dad was much better with the men and there was only Val and the Engineer on the tug. That winter they built a houseboat and hired a cook for the men as they had to go further afield to get the logs and could not board at home and now were going further around the Island.
The seventh of September 1892 another baby arrived. It was a little girl to gladden our hearts, Stella Berta, and Mother had her little daughter.
The spring of 1893 it was decided that the firm would have to get a new tug as the old Anderson was no longer sea-worthy for the work she had to do. So early in the spring Dad and Uncle Val went down to Goderich to have a new tow-tug built having been in communication with a very good boat builder by the name of Marlowe. They left a couple of men to attend to the pond nets while they were away. They stayed to help build the tug and in the last of June came home with the new tug. How proud we all were and especially prowd were Uncle Val's daughter and I for the new tug was called after us. Marlene Madill wanted her to be called the Careless Jim after Dad, as during the building of her, he was always mislaying the tools and banging his fingers. But Uncle Val said she was to be called the "Lizzie May" after his little daughter and myself and, as Dad never disputed Uncle Val when he wanted anything, that became her name.
They said that she was one of the nicest tugs that Marlow ever built. She rode the waves like a duck. She was a dream of a tow-tug, pretty as a yacht. I remember her coming in the Channel as if it was yesterday. So the firm was launched on a wave of prosperity and for quite a few years they mad good money at the log gathering and from the pond nets.
I had started to school the year Stella was born. I went for three months then came home for the winter. I went again until after Easter then home for the last of June to see the tug come home. I went to Smeitners again after the holidays. A year from that July another sister was born on the 30th. Now there were two small sisters, Edna Ina she was named, a lovely pink and white baby with long brown hair. My aunt, Mrs. Johnnie Ritchie had tied her hair up with a ribbon it was so long.
Dad had now invested some of his money in a farm out at Tholamuch, and that was where she was born. Mother went back to the Mouth for the holidays the next year after Edna's birth, but as I was staying at home now, she was there during the school year.
Dad had hired a man to run the farm now. When he first got it my Uncle Johnnie ran it for a year or two but he was now on a farm of his own. In 1896 Verna Ida was born. My memories of that were that I had to stay with Aunt Sue's children while she went to my mother. I had to walk two miles to get her and was longing to go back with her. When she did come back I think I ran most of the way I was so curious to see the new baby. When I saw her I thought she was a little Indian papoose she was so dark and she had such a mop of hair. Mother was disappointed because she was not a boy and thought that Dad would be too, but he did not seem to care as long as they were all right. Dad was delighted with every one of them.
The most disturbing episode in our lives was an outbreak of diphtheria in the family. The next September mother had sent to Eaton's for our winter clothing and there had been an epidemic of it in Toronto. Whether the clothing was contaminated or whether it was caused by a great many green tomatoes that were spread on newspapers in the attic, we never knew. Burt woke up with a sore throat and did not want to go to school. Mother thought he was spoofing and said for him to go. Poor boy, he was very sick in school and I could scarcely get him home. Dad took one look in his throat and said, "He has diphtheria." He sent the hired man for the doctor and soon six of us were down with it. Bert nearly died. I could not see to read for two months and Rosilla who was home at the time couldn't walk for six months, but thanks to the nursing, we all lived but what a horror that was.
A year from that, November 1898, I was married to Jack McCauley. Lila, another sister, was born the day before Christmas.
I do not know for sure when the firm dissolved partnership. Dad got work running a fishery outfit on Lake Manitou and the family moved out for a season. Ina was born before they went. Mother was disappointed and declared she would call her "Jamina" because she couldn't call her "Jim" but Dad was just as tickled as ever to have a new baby.
Sometime later he sold the farm to one of his hired men, George Viney, and bought the McKim homestead from Uncle John and started farming and timbering. He had some Indians working for him and as they had to have supplied he put in a stock of groceries. Soon he had worked up a very nice business with the farmers around, and with the village of South Baymouth. This continued until 1906 then his store was burned down and the dwelling house too. As it was only partially insured this was quite a loss but he sold some timber that spring and got a good price for it. With the insurance money he decided to build down near the front of his land, near the Bay. He again built a store and dwelling combined, bought new stock and started up again and was doing very well there. He left home one day to go to Manitowaning to renew his fire insurance that had lapsed. In those days with only a horse and cutter to make the journey of more than 20 miles it was necessary to stay all night. In the morning the fire was put out. The girls and two girls who were visiting at their home were out of bed. They barely got out of bed with their lives. My Uncle Val who was coming to the bay to cut logs had to stop and take off his extra pair of socks and give them to Mother to put on her feet. Except for some Mackinaw men's wear that she grabbed as she rushed out she had only her nightclothes on. One or two of the others were dressed, as was Stan. He had hitched the team to the sleigh and was bringing them to our home in the Bay. The store and house were a complete loss, as the insurance was not signed. Dad was phoned and immediately left. He had a little driving mare, which was very fast and was out in less that two hours, with not very good results as the mare was never the same again.
Shortly after that Dad left with a party of men for Alberta to locate a new home. Edna Ina was ill and it was thought that her health would improve with the drier prairie climate. This was not to be the case as she died of Tuberculosis in 1915. He filed on a half section of land there. He sold his land but took the cattle and horses and moved there. The rest of the children can better tell the story of his life in the West.
We had a very eventful life. He had made a great deal of money and lost it, but he always kept a sense of humor. He could always enjoy a joke no matter how great his troubles, always a friend to everyone and always read to help him or her. A kind and often-indulgent father but I never felt that I dared disobey him. |
