Writings of Margaret Barbour Carruthers

Western Prince Edward Island

My Great Grandfather was the first Barbour to come to P.E.I. His name was Thomas Archibald Barbour. We do not know the exact date but it must have been between 1810 and 1815. He was a native of Dumfries Scotland and was a weaver by trade. He had been told that there would be plenty of work for him in the New Land. He came by a slow sailing vessel. There was no work of any kind for any of them except helping the farmers that were settled on the land to clear their land and get started for themselves.

They landed at Malpeque Harbour. A story came to us from an eye witness who watched. He told how the passengers were rowed ashore in small boats from the ship. In one was a tall fair haired young man who was so impatient to reach land that as soon as the boat reached shallow water he put his wooden chest on his shoulder, stepped into the water and waded ashore. He was Thomas Barbour.

We don’t know how old he was but he married Flora McKay, daughter of John and Janet of Darnley. They had two children, Thomas and David. Thomas Sr. was dissatisfied with conditions and wanted to go to the mainland to try to get better employment but the stubborn Flora would not go. She is reported to have said “Why should I leave my home and family and go away with that strange man?”

So Thomas went to New Brunswick to get work in Miramichi. He was sending money to his family, then in 1825 a fire wiped out the town and he was never heard of again. Flora’s family must have helped her.

When they were grown Thomas, the eldest, went to sea and the ship was lost and he was never heard from.

David, born July 21, 1821, married Mary Mountain, daughter of James and Anne Donald. They lived in a log cabin on the old Donald homestead (Mary’s grandparents’ home.) In the year 1852, James Mountain and his wife and family came by boat to Montrose and took right where he landed along the Kildare River. It was unsettled and he was so satisfied that his son-in-law David Barbour and his wife and 2 two children came in the spring of 1855.

Aunt Anne was three years older than my father. The land must have been surveyed before that for my grandfather’s land fronted on the Western Road.

After my grandfather and grandmother came there were three more boys born, James, David and John. I do not know but very little of my father’s childhood. I remember him telling us he did not get to school till he was in his teens, and that school was in Montrose, somewhere where the Gillis families live. His uncle, Robert Hackins [Hockins?] was the teacher. He had a farm near there. I do not know when the Alma school was built but he went to school in Alma, I think two winters.

His father had built a log house about where the present house is now. I am not sure when the house was built. When my grandfather came the land was covered with mostly hardwood, maple, birch, white and yellow beech, a little poplar and toward the back of the farm there was a cedar swamp and some fir and spruce. A big brook ran across the back of all the farms and ran into the pond where the mill was, over half a mile south on the way to the school. My father told us at first his father and later he himself cut trees and piled them in great piles and burnt them. They would keep the best of the logs but he said it was all they could do as they needed the land. He never said anything about them having oxen but I heard in another account of the early days that they had oxen and that it was a big day when they got their first horse.

At first they used to walk to Alberton to church. My grandfather started a cottage prayer meeting that was held every Thursday night and it was still carried on till about 1900. It was five miles to Alberton and they used to carry their shoes and put them on when they got close to the church. They always said the minister 3 preached for an hour. They carried their lunch and had a recess and had another service in the afternoon, then walked home.

About that time I think there must have been a lot of young people. My mother and father were married when they were both 19. His birthday was January 1, and hers was February 14. I don’t know but very little of either of their lives. Her home was about a mile from his. She always lived with her grandparents and she always called them mother and father and always thought of them like that and I was grown up before I knew the difference. They had both died before I could remember and the only relative she had there was her uncle and aunt and she always called them John and Mary Jane. Having grown up with him she never called him uncle.

My father had 50 acres of the land my grandfather had and he built a little house. The mill must have been built before that for our house was built of lumber. It was not very big. It had one large room and two bedrooms, no upstairs. My father had left a strip of trees on the north right against the line fence between his land and grandfather’s. Then there was a strip of grass between the trees and the house. The door faced the north toward the trees. The garden fence started with a gate at the north corner of the the house and went east and turned south when it was opposite the end of the trees. I remember every bit of that garden so well.

Thomas Barbour, Mary Mountain Barbour,
Edward and Alberta Barbour.

I’ve always loved my memories of that garden. They must have planted the cherry trees quite soon. There were 8 or 9 trees that started about ten or twelve feet from the corner of the fence. Inside the gate was mother’s white rose tree that she called her English rose 4and then the corner going east and south was filled with sweet brier roses, then there was a plum tree that father had found in the cedar swamp and brought home. He said a bird must have dropped the seed. Then the cherry trees started and went to the line fence between our land and Mr. Mountain’s. Mother’s black current trees and rhubarb run were there, then down from the other corner of the house were three apple trees, never remember any apples tasting as good as those Wealthy apples tasted. Toward the bottom of the garden it was narrower and the apple trees and the cherry trees when they were in bloom seemed not so far apart and that is where my father had his beehives. And the bees just made the garden so perfect as I remember it. They were always buzzing and always everywhere and we played there all the time and never were stung.

I remember my mother telling me how much she loved her first little home and when she had one or two babies and Dad was busy in the fields she would take the baby and lay it on a stook and help him in the field. There was a wide platform all along in front of the door and the first thing I can remember I think was sitting there in the twilight with my mother while the older children played “run sheep run.”

I still remember those lovely long twilights. One evening I remember especially, my father came from my Grandmother’s and he had the dearest little fat puppy under his coat. How we loved him. We called him Bruce and we must have had him ten years or more. He had a black curly coat and very short legs.

Once in the winter he followed my father to Alberton [Tignish crossed out], five miles. We never let him go away from home but somehow he escaped us that time. Dad was hauling wood, that’s how he managed to keep up. But he got lost never having been used 5to go from home and when Dad got home that night, he did not come. All next day he did not come, but sometime through the evening came the familiar scratching at the door and here was Bruce, his poor toes full of snow and he was completely caked with snow. He was wild with joy to get home and everybody was as glad as he was. One Sunday years later he disappeared and never came back and it was awful not to know what happened to him.

Just in the yard not far from the house was the well and just near it Dad dug a big hole and put a watertight barrel into it. He took a broom handle and sharpened one end of it and put a hole in the barrel. It was for Mother to keep her creamers of milk in. It had to have the water changed morning and night. The creamers were weighted down with stones and a fitted cover kept it all safe. Mother made our butter and the milk had to set 24 hours to get all the cream to raise. Out under the trees he dug a little cellar and put a little house over it. It had an earth shelf all around and steps down and that was Mother’s “milk house” where she kept her cream and everything she wanted to keep cool. It was a nice place for a child to go into, always with Mother. We never opened the door on our own.

I started to school when I was seven and did not like it the first few days. I remember the teacher very well. He was a tall man and he boarded at my grandfather’s. He stencilled letters out of red and blue cotton and put mottos over his desk and over the windows and the door, all I think out of Proverbs. They were there for a long time. I don’t remember much of the years between seven and twelve, only I was happy. It was over a mile to school and Father drove 6us there in winter, or the boys took the sleigh themselves. The years between the time I was seven and twelve are rather a blank.

Summers we went to school. We had three weeks for holidays in May (to plant potatoes) and three weeks in October (to dig them.) I do remember about picking berries. There were a lot of wild strawberries before they put the mud from the river on the land. I remember how we would all hurry home from school to go picking berries as soon as we had our supper. Dinner was at eleven, and supper at four. I can remember the five of us picking a pail of strawberries. The raspberries were easy to pick and when they were ripe four of us could pick a pail of them before we went to school at 8:30. There were lovely gooseberries in the cedar swamp. They were my father’s favourite. And he always watched them to see when they were ready to pick. Once he told us we could pick them the next day after school and when we went the French had been there in the morning and we lost Dad’s gooseberry pies that year. The French lived on the part back of our farms and the railroad ran across the back of all our farms and they could walk down the track and easily get all the berries if they wanted to. There were lots of them (French).

When I was twelve my oldest brother, Arthur, went to Colorado with a man that had gone there when he was young and come home. Arthur was 18. Ed and George went to school winters but worked some of the summer away from home.

Up to that time my father only had 50 acres of land but he did carpenter work all summer. He built several big barns besides other work and did his own work between times. He built a threshing mill that they drove with horses. The front end of it was raised and the floor was heavy planks and turned. They 7tied the horses and had bars on the back so they could not back up. It had a fly wheel and the head that he put the grain through had a big cylinder with the long spikes and a belt ran from it to another pulley on the fly wheel. Then soon he built a shaker that the wheat and straw all fell into. The grain fell through holes in the bottom and the straw went behind. A couple of men pitched it into a mow in the back. He did all the threshing for my uncles and the neighbours.

Then he built a mud digger too and dug mud on the river about half a mile from home. They called it mussel mud and used it for fertilizer. He had a big fork that went down into the mud and a horse attached to a capstan and someone had to drive the horse. It was awfully cold, hard work. That was usually in March they dug mud.

Earlier every winter everybody went into the woods. All across the back of the farm was still woods. They got out wood to last a year and usually had enough dried hardwood for the winter. Then they sawed it as soon as they had all they needed and split it and had such a big pile drying all summer. Usually Father cut logs every winter and took them to the mill and had lumber cut for whatever he wanted. He nearly always had big piles of boards piled square of three cornered to dry.

8I was born January 12, 1882

I started school when I was seven in 1889. I was at school most of the time until I was sixteen.

When I was twelve my oldest brother, Arthur, went to Colorado, 1894. Then in 1895 the next two, Edward and George went to Maine. The following spring they went to Boston. The summer of 1897 my sister (Ella) went to Boston. It was very hot and she only stayed two months.

The fall of 1899 my brothers were tired of living in hotels and restaurant cooking and they wrote my mother and asked her to let me come and they could get an apartment and I could keep house for them. She would not let me go alone but that my sister and I could both go. So the last week of November 1899 we went to Boston.

Evangeline
Produced by the Ullman Mfg Co., in 1898

By that time the boys had second thoughts and decided as things were so different, especially cooking, I should work for the winter and at Easter we would start. So I did housework for about four months. They got a six room and bath apartment. At that time they were called “flats.” It was great fun getting it fixed up as the boys were so frightened of bed bugs in second hand furniture that they bought all new. I remember that they bought wall to wall carpet for the living room, a lovely velvet couch, a parlour table and for each of us an easy chair: Ed’s was a platform rocker and we had two of them. They were flowered velvet. George’s was a dark brown Morris chair. My sister’s and mine were just velvet covered rockers and we each chose a picture. Mine was Evangeline as I loved the poem and I have it still. It’s hanging in Mary [Sample]’s dining room [Mary’s daughter, Sharon Reidl, has it now.] I always loved it. She was standing under 9a lovely tree wearing a dark cloak lined with pink. Waiting for Gabriel. It’s strange to me that I can not remember the boy’s pictures.

Our bedroom was the back parlour divided off the living room with very heavy drapes. The front bedroom was fully furnished and they rented it to a man and his wife that worked with my brothers. There was a nice dining room and the kitchen I remember had a nice range.

My sister was a dressmaker so was able to live with us all the time. But unfortunately my mother was taken ill and she (Ella) had to go home in May, as soon as the summer boat could cross.

I enjoyed cooking very much and I got along well with it. The rent for the “flat” I remember was $20.00 a month. The boys got up about 4:30 as they each drove an ice wagon and to be out very early as there were other ice wagons on the streets. They each had what they called their route to drive several times a day and their ice was always to be ahead of the other fellow.

George had all his meals at home but Ed was further away and only in cool weather did he get home for supper. Geo in the hot weather usually had always two men and sometimes three. I had to have breakfast at 6, dinner at noon and supper at any time from 6 or 7 till 10 or 11 in the heat waves. When the heat waves were on the men usually came one at a time to eat and I sent George’s dinner down to him when he was nearest the house. These were the days they made their money.

Every load of ice they got was weighed and they had to pay the company so much a ton and whatever they had over that amount they had for themselves. Sometimes George used, in the hot weather, always three loads, sometimes often four loads and if you were a good cutter and did not waste the ice they made good money. I remember when Geo would not get in till 11:00 on a Sat. night, he would have made $20.00 and they got about $15-20 a week for working like that.

It was 10such awfully hard, hot work that most of the men were drinking beer they kept on the ice. When Ed and Geo started to work with the ice co., I remember it was the “Bay State Co”, the other men told them they could not get on without drinking. They said: “wait and see, we will” and they did.

Most of the men were Nova Scotian. George’s boss was from N.S. and he must have been about 50 and when Geo left he had lost his job and was back carrying ice for about $10 a week. There were four brothers and they were all ruined with the drinking.

Margaret Barbour, Age 20, 1902.

I was with the boys another year, then my mother was very sick and I went home on June 2. Ed and Geo came for a few days in August, I think. She died the 15 of Sept. 1902 and she was not 48 till Feb. She had had 11 children and 9 of us grew up. She was the loveliest mother and the best living person I ever knew. I never heard a wrong word out of her mouth. I missed her every day for years. How I wished for her when I had six of my own. That year after she left us was the worst year of my life.

I stayed home for five years then went back to Boston. My sister had been there for a couple of years by that time. In that five years Ed and Geo had bought land at Lot 5. Arthur had come home because our mother wanted him so much. When he was a boy he had always been her biggest help I remember how the last two years before he went west he was working in a farm and got home on Sat. night and Sunday he used to help her get us ready for S.S. and always helped her. It nearly broke her heart when he went so far away, but he did come home in 1901 and he was so good to her till the day she died.

Ed and George had saved their money and they came home that fall and bought a farm. It was 12 miles from home. It was land that belonged 11to the Duvar’s, Cecil’s father-in-law. It was a mortgage sale and they bought 300 acres for $3,000 and I remember they had the $1,000 they paid down on it in $100 bills. You can be sure none of us had ever seen $100 bills before.

It was lovely country and the part they bought was mostly covered with wood. So when Arthur came home in 1901 Ed and Geo wanted still to stay in Boston so he took on the job of building a little house and getting started farming their place for them. Cecil was 17 at that time and he and my father did not always see things eye to eye, also he was very bossy with the three younger boys, so Arthur very kindly took him with him and sent him to school.

The next spring Ella went to keep house for Arthur. Later the Boys bought another farm a mile up the road and they planned to come home and start farming. I am not too sure of the dates here, but they came home and all lived at the big old Craswell house. At this time I was in Alma with my father and the younger boys were in school. Ed was getting married and Arthur, Cecil and Ella went to Boston and later that spring George went too, about 1905, I think. Then my father wanted to marry again so I went about 1907 and the three younger boys were in Charlottetown at school. Arthur and Ella were paying for them.

In the spring they all came to Boston. Arthur had a house and Ella kept house and we all boarded with them. Not long after they came to Boston it was very hot and they were run down and they had been working vacations on the farm with Ed and Geo and Simpson unknown to us had taken T.B. from sleeping on a feather mattress that Fanny had brought from her home. Three or four of her family had died with T.B. There was an awful lot of it in P.E.I. at that time as they did not 12know how to take care of it. So coming into the heat in Boston he was taken sick in a year or so and Arthur sent him to a sanitarium. A couple of hours ride from Boston. He did not get better and Ella and Presley took him home.

By that time Fred had it and was in the sanitarium when Simpson went home. They got a home in Alberton and he [Simpson] died in Feb, 1908. In the meantime Arthur had got married to Margaret Duncan. In 1909 I went home for two weeks and I stayed for six weeks. Fred was still in the sanitarium. Arthur, Ella, Presley and Cecil were all in Boston at that time. My stepmother had two girls about 18 and 17. That fall Fred was so tired of being in the sanitarium that he and Presley went home.

That winter a friend of ours was also home from Alberta and when Presley and Fred were at Ed’s and George’s farm he lived near and he wanted them to go to Alberta. They must have decided very quickly. My stepmother was very anxious for them to go and George Hardy, the boy they went with was sure Fred would get better. They did not write Arthur, Ella and I and when we got the letter they were past Montreal. I don’t know who paid their way.

George and Ed were good friends with the Carruthers family so Presley and Fred knew them too and they asked them to stop in Lashburn as Bennett was there and Addie and Allison had been married. Bennett wanted them to stay with him as he had a half section of land and was batching.

They went on to Alberta and “filed” on a homestead. George’s young nephew lived with him and there was no work there for Presley so he went to Edmonton and worked for a time. Fred was feeling pretty good and he took on the cooking for the three of them. He had never done anything like that. He had been in the sanitarium for 57 weeks when he went 13home and the doctors said he was almost well.

In the summer Bennett wrote for them to come to Lashburn as he had a crop to harvest and needed help. So they came to Lashburn. By that time Fred was tired out and soon after they got to Lashburn Presley realized he could not work and take care of Fred. Bennett wanted him to stay and work by the year as he had to go home that fall. That was 1910. So Presley wrote for me to come and he felt quite sure it was better for Fred than coming back to Boston so I left Boston on Labour Day Sept. 1910.

At that time the government was trying to get settlers for the west and the fare was a cent a mile. It cost me $36.00 for train fare and we had Tourist Cars with regular berths. I remember they were all in black leatherette instead of the plush in ordinary cars and there was a little room at one end of the car they called a kitchen with a stove. Our car was not full. They were all single girls, most of them school teachers going west to teach school. There was only one man and he was middle aged and had a lonely trip.

I got acquainted with a very nice girl. She was going to Winnipeg. Her brother lived there. We had a whole day there and changed from the C.P.R. to the C.N. The country was so changed after we left Manitoba. It was so different. In Winnipeg I fell so in love with the city. The streets were so wide, I could hardly believe my eyes, the width of the Boulevard. We stayed at the Royal Alex. It was the big C.P.R. hotel and at that time the flowers were lovely. I decided someday I’d like to live in Winnipeg. (I changed my mind six years later. My husband and two older children were coming back the end of Feb. from a trip east. We started out from the hotel to do some shopping. The wind on Portage Ave. was awful. 14We had to rush the children back to the hotel.)

I did not like the look of the country at all on that first trip. But after I got to Lashburn all that fall the weather was beautiful. Fred was happy too, after I got taking care of him. He was pretty weak and his cough was bad. He had a little 22.8 rifle and he was such a good shot. Every evening a flock of prairie chicken used to walk down the road and pass under his bedroom window and he would get up and shoot one or two. They were very nice. He taught me to shoot and later I spent some pleasant hours trailing the chicken. There were a few partridge too and they were far easier to shoot than the prairie chicken.

I don’t remember when Bennett went home that fall. The Palings, an English family, were our nearest neighbours. They were a mile or more to the west and they were wonderful to us. The father was quite old. He had been a teacher in England and was a good singer and played the organ. Mrs. Paling was the sweetest, kindest woman I ever met in the west. Cecil was there that fall too and he worked on the Paling’s threshing outfit.

There were four sons, the eldest, Ernest, was Mr. Paling’s son from an earlier marriage. Then Fred, Rich and Cyril. They were so glad to have new neighbours. So often they would all get in the sleigh and bring the crokinole board and Cyril had a violin. Cecil told me that Mrs. Paling looked like our mother had looked and when I met her she did remind me so much of mother.

The threshing was soon done and Bennett went to help his brother who had a garage and machine business in town and he went to collect him. The territory at that time was from Manito Lake to the Saskatchewan River. He went to P.E.I. later that fall.

That was an awfully cold winter. 15The temperature in January went to 64° below zero. The frost in the air was like a mist almost and for days at a time we only saw the sun like a red ball through the haze. By this time Fred’s cough was pretty bad and we had to bring him from the room he had slept in up to then (it had no heat) into the house. It seemed to snow so often and we lived for the mail from home (Boston) and Presley used to go to Town usually twice a week and he said every time he had to break the trail. I remember there seemed to be a snowdrift all the time. By Feb. Fred was not getting any better and my sister came from Boston.

George Hardy had come down to see Fred. He and the boys were such good friends and he was so full of stories and always so good natured it was so good for Fred and all of us to to have him. Presley too was the best natured person all those weeks that I ever knew. He had to bring water from the bottom of the hill, about a quarter mile I guess, and had to get wood too and I never saw him come into the house without a smile and he was such a reader and he so often had a funny story to tell Fred. It seemed to me at that time Fred just lived on his strength. He said to me one day, “I just feel myself get weaker when he leaves me.”

I’ll never forget the first Chinook that came. The snow was piled so deep around the windows and then that Chinook wind started to blow from hour to hour, you could see how much the snow settled and the windows, the frost just melted off them in a day. That was wonderful after two or more months of such cold, frost and snow.

Toward the end of March Bennett came back and brought a friend of Fred’s (Ronville Gunn). He was going to his father in Alberta and he stayed a day or two in Lashburn. He 16came to see Fred but Fred was not strong enough to talk to him.

The last of March, 1911 Fred slipped away and left us. Lashburn was a mission station then so had no regular [Presbyterian] minister, only a summer student, so we had Mr. English [the Anglican minister] for the funeral service at the house. He was the minister that afterwards married Bennett and I.

We could not somehow think of burying Fred in that country so Ella took his body back to P.E.I. Arthur met her I think at St. John or Moncton, and he was buried by his mother and Simpson in Montrose Cemetery. I think most of the Barbours, my uncles, aunts and cousins and my grandmother are buried there. I think my grandfather was buried in Alberton.

I was pretty low that spring and Presley kept me alive while the boys were in Alberta.

Presley had bought a cow and that winter my stepmother sent me a clipping Dr. Oslrir (I’m not sure of the spelling) had discovered that milk drunk warm before it cools would kill the T.B. germs and if taken early enough could cure it. So Presley sent to George Hardy to ship the cow and he did and how to get the milk from the barn in the awful cold before it cooled. So we took a lard pail, fastened several plies of cheese cloth over the top, put boiling water in it and Presley ran to the barn, milked the cow, poured the water out and milked through the cheese cloth then left his pail of milk and ran to the house and Fred had it before it would cool. It stopped his cough so that he one day got dressed and went for a drive with Presley. I feel that if we had known that in December we might have saved his life. That was a bad time, better to forget it.

But the fall of 1911 Bennett had to leave before the threshing was done. His mother was very ill by that time. She had an operation some time before and was 17not supposed to do anything but she did. When Bennett got there she did not know him. It was terribly hard for him for she kept telling him she was wanted Bennett and was waiting for him. He could not get through to her, she thought he was his cousin. She did not live long after he went home.

When he came home he brought Mary Heywood with him. Addie wanted her to stay with her as she was expecting Ronald, he came in August. Then the winter of 1913 Bennett was called home again, his mother was sick so he and I.J. both went the first of Feb. Presley had gone to Boston the fall of 1912.

(I forgot, Bennett and I were married on June 18, 1912. We were going to go to Lloyd but Addie could not go so she insisted we be married at their house. Mary Heywood and Presley were Bridesmaid and Best Man. Mrs. Paling, Cyril and the Cravens, Mrs Lewis and her sister.)

I stayed with Edna till Irving got home the end of Feb. Andrew Gordon had worked for Bennett the summer of 1912 so he got to stay at the farm for the winter. In March I got Andrew to go home and bring his sister to stay with me and I went home. Bennett and Presley both got home sometime in March. Cecil had gone back to Boston and I don’t remember just when he came back but the summer of 1913 he, Presley, Andrew and his brother John all worked for Bennett and I had two Gordon girls, only one at a time.

It was a very hot summer. Ethel and Bertha came about the first of July. Mack and Mary were married that summer and they all went to Manito Lake. Mac’s partner had a cottage there and Allison had built one. Fred Brandon’s father had quite a large one and Bub and Snyder both built cottages. It was a lovely place and the lake was clean and good then. Ruth was in Lashburn that summer too but she did not have any children 18then.

Fred arrived on Aug. 7 and he was the prettiest baby in the world. Allison brought us home from the hospital. It was my first ride in a car. There were several in Lashburn that summer. Mac had the first I think and Fred Brandon. The Gordon girl left soon after I came from the Hospital and with the help of Cecil I got through the threshing and Harvest. Ethel and Ruth came out and cooked for the men when they were at 25 for I could not go with the baby.

In 1914 Dad had a lot of grain so he got a man to cook. He had had a trailer built, they called them cook cars. In one end there was a stove and shelves. A long table the length of the trailer on one side and a partial on the other side.

The Barbours

My great grandfather, Thomas Archibald Barbour, was the first Barbour to come to P.E.I. He was a native of Dumfries, Scotland. We do not know his age or the date he arrived, but he came to Malpeque Harbour.

The story came down to us from an eyewitness. It must have been about 1810 or earlier. He came by slow sailing vessel. They were rowed ashore in small boats. In one was a tall, fair-haired young man who was so impatient to reach the land that when the boat reached the shallow water he put his wooden chest with all his worldly goods on his shoulder and splashed ashore.

He was a weaver and the factory and mill workers were told by the immigration officials that there would be plenty of work for them in the New Land. There was no work of any kind but helping the farmers that had settled clear their land and get started for themselves.

He married Flora McKay from Darnley, daughter of John and Janet McKay. They had two sons, Thomas and David. Thomas Sr., dissatisfied with conditions, wanted to go to the mainland but his wife, the stubborn Flora, refused to go with him. She was reported to have said “Why should I leave my home and my friends and go away with that strange man?” so she stayed in Darnley while Thomas went to N.B. and got work in Miramichi. He was sending money to his family when a terrible fire wiped out the town of Miramichi in 1825. Many perished and Thomas Barbour was never heard of again.

When they were grown Thomas went to sea. The ship was lost and he was never heard from.

Thomas Barbour, Mary Mountain Barbour,
Edward and Alberta Barbour.

David, born July 21, 1821 married Mary Mountain, daughter of James Mountain and his wife Anne Donald. They lived in a log cabin on the old James Donald homestead, her grandfather’s home. There Aunt Anne was 20born Nov. 18, 1852. Thomas, my father, was born Jan. 1 1855.

In 1852, my great grandfather, James Mountain, and his wife and family came to Montrose by boat. They settled on the land where they landed, the farm now owned by his great great grandson Eldon Barbour. At that time it was unclaimed land. He was so satisfied that his son-in-law, David Barbour, came the spring of 1855 and landed at the Montrose homestead. They came by boat and got 200 acres of land on the Western Road. They had to pay a few dollars an acre, I never heard how much. The whole of it was covered with hardwood, mostly maple, beech, white and yellow birch and a little poplar.

Grandfather build a log house, about where the present house is now. It was Grandfather’s and Uncle John lived there with my grandmother and Aunt Anne and Nettie, the niece that my grandmother brought up after my grandfather died in 1888. He had been hurt by a falling tree in the woods and I expect it hastened his death. I can just remember him. He used to walk up to our house every day I think and we all loved him and I think my mother most of all. She always told us how good he was, and always when I heard him spoken of as a child always I heard what a good man he was.

After they came to Alma, as it was named afterwards, there were three sons born, James, David and John. The first school my father went to was in Montrose, across the river near where the Methodist Church was later, and his uncle Robert Hockins, [Hackins?] was the teacher. I don’t know when Alma school was built but Dad went a couple of winters when he was in his teens.

He and my mother, Mary Currie, were married in 1874 when they were each 19 and Dad had 50 acres of the land his father had. I think there must have been a lumber mill for our house was lumber 21and I remember my mother telling me that she was given a cow and some sheep and I expect chickens for she said girls were given things to help get started and she was proud of their first little house. And she told me when her first babies were little she took them out to the field and laid the baby on a stook while she helped my father. I have wondered so often how they managed those first years but I never thought to ask. All the things I want to know now and could have found out just for the asking.

My first memories of that far away home are always so nice. The side of the house was in the garden and the door in the end and it opened into the yard. The garden fence started from the corner of the house and went as far as the field between the house and the road. The fence ran down to the line fence between us and the next farm. The garden was so nice. The little gate went in right at the corner of the house and there was a little strip of grass where we played. Mother had a little white rose tree just inside the gate that she called her English rose. At the corner where the fence turned to go south the whole corner was full of sweet briar roses. They must have planted the cherry trees quite early for as long as I remember we had lots of cherries. There were about 8 of them and they were from the line fence right up along the fence to the garden. Mother had two rows of black current trees and near the end of the cherry trees there was a lovely little plum tree that had such nice red plums. My Father had found it in his cedar swamp about half a mile from the house. He said a bird must have dropped a plum stone and in the moist ground it had grown. Then there was a lovely “Wealthy” apple tree and two crab apple trees behind the house. And in between the 22cherry and apple trees Dad had his beehives and he had red and white clover for the bees and over in the field going toward the woods he always had a patch of buckwheat and vetch. He must have liked the buckwheat honey and he always had some ground for pancakes (were they good), and Mother fed it to her hens too.

So my memories of that garden with all the blossoms in June the roses and always the bees humming. Right out not far from the door was the well and not far from it my father had sunk a barrel in the ground, the top level with the ground and he put a hole in the bottom and a broom handle fitted into it—for mother to keep her creamers of milk in. They were weighed down with stones and then the barrel was filled with cold water. A fitted cover kept the milk fresh and it had to be filled morning and night.

He had left a good strip of trees on the north side to shelter the buildings. It do not go to the road. It started at the end of the yard and ran right up behind the barn. Out under the trees he dug a cellar, not very big, and put a little house over the top of it and steps down and shelves. That was Mother’s milk house. It was where she kept her cream and butter and anything she wanted to keep cool. And that was where my father kept his bees in the winter. They took the honey out of the hives in time for the bees to make more and they had that to eat in the winter. I don’t remember for how long we had the bees.

As far back as I can remember there was not a stump on any of the fields. The farms were all narrow and the fields small and they were all fenced. Everybody had a narrow lane (fenced) right along the side of the line between them and the next farm to drive the cows from one place to another. And about a quarter of a mile up the lane there was the 23biggest pine stump I ever saw. I am sure it was over three feet across. The five of us could sit on the edge of it. It was there all the years when we were young, finally I think my father bored holes in it and put salt peter in it so it would break apart easily.

My parents had 11 children, the oldest and the youngest died at birth. The others are:

I started school when I was seven and I did not like it very much at first. I only had two teachers all the time I went to school that could really teach. One when I was in the second reader and the other the last year I was in school, in the sixth. We did not have grades, we went from the first reader to the sixth. That was about the eighth grade now. There was no compulsory education. We could stay out of school any time as long as our parents allowed us to. My parents were always anxious for us to go to school and I remember one year I never missed a day. I must have been about 9 or 10 and I got a pair of steel skates for first prize for attendance. We lived about a mile and a quarter from the school.

When I was twelve my eldest brother went to Colorado with a man that had gone there when he was young. About that time my father bought another 50 acres of land about a mile north. It’s hard now to imagine a man having nine children on 50 acres of land and we always had plenty to eat.

24Of course we always had milk and all year mother made butter. Always we had our own meat and both the pork and beef were cured in pickle in the winter and dried for the summer. Through the summer a meat man came every Saturday and we could get fresh meat. In the spring my father went to the fish run and got a wagon box of herring. He cleaned them and salted them in barrels and they were always a standby all summer and fall. And there were fish pedlars too that came with cod, haddock and mackerel all summer. Dad liked the mackerel best as did we all and he had a standing order all the last summers I was home, I remember, for so many every week, but the cod and haddock were really good. They took them out of the boats in the morning and the fish man would have them to us for 11:00 dinner, that was 5 miles.

We had our own oats ground for oatmeal. We did not have enough wheat for flour for all the year but we got what they called shorts that we used for porridge too. We also got bran but we fed the bran to the pigs and hens. So we were well fed. From the time the rhubarb came in the spring we had wild fruit and bushels of cherries and apples till quite late in the fall but we never had enough apples to last all winter.

Then we had the sheep for our clothing. We kept 10 sheep, I think, for the winter and they were sheered about the end of May, I think, and the wool was washed right away. And as soon as it was dried we children had the job of picking it over and they sent it to the carding mill to be made into rolls. Then mother had to decide what she needed woven as each different cloth had to have a different weight of yarn. Yarn for men’s suits and blankets had to be fairly heavy, for underwear and dresses it had to be spun finer. Once the yarn was spun 25it was sent to the woman that did the weaving. I only remember my mother weaving one fall. She borrowed a loom from a relative that was not using it. She could weave and I learned to that fall. Grandmother always had a loom set up all the time in her kitchen loft and Aunt Anne and I expect Aunt Janey always wove. I guess perhaps they usually did ours too.

When she made men’s cloth it was sent to Grandpa Carruthers’ woollen mill. The cloth would be white and he dyed it fulled it and pressed it. I think the pressing must have been done between rollers for the nap all ran one way and it was as smooth as satin. It was just very heavy broadcloth and suits and pants were made from it and they would wear for years. When I was married Bennett had a pair of those pants that he said he had had for twelve years, so that was the reason people could clothe their families.

Mother dyed the yarn for our dresses red before it was woven and all the blankets and flannel were woven on white warp. It was starched before they put it on the loom. It was woven so close that in the blankets you could not see the warp at all. The men’s cloth was made of all yarn. The looms would only weave the cloth a yard wide so our blankets had a seam down the middle. Then after that spinning was done there was the knitting yarn to do as all socks, stockings and mitts had to be knit. Knitting was never done, there was knitting all the year. But it was such a good life.

There was quite a lot of wood still on our farm when I was in my teens and my father always cut cord wood and hauled it to Tignish to buy our flour, always in barrels, 198 pounds. So you can see how much a dozen sheep meant to people. I don’t remember when they decided to sell the sheep, but everybody did I think. I know my mother was so 26very unhappy about it.

I think it was the fall of 1895 that Ed and George went to Maine. A boy had to work for a month from five in the morning till dark for $10.00. So most of the boys left the island. There was a neighbour of ours, a carpenter, who had gone to Maine in the spring of that year and taken his eldest boy and the boy got a job in a pulp mill and that fall he [the carpenter] sent money for his wife and the other three children to go as there was lots of work. So Ed decided to go.

Ed and George had always been like twins and were always together, there were only 13 months between them, so George decided he was going too. He was to go to work in Alberton that week and was going down that morning on the train with Ed and the Thomsons. He did not tell us as he thought Dad would stop him. So he went and when he did not come home Saturday night we soon learned he had not been where he was supposed to be and we soon heard from them.

That was the last year I was in school. When my sister was sixteen she went for three months with a very good dressmaker in Alberton to be taught dressmaking. Mostly cutting and fitting as my mother was an excellent sewer and Ella had helped her sew for a long time. With all the sewing done at home for a family of 7 boys and 2 girls there was always sewing. So I did the housework and they sewed.

Ed and George worked in the woods in Maine for part of the winter and in the spring they went to Boston. They had the name of a man from home that could help them get work. But they had to wait a month for the weather to warm up for this man was in the ice business and as soon as it warmed up they put on teams and also more men. So they got maps of Boston for hours they walked and really got to know something of the city.

Life was always quiet in the farm. 27Ed and George worked hard all summer and were laid off in the fall as the older men got the winter work. So they came home that fall and stayed for the winter, they went back in the spring and worked another summer. They came home again for another winter. That summer Ella went to see how she would like it. The boys sent her the money, the fare was about $15.00. She went in July not having any idea how hot it would be and she only stayed two months. The boys had saved by that time $1000.00 and they decided to buy land on the island. They heard of a mortgage sale on a farm twelve miles from home. 300 acres of land for $3000, so they bought it. It was a lovely piece of land, mostly wood. It was part of a section of land that the British government had given an English man and his wife about 40 or 50 years before. The older man, Colonel Duvar was dead and his son had a couple of saw mills and he had got into debt so was selling part of the land.

The next fall Ed and George got the winter job and they were tired of eating in restaurants and they wrote my mother to see if she would let me come to Boston and keep house for them. They had decided to take what they called a “flat.” I would be 18 in January. Mother would not let me go alone but she said Ella and I could both go. So we went the last week of November 1899. We arrived in Boston the day before Thanksgiving, it’s always the last Thursday in November. It was very exciting. I remember a storm the day we left and Father came to South Side with us. We got on the boat there for the three hour crossing to New Brunswick. The Gulf of St. Lawrence can be really rough as everybody found out that day. I think everybody in the boat was seasick and the poor stewards had a busy time.

How that old 28Northumberland rolled! Everybody’s suitcases were rolling from side to side all the way across. I was fine as soon as I got off the boat but Ella was train sick then and did not enjoy the rest of the trip.

We were supposed to be in Boston about 7 the next morning but we had an accident not far out of Boston. We ran into a freight train and our engine was smashed so badly they had to wait till another came out from Boston. George was down to meet the train and found it was several hours late and went back to work. When he came again the train was in and we were nowhere to be seen.

We had been well told we must never speak to anyone except a policeman so we followed instructions and told a policeman were we wanted to go and he put us on a street car and told us where to get off. So we got to the boys’ room. I remember it was on Berkley St. and it was a lovely big room. Not long after George came very hurriedly to see if we had arrived. We had had new dark coats and hats before we left home but he said we would have to go get new coats and hats for we were going to a cousin’s for Thanksgiving. So he took us off to Houghiton and Duthers [Houghton and Dutton?] big store and I remember I got such a pretty beige coloured coat and a pale blue velvet hat with a pale blue ostrich feather. They got us a room next door to them. They decided in the meantime that I had better work at housework for the winter so I would learn something of the difference in cooking, so we both got work.

Ella got a place the woman of the house knew of and I wanted one close to where she was so I went to an Employment office near there. When I went into this place it was full of all ages of women. I did not like the look of them so I asked where the woman was that ran the office. Someone said she lived 29in back and we all waited there and at a certain time the women that wanted help came or she sent them to places. But they saw that I was going to go to find the lady and they said I couldn’t go in there but I was not staying in that room. Anyhow, she let me in. I remember she was ironing and we talked and she said she had a place she was sure would suit me, a young Jewish woman with one little girl lived in an apartment, it would be better than going into a big house and she would phone her and I would come back and see her. So I came out and one girl said “Did you get a job?” I said yes. She said I was not here ten minutes and I have a job and she had been waiting there for days.

I stayed with the Jewish woman till Easter and by that time the boys had got a six room flat with a bath so then Ella left her place and got a place with a dressmaker so she could live with us. I remember what fun it was buying the furniture. There was a stove but that was all. The first day I was there the men came and put the carpet in the front room. There was a big front room and a front bedroom and a bedroom off the front room and the boys’ room off the hall and the dining room and kitchen at the opposite end. It was on the third floor and the rooms were large so it was not too hot.

I remember that I weighted 140 lbs that spring and a year from that I weighed 120 lbs. I never got past about 135 after that.

Evangeline
Produced by the Ullman Mfg Co., in 1898

I remember the four of us went to buy furniture for the living room. They said each one of us would choose a chair for themselves and a picture. George got a Morris chair that would lower down to almost a little bed. Ed got a platform one so that got two like that. Ella and I each picked velvet covered rockers. I got for my picture that picture of Evangeline that Mary has. [Now Sharon.] We had 30a big wide velvet couch and a lovely big mirror that just fit between the front windows with a lovely gold frame. I think that was the only secondhand thing that they bought. The hotels were infested with bedbugs and they were so afraid of them they would not buy any secondhand stuff. The furniture was sent home later and later still Ed and George went back to Boston and they sold the furniture at home. And Bennett told my later, after we were married, that at the sale he had bought the mirror. I was in Boston by that time.

The boys rented the front bedroom and I think they got enough for it to pay the rent, I’m not sure. I got on all right with the cooking. I did not have a cook book but the Boston Post had a recipe every day and right away I started a cook book. They were the best I ever had and I had that book for years.

Not long after we got settled we got word from home that Mother was sick and they wanted Ella to go home so she went the first of May. That was 1901.

I don’t remember anything very special about that summer except Fanny Gard, a girl Ed had met the winter before came to Boston. I expect they were engaged at that time, I don’t remember, but I know George was not too happy about Ed sending her the money to come. She was keeping house at home for her father and brother so she stayed two months and went back.

That winter Boston had a real epidemic of smallpox. I don’t remember how they got it but it got a real head start before they really got after it. For a while I think everywhere that people gathered was closed. I think a lot of people died but Ed and George went on working all the time. Everyone was told through the papers that everyone had to be vaccinated and the 31doctors were mobilized and on certain days they went into every part of the city, and to every house. I remember George and I were home when the doctor came and we got it at the same time. It started to take at the same time and we wore shields over it of cellophane that we could see through. It got big scabs and was very itchy and the scabs came off both our arms the same day. It must have lasted 6 or 8 weeks I don’t remember.

Margaret Barbour, Age 20, 1902.

In the spring of 1902 our mother was not getting better and they sent for me to go home and I went in June. My oldest brother, Arthur, was in Colorado and she wanted very badly to see him so in the winter of 1902 Ed was not very busy and he went to Colorado and Arthur came home with him and stayed awhile with us [in Boston] and then went home.

Ed and George wanted to keep on working in Boston to get their farm paid for and they wanted Arthur to go home and start working on their farm. Dad had helped them the winter before to build a little shack where they could stay while they worked. There was so much wood on it that had to be cut so the land could be cleared. So Arthur had gone there in the spring. He boarded with one of the neighbours that was near.

Mother was able to be up and around the house when I went home but by that time the doctor thought she did not have long to live. He thought she had cancer of the liver. In August Ed and George got some time off and came home for a few days. We had the same minister that we had for several years and he came to see her several times a week. Arthur was a great comfort to her. He always had been. I remember when we were all small and he would always help her get the little boys dressed to go to S.S. I think he came home often to see her. I guess she must have been in bed about a month and he would 32always stop at the door and let the boys take his mare and buggy to the barn and he would go in to her. He used to lift her up and hold her till she got rested from lying so long. She died on September 15.

Ed and George could not get off again to come home for the funeral. In 1916 when our father died they were living on the island and they were the only ones of the family at home then.

That was the saddest year of our lives. Life was never the same for any of us I am sure. She was a lovely mother, so different from even our aunts and neighbours and Arthur was always the most like her. But Ed and Ella both looked a bit like her.

Ella and I stayed home that winter and Arthur built a house on the boys’ farm. The winter after Mother died he took Cecil with him. He was 17 and Dad did not manage him very well and he was hard on the younger boys so that was good for all of us. I stayed home for five years. Ella kept house for the boys, Ed and George, I think the fall of 1904 and Ed was getting married in the spring and there would be too many so Arthur, Cecil and Ella went to Boston about April or May and George went as soon as the crop was in. Then as Dad’s crop was in I went and helped Ed. The boys were home and Ed and Fanny were married I think in June. Simpson and Presley went to school in Alberton the next year and took the exam and went to Prince of Wales college that winter.

P.E.I. at that time was so full of T.B. and the doctors did not do anything to help. None of the Barbours and only two families in Alma had it. One family only lost one, but the other family lost five before it was done and it was strange, the youngest girl lived all through those years and never took it. Fanny’s family had it and four of them had died and I remember Mary 33McMurdo’s mother saying to me what an awful thing for a boy as strong as Ed to marry into that family. It seems so awful to me now, after the experience we had with it after.

Fanny only weighed 86 pounds when she and Ed were married and I never knew anyone with the energy she had. The way she worked in that old house, there were 9 big rooms. It had been all cleaned and papered the year before they were married. However she lived to the fall of 1917. They sold the farm and moved to Alberton. Ed was keeping foxes and they had the two children, Alberta was 12 and Hilton about 9.

Simpson and Presley worked with Ed in the summer before they went to P.W. college and Simpson slept on a feather bed that had come from Fanny’s home. That fall they went to college and Fred went with them to school in town. Arthur and Ella were paying for them. Dad was getting married again and June had two girls, so the three boys came to Boston.

Arthur had got a house and Ella was keeping house, but coming there right in the hot weather and going to work it was not long before Simpson was sick and when Arthur took him to the doctor the doctor told Arthur after, he knew at the time he saw him first that he was threatened with T.B. and if we had known it then and got him out of the city to the sanitarium he might have been better.

I don’t remember how long he was in the sanitarium but in the winter of 1907 Arthur found out Fred had it and he got him right away from the city.

In the spring the doctor told him Simpson was not getting any better and to send him to P.E.I. So Ella and Presley took him to P.E.I. They got a house in Alberton and I think they had stayed at Ed’s for a while. He died in February and Ella and Presley came back to Boston.

Fred was at the sanitarium over a 34year and all that time I don’t think my father or Ed and George ever paid a cent for him. Arthur, Ella and I paid.

The summer of 1909 I was awfully tired. Dr. Durgin told his wife when Simpson died, that he had never seen anyone come so near to having a nervous breakdown and not have it. So the summer of 1909 I went home for three weeks and stayed six. I really went home that summer to meet a man I had been writing in Alberton for years. But when I met him I knew I did not want to marry him so I had a nice six weeks and went back to Boston.

By that fall Fred was really tired of the sanitarium and wanted to go home so he and Presley went. He was 18 then and he had not been home since he was 16. George Hardy, a friend of ours from Alberta, was home too that winter and he wanted Presley and Fred to go back West with him. He was sure Fred would get better if he was out there. He and his nephew were batching and there was still homestead land near him so they went.

Our stepmother did not want them at home as she had two girls of her own about 15 and 17. I don’t remember where they got the money. She was very insistent that they go and they must have decided very quickly for they did not take the time to write Arthur Ella or I. When we got the letter they were going they were already past Montreal. We were really shocked for we had been worrying about Fred so much after losing Simpson.

The boys all knew Addie and Bennett and the Carruthers asked them to stop off at Lashburn and see them. Addie and Allison were just married a few months. Bennett wanted them to stay with him as he had half a section of land and a house and he wanted someone to help him, but they went on with George and they each took up a homestead.

Fred was feeling pretty good then and as 35they could not do anything on the homestead Presley went to Edmonton and got a job and Fred stayed and he did the cooking. It was a hot summer and he was not used to being over a hot stove and there was no trees around the house, so he was soon feeling pretty tired. Then Bennett wrote them to come to Lashburn and wanted Presley to work for him by the year as his mother was not very well and he was going home in the fall and they came to Lashburn. By that time Fred was coughing pretty bad and when Presley decided to work for Bennett he knew he could not work and take care of Fred so he wrote for Ella or I to come and stay with them as Bennett was going to collect for I.J. as soon as the crop was up.

Ella was planning to get married so she did not want to come so I left Boston on Labour Day 1910. The part of the trip between Boston and Winnipeg was pretty good but after Winnipeg the country changed so much and I did not like it at all. I decided if Saskatchewan was like that I was soon going back.

It was lovely weather all that fall and I was so glad to be with the boys again. Fred was really tired out and stayed in bed most of the time. I wanted to a take him right back but neither he or Presley liked Boston and after he said to me “If I have any chance Margaret it’s out here,” I did not say anymore about it.

They were ready to thresh when I got out there and it only took a day or two. Then Bennett went to collect for Irving and at that time they came from the Sask. River to Manito Lake to Lashburn. I don’t remember when he went home but before winter. Cecil was out there before I went. I guess he went on the Harvest Excursion. For years every fall trainloads of men, boys and the occasional girl went on the Harvest Excursion and he 36was working at the Palings when I came.

They had been in Lashburn for some time and had a lot of land and a big steam engine. I think they threshed for most of the neighbours but Bennett had a small outfit of his. I don’t remember about Cecil that fall. He must have gone back as soon as the threshing was done. It was a lovely fall and I don’t remember when the snow came. Palings were so glad to have neighbours with boys and Mrs. Paling was so glad to have a girl. She was such a lovely person. He had been a school teacher in London and had been quite a good singer. I remember him telling me he used to sing at the Crystal Palace in a choir. They had an organ and as soon as the snow came they would all get in the sleigh and bring the crokinole board and Cyril had a violin. They would come quite often. It was so good for Fred to have company and Mrs. Paling was always so good to him, they all were.

The Palings were a mile away and then the McKenzies were a mile further, they were so very nice too. Annabel was 15 or 16 and Madge just younger and they had a piano and Mrs. McKenzie played. The whole family was musical. George was a lovely violinist and both girls sang and played but they did not visit very often. It was an awfully cold winter. We were quite content to be by ourselves and Fred could be quiet.

Jan. was very cold and lots of snow. Fred was not very well and we were worried about him. We had the doctor to see him right after I came and he said it was the biggest shame he ever had to see this boy with consumption because it was the only thing wrong with him, just his lungs. He gave him a tonic but of course it did no good. In Feb. Ella came from Boston and George Hardy had come in Jan. He was so good for Fred. The boys liked him so much.

I guess it was the end of Jan. we got the Chinook. I remember it 37started in the night and we all woke up with the weight of the bedclothes for it had been so cold before that and from hour to hour you could see the snow go down and I know we were so glad to thing the awful cold was gone.

Fred got gradually worse. Bennett came home toward the end of March and he had a boy with him that had been a friend of Fred’s at home. He was going to his father in Alberta. Fred left us the last day of March and it was terrible to part with him. He was 19. Ella took his body home to P.E.I. Arthur met her at Moncton, I think, and he was buried in Montrose with our parents and Simpson.

I wanted to go back to Boston that spring but when I had a check up the doctor told me he would not give me more than two years if I went, but in the Sask. climate I could live to be 80. I was awfully run down and could not do more than look after myself. Presley really looked after me then. That summer is pretty blank. I think Bennett bought a threshing outfit for I remember his mother was very sick and he had to go home and Presley had a man to help him finish the threshing.

I don’t remember much about that winter. Presley and I were alone but we went to whist drives and dances at different places with the Palings and the McKenzies.

Caroline Haywood Carruthers, circa 1908.

Bennett’s mother died soon after he got home. It was very sad for him. She did not know him when he got there and his cousin had been to see her and she thought it was still him. She kept telling Bennett that she was waiting for her boy to come home, and he never did get her to know it was him. It was very hard on him.

I don’t remember when he came home that spring. Mary Heywood, his cousin, came with him. Addie had sent for her. Ronald was born in August.

Bennett and I were married in June. I wanted just to go to Lloyd but 38Addie wanted us to be married at their place. They had three rooms behind the drug store and all the upstairs over it. So we just had Mrs. Paling and Cyril, Mr. and Mrs. Craven, they were an old English couple, Mrs. Lewis and her sister and friends of Addie’s and Bennett’s. Lashburn was just a mission station then and they only had a student in the summer so we were married by Mr. English, the Anglican minister. Mac and Mary were married there a year after.

The church had been opened the fall of 1911 but there were no weddings in it for some time. That was the spring the Titanic was lost. Mr. and Mrs. Paling had been to England that winter and they came home soon after, I think it was the 15 or 16 of April.

The fall of 1912 Presley went to Boston, Andrew Gordon had worked for Bennett that summer and in the fall Bennett’s father was sick and sent for him to go home. So he and Irving left for home the first of Feb. He sent for Andrew to come and look after the place and I went to stay with Edna. They had three children, Keith was a year old.

I stayed till I.J. came home the first of March then I got Andrew to go home and get his sister to come and stay with me. I was tired in town. Bennett and Presley came the same week about the first of April, 1913.

That was such a hot busy summer. The Gordon girl stayed with me and Bennett had built a little summer house to sleep in. It was just two by fours with a roof and lined inside with mosquito netting. It was near the door out of our bedroom with just a built up bed. We had our bed inside for we had to go in when it rained. Cecil had come that summer and we had the two Gordon boys so there were the five men. It was such a hot summer.

It seems we were always cooking and 39baking. We had to make bread three times a week.

I guess with everybody there are certain days that one remembers. I know I have always remembered the 6 of August, the day before Fred was born. Right after breakfast, I mean Aunt Edna’s breakfast, she and the three children arrived to spend the day. The reason they came so early was Uncle I.J. had the chance to get a man with a car to bring them out. Cars were a real novelty then, there were only about four in Lashburn and as it was nine miles to our place he did not want to make the trip. Needless to say it was not one of my “at home” days. They stayed the day and he came for them just before bedtime.

About an hour after they were gone I discovered that I had to go to the hospital. Bennett was a bit fussed as the car had not been gone very long. However he got Presley up and he drove us. It was a real dark night and we were glad to get to the hospital.

Fortunately we had a wonderful doctor and a good nurse. He sent Bennett back home and Fred arrived about 5:00 on August 7, 1913. I had just got him into my arms for my first look at him and Bennett came in the door. We thought he was the most wonderful baby we had ever seen. I remember too, Mrs. English the minister’s wife came and spent an hour or so with me and she said she had never seen a more contented baby.

At that time they let anyone in that came to see a patient. That was the time I met Mrs. Nelson. She was a patient and Dr. McKenzie said to me there was a girl alone in the next room and I was alone. He said he thought we could be friends and he brought her in. How right he was, we have been friends ever since but right now she is very ill in a hospital near her daughter in Alberta.

Allison had a car that summer and he took me home on 40August 21, and as we drove down the hill to the house they were just starting to cut the first of the wheat, three binders were already going up the field. By that time there were 8 men and it was terribly hot and there was a man that just hauled water all day. They had to rest the horses and give them a bit of water. It was the hottest harvest I remember.

About the first of July Mac and Mary were married and they all went to Manito Lake sometime in July. Ethel and Bertha came to surprise Addie and Mary, I think Allison knew they were coming but we didn’t. The train came about six in the morning so he brought them out to our house for breakfast so he could take them on to the lake.

Ruth was in Lashburn that summer too. She and Mel had been married the fall of 1912. Ella Clark usually spent a month or so at home in the summer and Ethel got her to stay with their father that summer as Ethel wanted very much to come to Lashburn.

I often wonder how I got through that summer for, sometime before harvest was over, the Gordon girl left. When the threshing was on Ethel came and helped me and Fred used to get colic and cry about supper time. I can remember Cecil used to come in and walk the floor with the baby while I’d be putting the the supper on the table.

Ethel was wonderful always and when they went to 25 to thresh she and Ruth came out to the cook car and cooked while they were there. The first day they did not get a bite of dinner for themselves. After that they knew better.

I remember I had one awful bad day later that fall. Craig’s had the school section that joined our place and they had cattle there and at that time there was an epidemic of blackleg among the cattle. It was an awful thing, if they did not 41get them vaccinated there was not much hope for them. So they built a corral in the pasture and they built it right outside our fence.

One morning they came down to vaccinate the cattle, Fred must have been about 6 months old. I was alone and Bennett was at the house and he went over to see how they were getting on. Mr. Craig was quite old but he was trying to tell them what to do and he worked too hard and played himself out.

Bennett came back soon with him and put him on the couch. He told me they wanted me to give them dinner. I said I couldn’t, I had our own men to feed. “Oh yes,” Dad said, “you can, I’ll help you.” And I did. They could have gone home, it was only a couple of miles. We did have a couple of cows in the pasture, I think. They lost some of their cattle too and the old man never got over it. I think he died the next week.

That was the worst day I ever remember. We had about 6 men besides Dad and I had to give them their dinner first and then get ready the second one. What made the trouble was it was getting so hot and having to feed the baby. Then about supper time he would get the colic and never having had anything to do with a baby before I didn’t know what to do for him. That was before Ruth had any children.

I don’t remember much about that fall. Ethel had to go home and Bertha stayed with Mary. Mac and Mary were living in the rooms up over his office. Then he bought the Price house where they still live.

I don’t remember much new about the summer of 1914. I guess I cooked for the harvest but Bennett got a man to cook for the threshing—guess he must have had the cook car and the bunk house built the summer of 1912.

The man cook was Adam and he was good. I guess that was perhaps the easiest fall I ever had. It was the only fall I did 42not have to get up and get breakfast. The cook made hot cakes for the men every morning and the cook car was down in the yard and every morning when he saw my fire go on he would cook hot cakes for me and run up with them. He asked Dad for me to go down for dinner always and he always kept my place right inside the door beside Dad and pity help any of the boys that tried to sit there. He was a good enough cook as that was all he had ever done.

There was a lot of rain I remember that fall and Dad had two men that had come all the way from Southern Sask. They had a covered wagon with their bed and stove in it. Dad met them one day at the corner by where they built the Tyrone school and they were looking for work so he brought them home and I think they stayed till the freeze up.

They ploughed all fall, I guess they must have each had four horses. They were Joe and Charley. Sometime that fall Charley got word that his house was to be sold for taxes in the States. They had both come from the States to try their luck at farming. Charley sold Dad two of his horses. They were Slim and Major that we had for so many years.

Those were happy years. Presley was with us from 1912 till 1917. 1915 was a good year, Bennett hired an English couple that lived in Lashburn. He was a nice quiet old fellow and she was quite a cranky lady. She was older than I was and so slow to work.

Lennie came in June 1915 and I would not go to the hospital for I would not leave Fred with her. So I stayed home and the doctor was away and fortunately Mrs. Sampson was working at Alex Milne’s and she had told me if I got caught without a doctor to send for her. So I had to that day and she rescued me and was my friend and Lennie her girl forever after.

We had a wonderful crop 43that fall and Ethel wrote for Bennett to go home for her dad and Harold had both died and she was selling the farm and wanted him to go and take care of things for her. My teeth were needing a lot of attention and Ella wrote me to come home that fall and I either had to go to Edmonton or Boston so I decided to go to Boston. I often wonder now where I got the courage, but somehow I did, for Lennie was only 6 months old.

We left Dec. 13, then at the last minute Bennett decided to wait until after Christmas as Addie had decided she would go if he would wait for her. She would just go to Ottawa. George Lynch, a hired man we had had for many years then, was going to Nova Scotia and he would be on the same train I was on but in another car. I managed alright as he used to come and sit with the baby while Fred and I went to the dining car.

When I got to Montreal I went to the Y.W.C.A. for the day and he went right along. I had lots of help, with all the girls there, with the children and they went to the train with me and it was only about ten or twelve hours to Boston and I was there in the morning.

Ella was there to meet me. Cecil was in Boston that winter too. Our father was sick at home and was not expected to get better so I was supposed to go home with Bennett when he came after Christmas. But he forgot to write in time and when I got his letter he was away to the Island. So Arthur said I was not going over that road in winter with two children alone so I did not get home to see him.

Bennett, Margaret, and Fred Carruthers,
circa 1914.

We had to be home to Sask. the end of Feb. so I had my teeth done about the time Bennett got to Boston. Arthur lived out in the country that winter so we went out there and were a few days with Ella. We got our pictures taken and took Fred to the children’s hospital 44to see about his little thumb.

Then we went to Ottawa and stayed a few days there. Addie had Ronald and Robert and we started home. Winnipeg was the coldest place I ever was out in that day. We went from the hotel to Eaton’s, that was the day we got our china cabinet. It was some trip home. Poor Ronald, he was a year older than Fred and so nervous he cried every move.

(That was the last time I was in Boston till 1946 when Lennie and I went to P.E.I. She came back to Toronto in three weeks and I went on to Boston for another month. Arthur and and Carrie were married before that and Cecil and Maude and Presley and Janet all lived there then. Eleanor was married too and Presley had a big house and he had made her a lovely apartment on the second floor. Her husband was away in the navy the spring of 1916. [1946?])

Mrs. Sampson came along one day. She lived in Edmonton with her husband during the winters. We were very glad to see her as we wanted to help. Her husband had gone someplace else to work. It was a cool wet summer and the grain crew so very tall. Then later on it froze. We never got any really hot weather. I don’t remember much about 1916 now. Lennie was a year old and one of the first words she said was Sammy. So Mrs. Sampson was Sammy from that time and she was such a good friend as long as she lived. After that year they rented the Mape’s farm across the gully from the McKenzies.

Margaret, Bennett,
Lennie and Fred Carruthers, 1916.

I don’t remember much about the 1916 crop except Bennett burned a lot of the wheat that had been frozen. I think he burned the spring of 1917.

The fall of 1912 Presley went to Boston for the winter and he met the girl he married. She was Janet Shaw from P.E.I. I had seen her at home as her home was only a couple of miles from Ed and George’s farm but we had not gone to school there so did not know all the young people of the district. So in March of 1917 45she came west and Presley met her in Winnipeg and they married there.

He had the Craven farm and was living by himself for a while before that. They stayed with us a few days after they were married and we gave them a reception that lasted two evenings. Our house would not accommodate all the neighbours.

That was a very busy, hot summer. I did not have help in the house that summer, it was very hard to get help.

When Janet was first married she thought the country was wonderful. At home on P.E.I. my brother Ed’s wife was sick with T.B. and when Janet wrote to thank her for her wedding present she told Fanny that if she came to Lashburn she was sure she would get better. Fanny knew she was not getting any better so she decided quickly that she would come. Ed asked the doctor and he was satisfied for her to come.

Fanny thought Janet meant her to come to their house and I had not known that Janet had asked her so I was very surprised to hear that she was coming. So I wrote my brother right away and told him to be sure and send the girl that lived with them to take care of her. But when he got the letter she was already on the way. She was not able to travel alone so Mrs. Heywood wanted to come so she said she would take care of her if Ed would pay her way. So he did.

Janet was in a real flurry when she got the letter that Fanny was coming and she said she couldn’t come to their house because she was afraid of the T.B. So Bennett met her. She was so very tired she could not drive the nine miles to our place and had to stay in town for the night.We were very frightened about her as she was much worse than we expected.

When we heard she was coming Bennett built a summer house that we had meant to build for ourselves as we had one for some time and it 46was blown down not being very substantial. So this time he did a good job. It was just built with a floor and a frame of 2x4s and this one was covered with wire screening and latticed with loths [laths?] and had a real good roof. It was really lovely to sleep in. It had binder canvas on the inside to keep the rain out and it rolled up and let down. So we thought it would be really good for Fanny on hot days, but she did not like it at all and would not even nap out there.

I had known her very well at home and I was really fond of her. I think she was about the smartest girl I ever saw. She could skate the fastest, dance for hours and do housework like a little whirl-wind. Five of her family had died with T.B. and all that summer she used to tell me “If I had only listened to Ed I’d never be sick like this.” There had been a big crop of blueberries the summer before and day after day she would not stop going to pick more. She had to walk quite a distance and she over did and got sick. The trip to Saskatchewan was really too much for her too.

Fortunately I had a good room for her and she could have breakfast in bed and rest as much as she wanted to. But she never got a bit better. It was bad for us for I was expecting a baby in the fall. Uncle Allison went to the doctor to see if they would take her into the hospital for a while, but they wouldn’t.

She decided in about a month or so that she was not as well as she had been and decided she wanted to go home. We had an awfully nice young student minister and he came so often to see her and he was from Chicago and he said to her he would take her when he went at the first of September but I had already written to Ed and he wired me not to let her leave with anybody, he was coming for her. He came about as soon 47as he could.

She was so ill he had to carry her on and off the trains. It was a hard experience for them both. When he got home and she was so sick he asked the doctor if he had known when he told her she should go that she was as sick as she was. He said he had known but could not tell her. Ed said to him, “You could not tell her but you could let her suffer those two trips and exposed us to the disease.” But she had the most courage I ever knew anyone to have I think. She said to me one day, “I am going to die but not this fall.” She was two months or more with us and two months from the day she left she was gone. Alberta, her girl was 12 and Hilton about 9, I think.

At that time Bennett kept one man all the year and usually three others from Easter till freeze up. Then the extra ones for harvest and threshing. Soon after Fanny left he got a married couple. She was to cook for the fall. They had two children. She was a fine person and a really good cook. They stayed till the threshing was done and later that fall we moved to 25.

I forgot to say we had a wonderful crop that fall, and the price was good.

There were no buildings at 25, only a barn, so the two children and I lived in the cook car till Bennett got the first half of the house moved. It was a lot of work for they had to dig a cellar. So as soon as the house was there he got the carpenters and got it ready for us to move into.

That winter we only had two rooms, a kitchen and a bedroom. The kitchen was 12x16 and the bedroom was 8x16. They got the frame up for the living room before it got too cold to work. It was 16x16. We were comfortable that winter.

A Hoosier Kitchen Cabinet.

As there was no pantry or room for built in cupboards, Dad got me a Hoasier [Hoosier?] Kitchen Cabinet. It was really something in 1917. It had a bin 48that held 25 lbs of flour with a flour sieve and a small bin that held about 20 lbs of sugar, room for dishes, a lined bread box with an inside sliding cover, a drawer where I kept oatmeal, another for kitchen towels, one for kitchen utensils, a big bottom cupboard for cooking dishes and a bread board. It also had the best table top that I have ever seen. It was porcelain iron and was the width of the cabinet. It slid under the cupboard part and you could draw it out to be about 2x3. It was enamelled so nothing stuck to it so it was the best for baking. How I enjoyed it that winter.

We were all settled into our two rooms before Arthur arrived on the night of December 4, 1917. Janet and Presley kept Fred and Lennie while I was in the hospital. That week Halifax was blown up. George Lynch was working for us and he was from N.S. and he went home and heard of it on the train and went right on to see the ruins.

While we were in hospital I remember Dad had bought a lovely new cutter all lined and with doors on each side. It was really nice to ride in. When I went to the hospital I had gone in the buggy. And it was while we were in the hospital that he also bought the Edison phonograph. After we were home, Arthur and I, he went into the other room and put on a record and started it. You can imagine how surprised I was. I think that was the first time the phonograph had come to Lashburn. Alex Milnes and McKones got one too that winter. We each had our favourite singers. Everyone had a good crop that year and the stores made good that year.

I often thought after how very heedless we were that fall. There was not room for us to bring all our things with only the two rooms and we left our china cabinet with my dinner set that Dad had given me in 1915. 49Of course the house was away by the river bank on 10 and no road went past it. I always shivered after when I thought about the danger my dishes were in.

We had a really nice winter that year of 1918. Mr. and Mrs. Shepperd lived just half a mile east and they were so glad to have neighbours so near as they loved to play cards and no one near played. 500 was the game then and they did not have any children so they could come whenever they wanted to. Arthur was the best baby in the world that winter and he would sleep in his carriage till two or three o’clock when they would go home. Presley and Janet came every week and Sundays that winter. I don’t think we could have had a minister in town that winter for we did not go to church. So there could not have been a minister.

1918 was not a very good year at all. Bennett had bought our very first car that winter. It was of course a Model T. The spring of 1918 as soon as the weather was warm enough Dad got the carpenters and built the front room and the shop with the garage in half of it. Then he had a house built for the hired man. We had an American couple that year. I think they had two children. A boy Fred’s age and a younger one. Also we had two Frenchmen from Bonnyville. We got them in April and with 4 carpenters and a baby I was very glad when we got the married couple, for after a while she took the two of them for meals.

As soon as it was dry enough to run the cars Walter Ellis arrived one morning with the car and Bennett had not told me he had bought a car. He got in behind the wheel of the car and they went on the road toward the south with Bennett driving. He had been driving a tractor for quite some time then and so he seemed to manage all right. So when another car came and picked Walter up 50and left the new car I began to think it had come to stay.

That was all the driver training Bennett had and he took us out, I am sure, not long after. I remember Mr. LeReaez saying to Bennett years after how near they must all have been that first summer to their deaths knowing so little about cars. I remember that summer though how good it was to go for a drive in the evenings. I’d put the three children in their nighties and we’d go for an hour or so and come back and carry them to their cots.

That summer too Dad took Fred to Sunday School for the first time. We had a student minister for summers. At that time there were four churches in Lashburn: Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist. As none of them had a regular minister at that time except the Anglicans. At that time Lashburn was a mission station and I don’t remember just when they formed a congregation and got a settled, ordained minister.

As I remember 1918 now it was a very unsatisfactory year. Our crop was frozen in July and all the wheat Bennett threshed that fall was enough for the seed for next spring. It was still war time and wheat was over ten dollars a bushel so it was a great disappointment to everybody. I remember being at the fair in August and it was so cold some of the men had their fur coats on. I remember Ethel went back to the house and got her fur coat.

That was the year of the Spanish Flu epidemic. I don’t believe there was one house anywhere in our part of the country that some of the family wasn’t down with it. The first reports we had of it was really terrifying. That was the first time I was ever afraid of any sickness, really afraid. They said so many people just got it and before they realized how sick they were they just died and so many left families of little 51children. That caused almost panic in places and so the stories were suppressed.

It must have been in November when it got to Lashburn and it was really bad. Everything was closed. Uncle Allison and all the family except Addie and Ethel had it and they were having trouble at the hospital. One of the nurses died so the doctor got Ethel to the hospital to take care of the babies. I don’t remember that she ever had it.

Lennie was three years old and she was the first to take it at our house. Dad and I had just got her fixed up with a fire in the front room so she was away from the others when Presley came along for Cecil. Cecil was at our place, I don’t remember why he had come, so he went with Presley. They were expecting their first baby about then.

A few days after Bennett was in town one day and he took sick in the co-op store, so he went to bed with Lennie in the front room. Fred was five, and he got it too. Bennett was better and able to just be up. John McKone came and did the work at the barn and he came to the windows and was talking to Fred and Lennie when they were just up but hadn’t been allowed out of the room. Arthur was 11 months old and he got it too.

The doctor had come every day from the time we got it. Someone drove him and he went to every house from Lashburn down to McKenzies then up the other road back into town. They fixed a mattress in the back of his car and when he had a chance he slept a bit. He used to go away north of Maidstone and to any place he was called.

Then Janet got sick and Presley came for me. I did not want to leave the children but Dad said they would be all right till I got back. Alex Milne and Rich Paling had not taken it and they were one of them staying at Presley’s nights. Someone brought the doctor and he 52had called at our house on his way. When he came in and saw me he said to me “You should not be out of your house, Fred has pneumonia!”

More Pictures

Caroline Haywood and Christopher Harold Carruthers. (Bennett Carruthers’ parents.)

Bennett Carruthers
Lester, Mary, Lennie, Fred,
Eric, Arthur.

Tilling.

First Combine, 1928.

Carruthers Farm, Lashburn Saskatchewan, circa 1930.

Hay Stooks.

Carruthers Family, 1937
Lester, Arthur, Lennie, Fred, Bennett,
Margaret,
Eric, Mary.