Pioneer life of settlers in Ontario in the 1850s-1870s

 The following is taken from an account "MY RECOLLECTIONS" by James Arthur Watson, a second cousin of my dad.

[James Watson junior and Jane Buchanan]

Our Grandfather, James Watson, was the son of a Scottish stonecutter, one of a number of Masons who were brought to Canada to do the masonry required in building the canals that made a by-pass to the St. Lawrence River, so that the country would be free of the threat of American trouble along the river. 

He was born in 1825  and had several brothers and sisters. I understand that he married, but lost his wife. Then he moved to the newer part of Ontario where he and some of the family settled in an area known as Donegal, in Perth County, near a family from Ireland.

Our Grandmother was the youngest child of Andrew and Jane Buchanan, of Omagh, in the County of Tyrone, Ulster. The family were among the thousands who had to leave because of the potato famine in 1847. They were nine weeks crossing the Atlantic, as it was a sailing ship and, without wind, the ship was becalmed. That ship, like many others, had a terrible time with fever and other illnesses, caused by lack of fresh food. When reaching Kingston, Ontario, the father died. The family were assisted to travel to the newly-opened area, where they could get land. There were no roads, just trails through the forest, but they were able to make a home. This Irish family called the place Donegal, after the home they had to leave in Ireland. {I had heard that the name "Donegal" was chosen by the first postmaster there, from his home in Ireland.]

James Watson and Jane Buchanan were married September 22, 1856, and lived about half a mile north of Donegal Comer.

Life was very different then for the new settlers, not like in the towns. When James returned to the house, the door was open, for, when Jane kept house for her brothers, they didn't have glass windows and needed the open door for light.

James had purchased a team of horses but when one died, he had to sell the other to pay off the debt. To get some money he had to work for others, all day, from daylight until dark, for all of a shilling. We did not have dollars in Canada then, still using “pounds, shillings and pence"! A shilling was hard to earn but it would buy a lot. A man could take his own jug to the tavern and get a gallon of rye whiskey with it.

They didn't need to buy a lot, just salt and tea. They got sugar from the maple sap and soap was made of fat from their own meat carcasses, mixed with lye from wood ashes. Candles were made from fat too.

They had to harvest their crops in the evening, after a day’s work for others. Jane would carry a "lanthorn" (lantern), a candle sheltered from the wind in some kind of container made of tin. To harvest the, crop, James would cut the grain with a scythe that had an arrangement with wooden fingers to catch the grain (called a cradle). With each swing the scythe would hold a bundle of grain. The grain laid on the stubble until the next day, when Jane would tie the bundles into sheaves with a wisp of straw, called a withe. When I was a boy on the farm Dad showed me how it was done. When all that was done, James and Jane would carry it to where it would be stored until winter. They used a hand-barrow, like a wheel-barrow but, without wheels. It looked like a stretcher, with legs, so they needn't stoop to pick it up. 

The sheaves of grain were threshed by hand with a "flail" (a wooden handle tied to a wooden beater), striking the heads of grain to loosen the kernels from the hulls. Then the grain would be tossed in the air where the wind would blow away the chaff. James would carry bags of this grain on his back, several miles to a water powered mill. The miller took a share of the meal for his work and the rest was carried home. There were no roads, that's why it had to be carried. This meal from wheat or rye was their whole grain flour. Not  having yeast, a bit of batter from the last raised dough was saved, kept in dry flour, until the next time, then softened, and used as a starter (it was called "mother").

Jane used a spinning wheel to make thread from wool or linen. Her family, being from Ireland, knew how to do all these things. Then she made cloth on a loom. Some of it for sheets and blankets, some for garments, all made by hand stitching. No sewing machine in those days. Her family, husband, sons and daughters, wore clothing made in that manner, until they were grown and ready to leave home.

When Canada purchased the Northwest Territories from the Hudson's Bay Co., the land needed to be settled.

[They traveled by train through the USA to reach the area of western Manitoba, where they settled in 1879 - but that story is told elsewhere in more detail by his uncle David James Watson.]

The Vanished town of Antross, Alberta

During the first half of the 20th century, the mixed forests of west-central Alberta were cut down to make room for farms. This produced lumber that was used for building Alberta's future. 

New towns sprang up at the sites of the larger sawmills, These towns often included schools, churches, and businesses, as well as homes for local residents. Antross was named after the Anthony and Ross lumber companies, which had sawmills on the site. My mother and her younger sisters attended Antross School, and my aunt Myrtle was married in Antross. and I think that one of my uncles and his brothers played for the Antross baseball team. And my dad nearly died there when a skittish team of horses pinned his neck against the scrap wood burner. (But that is another story,) 

Antross was a booming place. But its sawmills were not the only ones in the area. I remember someone saying that on a clear winter day, he could see the smoke form six different sawmills from his farm house.

By 1950, Antross suffered the fate of many other resource-based communities, The timber was exhausted and the sawmills shut down, and everyone moved away. Many of the people moved to nearby Breton, where Pearson's and Fraser's sawmills continued to operate for a few more years, before they too had to shut down, 

By then the Pembina oilfield was opening up jobs for some of the unemployed local people. Breton survived the collapse of the local lumber industry and became a supply center for local farmers.

Only two buildings remained on the Antross town site by 1960, the remains of a house and a barn.

The dynamic hamlet of Antross deserves to be remembered, It touched the lives of many people, It was place to work, to learn and to enjoy activities with family and friends.. 

I remember seeing photos of a "railroad track" built out of scrap lumber, so that young people could push a mining car up the hill, jump in and ride the car to the bottom of the hill, before restarting the process. You don't see that every day.

The Little Moose Bridge Truck Collision 1950 (Bill & Reg)

Bill was 8 years old and Reg was 6. The school bus had dropped us off and we were walking the 2 miles home to our parent's farm. A passing truck stopped to offer us a ride, as it would be passing our house. Reg joined the driver and his assistant in the cab of the truck and Bill rode in the grain box behind the cab. 

In the 1940s in our area, trucks often used sleigh trailers to carry logs or lumber to town. These worked fine, unless you needed to stop, since the sleighs had no brakes. 

 As we were descending the hill to Little Moose creek, a truck with a sleigh trailer loaded with lumber was descending the longer hill on the other side of the creek. The bridge was narrow and both trucks tried to stop.

The collision was like a slow-motion train wreck. We were coming down a hill onto the bridge when the collision happened. Bill was in the truck box and flew out onto the frozen creek, along with some sacks of grain and a couple of saws. The back of our truck landed on the ice as well, pushed by the heavier truck. 

Reg was in the cab and the guy riding with him decided to bail, he jumped out pushing Reg out first. Reg landed in front of the truck's rear wheel. The wheel wasn't turning because of the ice on the road and the fact that the driver had the brakes locked up. Reg just slid along on the ice in front of the wheel for a few feet, till the truck stopped. 

If the wheel had been rolling, Reg would have been crushed and possibly killed. 

We are thankful for the miracles in our lives.

[I decided to remove this story from the cold weather posting and post it here with a photo of a truck load of lumber on a sleigh trailer. Thanks for the photo Lloyd.]