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.]