|
My grandfather Elijah, born in 1857, was another son of
George. He married about 1880 and bought the south portion
of lot 25 Con. 2 - 25 acres on the Telephone Road. This was
the period of the peak hops and barley boom years which
lasted from 1860 until 1890, when the McKinley treaty put up
such a tariff that the boom times were over. To help the
income Elijah worked as a carpenter and helped build the hop
kiln for his neighbour Willet Bedal on lot 27. This building
survived until a short time ago.
Elijah raised two sons and a daughter. The oldest son
Arthur, born in 1881, spent his last years on the farm just
west of Trenton and the road is named in his memory. There
is a family story that his younger brother Ernest, at about
the age of 12 years, was sent with a team of oxen to plow a
field. This would be about 1904. The field was not finished
at quitting time at the end of the day. Next morning, Ernest
awoke behind the plow having yoked the oxen and fished the
task while still asleep.
About 1907 Ernest went west to North Dakota to work for
his uncle Wallace in North Dakota. Soon after, his father,
brother, sister and families followed. Perhaps the United
Empire Loyalist's memories were too strong for Elijah and he
migrated across country to end up at Waldeck, Saskatchewan
in 1908. Ernest was too young to take up a homestead so
became a cowboy, working for a large corporation known as
the Matador Ranch about 50 miles north of Swift Current,
Saskatchewan.
The manager was a tall Texan called Legs Laird. He had
brought a large herd of Texan longhorns to this area. One of
the stories dad told was that you would not dare get off
your horse as the cattle in their curiosity would trample
you. A human on foot was a strange sight to them.
Dad took up a home-stead when he reached 21 and became a
wheat farmer. Several families from the Smithfield area
later took up land in the Waldeck area. The drought began
about 1920 and most families returned, including Elijah, in
spring of 1921. He died from a heatstroke on July 4, 1921,
having shoveled coal all day in Trenton in a temperature of
104° in the shade, at age 65 years.
Ernest seeded the wheat fields in the spring of 1922
three times, and there was not a kernel of harvest. In
December 1922 Ernest with a family of five arrived in
Trenton with some Jersey cattle and the western bronco
called Dan Patch after the famous standard bred of the same
name. I think Ernest could have witnessed a race about 1900
when Dan Patch raced on the track in King Edward Park. This
bronco was the colt of a pinto mare that Ernest had captured
from the Matador Ranch about 1917, my birth date. This
bronco became well known in Brighton until his demise in the
early forties.
The Matador Ranch ceased in the summer of 1922 and Ernest
was called back by Legs Laird to the last great cattle drive
of the era to take the herd to a ranch in Montana. The
saddle of this story is now in the Harness Shop at Proctor
Museum.
During Jan. 1923 Ernest helped put up ice for the McGill
Co. of Trenton which was big business at that time, soon to
cease when electric refrigerators became available. At the
end of the ice harvest the next job was at the Wm. Fraser
Cooperage Mill. A day's work was to take a team and sleigh
from Trenton to Colborne and get a load of elm logs. These
logs were in 12', 14' and 16' lengths and used to make apple
barrel staves.
On one return trip and crossing the Trent River, team,
logs and driver ended up in a space where the ice was thin,
from the ice harvest. Ernest single-handedly rescued the
horses and spent the night in the Blacksmith Shop keeping
the animals from getting chilled. He later ended up owning
this team as they were known as outlaws, having being abused
by former teamsters, and Ernest was the only person able to
handle them.
Ernest went west to the harvest the fall of 1923, and
returned to the Cooperage Mill for the winter of 1923 and
came to the Snelgrove farm east of Brighton at the corner of
Boes Road and Highway 2. It was impossible to make a living
for a family of five on this gravel hill and swamp, so the
winter of 1924-1925 Ernest would get up in the middle of the
night, go to the neighbour's barn and take care of the
Jersey cattle. The reason for the neighbour barn of Ernie
Potts was that the hobos had burned the Snelgrove Barn in
July 1924. (There were lots of hobos that summer.) He would
saddle their bronco and ride to Trenton to report for duty
by seven, work a ten hour day for a dollar in wages, and
return to do chores again.
The spring of 1925 Ernest contracted to merge his herd of
Jersey cattle with the Holsteins of the Peister family on
Scriver Road, to provide milk for the dairies of Toronto.
This meant getting the 8 gallon cans at the Smithfield
Station for pick up by the milk train at 7 am. This
arrangement lasted only one year. The next stop was on the
west half of lot 7 Con. 1 west of Brighton just beyond Huff
road. This lasted 3 seasons. This is also poor land and the
fall of 1928 Ernest again went west for the harvest and
returned in November for an auction sale and to start a new
career as a truck driver for a company known as the Red Star
Line.
The highway had been paved in 1926. The first trucks were
relics of World War I with solid rubber tires. So again
Ernest was a pioneer. He drove transport until June 9, 1937
when he was killed in an accident near Napanee. Ernest
raised nine children and could boast he never took a cent in
welfare.
|
