ANDREW WOODS (GAINSBORO).
"I was born in Leeds, Ontario. I left there in '79 and went to Bay
City, Michigan, and Detroit, working at my trade as a blacksmith. I then
went into the lumber woods to learn how to do rough work, for all this
time I had it in my mind to come to this western country. I next went
to Chicago and worked for about two years at my trade, among other
places in the Pullman car works. That was too nice a job; I could not
get rough enough experience; I wanted to do rough work as I say, be-
cause I thought anything would do for Manitoba, but I got badly left
on that.
"I went from Chicago to St. Paul and from there to Leadville,
Colo-
rado; I was sent there to work in the mines as a blacksmith. Well,
Leadville was rough enough and I did not stop there long, but came back
to Chicago. The way I came to go to St. Paul was that I had a brother
who wrote me to meet him there on March 12th, 1881; I went there but
did not meet him; he did not come for nearly a year afterwards. Jim
(my brother) and some other fellows down in Ontario who had some
little money had a scheme to come out West and start a town. They
had every picket in the fence down there covered with figures. I was
to be the blacksmith, another was to be the wagon-maker and so on.
They unfolded their plan to me (this was while I was in Ontario), but I
went on west regardless of them in 1879 as I said, and in December, '81,
I arrived in Winnipeg and went to work. In March, 1882, Jim and the
other boys came out and I went from Winnipeg to Emerson to meet
them. Jim was there and two Tweedie boys and Covell and Hewitt.
That is all I remember. Hewitt was a stone mason; Covell was an
engineer. The Tweedie boys were farmers, and one of them was part-
preacher, a kind of Plymouth Brother. Eighteen hundred eighty-two
was the year of the great flood.
WEST FROM WEST LYNNE WITH OXEN.
"The flood lasted quite a while and we came to the conclusion we had
better separate and go out and take up land. Jim and I bought a yoke
of oxen in Emerson. Jim went up to Winnipeg to get my trunk and
trash. Emerson is about sixty miles south of Winnipeg and he went
up with the oxen. When he got back we outfitted in West Lynne, across
the river from Emerson, to go and take up land. We had the oxen, a
wagon with a tilt-prairie schooner, you know, and Jim had a feather
bed he had brought from home, and some old fashioned quilts. We
bought a plough and provisions, of course, including three bags of flour
and a bag of baker's bread. By this time we had another yoke of oxen,
one team seven years old and one four. Jim and I started out from West
Lynne on the 20th of April, 1882. I had not a word to say. Jim knew
all about farming, and I was only a blacksmith. His idea was to go where
we could get good enough land. We headed for Deloraine where the
land office was. It would be about 180 miles to Deloraine. The bridge
between Emerson and West Lynne was swept away by the flood before
we left. That first day we made about three miles. I drove the oxen.
We had a yoke on the front team and harness on the hind team. I
thought I knew something about driving oxen, but I didn't. They seemed
to do pretty much as they liked. We were in the flood water up to our
necks sometimes. As night approached we got onto a dry knoll, staked
the oxen out and then waded back to West Lynne to get dry. That was
the best we did the first day. Next day we started west and got to the
Mennonite settlement, where we bought eggs and some other stuff. We
did not fare too badly there, but when we got to where the English
speaking people were we had to pay terrible prices. Feed was not very
plentiful. We bought a little hay for the oxen about Crystal City, but
had to pay a big price.
JIM'S BREAD.
"East of Crystal City we eat up all the bread, but Jim thought that did
not matter. He had graduated with a woman to cook for surveyors. We
had some tinned stuff and Jim said he knew all about bread making, so
we pulled in at Cartwright on Badger River and I looked after the oxen,
watching they did not get away while Jim made bread; he set it the same
way they did in Ontario to rise, but it snowed in the night and snowed
into Jim's bread, so we could not eat it at all. Well, we ate a little, per-
haps, but we fed the balance to the oxen.
"We came on to Pancake Lake where there was a house. I went up
to the house and asked the woman to sell us some bread; she said she
would not sell us any bread, but if we had any flour she would trade us
bread for flour, as flour was very scarce. We were very hungry by this
time for good bread so I agreed. She said the bread was right in the
oven, but would be ready in a few minutes, so I went back to the wagon
and told Jim. After a while the woman came down with three big loaves;
we asked her how much flour she wanted and she said 'what we like'.
She sent the kids down with a great big dish pan or bread pan and I
emptied flour into it, and found that it took nearly half a bag of flour
to pay for three loaves. Jim told me I had given her enough to bake
fifty loaves. The old woman was English speaking. We got from there
to Waukapo, somewhere pretty near the east end of Turtle Mountain, and
we got some more supplies there. Before we got to Deloraine our flour
was pretty nearly used, and we bought some flour at the grist mill.
LOOKING FOR LAND.
"At Deloraine we went to the land office and got the numbers of vacant
sections and then started out again. We left one yoke of oxen with a
farmer near Deloraine. We divided the wagon and hitched the steers
on to the hind wheels and made a cart, and in this way we got to Souris-
ford hunting land. The water was still high from the floor and the river
was too wide to get across with the oxen. I should say the river was over
a mile wide at the Souris then. There was a ferry; a man named Gould
was there with a boat. We left the oxen there and got a pony and came
west. The way we did was this: Jim rode the pony on six or eight miles,
then he would stop at a survey stake and drive it down with a heavy stone
so as to make it fast; he would leave the pony hitched to the stake and
walk on; there was no trail, but it was open prairie so we could follow
the line of the survey stakes without much difficulty. I would walk and
watch till I got up to the pony, overtake Jim and ride ahead of him, and
when I thought I had got far enough I would hitch the pony to a stake
and foot it. We looked at the sections as we came along. We got to
Lyleton and picked out our land after which we returned with the pony
to Sourisford, got our oxen and went back to Deloraine where we entered
for our land.
"We tried to buy some supplies at Old Deloraine. One fellow asked
us $9.50 a hundred for flour; we did not pay it of course. We met him
on the trail; he said that one man was actually charging $10.00 a hun-
dred for flour, but he would not fleece new comers; he would not "extort'
them so he would take $9.50. I talked United States to him for about a
minute and told him to go on; I went to another farmer and he sold us
flour at $5.00 a hundred. We got fifteen hundred from him at that price.
We came to another man there, J. H. Taylor, afterwards post-master at
Carnduff. He was farming west of Deloraine in the Turtle Mountain dis-
trict. We bought a bushel of potatoes from him and a bag full of oats
for $5.00. The price was $2.50 a bushel for potatoes and $1.25 for the
oats; we did not complain of this, of course. We returned to Lyleton and
went to work on our land. That was across the line in Manitoba-sec-
tion 12, township 1, range 29, close to the American boundary. There was
no one settled right there, but there was a party about seven miles east,
and a man named Dr. Dann was on 29, three or four miles north. He
was batching there in a shack. He was a remittance Englishman. He
used to come over to us Canadians to find out how to get along. He was
a very nice fellow, but he knew nothing of prairie life.
THE ENGLISHMAN AND THE WASH-TUB.
"We had a wash-tub standing out in our chip-yard. The Englishman
noticed it and said, 'Will you lend me this article"' Apparently he did
not know what to call it. Jim said, 'Why certainly', so after the English-
man had had some pork and bannock he went away with the wash-tub
on his head. Going around one day to his place (Dann's) we saw the
wash-tub standing out in his door-yard. We did not like the looks of it; we
thought it was going to fall down. We said, 'Are you through with the
tub'" He said, 'Stop and have some dinner; I am going to use it; just
let me have it for a few minutes, I will do up enough to last me a week'.
I thought he meant washing. He had a saw-horse there and some poles.
He started in and sawed up three or four poles and threw the pieces
around the wash-tub. He then grabbed an axe and got inside the tub
and began slashing at the sticks every way around. He got into the tub
to keep himself from cutting his feet with the axe. We told him what
the tub was for. He replied, 'By Jove, I thought that it was to cut wood
and that was what it was in the yard for; if it was a wash-tub why wasn't
it inside"'
"We put up two good log houses on our places. We got the logs
from the South Antler Creek. There was good timber on the South
Antler. Some of the logs were a foot and a half, in fact nearly two feet
through.
"We concluded we would break fifteen acres on each place, which
was all the law required, leave it there and go away. Jim did not think the
land was much good because there was a bit of sand in it. We did the
breaking after which we built the houses. We were young fellows then
and could work, and we were not long about it. I then sold my steers
and went down to Emerson to look for a job, also Portage La Prairie and
Brandon.
MEETS JOE MARTIN; SOME BLACKSMITHING.
"On the 12th of July I had to go through a prairie fire, I burned a
hole in the lapel of my coat and altogether I was a pretty tough looking
object, a pretty hard looking case. I went on the train from Brandon to
Portage and at Portage I met Joe Martin (subsequently Attorney General
of Manitoba). Through a mistake of the agent at Brandon I had got a
ticket for five cents. I told Martin about it and said I was going to give
it back. Joe told me I was a damned fool, and if I was ahead of the
C. P. R. I had better stay ahead. There was a man there making buck-
boards. I asked him for a job. He said he wanted a man, but he wanted
a sober man. The hole in my coat and my tough appearance made him
think I was a drunkard. I gave him a dressing down when he begged
my pardon and set me to work. I finished in a day and a half a job
the foreman said would take five days. The foreman was on a drunk
all the time, and the boss was going to sack him and give me his job. On
Monday morning the foreman had sobered up and came back so I told the
boss he had better keep him on, as I could get a job anywhere. So I went
on from Portage to Winnipeg. I went to the Vulcan ironworks through
an ad. in the paper. I noticed all the fires were full, so said to the fore-
man, 'Guess you have got your fires pretty well filled', but he asked me
if I was a railroad blacksmith, and when I said I was he said I could
come in the morning. I noticed a poor devil working, well, trying to work,
and I said to myself, 'You will be laid off in the morning'. Well, I went
on in the morning and this fellow's fire was empty. I made a wedge for
my old hammer and told the helper to blow up the fire. The helper was
an Englishman. It was an awful job to blow that fire up. It was no
more like a railroad fire than nothing. All the rest of the smiths were
making switch rods, and when I asked the foreman what he was going
to put me at, they threw me down a wheel-barrow full of these things
to weld up. I worked along and welded two or three of them quietly and
slowly, but the other men were welding two or three to my one. The
foreman came around and said if I would make my scarf a little nar-
rower I could weld them a sight easier. I told him if he would give me
a helper who was good for something I could work a sight quicker. The
foreman said, 'How would I do'" I said, 'Try'. He took hold of the
helper's sledge. I said, 'Couldn't you get another sledge; two sledges
like that would only make about one good man'. He got another sledge
and I piled in right between them and welded two or three and the fore-
man said I would do all right, and he would send me a good man. So he
sent me a great big Irishman; he stuttered and told me the foreman had
been running men all summer. I and the Irishman piled in good shape.
He was a good man and soon we were working faster than the others.
When I had showed them what I could do I went to the foreman and
told him he had been running men all summer, but he couidn't run me,
and I wouldn't stay in his slaughterhousc for $5 a day. I went to Emer-
son and started up horse-shoeing and stayed there till next spring. I had a
partner named Butler and we put up buggies and wagons also. In the
spring of 1883 it looked like another flood so Butler and I decided to
light out and go to Sourisford and start a shop there. We bought a yoke
of oxen. As I had graduated the year before, I told Butler not to meddle
with the team, he was to let them alone and never go near them, and he
didn't.
EXPERIENCES WITH A CART.
"We thought we would do better with a Red River cart than a wagon,
so we paid a half-breed three dollars for the benefit of his experience
in buying a cart. He picked us out a cart and we started off. I drove
the oxen and wouldn't let Butler touch them, for a hundred dollars. At
last they got stuck in a~mud-hole. I did all I knew with my lungs and
my whip, but it was no good; there the cart was apparently for all time;
and Butler was just standing around grinning and grinning and never
saying a word. 'I don't know what to do', I said. Then Butler says, 'Give
me that whip, Andy'. And I gave him the whip. And then he started to
lambaste those oxen and swear. I didn't know how to swear. What I
had said to those oxen was polite compared with the language Butler used,
and he made them curl their tails and hump their backs and they took
that cart out of that mud-hole just flying. They couldn't get out too
quick. Then he said to me, 'That's the way we used to do in Nova Scotia;
here, take your team'. But I would never touch a whip after that. Butler
had been driving oxen from a boy. He knew all about it.
"The Red River cart was a bad speculation. When we started out the
half-breed told us that when the cart began to 'sing' it was 'feeling al-
right'. Well, it wasn't long before it began to squeak in good shape.
About four o'clock in the afternoon the axle twisted off. The breed had
told us that if anything happened to the cart to get a bit of timber and
make it good; when the axle failed we were about four miles from timber.
However, we went there and cut down an oak about eight inches at the
butt, big enough for an axle. We started back; Butler was carrying the
stick and I carried the axe; when we had got about a quarter of a mile
I said to Butler, 'Let me carry the stick', and he let me carry it. I car-
ried it right up to the cart. Well that cart was always breaking down
and when we got to Deloraine it was a new cart. There wasn't any of
the old cart left. We had, among other things, of course, the anvil and
bellows in the cart and I used to notice that the bellows looked migbty
funny on the prairie the way they stuck out of the cart.
"A blacksmith is mighty handy in a new settlement and on the
road people we met would want us to come and settle at their 'town'. One
fellow pulled out a plan of a townsite, with manufacturing establish-
ments, a town hall, market square, and a wharf with steamboat along-
side. Butler used to want to go to these places, but I knew it was all
imagination, and that when we got there it would only be one house. I
would tell them so and they would get fighting mad; Butler thought I
was too hard on these farmers, but although it was a fine country, settlers
were scarce as hen's teeth and I knew better. Anyway eventually we
stopped at Old Deloraine."
JACOB GEORGE BURKE (ELMORE) ON THE BOUNDARY.
"I was born in Victoria County, Ontario, in 1857. I came out here
in the spring of 1881 by the States, through St. Paul and Manitoba. When
I got to St. Boniface, Winnipeg, I was alone. I walked from there to
Portage La Prairie along the Old Government road which was all over
people. I had made some acquaintances and a bunch of us walked together
to Portage. There I had an uncle who lived 22 miles north west of
the town. His name was David Graham, and he had come there from
Ontario in 1879; I stopped with my uncle until the first of May. I re-
turned to Portage La Prairie, and got a job on the railroad. The C. P. R.
was then being constructed and I worked on the grades up to August; I
then went to track laying as a spiker and got $1.75 a day. I worked
there until the ground froze up and then went into the bush at White-
mouth to winter. I had come across G. H. Strevel, who had a tie contract
and I stayed in the bush until the 10th of April '82 and I then went by
train to Brandon. Abe Shouldice and my brother Ben had joined us in
the fall the year before at MacGregor, Manitoba, when I was working
on the track laying at Brandon. We left the track laying to go to De-
loraine, walking from Brandon around the east side of the Brandon Hills.
That was in April. The country was full of water and we were continually
wading through the sloughs. That was the year of the Big Red River
flood. We were three days on the road. We carried a tent which was
7 feet x 7 feet, and at night there were eight men sleeping in it. These
eight men were myself, brother Ben, Abe and Bill Shouldice and four men
who have since left the country. We had nothing to eat but soda biscuits
and cheese. We could get a duck or so but could not cook them. We
rested in Deloraine for a day; there was a land office there and we got
profiles and then went land hunting. We hunted land until we got to
Sourisford, where we found the river full of broken ice. Alf Gould had
a small boat there and was running a ferry, but we could not get across
owing to the ice, and we were 48 hours on this side of the river before
Gould could bring his boat across from the other side. During the trip
down our trouser legs would be wet through all the time and we would
have to sleep that way at night. Owing to the flood the river was nearly
a mile wide, over its banks. We stopped at Sourisford for a day or two.
There were no houses west of Sourisford and we travelled all day after
leaving the ferry going west. We came to a ravine where the water was
so deep we could not get across and so had to walk back to Souris, and
from there we tramped back to Deloraine. I 'entered' for my home-
stead the farm we are now on, 'unsight unseen'. We rested a day or two
at Deloraine, for our feet were sore and skinned, and then we tramped
back to Brandon where we arrived the 3rd of May, 1882. All the time
the water was just as bad. We stopped in Brandon until the next Sat-
urday following which was a week. We went down to Portage, the same
bunch. We had tents there, and we started to work at Chater on the
railroad again, then we moved from Chater up to Alexander working on a
gravel train. In August of that year we bought two yoke of steers and
paid $160 for one yoke and $165 for the other yoke. We got them from
John E. Smith of Brandon.
"We got two wagons between us (the same bunch of eight), two
ploughs, and a little metal cook-stove for about $7. We loaded up
and struck out again from Brandon with the steers and wagons, but they
were three year old steers and not broken at all. We had all kind of
manoeuvres with unbroken steers, but we got along fairly well with them
until we got to Boggy Creek in the sand-hills on the west side of the
Souris river. We got stuck there in a boggy place and had to unload and
we had to carry the stuff across, and then draw the wagons ourselves
as the oxen sunk in worse than we did; it was all they could do to get
through without the wagons. However, we arrived finally on the South
Antler where we now are, namely; the west half of section 22, township
21 on range 31 west of first meridian. Ben was on section 28, Bill and
Abe Shouldice on section 32. They had 32 between them. Two of the
other fellows were on 14 and the other two did not build at all; they stayed
around, but were dissatisfied, and kept the rest of us in torment because
they wanted to get back, and were disheartened at being so far away
from the railroad and any habitations. They stayed with us until we made
our first trip to Brandon, when they left us. We lost track of them and
have never seen them since. We built sod shacks and ploughed about an
acre apiece. We did our breaking in August; weather was dry, the prairie
hard and the sod tough. We had a tent to sleep in until we put up shacks.
We stayed here about a month and then went back to Brandon with the
two yoke of oxen where we loaded the steers on the cars and took them
along to McGregor on the C. P. R. There was no station and no platform
at McGregoir, only a side track. We had to get a pile of ties and sticks
in order to get the oxen out of the cars. We took them up to my uncle's
which was about seven or eight miles and gave him $25 a yoke for win-
tering them. We then went to work on the railroad. We worked at
Grenfell in the Northwest Territory about sixteen miles west of Broad-
view. Ben was made foreman. There was Able Shouldice, Dave Burke,
Bert and myself; we worked with Ben as foreman, and worked together
on the section. We had been working together before for a part of tw~
seasons on the railroad. We stopped there until some time in the first
half of March in '83. Abe Shouldice, Dave Burke and I left and went
down to McGregor where the oxen were, and were joined there by Bill
Shouldice who had gone home to Ontario. We got another yoke of oxen
and paid $250 for them without the harness. They were seasoned oxen,
five years old, a roan and a red; they were a fine team of oxen. Bill
Shouldice got a pair of aged oxen and paid $222 for them. We got some
oats and two bags of wheat. We hired a car and loaded at Bagot and
went to Brandon and from there it took us ten days by road to get to
Elmore. We left Brandon on the first of April and arrived here on the
10th and I settLed on the one quarter section where we are now sitting.
We brought in with us 1,000 feet of lumber and built a lumber shanty.
That was the first lumber shanty ever built in this part of the country. It
was 12 x 16, one ply of rough lumber with tar paper and we sodded it
up on the outside. We used it for 8 years and then used part of it for
a kitchen which we made of lumber drawn from Deloraine. That summer
(1883) I broke up about 20 acres on the bench and I sowed four bushels
of wheat, and that was all we had to sow. We got that at McGregor.
From this we threshed 36 bushels. It was put in on breaking without
backsetting. McArthur had a little steam thresher, but there was arso a
12 horse power, a little portable rig. In '84 Ben and I went to work on
the railroad again and the others stayed on the homestead. We sold some
of the oats we threshed for lOc a bushel to neighbors that came in. In
1884 we put 60 acres of wheat in and the balance of what we had broken
was under oats, and that year we threshed 1,760 bushels of wheat. The
old commission trail ran through here and we came in on it. That 1,760
bushels were threshed by McArthur's outfit, and we paid him 5c for
wheat and oats both, and furnished our help, except that he had two men
with him; they were Tom and John Wilson. Gavin Middleton was the
engineer. We burned wood in the engine.
TEAMING WHEAT.
"The first threshing was in 1883 and the men around the outfit were:
Tom Wilson, John Wilson, George Harrison, Allan McDougal, Duncan
MeDougal, Billy Coade, James Harris, W. A. Smith, Donald Colquhoun,
Archie Brown, R. H. Henderson, Gavin Middleton with Bill McArthur as
boss. The first grain we hauled out was in 1884 and we drew the first
load of wheat 125 miles, and it brought somewhere near 60c a bushel.
In 1890 Mr. Taylor hauled wheat to Deloraine where he was offered 30c
for it. He got it ground. The first trip we made out with wheat we made
to Brandon, but then we conceived the idea that it would be nearer to go
to Virden, so the next trip we made Allan MeDougal, Duncan McDougal,
Dave Burke and W. A. Smith came here here to my granary and loaded
up four loads of wheat, and then started to make a trail to Virden. They
went across country until they got somewhere near where Pierson now is
across the Manitoba boundary. They followed the trail along the correc-
tion line and then struck across country again to Pipestone. They came
out of Pipestone which they struck at the crossing which they called Forks
Crossing. It took them eleven days to make the trip to Virden where they
sold the wheat for 52c a bushel. On the third trip we made with wheat
to Virden we gave Archie Brown one load for drawing out another load,
made four trips to Virden (65 miles) and one to Brandon (125 miles).
We got back home from the last trip on Christmas Eve. The last load we
drew to Virden we sold for 42c.
"Abe Shouldice drew a load of wheat to Virden and sold it. On the
way out he broke his wagon; he had to rent a wagon to take his load on
with, and by the time he had got the old wagon fixed and paid all ex-
penses of the trip he was $2.00 in debt.
"The first binder was brought into this settlement by J. B. Burke.
It was a Massey binder and he paid $250 in three payents. He got it in
Brandon. It was a 6-foot cut without a bundle carrier. That was in 1884.
The crop before that was cut with a cradle, and the wild hay we cut with
a scythe. The last trip I made to Virden I sold my span of steers for $150
in order to make a payment on the binder, and that left me in this posi-
tion; that I had a farm, a binder and mowing machine, but I had no team.
Of course my brother Dave had his team. The next spring Ben, who was
still on the railroad, sent me in a span of three year old steers. That was
in the spring of '85, so that I was again the possessor of a full outfit.
In '85 I got a good crop, but it was frozen on the 23rd of August, and
we sold that crop all the way from 15c to 25c per bushel, after drawing
it all the way to Virden. The first grist that we got we drew the grain
to Deloraine and had it ground at the mill there. That was in the fall
of '83.
A HONEYMOON IN THE SNOW.
"On the 4th of October, '83, I was married to Miss Jennie Smith, a
seventeen year old lady who was the daughter of a neighbor of my uncle in
the Portage La Prairie country. We were married in Portage La Prairie
by a Methodist preacher who used to preach in our old circuit in Ontario.
After the marriage she came with me on the homestead. We came to
Brandon on the train and stayed there until the 15th of October. I had
my wagon and oxen there and loaded up the little belongings we had. We
made Sourgis (Plum Creek) that night (Souris is about 25 miles from
Brandon), which is not very bad with an ox team. There was three feet
of snow on the ground. At Souris there was a hotel and we stayed the
night in it. The next night overtook us in the sandhills. There was no
habitation near, and as I said just now the snow was on the ground, so
there was nothing for it but to camp in the open. We took some quilts
and spread them over the tongue of the wagon making a kind of a tent,
and we slept there underneath on the snow. On the third night we had
got past Melita. There was a house there at Melita but no town. We
thought we could make Dr. Dann's for the night, but we got lost between
Melita and the doctor's. We got off the trail and when we struck sight
of a stack we thought it was the best place to stop in for the night. It
was a small stack containing the straw which had been threshed from
six or seven acres. We used this straw stack for a bed, and although we
were somewhat cold, we were quite comfortable with straw as a shake-
down. In the morning before we got up along came Jimmy Reynolds and
routed us out of bed. We had got off the trail but Jimmy had stayed
on the trail and was following us up and from the trail as he was going
by saw our outfit standing at the straw stack. Under the circumstances
the straw was quite a luxury. The night before we had no straw to lie on.
We just had a quilt spread over the snow. About 10 o'clock that day we
arrived at old John Poter's, section 30, township 1, range 30. John Poter's
was about four miles from home. We had dinner at Poter's and the bride
arrived about four o'clock, being the first white woman who settled in
the township. Mrs. Archie Brown came in the spring of '83. She was
the first woman in the district-she and her mother, but that was in the
Winlaw settlement. My wife was the first bride brought into the south
country for many a long mile. (The writer and Mr. Burke were sitting
in the stable at the time.) At the present time the bride is in the house,
the mother of ten, five boys and five girls, all of whom are living. The
first child was born on the 24th of August, 1884. It was a girl and we
named her Florence Georgiana, and she was christened in Virden.
"The crop of 1885, as I said before, was frozen and besides that there
was a good deal of smut, so that we made nothing at all out of it. In
1886 we had a complete dry out. In the fall of '86 I made application
for a patent, having completed my homestead duties. Up to that time
I had never been home since I came in the country, and I thought I would
take my wife to Portage La Prairie for the winter and go and work in
the bush myself, so I took her to her old home in the Portage La Prairie
district and then went on to the bush where I worked that winter again
for Strevel. I stopped there a month and a half in the bush, but I got
tired of it and came back and joined my wife at my father-in-law's with
the intention of both of us returning to the farm. At that time Ben was
working on the railroad at Virden as section foreman. I happened to
strike Frank Green, the road master, and nothing would do but I must
stay on the railroad, and so I went to work with Ben for $1.25 a day.
Ben got me and my wife two rooms where we lived, and we cooked on
Ben's stove. I worked two months under Ben and then Frank Green got
me a section of my own and made me boss. My section was the section
between Fleming and Moosomin. After that I was section foreman at
Virden where I stayed until the 4th of March, 1889. In November of
'88 I sent my wife on home. My father had joined us and he was living
in my house, so there was my wife, the old man, three babies and one
or two more people.
SHANTY BURNED.
"That winter while I was away ('88) in the month of February the
shanty was burned down and the whole shoot destroyed. That was in the
afternoon. They were all away at the time. It was on a Sunday and they
used to go visiting around on Sundays, and so they were away on a visit
to one of the neighbors when the fire took place. When they arrived back
in the evening they found the shanty burned down. Nobody had noticed
the fire. There was nobody soliciting insurance so that it was a total loss.
It must have been just a blast and the shanty was gone. My family went
to Ben's house on section 28. By this time Ben had given up railroading
and was batching on his place. There was no crop to speak of owing
to the dry weather in 1889.
"In '88 we formed a company to buy a horse power threshing machine.
The company consisted of Dave Burke, J. G. Burke, Ben Burke, Billy
Coade and Billy McBride. We got the horse power in Deloraine, Mani-toba.
"There was a middling fair crop in 1890. There was no rain to speak
of until late in June, but we got a decent crop. From the latter part
of '86 to 1890 we hauled our wheat to Deloraine, which was 70 miles by
the trail. It was 110 miles to Virden. Deloraine was, therefore, closer
and it was more advisable to haul our wheat to the latter point. 1891
was a big crop, the finest crop ever seen in the country for a good many
years before and for many years after.
FIRST PICNIC.
"The first picnic was held in South Antler in the summer of 1884.
They came for 25 miles to the picnic. There were two buckboards there.
It was pretty swell to have a buckboard in those days. All the rest of the
picnickers came in ox and horse wagons. This was the first picnic held
in Winlaw. The first year we had no foot-races and I don't think there
were any prizes. It was a basket picnic but we set tables. The second
picnic was in 1885 and was quite a big affair. They had pony races and
foot racing and dancing. After that it became an annual event for a
long time. In 1885 Christopher Halliday presented a silver medal for
target shooting, and William Richardson of the Massey-Harris Company
at Carnduff won the medal, but the medal was burned in a fire recently
when the Massey-Harris warehouse at Carnduff was burned down. Among
the other winners for the medals were Joe Gosnell and John Harkness,
and once it went to Deloraine.
PIONEER POST OFFICE.
"We got our first post office in '86. Up to then we were served from
Deloraine from which point the mail went to Butterfield at Dr. Dan's
which was over the boundary in Manitoba. W. A. Smith, of Carievale,
was the first mail carrier in '86. J. F. Shillington was made post-master
at Elmore at $5.00 a year. We got mail once a week. For that $5.00 a
year the post-master had to keep stamps on hand, receive the mail from
the settlers and distribute it. The settlers came to the post office, or to
the farmhouse where the post-office was kept, to get their letters. Mr.
Shillington appointed me his deputy. He kept the post-office in his own
house until 1889 when I took it over. After the first year Mr. Shillington
got $10.00 a year, but the salary remained at $10.00 a year for ten years,
when it was raised to $15.00. It has now increased (1910) until the
post-master receives $69.00.
"Among the early settlers at Winlaw in '83 were Donald Colquhoun,
R.H. Henderson and Archie Brown. Early settlers in Elmore in '83
were seven brothers Burke, viz.: Dave W., J. G., Ed., Ben, Wesley, Alf. and
Albert (all of whom are now (1910) working their land except Ben, who
is keeping store in Gainsboro), Duncan McDougall and James Darroch.
Early settlers in Workman were Hezekiah and Harris Wilbert (the only
men living in there in 1883).
"The second woman to come into the district after my wife was Mrs.
Coade, Sr., who was the mother of Billy and Tom Coade. As before
stated, the first bride to come in was my wife (Mrs. Jake Burke), our
first child was the first birth; and unfortunately my family had the first
death, which was that of our fourth child, a boy."
JOHN WEIGEL (SOURIS RIVER VALLEY)
.
John Weigel is largely in a class by himself, a German, who cut loose
entirely from his country, and although with a limited knowledge of Eng-
lish, took up a solitary homestead in the valley of the Souris River south-
west of Carnduff. He built a shack and started ranching with one cow.
That was in 1892. In 1902 there was a terrific flood carrying away
bridges on the Souris and its tributaries and doing great damage. John
walked into the writer's office, and told him the flood had been a "holy
fright". He was an intelligent and very humorous man, who had been
a book-binder in Germany, before he came to Canada to start ranching
with one cow. The interview, as reported at the time, then proceeded
as follows:
We asked him if it was true he had lost 26 head.
The old book-binder from the Rhineland flashed that vivid smile
of his.
"No, only 17 head."
"Well, you can stand it."
"Oh, that's what everybody says-you can stand it. Two years ago
I lose 22 head with blackleg. People say you can stand it."
In further conversation Weigel said "of course" he lost 15 calves in
the flood.
We pointed out that 17 and 15 made 32.
"Oh", he replied, "I only count the big head, I lose 17 head."
Mr. Weigel told us that 12 years ago he started ranching with one
Low and since then he lost $3,000 worth of cattle.
"Hear my fight with the bull last September"" queried Mr. Weigel.
No. So we got the story of his scrap with the Jersey bull:
He was leading the bull with ring and chain when he slipped, and
the bull charged him, smashing two of his ribs, breaking his collar bone,
spraining his wrist and making the blood gush from nose and ears. He
caught the bull by the nostrils, got on his feet and regained the chain.
He grabbed an axe lying handy and hit the bull a clip on the head with
it, sobering him a little. They were near the door of the house and still
hanging on to the bull's chain he got through the door and shut it back
on to the chain.
"And," said John, "so we vas. The bull vas bleeding outside and I
vas bleeding inside. When he cool down some I go out and speak mit him
and take him to the stable and tie him up."
"What did you do with the bull afterwards""
"I make beef."
John said he was going to California, Mexico or Brazil.
Editor-"Why a cyclone down there will do more harm in two minutes
and do it quicker than a flood will in 20 years."
John-"Well, the flood is quick enough."
John Weigel sold out, went to the States, and was lost sight of.
The foregoing reads something like a funny story dished up by a
professional humorist. Truth is stranger than fiction, and we give our
word that the above is truly told, without exaggeration or coloring.
Bibliography follows:
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