Sketch LIX
Pioneer Odds and Ends
The first grist-mill in old Woodhouse, was built by Colonel Samuel Ryerse, at Port Ryerse, and the first grist ground in it was grown on the old Misner farm just south of Simcoe. The grist was carried to mill on the back of a horse, and young Misner had to turn the bolter by hand as the grist was being ground; but it was a great improvement on the stump mill.
Caleb Hazen started one of the first wagon shops in the settlement on Lot 2, in the 1st concession of Woodhouse. He made crude ox-carts and two-skein, linch-pin wagons. In those days the settler who could afford to carry his wife and children four or five miles through the woods, over corduroy roads, to a Sunday meeting in a new linch-pin lumber wagon wholly paid for, and drawn by a yoke of oxen all his own, was supposed to be on the highway leading to prosperity. Colonel Rapelje brought the first spring carriage into the settlement, and for a while it was an object of great curiosity, especially to the children, who had never seen such a vehicle. The next innovation on the democratic plane of social equality was an importation of Cross & Fisher’s, consisting of a French horse, a cutter and a single open buggy. Roland Gilbert claimed the honor of having ridden in the first “democrat” wagon brought into the country. The nabobs who rode in carriages in those times had to pay for the social distinction it gave them. For purposes of taxation single and two-horse carriages, second stories on dwelling-houses, and each additional fire-place, were assessed at nominal sums fixed from time to time by statutory enactments—a one-storey cabin made of unhewed logs, and containing one fire-place, being exempt for taxation.
It is said that one James Wells, who lived on the lake shore at this time, allowed his enterprise to get the better of his judgment, and actually built a two-story house containing two fire-places. Coming to his senses after the house was completed, and fully repenting of his folly, he tore the house down and reconstructed it on a one-story, single fire-place plan.
The young people who read this must not condemn the system as smacking of barbarism, for they must remember that the same principle is still in vogue, the only difference being in the manner of its application. Mr. Wells simply found that a little exhibition of enterprise subjected him to a fine, and if his grandson is alive to-day, and is an enterprising man, he must pay a similar fine for a like purpose every time he indulges in a little “fix-up-itiveness.” Of course, exemptions vary from time to time, but the principle remains—and it remains as a disgrace to the more enlightened times in which it is our blessed privilege to live. May the time hastily come when these evidences of home improvement will be exempt from taxation, and the man who lives the life of a troglodyte be compelled to bear his full share of the common burdens; or, in other words, be compelled to pay a like sum for a like number of acres of land of like natural value, regardless of any artificial value which human thrift may have attached to it.
Blacksmith shops appeared here and there from the very beginning. They were prime essentials in the work of settlement. Hoes, forks, chains, clevises, axes, nails and pretty much everything of like nature, were made at these shops. They were exceedingly crude, clumsy and expensive, like many other hand-made articles in those days. In the early settlement the major portion of the horse-shoeing business was done by shoeing oxen, and it is amusing to hear the old people tell how they used to take their best girls sleigh-riding in ox sleds, and how they used to run horses—no, I mean oxen—with their “swell” rivals. Sometimes their roadsters would be a yoke of steers, and they the driver would have to walk and lead the nigh steer while his girl sat on the sled alone. Sometimes they would gather a sleigh-load of girls and boys, and go singing and shouting away through the woods on a crisp, moonlit winter’s night to a spelling-match held in some log school-house. But whatever the occasion, if it were a bit icy, the oxen would require shoeing to enable them to keep their feet. It is astonishing how fleet of foot some of the oxen were. They were trained to it, and it was a common thing to see a yoke of oxen trotting along the road hitched to a clumsy two-wheel cart, in which would be seated some settler and his wife, while just above the sides of the rude cart-box might be seen from two to a half-dozen heads of the on-coming generation, bobbing about with every jolt of the clumsy, shambling old cart.
To show how the sons and daughters of the first families pioneered their way into the unbroken forest of the back townships, the following description, given by a silver-haired matron of one of our modern Norfolk homes, may be taken as the common experience of all. It is given in her own words, as follows:
“When father (her husband)[1] an’ me settled here in the woods the only neighbors we had was screech-owls, wolves an’ bears an’ yawlin’ wildcats. Our nearest human neighbor was four miles from us, an’ it was nine miles to the settlement where mother lived—father was killed by a tree fallin’ on him ‘bout a year before we was married. The winter before we was married my ole man chopped on the land here, and towards spring he built a log shanty. The land between us an’ the settlement was clay an’ heavy timbered, an’ when it broke up in the spring it was nearly all under water. My ole man had a yoke o’ steers his father gin him, an’ after we was married we borrowed a sled an’ moved in here before it broke up. We just had one little sled-load o’ stuff to commence keeping house with, and I rode on top of it an’ father—that’s my ole man—walked an’ led the steers. That first summer we didn’t have no cart or wagon, an’ many a time we went out to the settlement that summer on a Sunday, to meetin’ an’ to mother’s with the steers an’ the crotch. Crotch? Why that was a thing my old man made to haul logs on. It quirled up at the nose like a sled an’ sprawled out so-fashion. You see one end of the log laid on the crotch an’ tother end drug behind. Well, as I said, we went to meetin’ an to mother’s with that crotch. My ole man had a seat fixed on the crotch, an’ when we went through mud-holes I would have to hold up my feet to keep ‘em out of the mud. My ole man had to walk, and when we got out to the clearin’ he would roll down his trowser’s legs and put on his boots. We planted a little corn among the stumps, an’ that fall we had some cornstalks of our own raisin’. I shall never forget to my dyin’ day how proud I felt of them cornstalks. How happy I was when we went out to mother’s that fall with a bundle o’ cornstalks on the crotch for a cushion for my feet. It was our first crop, an’ that bundle o’ stalks was the most precious cushion I ever owned.”
I will simply add that this old lady lives in an elegant home, situated in a rich section of country, and supplied with all the comforts of modern rural life.
These sons and daughters of the old Long Point pioneers possessed few advantages for acquiring even the crudest kind of a fundamental education. In the beginning, children received little or no education beyond what their parents were able to give them, and even where the parents had received a fair education in the older lands whence they came, they had not the time while struggling for a bare existence in the primeval forest to instruct their children in the commonest branches of learning. It is no wonder that so many of Norfolk’s first generation of native-born citizens grew up into manhood and womanhood unable to read or write. As settlement advanced, and a sufficient number of families had settled where it was possible for the children of each to gather at a common centre, a school was established on purely voluntary principles. The average wage paid the teachers was about $10 per month with board, and the average annual term was three months of the winter season. If the number of families within reach of each other was five, for instance, and the total number of available children twenty, and each settler was willing to support the school and pay his share of the expenses, each would subscribe at the rate of $1.50 for each pupil sent, payable in monthly instalments of fifty cents. Of course this is assuming a three months’ term with a teacher at $10 per month. In the case assumed the settler who sent two pupils would pay $3 for the term and board the teacher one-tenth of the time. There was no government appropriation for the aid of common schools previous to 1816.
These pioneer schools were very crude as late as 1826, as shown by the following review of the school-days of one of Norfolk’s “back-township” pioneers and best known citizens, who was born in an old Charlotteville home about eighty years ago, and educated (?) in one of these pioneer schools located not far from Vittoria. As he is a Justice of the Peace of many years’ standing, we will let the squire tell his own story:
“ The first school-house in our neighborhood was a little log structure, an’ the last term that was taught in it was my first term at school, an’ the master’s name was Cornelius Schammerhorn. He kept three months, an’ the last day we had a high old time. The master invited all the parents an’ he fetched three gallons o’ whiskey an’ a sack o’ sugar to treat the hull caboodle of us. The old folks heard us read an’ seen us write, an’ then we had a spellin’ match. Everybody helped themselves to sugar an’ whiskey, an’ in the afternoon we all played ball. In about 1826 father an’ a neighbor built a little new frame school-house, and the first master that kept school in it was Benjamin Tisdale. My next teacher was John Lanning, an’ he never went to school a day in his life. Then came Daniel McCall, who kept three months an’ then went off down south for his health, an’ died. My next teacher was Philip Smith. They hired him for three months, but after he kept one day he gave up the job, an’ D.W. Freeman took his place. The next was old Laterette. They hired him the first day of November, 1832, an’ he kept till Christmas eve, when, ‘e got drunk an’ got the grand bounce. Then they hired Sandy Ford for three months, an’ he got through all right. The next winter they hired ‘im agin’, but after he’d kept for about a month he come to school one morning’ from Vittory drunk as an owl an’ daubed all over with mud. A lot of us boys got ‘im in the school-house, an’ then we fastened the door an’ made up our minds to give ‘im a good smokin’. Some o’ the boys boosted me up on the roof, an’ then they handed up a board, an’ I put it on top o’ the chimbley an’ sot down on it. After a while the smoke begun to ooze out through the windows, an’ the boys kept up such a yellin’ that father an’ some o’ the neighbors heard the racket, an’, thinkin’ the house was on fire, they came on the run, an’ busted the door open, an’ when they took poor Sandy out he was more dead than alive. That ended his school work. He was the last teacher that kept school in that school-house. I tended school one term after this down to Smith’s school-house. An Irishman named Boyd kept the school, and he had a peppery temper. Whenever a scholar made him mad (and that would happen many times in a day) he would grab his stick an’ make a rush for ‘im, an’ if ‘e got there before he got over his mad fit he’d make the dust fly out o’ the poor feller’s jacket, I tell ye. He was the [the] worst tobaccar chawer I ever seen. In them days a tobaccar-plug looked like an old-fashioned dough-nut. It was a double twister, an’ when straightened out looked like a piece of black inch rope about a foot long. Old Boyd kept one o’ these plugs layin’ on his table all the time, an’ every little while he’d bite off about a half an inch, an’ then he’d spit from one side o’ the school-house to the other. Sometimes while readin’ the mornin’ prayer out o’ the spellin’ book, he’d stop an’ bite off a wad from the double-twister, an’ then he’d go on where he left off. But when he stopped the prayer to wallop a scholar he’d always begin over again with the words, ‘We beseech Thee, O Lord.’ When any of us were late in the mornin’ the first question we asked was, ‘Has ‘e got through beseechin’ yet?’ Poor old Boyd! He gave me the finishin’ touches to my education.”
[1] Owen’s interjection that the narrator is talking about her husband seems to be in error as she states that her father was killed about “a year before we was married”. It appears that “my ole man” was the husband.