Village of Dell

Personal note:

Dell was where my ancestors settled when they came from Dell, Isle of Lewis in 1873.

Dell was also the hometown of John MacLeod, the author of Memoirs of Dell, 1971.

DELL

In 1797 it was found by the Executive Council of the Government of Canada that the English must maintain a majority over the French. They thus used their position to make large grants of the unlined Crown land of the Province of Quebec to themselves and their friends. There were certain lands that lay east of Montreal and the Richelieu river and for that reason were called the Eastern Townships. None of the Townships were granted to, or reserved for the French. The land was deliberately used to enrich the English officials and commercial majority and to build up the English population against the French.

Concerning the Township of Hampden, County of Compton, in which Dell was located, a book, entitled, "History of the Eastern Townships", written in 1869, states, in part, "----- this tract of land though considered a township and to some extent inhabited, is not constituted as such. It is of irregular shape, bordering Whitton, Marston, Ditton and part of Lingwick and Bury. The settlements are mostly in the northern part near Whitton. The census of 1861 gives it a population of 103 inhabitants".

From about the year 1850, in the Outer Hebrides, off the north-west coast of Scotland, in which is located the Isle of Lewis, the croft farmers were forced by the big land owners to vacate their land. In consequence forcing many of them to emigrate to various parts of the world. Some of them were destined to settle in Dell, in the Eastern Townships, Province of Quebec, Canada, to take up farming.

The ancestors of the writer emigrated to Canada around 1870.

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This area for which they were headed was heavily wooded. Soon Gaelic communities began to blossom as the new settlers cleared the land. In its clearing they discovered that along with it being hilly it was also extremely stoney and therefore quite unsuitable for successful farming. As they proceeded to clear the land and to hew and mould the rough terrain and to build their homes from the logs that they cut, they settled for mixed farming, to eke out their living between stone and stump. As one said, humorously, "It is so stoney that one couldn't even raise his own voice onit".

Eventually it became a community as Gaelic as the homeland whence they had come.

In the surrounding communities people shared one problem in common, namely, place names. They, therefore adopted the names of the places from where they themselves had come, from across the seas in the land of the heather. Among them were the following tongue-rolling names, Barvas, Bal-eshar, Bal-ivanich, Bal-allan, Beinn M-hor, Beinn Deargh, Cuila M-hor, Drum-avac, Galson, Gisla, Stornoway and others.

Amongst those immigrants was one, Murdo MacDonald, who hailed from a small settlement called "Dell", near Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, Scotland. (Incidentally, the writer's maternal grandparents had also hailed from the same place). Eventually, the hills and woods became sufficiently cleared and spotted with log houses as to warrant a post office for the area. But first it was necessary to have an appropriate

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name. Murdo was confronted with this issue and he suggested that its name be called "Dell", after his own old country place. The name apparently met with the approval of government officials. And so it came to pass that the name "Dell" was adopted as the name of this particular community and from that time onward it was to be designated as such. The Gaelic name for Dell is "Ben-dhal, which was what it was referred to by those Gaelic-ers who couldn't speak English.

Murdo, by virtue of his political connections, his education, or, just by his plain good looks, became the first and only postmaster of this Gaelic place. He thus became nicknamed "Murdo Dell". He had a brother, Angus, who was nicknamed "Doak", (more about him later).

The Dell post office was located where Alex A. Morrison (Alex Pat) (Alex Unish Ruadh) farmed.

The word, "Dell", as defined by the Oxford Dictionary means "A green and silent spot amid the hills! what an appropriate, suitable and beautiful name, which describes it to perfection.

(In the Isle of Lewis is a place named "Clachan", in English it means stones. Humorously, I wonder why Dell had not been named Clachan instead. In reality it would have been as appropriate and in a way as suitable. However, the word Dell meaning what it does, I am pleased that that was the name that was adopted).

Dell, in its tranquility, was a closely knit community embosomed

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in the eternal hills, with no noteworthy history and with no literature of its own. In fact, it is rather quite insignificant to a stranger. But to those who were involved with its past whose survival in the space of time, as such, is but a mere drop in the ocean of time. It was a place where its people had learned how to live and how to die, how to be at peace with their neighbours and with their God. It was a place where their world believed whole-hardheartedly in the power of prayer, in the brotherhood of man and in the fatherhood of God. It was a place where kids grew up instead of out where they learned the lessons of virtue, of character, of principle.

The people of this Gaelic speaking community may be likened to those of the Mormons, or the Quakers, in their religious ways, their loyalty to each other, their clannishness, their humility and in their general good attitude towards one another, a society of people who were benevolent in their mission towards their own people.

Amongst the original people of Dell, which were solidly of Gaelic speaking Highland Scottish immigrants there was not one "Sassanoch (English) or one "Frang-och" (French") family. Of course the mother tongue of them was Gaelic. Many of them never did learn the English language, and those who did, it was quite broken. Even in those days in Quebec, even in Dell, there was a bilingual problem.

Dell reached its zenith about 1925, both economically and population-wise. From that point on it began to deteriorate and to fade, as the new generation began to take flight to greener fields, and to

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realize that Dell was a good place "to come from".

The population of Dell in its greatest vigor consisted of approximately one hundred twenty-five inhabitants. That is, twenty-five families seventy-four children and forty-eight adults, this included parents, bachelors and old maids alike.

Dell is located eastward from Sherbrooke, distance of about fifty miles, just beyond a town called Scotstown, which at one time was a predominately English-speaking town. Scotstown contained the post office of rural Dell in the youth of the writer.

On leaving Scotstown, going eastward towards Milan, on the Dell road, or the Balallan road, depending on where one might be going, on past the railroad crossing and the bridge, about a mile out of town, still on the macadam road, there was a wye. The road bearing to the left was where one entered the portals of Dell, through a beautiful growth of balsam and spruce trees whose branches hung over the road similar to the gateway to the Black Forest of Germany that one reads about. One could actually "hear" the quiet. It was beyond that point that had lain our destiny, our heritage.

About four miles up this road which is mostly up the hill all the way, is where the so-called farm land begins. A couple of miles farther on is a cross-road. The one bearing left is where the Galson road begins. On this road for about a mile, four farms were once located, beyond them the Galson woods, which was three miles deep. The

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road bearing to the right at the cross-road was called the Cross-Road which led to the McLeod's Crossing road.

About three miles farther up the Dell road, up hills and down dales, but mostly up, on the right hand side is another another fork in the road known as "the Corner" of the Dell Range. On this range, originally, there were five farms. In my memory there were but three, namely, that of, Kenneth D. MacLeod's, (where the writer was born), John K. McLeod's (no relation) and John D. Graham's, in that order. Just beyond Graham's farm is where the Dell Cemetery is located, then the remnants of another old farm, and finally, a half mile farther on is Findlay's old place, explained elsewhere.

From the Range corner the road continues on up steep hills for a distance of about another mile to a point known as the Four Corners, where the Dell, Milan, Tolsta and the Middle District roads intersect.

In my early youth Dell consisted of twenty-three so-called farms which were then active. Once upon a time there were thirty-three such farms altogether.

The above constituted the whole of Dell, if it were contained on a straight line it would cover approximately twenty miles.

Dell is located in the vicinity of the territory in which the legend of Donald Morrison, "The Megantic Outlaw", actually took place.

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The manner in which the people of this place lived fifty years ago was pretty primitive measured by the standards of to-day. It is difficult for the people of the present generation to realize the hardships that were endured in their great-grandparents' time, not to mention even before that. The things that they had to do without and the things that they had to do for themselves were almost unbelievable. They got along though, necessity being the mother of invention. The hard labour of that time, when a day's work was from dawn to dusk, often beginning before the crow of the rooster at the break of day and finishing after the sun had already gone down in the west and darkness had again fallen, made them a hardy people.

Still, its primitiveness and herd labour seemed to induce a happiness that was unique throughout the entire community. The mood could be felt in the air. Each was dependent upon his neighbour for his very being, the feeling was indeed compatible, living in unison, as it were. Their unspoken pledge seemed to have been "one for all, all for one". They had a loyalty to each other and a loyalty to principle. They possessed a richness derived from ardent prayers, such a richness that is beyond all that can be substituted with gold. Rich in faith, friendship and in their regard for their neighbour. An air of tolerance was thrust upon them regardless of the attitude of the individual concerned. In truth this tolerance was immeasurable in solid genuine neighbourliness. It wasn't much of a place of excellency, splendour or style, but, in theory, it was all of these and more, in principle and character.

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The atmosphere was harmonious and free from friction. They laughed at themselves and at each other. The hospitality that was extended by them was unexcelled and enjoyed by all. In their fullness of life, in their own simple way they enjoyed living.

They enjoyed and loved their neighbour, loved to joke and to tease each other and to gossip. Their gossip was light, cautious and restrained, not derogatory anyone, carefully guarding against the lessening of a personal reputation. They had a deep, firm belief in providence and in the hereafter.

I personally feel a keen sense of pride and I cherish the thought of having been a part and parcel of the sunny nature of Dell, of this Gaelic speaking community. Also, a sense of pride of being a direct descendant of those rugged people who hailed from the Isle of Lewis, the land of the heather, whose beautiful Gaelic language goes as far back as history itself.

Many years after I had left Dell, I had on many occasions attended celebrations that were held annually in honour of the patron saint of Scotland, Saint Andrew. On one such occasion I am extremely proud to relate the following story; there I met a woman with a genuine Scottish brogue. I had known her for years but only casually. With an air of aloofness and sarcasm, in a loud tone, she inquired as to what my purpose was of being there on such an occasion. She said, "And what are you doing here? You are not Scottish". I replied, "Yes, I am one hundred percent Scottish even if I was born in Canada. And, besides,

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can recite the twenty-third Psalm in Gaelic, can you?" he said that she couldn't. Boy, that made me feel real good. (I can still do so)

Scottish people the world over are noted for their nicknames. Actually, nicknames were a necessity for identification purposes on account of so many with the same surname and also with the same christian names, even though they may not be related. Actually there were eight families by the name of "Morrison" who lived in this small community at the same time, each of whom had several children. Some families were related but mostly not. There were also five families by the name of Murray, not all related. It therefore was essential to have nicknames, to keep things straight and uncomplicated.

There were cases where the father's name was, for instance, John, whose son was also named John; then there could also be another son named Johnnie. Also, a woman might be named Mary, a daughter named Mary and yet another daughter named Mary, or Maryann. There was "blond" Donald and "black" Donald and "big" Donald and "little" Donald and were identified as such, in Gaelic.

One, John Morrison, was known as "Iain Unish Cuilliam", (John Angus William). John D. Graham was known as "Iain Domduill Unish og" (John Donald Angus Young). John K. MacLeod as "Iain Coinneach h’ Aighdear", (John Kenneth, the soldier) and so on. To say the least, all of was extremely complicated to those who were not familiar with the people of this Gaelic community. Yet, by the same token, to the natives it was relatively simple and not complicated or confusing.

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I wish to emphasis the fac­t that I have nothing but the highest regard and the greatest respect for those people of which this writing is about, for they stood tall in principle and ideals.

We who are familiar with Dell, all appreciate the fact that practically every one in the area had a nickname. In fact, some had two, many were better known by their nickname than they were by their Christian or surname. On that basis throughout these writings their nicknames, for familiarity sake, will be used from time to time. The reader is assured that no offense is intended, such is the fartherest from any such intentions.

Note: Please refer to glossary at end of book (re nicknames). p. 248

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