As stated at the outset in this little volume, it was our intention to present brief biographical sketches of a few of the earliest pioneers in North Sydenham. We have now arrived at that point in these reminiscences.

These sketches will be found not only brief, but in some cases lacking in detail, a fact for which we are not entirely to blame. When information was sought on this point, one was painfully reminded of the fact that the average memory is a short one, and has a limitless capacity for forgetting. This is a wise dispensation of Providence after all. The memory of past joys remains with us, and lend to the olden days a charm all their own, and we are so constituted that the ills and sorrows of past years are forgotten, or remembered but dimly. Existence would be intolerable if we remembered our griefs and trials in their first bitterness. But in the hurry and cares of modern life it is surprising to learn how many of the salient facts in the lives of those who first settled in the township are forgotten. What will have happened, then, when we of this generation have given way for another one that knows of the pioneers by name only? Ask the average man to give you a clear and succinct account of the life of his great-grandfather and not five times in a hundred will the answer be a satisfactory one.

In the majority of cases, however, it has been found possible to give at least the dates of birth and death, the early occupation, time of coming to Canada and settling in the township, in the life of each subject as in turn he comes under discussion.

A word rray be said here as to the photographic reproductions appearing on other pages, of which there are eighteen in all. Of the eighteen gentlemen whose portraits are given, seventeen were bom in Scotland. William P. Telford was born near the Scottish Border, but on the English side of it, of Scottish parents however. He, Doctor Lang and Thomas Lunn were born in the end of the eighteenth century, and seven others of the eighteen before the battle of Waterloo. At least one of these remembered that event distinctly, and the outburst of national rejoicing that followed the news when the Duke of Wellington

“Or. that loud Sabbath shook the spoiler down.”

On a certain day in 1845, when sitting down to dinner with his family in his little log house on the Lake Shore Line he remarked “it was just thirty years ago today—how well I remember it!—that Waterloo was fought.” The saying stuck in the mind of one of the boys, and long years after he related the incident in our hearing. The portrait of the first Presbyterian minister in Leith appears side by side with his colleague at Annan, who was the first minister of the Lake Shore Line congregation after it was organized on a self-sustaining basis. The first teachers in Leith and Annan public schools appear on the same page at Nos. 3 and 4. As far as possible it was endeavored to secure photographs taken late in life; that of Walter Aitken was taken a week before his death. No doubt the shades of this goodly company of Scottish worthies would be intensely surprised were they to learn their living likenesses had all been gathered together within the covers of a book.

To the selection that has been made of subjects for these sketches, some exception will doubtless be taken.

There were many others among the pioneers of North Sydenham just as worthy of a place here as those whose names appear, and perhaps more so. It would prove an invidious comparison to even name a number of them. But it was a physical impossibility to include them all; that task is left for the future historian of Grey County, who, it is to be hoped, will have the leisure and the means to do justice to the memory of them all.

Taken collectively, the portraits of these men will afford an interesting half hour in facial study. One characteristic is stamped on the countenance of each of them—a deep-settled and inflexible determination. There is no other quality will take the place of courage; it has no substitutes. These pioneers needed the last ounce of it if they had to withstand the trials and hardships they faced and endured in the years when they were reclaiming a township from the wilderness and making it to blossom as the rose. They are among the real heroes of Canada. We raise monuments to our soldier dead and deck them with wreaths, and it is entirely fitting and proper we should do so. But it is well to remember while so doing that if it had not been for the labors of these men our soldiers would never have had a country to defend. They were the true builders of empire—the men who had the grit and determination to engage in what must have seemed at times almost an insurmountable task, and do the spade work for the on-coming hosts who gathered to reap where they had planted. Let us suppose for a moment their work were to be done over again, and under the same circumstances that prevailed in the forties and fifties of last century. Suppose Sydenham were by the stroke of an enchanter’s wand restored to the tangled brush and towering hardwoods covering the land in one unbroken stretch at that time. How many of the grand—196— children and great-grandchildren of these men would be satisfied to make their permanent abode in the midst of such isolation, and through the daily sweat and toil that were theirs wrest from Nature the same reward? They would be few indeed. These men had their own shortcomings and faults. Occasionally some of them drank a little too much and at barn raisings and logging bees, when laboring under the stress of a strong excitement, they were guilty of a vigorous language not found in prayer books. But they were honest, truthful and law-abiding, and above all they possessed the supreme quality of courage—the indomitable energy and perseverance which tries again and again regardless of failure, until at last effort is crowned by success

It is not claimed for the first settlers of North Sydenham that they are any more entitled to honor than their brother-pioneers in other parts of the County or Province. Such a claim would be ridiculous on the face of it. Their history was marked by no momentous events; the whole field covered by these reminiscences is a limited one indeed. But the hope has been expressed time and again, by many of their descendants, that in some manner the story of the sacrifices they made and the difficulties and discouragements they so successfully surmounted might be told, so that their names and their memory might not perish from the earth but be preserved as an example to those following in their steps of what industry, thrift and patience can accomplish in a new land, where, above all things, men must trust to their own resources. The consummation of this desire has been the strongest motive behind the writing of such a story—with all its imperfections—as the present one. There were secondary motives as will be shown later on, but this was the strongest one.

These, then, are a few of the first.

JOHN COUPER

John Couper was born at Clarkstone Toll, in Refrewshire, in 1819, of a respectable middle class family. He was raised on a farm, where he worked as a plowman; he also gained a thorough knowledge of gardening and acquired a fine taste in flowers and their successful culture. When twenty five years of age he came to Canada and settled first at Galt, which at the time was a sort of halfway house for many settlers who later came to Sydenham. He worked there for two years and then came to Sydenham, taking up a lot on Concession C, on which he settled in 1847. Here were born and raised his family of two sons and three daughters.

He was a hard working and successful farmer. Soon evincing a strong taste for public affairs, he was in 1860 elected a councillor for his ward in the township council, and served as such until 1866. He then served as deputy reeve for one year, and for the two years following was honored with the reeveship. For many years he was an elder in the Presbyterian congregation at Annan and always displayed the keenest interest in its affairs. As the possessor of an unusually rich voice he frequently led its service of praise as precentor. His tastes in literature were keen and discriminating; Carlyle was a favorite, of course, but his admiration for Burns was little short of idolatry. Partly from his extensive reading and partly from pure love of an argument, he became a controversialist along many lines of thought, and it must be confessed that in battles of this kind his keen wits rarely met with their equal. When the occasion demanded he had at his command as dry and subtle a sarcasm as one would care to listen to.

In the first Provincial election held after Confederation he contested North Grey in the Liberal interest with Thomas Scott, Conservative. The elections for the Dominion Parliament and the Provincial Legislature were held simultaneously, in September, 1867, for the first and only time since Confederation. For the Dominion Parliament the two contestants were Messrs. Snider and Boulton, Liberal and Conservative respectively. At the Liberal nomination meeting there had been three nominees, James Paterson, John Couper and Thomas Purdy. Mr. Couper was nominated but at first positively refused to stand. The nomination then went to Thomas Purdy, but he, not being present at the meeting, just as positively declined it when apprised of the action of the convention. Mr. Couper was then induced to reconsider his declination. The result on election day was a curious one. Mr. Snider was elected by 254 majority over his Conservative opponent, and Mr. Scott beat the Liberal nominee by 259, there being a difference of only five votes in the two majorities. It was frequently asserted throughout the constituency in the following legislative term that, in the person of Mr. Couper, the electors had left the ablest man of the four at home.

In all the activities of his home community Mr. Couper took a leading and responsible part. He was a man who seemed to inspire confidence instinctively; the word of John Couper was always regarded as a sufficient guaranty, for men knew it was as good as his bond. His standard of morals in political life was a high one and some of his campaign speeches make good reading even yet, indicating as they do his high sense of integrity. Such a reputation is more precious than rubies and a priceless heritage to leave to one’s children. In his late years he was sorely afflicted with rheumatism. He is buried at Annan, having died at his home near there in 1896, a long, active and honorable life thus being brought to a close.

JAMES ROSS

James Somerville Ross was born in Edinburgh in 1801, his father being an employee in the service of government in the Customs there. He received his education in the High School of that city, the course of study covering five years, and must have been well up in his classes as on one occasion he won a prize of a costly timepiece for reciting one thousand lines of Latin without an error. After two years spent in Caithness-shire, in the office of his uncle, who was a fish merchant, he returned to Edinburgh and was apprenticed in the baking business. He then established two bake shops, one of them in the suburb of Currie where he met and married Janet Henderson. In 1835, with his wife and five children, the youngest six weeks old, he came to Canada in the sailing vessel Roger Stewart. It was the fifty-second transatlantic passage for that vessel’s captain and the voyage, which took about six weeks, was also the calmest one he had taken. He came to Galt and was there about seven months; he then moved out to Preston where he engaged at his trade of baking for two years. Here he prospered, but the suppression of the MacKenzie rebellion was followed by a bad business depression during which Mr. Ross quit the baking business and, in 1837, rented a farm near Preston and also started a brick kiln. In February, 1844, with two or three neighbors he came to the Lake Shore Line to spy out the land, but the snow was so deep their intention was frustrated and they returned to Galt. Late in March he walked up to Owen Sound alone, went down the Lake Shore Line, examined the land and chose the farm he afterwards occupied, but the land was not in the market at the time. He asked John Telfer to file his application for it and returned to Galt. This was Lot 38, concession C and was chosen because of a good spring at the back of it. The Land Agent’s office awarded him the lot and on May 10th, Mr. Ross and his two eldest sons having arrived from Galt at the Lake Shore Line, the first tree ever chopped on it was felled by the three. A shanty was erected and clearing begun. The rest of the family were, with their effects, brought up in four sleighs in February, 1845. In March of that year he again went to Galt with Andrew Biggar to bring back some stock. His fourth son, then ten years of age, who had remained in Galt, returned to the Lake Shore with the two, walking the entire distance of one hundred and eight miles in six days and driving a sow the whole way. This was regarded as a wonderful feat even in those days for a boy of ten years, but little did he realize as he tramped his lonely journey his powers in long distance pedestrianism would be made a matter fo record seventy nine years later. About a week after their arrival home, one fine morning about eight or ten little grunters were found following this sow around the barnyard.

In 1855 Mr. Ross bought a store in Leith from a gentleman named Wylie and with his sons James and Allan became the firm known as James Ross and Sons. They did a large general store business and in later years engaged in grain buying as well. He continued a member of this firm until his death. Mr. Ross had a considerable knowledge of common law, was one of the first elders in the Annan congregation and was prominent in the educational affairs of the district. He was a big man physically, standing well over six feet, and was of a grave demeanor. All his life he was an enthusiastic curler, and he even tried with some success to introduce the roarin’ game at Annan. His wife died at Leith in 1869 and in the following year he visited Scotland, and the scenes of his early manhood in Edinburgh. Returning to Canada he died in February 1871, also at Leith. His remains rest beside those of his wife in Annan cemetery.

Gideon Harkness

For a man who exercised such an influence in the district where he settled and led such a long and honorable career, very few of the facts in Mr. Harkness’ early life are available for presentation here. He was born in Hawick, Roxburghshire, in 1818, and came to Canada when about twenty six years of age. When a young man he learned the trade of a stone mason, and learned it passing well, if one may judge from some of his handicraft still remaining in Sydenham. He came direct to the Lake Shore Line from Scotland and took up land about half a mile northeast of Annan. For the first few years after coming, he was accustomed to go to Galt every winter to work, returning in the summer to resume, clearing his land. Here all his family were born and, like all Scottish-Canadian families of that place and time, raised to work and work hard. There were no drones in the hive on the Lake Shore then. Young and old worked early, and late and few of them indeed suffered any ill effects from it. The farm Mr. Harkness had chosen had not the natural advantages possessed by some others, but excellent judgment in cultivation, and cropping and in farming methods generally, made every square foot of it a productive one. He was an enthusiastic stockman and his judgment, in horned stock more particularly, could be pitted against the best in Grey County with honors to himself. As a stock breeder, no man in Sydenham did more to raise the standard of cattle raising in the township than he.

In political affairs and public questions in general, he took an active interest, but never a leading part. Hard headed common sense and shrewdness were his outstanding characteristics, and it is fortunate for all of us such men are found in every rank in life and in every community. They keep their own feet and the feet of their neighbors on the solid ground, and their heads out of the clouds. From the very beginning he took a prominent place in the affairs of the Presbyterian congregation at Annan and was for many years its leading elder. He was one of the organizers of the Sydenham Mutual Fire Insurance Company and became its first president. After twenty years spent in Canada he visited his birthplace in Scotland, and while he found the condition of the working people greatly improved, he had no desire to stay there. Of all his fellow Scots in the district, he preserved to the very last his native dialect in its richest and purest form. In time it grew, in fact, to be a little bewildering to the young Canadians who had grown up around him. His success in prize winning at the fall fairs was perhaps the best evidence of the interest he took in his calling. These annual competitions were potent events in the life of a farmer sixty years ago, and a genuine promotive of good husbandry. To the end of his life everything that tended to improve the lot of the farmer and the general practise in agriculture had his heartiest support. He died in his seventy-seventh year, his remains following those of many a fellow-pioneer to their last resting place in the Annan cemetery.

WILLIAM BROWN

The ancient town of Hawick was, in the early years of the nineteenth century, the birthplace of many a future Grey County pioneer. The men of Hawick were in ancient times famous for their intrepid valor in war, and an instance of it that has passed into a fondly cherished tradition may be briefly recounted here.

In 1513, when King James IV of Scotland summoned all the men throughout the length and breadth of his kingdom, between the ages of sixteen and sixty, to his standard at the Boroughmoore in Edinburgh for the invasion of England, the story goes that the response to the call to the colors was unanimous in Hawick. The town was stripped bare of fighting men; none but old men and boys were left. King James crossed the border with the largest force ever gathered under one Scottish leader up until that time. He met the English host led by the Earl of Surrey at Flodden, and every schoolboy knows the issue of the battle that followed. The remnant of the Scottish army fled back into Scotland, but Surrey did not follow up his advantage, probably because the forces under his command had been manhandled too severely by the men of the North. Parties of his soldiers, however, crossed the border on marauding expeditions, and one of these found its way into the neighborhood of Hawick. They encamped in a ravine not far from the town, intending to loot it at their pleasure, but their careless confidence was their undoing. Word was brought in that a party of English was close at hand and in the defenceless state of the inhabitants, the greater part of the men of military age having been killed at Flodden and the rest scattered, naturally great alarm was felt. They reckoned without the fighting spirit of their sons of tender years, however. A considerable number of these gathered together, found their way at the midnight hour to the ravine, and, no sentinels having been thrown out, fell upon and surprised the sleeping English and slaughtered them to the last man. The authenticity of this story is vouched for by eminent Scottish historians. It seems a barbarous act to us now, but it was no worse, if as bad, as many of the inhumanities practised in the Great War.

Our sketch’s subject, however, had none of those militant qualities that made the men of Hawick feared in the days of Flodden. A more peaceable or mild a mannered man it would be hard to conceive of and his kindness, more particularly to dumb animals, was the quality by which he is best remembered. In early life Mr. Brown was a shepherd, and the contemplative nature of this employment was favorable to the poetic instinct, with which he was gifted in no mean degree. In later years his improvisations in verse, upon local events on the Lake Shore Line, were by many considered as worthy of a wider field and a larger audience. He was born in 1809 and came to Canada in 1842. He settled at first in Galt, and as he had the best education afforded by the common schools in his native shire he was drafted into the service of school teaching there, but only for one year. In 1843 he journeyed up the Garafraxa road to Owen Sound, then a hamlet of seven or eight houses. In the allotment of Crown Lands he was given Lot 40 on the Lake Shore, close to Doctor Lang’s; the two formed a close friendship which closed only with the death of the last named. Like many of his Scottish neighbors, he had a penchant for gardening and fruit raising, and his orchard, raised from the apple seed, was the first and one of the finest on the Lake Shore. It was also, in its prime, the objective of many a gang of young marauders, bent on apple stealing. Marrying after forty years of age, Mr. Brown still had a family of twelve children, most of whom yet survive as active and useful members of society. For several years after coming to the locality he rented what was afterwards known as the Keefer farm, about one mile below Annan and, like many of his neighbors in that early day, could relate stories of the vicissitudes of pioneering that have unfortunately passed into oblivion. He died in 1892, while in his eighty-third year, and interment was made at Annan.

ANDREW SIBBALD

Andrew Sibbald was born in Selkirk-shire in 1816, just a few miles from Hawick, which is across the county line in Roxburghshire. In early life he was a ploughman In the primitive agriculture of that time, as we now consider it, a ploughman was reckoned the highest type of agricultural laborer, and Mr. Sibbald was an expert in his line. He would have learned blacksmithing, but blacksmith apprentices had to serve seven years at the trade and without a cent of wages in those days. He came to Canada in 1845 and settled first at Galt, where he worked for a Mr. Thomson. The trip was made in a sailing vessel, the voyage lasting six weeks. In 1849 he came to the Lake Shore Line district and settled upon Lot 25, Concession 6. Mr. Sibbald was always known as a tremendously hard worker and he found ample scope for his energy here. The farm was all virgin timber. After working there for some time a surveyor happened along one day, stopped for conversation, became interested, and finally consulted a map. He then told Mr. Sibbald he was clearing land on the next lot, and that gentleman was mortified to discover he had lost the labor of clearing six acres not his own. He shared all those privations the pioneers accepted so cheerfully as inseperable from their lot and on one occasion walked all the way to Durham for some flour. But steady industry always has its own reward. In 1866 he had so far improved his condition as to be able to take a trip back to his birthplace in Scotland, having for company Mr. Gideon Harkness and Mrs. David Armstrong. A sentimental interest may have been responsible for the journey, but he returned to Canada more than ever satisfied he lived there. He was a most successful farmer and took an active and leading interest in the fall fairs of the township and county. He was also instrumental in organizing the Sydenham Mutual Fire Insurance Company and was one of its first directors. As illustrating the scarcity of cash in the early times, he used to tell how he realized the sum of $1.50 from the sale of a fancy vest brought from Scotland, to Andrew Biggar, and this was the only ready money he ever received in the first three years after coming to Annan. He died in 1886 at Annan, in his 70th year, and is buried there. He was an upright and conscientious man whose private life was always most exemplary, and his family, one of the most widely known in Sydenham, all followed faithfully in his footsteps.

THOMAS RUTHERFORD

Thomas Rutherford was born in 1812, at Ancrum, Roxburghshire, and emigrated from Scotland to Canada in 1832. In his early years he was a gardener on the estate of Sir William Scott, which occupation his father had followed before him and for the same master. Mr. Rutherford had rather a distinguished connection, being a second cousin to Scotland’s greatest, national figure of the time, Sir Walter Scott. On more than one occasion, as a boy, he had opened the gate for him when Sir Walter was taking his daily exercise of horse-back riding. He described his kinsman as a rather severe looking gentleman, and as having a due sense of his own dignity. After coming to Canada he first settled at Galt and engaged in the butchering business. All his life he retained a vivid impression of the outbreak of cholera there, mentioned in a previous chapter, and of his helping to bury some of the unfortunate victims. He came to the future Owen Sound late in 1840, having been engaged by John Telfer as purveyor of the government stores furnished him as supplies for the first settlers, until they could get a start and raise crops of their own. These stores had to be paid for by the settlers of course, and thereby hangs a rather amusing story.

Among the arrivals in quest of provisions, one day appeared a number of Indians, only a few of whom could speak English, and that very imperfectly. In their broken lingo, eked out by signs, they managed to make Mr. Rutherford understand the kind and quantity of the stores they needed, but when the time came for payment they showed no desire to pay at all and grabbed up their packages with the intention of decamping. This roused the ire of the storekeeper. He was a man of powerful physique—not very tall, but heavily limbed, and strong enough to handle three or four of the Indians in a rough and tumble fight. He launched a blow at the jaw of the leader of the party which landed safely and then, even before he had time to time to hit the floor, grasped him by the throat and backed him out of the door of the storehouse on the run. A few feet from the doorway lay a log; the Indian in his involuntary flight backward tripped over it and lay like a dead man. In fact, he imitated the ’possum so well Mr. Rutherford was deceived as to how badly he had hurt the redskin. The other Indians were alarmed and made signs to their white brother the seemingly dead man should be buried where he lay. Whether he saw the chance for a joke, or was seriously alarmed, is not clear. But in the excitement of the moment he ran into the storehouse, picked up a shovel and, returning with it. threw a shovelful of dirt on the prostrate form. The Indian rose hastily with a yell, bounded down to the Sydenham river distant only a few yards and, plunging in, swam across it on the double-quick. That lesson lasted the Indians for all time.

Shortly after this incident Mr. Rutherford engaged in hotel keeping on what was then Union Street, and the hostelry he kept and the hospitality he dispensed were long remembered by arrivals among the pioneers at the growing village, who made it a sort of rendezvous. In 1845 he went with William Sibbald to Elora, to attend a sale of Crown Lands, and each bought the lot they afterwards lived on, Mr. Rutherford’s being Lot 35, Concesison A of Sydenham and Mr. Sibbald’s the lot next it on the south-east. The price paid by Mr. Rutherford was forty-five pounds for the lot of one hundred acres. This farm has ever since been in possession of the Rutherford family; Mr. Rutherford felled the first tree ever chopped on it when he moved in and took possession.

From the start he was closely identified with the various movements tending to advance the best interests of Leith and vicinity, and from his previous business connections in Owen Sound was for many years one of the best known and highly respected residents in the whole district. Although in early life a robust man, his health about ten years before his death became impaired, and two trips were taken to Scotland in the hopes that the change of climate and scenes of his boyhood would restore it. These were ineffectual however, and he died in March,

1879, at the comparatively early age of sixty-seven years. He was buried at Leith in the Presbyterian cemetery, of which church he had been a most consistent member and supporter.

While he made no pretensions to either brilliant gifts or accomplishments, Mr. Rutherford was a man of remarkably sound judgment and level headed Scottish sagacity. His native shrewdness and perspicacity not only won for himself a comfortable independence in material things, but made him a helpful confidante and adviser to all who sought his counsel in the hour of business perplexity. He never forgot his duties as a neighbor or a citizen and always zealously discharged them. A grandson, Major Thomas Rutherford, served his country with bravery and distinction on the European battlefields of the Great War.

THOMAS LUNN

Thomas Lunn was born at Lilliesleaf, Roxburghshire, in 1799. His father was a farmer on the estate of Sir John Riddell, and the education he gave his son must have been a good one, if we may judge from the use he made of it after coming to Canada. Not much is known of his early life, which is regrettable as we would find that part of it highly interesting. He engaged in business in Hawick and seems to have succeeded fairly well. He was married before coming to Canada to a Miss Usher, of Edinburgh. The name of Usher is a familiar one to many Canadians, although the variety of bottled products carrying the label on which the name appears is not as popular as it once was in Canada, while in the United States it has suffered almost total eclipse. The Usher family was, at that time, one of the wealthiest in Edinburgh, and her parents considered that their daughter had married beneath her station. No actual estrangement followed, but their treatment of the young couple was never afterwards marked by an excess of cordiality.

In 1842 Mr. Lunn, then forty-three years of age, sold out his business and with his wife came to Canada. They were among the very first settlers on Concession A of Sydenham; there is no record at any rate of anyone being there before them. He settled on Lot 29, in 1843. on which as yet not a tree had been profaned by the axe. The change from the most fashionable residential quarter of Edinburgh to a log shanty in the backwoods of Canada must have been, for Mrs. Lunn, something indescribable. Her husband immediately began clearing the farm, which is about a mile north-east of Leith. At time of writing it is owned by Mr. Hugh McKay, one of Sydenham’s most prosperous farmers. In 1843 it was one hundred and twenty acres of solid bush—beech, maple, birch, ash, hemlock, elm, cedar and tamarack. Were the same timber standing there today it would probably sell for $20,000. A description of the first log shanty erected by Mr. Lunn was lately given us, as well as some faint idea of what the farm looked like after he had been on it for a few years, but its appearance when he moved in must have been something such as we of this day and age cannot adequately visualize at all. The harbor down at the waterfront soon came to be known as Lunn’s Landing. There were no roads anywhere and Mr. Lunn brought his supplies down to this harbor from the straggling hamlet at the head of the Sound by boat. The Lake Shore Line was shortly afterwards opened, but at first the road was little better than a cowpath through the woods.

Mrs. Lunn was sincerely devoted to her husband, or the change would have been insupportable. She never mastered the mysteries of backwoods housekeeping, and the voracious appetites of the neighbors who gathered at Mr. Lunn’s logging bees struck her with horror. One day the wife of one of these neighbors called in and found her surveying a devastated dinner table with a helpless air.

“Oh! Its thae loggers, ye ken”, she replied, upon the neighbor enquiring what was the matter—“they eat liki deevils!”

Leith was not settled until three years after Mr. Lunn’s arrival, and such social life as there was, was found on the Lake Shore Line. He was of the first to suggest the holding of religious services in the neighborhood there, reference to which has been previously made, and also one of the first to take a leading part in them, until a regular ministerial supply could be obtained. Accord-'ng to the tenants who followed him on the farm, after his departure in 1852, he had cleared about thirty acres before that time. It was sold by him in 1860 for about S2,500., and here the author first saw the light of day about fourteen years after that date.

Mr. Lunn moved into Owen Sound in 1852. He had previously been a member of the first Provisional County Council and on April 15th, 1852, by appointment of the Earl of Elgin, then Governor General of Upper and Lower Canada, he was made Chairman of the building committee of the jail and courthouse, the erection of which were necessary before Grey could be formally separated from Wellington. These buildings were finished in 1853 and Owen Sound then became the County Town of the new County. Mr. Lunn was appointed its first Registrar, an office he held until his death. The emoluments of the office were at this time very generous as land speculation was brisk, and the Registrar paid on the fee system. In 1862 he was elected Mayor of the town, an office he held for two terms. The duties of both offices were discharged carefully and conscientiously.

There are few people now living who remember him while he lived at Leith, but those who describe him as a shrewd yet kindly man, who won the respect of everybody by his honesty and fair dealing. After his removal to Owen Sound he accumulated considerable means and died a comparatively wealthy man. Division Street Church owed its origin chiefly to him and for many years he was Chairman of the Presbyterian congregation there. He was for several years one of its elders, and would have continued so until his death had he not resigned and ever afterwards declined re-election. While holding the office of Registrar he was of course debarred from taking any part in politics, although his sympathies were strongly with the Reform party. In 1872 he visited Scotland and saw for the last time the place of his birth. The closest companion of his later years was the late Robert Paterson, the two being almost inseperable. His wife predeceased him by several years, having been held in as high esteem as her husband. In the spring of 1875 his health began to fail, and he died on the 5th of November of that year at seventy six years of age. With his wife he is buried in Greenwood Cemetery at Owen Sound.

ROBERT GRIERSON

The name of Grierson is a familiar one to all students of Scottish history. The most famous—or rather, notorious—among those bearing the name was undoubtedly the persecutor of the faithful in the Killing Time that followed the declaration of the Solemn League and Covenant, Grierson of Lag. Next to John Graham of Claverhouse, “the handsomest and wickedest man of his time” as he has been described, Grierson of Lag was the most relentless persecutor of the Convenanters. It was well said of him that his very n^me was infamy.

Had Robert Grierson lived in the days of the Covenanters he would have been found among those who suffered persecution for conscience sake. His uncompromising Presbyterianism admits of no other conclusion, as those who remember him will testify.

He was born in 1810, in Roxburghshire, his father’s estate being known as Effledge Farm, and this name, following a Scottish custom, Mr. Grierson bestowed upon the farm he settled on near Leith. None of the facts in his early life are known to us, nor do we know the year in which he came to Canada. The family of which he was a member were familiarly known in their native shire by their spare, tall stature and an erect military bearing— in fact it was frequently said of them that they should all have been soldiers. He had a brother who was one of the finest athletes in Scotland and a famous runner. In middle life Robert had the same cast of countenance and features as the Duke of Wellington and looked remarkably like the portraits of the Iron Duke.

Mr. Grierson was educated for a school teacher and after coming to Canada taught for a short time at Glenmorris, near Galt. He came to Sydenham in 1845 and settled on Lot 25, Concession A, at present owned by Walter Veitch. It is said that the first barn raising ever held in Sydenham took place on the adjoining lot, No. 26, and that through some horrible blunder there was no whiskey at it! Such a calamity would not soon be forgotten. Mr. Grierson saw pioneering in its most primitive guise. The Toronto Globe was founded in 1844 and many of the Reformers of Sydenham, fathers of future good Grits, immediately subscribed for it. Thomas Lunn, who had the previous year settled on Lot 29, used to bring the Globe from Owen Sound out for his neighbors and it was distributed from his log shanty, distant about a mile from Mr. Grierson’s, to all those in the locality who had subscribed. Those who went after the paper followed a blazed trail through the trackless bush between the two shanties, being careful never to leave one blazed tree until they could see the blaze on the next one. One can imagine how such a paper would be treasured. Next to the Montreal Witness, the Globe was the first newspaper to make its appearance in Sydenham.

In 1851 he married Janet Usher, a niece of Thomas Lunn’s, and in 1854 moved up into the village. He was Leith’s first school teacher, as he has been previously recorded, and always took a deep interest in the affairs of the Presbyterian congregation, of which he was for many years an elder. It may be said of him as it was said of Barnabas “He was a good man”; a warm heart lay behind his grave demeanor. A domestic affliction which overshadowed his whole life after coming to Leith was borne with the most exemplary patience and cheerfulness. He died in 1892 while in his eighty-third year and is buried at Leith.

This sketch will be pardoned for its brevity and dearth of details when it is known that Mr. Grierson died childless. It will not fail in its purpose however if it serves in a measure to perpetuate the memory of a man faithful and true, an upright, conscientious and honorable citizen and one of the very earliest in that brave band of settlers in North Sydenham of whom it may well be said that in honoring them we honor ourselves as well.

WILLIAM TELFORD

As Mr. Telford’s activities have been dealt with rather extensively in another part of this volume, this notice will be made as brief as possible.

William Pattison Telford was born at Bells, England, in June 1797, of Scottish parents. His father, William Telford, was a shepherd, and was born in 1758, living to the advanced age of ninety five years. The family crossed the border into Roxburghshire some time in the end of the eighteenth century and lived in various parts of that county, finally settling at Castleton, or Copeshaw Home. Mr. Telford attended lectures in Edinburgh and qualified as a school teacher. He developed a fine faculty as a musician and became band leader in Castleton, where he also taught school. In October, 1835, he married Elizabeth Murray, and continued teaching in Castleton until 1840. In that year he emigrated to Canada, with his wife and three children, landing at New York and coming to Galt via Albany and Buffalo. He engaged in his previous occupation and taught school in Galt and vicinity for about eight years. He also worked at house painting, gun repairing and woodwork; in fact his multifarious labors seem to have extended to almost every branch of mechanics. He was requisitioned to shape tombstones and paint the inscriptions upon them, draught plans for buildings, make spinning wheels and reels, and as a flautist played for all sorts of functions, grave and gay. An ardent fisherman, one of his reasons for coming to Canada was the fact that the sport with rod and line was sadly circumscribed in Scotland, and he hoped to find freer play for his proclivities in that direction here. In 1848, as has been noted, he came to the Lake Shore Line from Galt, and became teacher in the Annan school. Here his energies were taxed in all directions and he was possibly the busiest man in the whole locality. His home became famous for a free and easy hospitality and a camaraderie such as we know nothing about in these degenerate times. The neighbors were fond of gathering for a social crack and none was sent away. This happy custom prevailed everywhere, as is the rule in new settlements. As they grow older and inequalities creep in, people become more precise and formal, and the ultimate result is not a happy one. Mr. Telford suffered a sort of nervous breakdown in 1856 and retired from school teaching, never enjoying really good health afterwards. But body and mind remained active. There was hardly a family in the neighborhood but boasted of some household ornament or useful piece of furniture made by him. His industry, judged from the works of his hands he left behind him, must have been prodigious. He took but small interest in public affairs although his literary taste was good. He had a large family, thirteen in all, but of these five died in infancy or in the very earliest years. For the last five years of his life he was bedridden the most of the time and died in March, 1879. His was preeminently a life of practical usefulness and if his temper was irascible and uncertain at times, it was easily forgiven by people upon whom he had bestowed so many kindnesses. He was survived by his wife for twenty two years. Both are buried at Annan.

JAMES GIBSON

It was our original intention to limit these sketches to men who arrived in Sydenham prior to 1850. An exception must be made in the present case, however.

James Gibson was born in Carstairs, Lanarkshire, within a few miles of Glasgow, in 1805. He received his early education in the latter city and learned his trade of cabinet making there also and later became a fully qualified architect. He witnessed the first developments of steamboating on the Clyde, that classic river destined in later times to become the seat of the greatest steel shipbuilding industry in the world. Shortly after his marriage in Scotland he determined to come to Canada. He arrived in Toronto in 1841 and engaged in house building and general architecture there.

Had Mr. Gibson remained in Toronto he would have, in time, accumulated considerable wealth, as before leaving he owned five residences in what is now the heart of the city. In 1852, however, he came up to Sydenham with his wife and four young sons. He settled on a farm five miles northeast of Leith, on Concession A, having for neighbors a settlement of Scottish Highlanders who had taken up land in what was generally known as “the Swamp.” These Highlanders were almost all of three families, the MacLeods, the Camerons and the MacMillans, and they retained in a marked degree all the characteristics for which the Highland clans are famous. The Queen’s English was a foreign tongue among them. They made their living by fishing and shingle making, with a little farming thrown in for good measure.

Mr. Gibson’s farm was an isolated one, and it was seven years after their coming that his wife first saw Owen Sound. In time the farm of two hundred acres was cleared and a large stone house was built in the late sixties. From this home there afterwards radiated a true hearted hospitality, which they who once experienced its kindness never afterwards forgot. The hardships of pioneering had been severe but honest labor had met with its earned reward. None but a hardy Scottish Lowlander could have achieved success under such difficult circumstances, which only the most tenacious courage could overcome.

Mr. Gibson had deep religious principles and from the very beginning showed the greatest interest in all religious movements in the neighborhood. He was one of the leaders in the organization of the Presbyterian congregation at Leith and in the building of the church there in 1865. This church he attended regularly, summer and winter, although distant from it five miles, until the infirmities of advancing age made such attendance impossible. He was for more than thirty years one of its most influential elders and as a member of Session his opinions were always accorded the utmost respect. He had a florid voice of great purity and delighted in the service of praise, and in the songs of the land of his nativity. He had many favorite songs that betokened his fine musical taste, his prime favorite of all, however, being Tannahill’s matchless ballad upon the return of Spring, “Gloomy Winter’s Noo Awa”. In his younger years a splendid performer on the violin, he later mastered the art of making the instrument itself, and found great pleasure in their construction. His natural taste in music and mechanics found its best expression in this congenial occupation.

Mr. Gibson is best described, in point of character, as the finest type of Scottish gentleman of the old school. He had an unaffected urbanity and courtesy of manner that nothing seemed to disturb; every word and every action while in contact with his fellow men bespoke his innate and superior breeding. As one of his illustrious countrymen said of a friend and patron, so it might be well said of him, that “he was a gentleman who received the patent for his honors immediately from Almighty God.” It is not given to many men to make friends as he made them, intuitively and without effort. He reached the ripe old age of eighty-nine years and died as he had lived, at peace with all men. Of his large family, truly one of North Sydenham’s first families, only one remains in the vicinity, in the person of Mrs. Jean Cameron, at Leith. He was buried at Leith and a suitable monument now marks the last resting place of an ornament of his species and what has truly been called the noblest work of God—an honest man.

WILLIAM LANG, M. D.

Hamilton, Lanarkshire, in this day and time a thriving city, eleven miles from Glasgow, was the birthplace of William Lang, in August, 1796. He received his early education there and adopted the medical profession for a pursuit in life. He graduated from the medical departments of London and Edinburgh Universities with high honors in both, and the list of degrees conferred upon him by these seats of learning, as attested by the monument erected to his memory, is a long and impressive one. He specialized in surgery and enlisted on a man-of-war in the Royal Navy in this capacity. Mr. Lang was a skilled equestrian and a story is still told of how, when at Malta with the Mediterranean squadron, he rode up the steps of a temple and on into the building to win a wager. Quitting the navy he married Susan Burnie, and the two came to Canada in 1827, with their two sons, William and James. He settled in Toronto and in connection with his medical practise carried on a drug store there.

Shortly after the first settlement at the head of Owen Sound he came to the new community as its first doctor, having been offered special inducements by interested parties to do so. His able colleague, Doctor Manley, came shortly afterwards. Dr. Lang settled on Crown Land grant, Lot Number 42, on Concession B, Sydenham, and this property is still in possession of his grandchildren. He speedily became known to almost every settler in the township, as doctors were a stern necessity at unforeseen times with the pioneers. The precise date of Doctor Lang’s coming is not known at present, but it was two or three years prior to 1844. Some future historian will unearth the facts. A hundred interesting anecdotes of his practise in the earliest days could be narrated, did space permit. After his neighbor, William Brown, he was the first to plant an orchard on the Lake Shore Line, although both gentlemen were laughed at for their pains and assured that fruit would never be successfully grown here. Gardening and fruit growing were favorite recreations in his long life. When he first settled on the Lake Shore roads were still of the future, and the path to his log house from the rude hamlet of Sydenham was a blazed trail through the woods. His third son, George, joined the rush to the goldfields of California in 1850, and shortly afterwards died there.

Always an enthusiastic Mason, the Doctor stood high in the councils of early Masonry in Owen Sound. His practise, of course, was large, but hardly a lucrative one. Probably no man in Sydenham ever did as much work, or so much of it gratuitously. While a highly skilled practitioner, more particularly in surgery, he was notoriously a poor collector, and, where his patients were in straitened circumstances, he often never presented a bill. His belligerent personal appearance and a lurid flow of language, more particularly when he found his professional instructions had been neglected, were belied by his large generosity and forgetfulness of self and his own convenience and comfort.

In spite of the hardships of pioneer life, and many of them make more interesting reading now than their realization did then, Doctor Lang raised his family of nine sons and two daughters on the old homestead. His son William was a successful farmer and shrewd man of business, who in later years served the township as Reeve for upwards of twenty years. The untimely death of Burnie. the second youngest son, in 1878, as the result of being thrown from a buggy, is still remembered by our older people.

He died in November, 1868, in his seventy third year, and was survived by his wife for twenty-eight years. They, with their whole family excepting their son George, found interment in the Leith cemetery. The eldest son, William, outlived all his brothers and sisters, dying in 1912 while in his eighty-sixth year. On the roll of Sydenham’s pioneers no name stands higher than that of Lang.

ROBERT ELLIOTT

In the year 1810, Robert Elliot was born on the banks of the Yarrow, near Ettrick, in Dumfries-shire. In his youth he was a retainer on the estate of the Duke of Buccleugh, at that time one of the most wealthy and powerful of the Scottish Lowland’s titled aristocracy— “the bauld Buccleugh” as Sir Walter Scott called him. He landed in Canada in 1837, while it was in the throes of the MacKenzie rebillion and sojourned in Galt until 1843. He then joined the hegira making its way up the new Garafraxa Road to the village of Sydenham, and settled on the Lake Shore Line on a Crown Land grant of fifty acres which he at once started to clear. He was thus among the very earliest settlers in the district, and in after years had many an interesting story to tell of the novel experiences of that time. Here his family of seven sons were born, six of whom arrived at man’s estate. The second youngest of these sons, James, after serving his apprenticeship to the machinists’ trade in Owen Sound, went to New York State and achieved considerable success there as an erecting engineer, having charge of the installation of the power plant at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893. He died a few years later and was brought home for burial.

Mr. Elliott never farmed very extensively but his methods were the very best. Weeds were an abomination he could never tolerate, and his farm was known as the cleanest in the township. He never evinced much interest in public affairs nor aspired to an elective office, but he had a kind heart and a genial manner that made him prized as a neighbor and a friend. From a trackless forest he saw Sydenham blossom and burgeon into one of Grey’s first townships and in the transformation had the satisfaction of knowing he had borne a worthy part. He died on the old homestead where he had lived for fifty one years, in 1894, and while in his eighty-fourth year. With many another sturdy pioneer he rests in Annan cemtery, by the side of his wife.

WILLIAM JOHNSTONE

Away back in the sixteenth century a song was sung on the Scottish Border, one verse running about as follows:

Armstrongs and Elliots,
Johnstones and Turnbulls
Nixons and Croziers,
Raid thieves a’.

These famous families were among the foremost of the Border reivers, and it is not unlikely that the subject of this sketch had in that distant day as an ancestor some illustrious scion of the clan Johnstone who, on more than one occasion, surrounded by his marauding kinsmen, rode bravely down through Annandale and the Debateable Land and on into Northumberland to harry the hated English, drive off their cattle, and take back into Scotland as legitimate spoil everything not too hot or too heavy to carry.

A story is told of the leader of one of these reiving expeditions who, passing a group of fodder stacks on his retreat back to Scotland and safety, exclaimed covetously —“Ay! if ye each had four legs in under ye, ye wudna stand there lang!”

The name of Johnstone stands high in history. Were a poll taken, it would probably show that more illustrious men have borne that name than any other in the English language.

One of them claims our attention at present. William Johnstone was born near the village of An can, in Roxburghshire, in 1814. His people were fairly well to do and early ii iifo the medical profession marked him for her own. He studied at the University of Edinburgh and qualified in medicine, but did not finish his course in surgery. Anaesthetics were then unknown and the horrors of ihe operating table and dissenting room were a little too strong for him. He emigrated to Canada in 1843 and was sixteen weeks on the voyage out. Contrary winds drove the vessel hopelessly out its course, and the captain at last found himself down on the west coast of Africa. Starvation stared the whole company, passengers and crew, in the face, when America was reached. He first settled at Smith Falls, taught school for four years, and married there. He came to the Lake Shore Line in 1847 and located about five and one half miles below Annan. In time the locality was given his name, and so was the post office established there by the postal authorities. In 1863 he was active in organizing the Presbyterian congregation at Johnstone, and was one of its first elders. During Mr. Hunter’s ministry the first church was built, Mr. Johnstone presenting the church site to the new congregation and his brother Robert, who had settled on the adjoining farm, the ground for a cemetery. On account of his early advantages in the way of training and an education, he soon became one of the busiest and most influential men in the township. He never practised medicine, but his offhand advice to his neighbors in the time of their ailments saved many a doctor bill, a service for which they were always grateful. He had considerable legal lore at his command as well, and gave many an opinion in such a respect that subsequently proved to be good in law.

Mr. Johnstone was often pressed by these neighbors to stand for municipal honors, but this he resolutely declined. In spite of his many activities he seems to have been of a retiring disposition, and a man who disliked publicity. In company with Cornelius Duggan of the Irish Block, he took the first census in Sydenham. When the Johnstone post office was opened he became its first postmaster and continued so until his death. For twenty six years he was assessor of the township, an office he also held at the time of his death. These, with the duties on his splendid farm he had cleared from the virgin forest, were tasks more congenial to his temperament. Had he remained in Scotland the ability at least was his to have risen high in the ranks of any of the learned professions he chose to adopt. The lure of a new land overpowered such a consideration, however, and nobody ever heard him regret his coming to it. Canada received many such men at the time and their coming was an advantage to the country, to themselves and to those they left, for it relieved the congestion in population in Scotland and made the gaining of a livelihood easier there.

In one respect he was truly a most fortunate man. He had the happy faculty of making few or no enemies, and at the same time a veritable host of friends. No man in Sydenham was more universally respected for his genial qualities and thoroughly trustworthy character. Such men have a wonderful influence for good in any community, and his example was one that could always be followed with safety. He died at his farm at Johnstone in April, 1886, and is buried in the cemetery there. By a liberal bequest found in the last will and testament ot one of his sons, since deceased, the Presbyterian congregation at Johnstone were enabled to erect a comfortable and commodious -church edifice of brick on the same site as the first frame one, which stands as a durable and praiseworthy memorial to the name of Johnstone.

HUGH REID

About one hundred years ago at time of writing, or in June, 1824, to be precise, Hugh Reid was born at Paisley, Scotland. Before coming to Canada he was apprenticed in one of the wood working trades. There is no record of the date of his emigration, but he must have come out while a very young man, for he had been at Smith’s Falls for several years and was married there before he came to the Lake Shore Line in 1846, when only twenty two years of age. His wife was also born in Scotland’s city of shawls. Mr. Reid was the first precentor in the Annan .congregation, a fact that has been noticed elsewhere, and was all his life an enthusiastic admirer of music and musicians. He soon became prominent in local politics and for about ten years was a councillor in Sydenham. From this he was raised to the reeveship, and in 1873 was elected Warden of Grey County, taking office simultaneously with S. J. Parker who was in that year first elected to the treasurership of the County. He discharged the duties of these offices faithfully, and as his public record was such as to inspire the utmost confidence he was later elected treasurer of Sydenham township and of its Agricultural Society as well. On two occasions he acted as county valuator, and was for many years secretary of the Sydenham Mutual Fire Insurance Company. At the time of his death he was president of the Telford and Company brokerage firm. All these public duties make his life a busy one and brought him in contact with so many kinds and conditions of men that his face was one of the best known in Sydenham and Owen Sound. Like many of his Protestant countrymen he was an enthusiastic Mason, and rose to some of the highest honors in local ranks of the craft.

He was a man who loved company, and the pleasures of social life were to him a necessity. It would be useless to say he had no enemies, as no man who has held public office as long as he did and mingled in public affairs so extensively fails in accumulating at least a few of them, but none of his enemies could lay his finger on a solitary dishonorable or dishonest act committed by Hugh Reid. No man on the Lake Shore Line was so much in the public eye or was so freely criticized, but he was happily not of a sensitive disposition, nor did he carry a grudge. It was noticeable, too, that many of his warmest critics were his heartiest supporters on election day, a fact that is only accounted for by a strange perversity in the Scottish character, which neither they nor any one else can explain. In his younger years he was said to have been a very handsome man, with regular features, and to the last he preserved a serious and thoughtful cast of countenance not generally found in men who enjoy social inter—228— course as he did. He was a great admirer of his native country, its literature, music and institutions, but, above all, its people. This was evidenced by his trips back to the Old Land; his portrait which appears on another page is by a Glasgow photographer. Among the last of the earliest pioneers in North Sydenham to pass away, his death was sincerely regretted by the host of friends of his declining years. He is buried at Annan, having died in May, 1905, in his eighty first year.

DAVID ARMSTRONG

Of the facts in connection with Mr. Armstrong’s early life very little is known to us. The obituary notices which have from time to time appeared in the public press on this, as well as many another worthy subject, are reticent on this point; evidently those who wrote them thought they would be of very little interest to their readers. In this we believe they were mistaken, for in the well known words of the poet, “the child is father of the man,” and the characteristics we display in our youth are in most cases reliable forecasts of our subsequent careers as men. We do know of David Armstrong, however, that he was born in Dumfries-shire in 1818, and that he came to the Lake Shore Line in 1846, or when he was twenty seven years of age. His brother Robert came about the same time; in fast at one time the Armstrong family, of which there were two separate and distinct branches, were the most numerously represented of all the Scottish families in that community, and a very worthy and eminently respectable representation it was too.

Mr. Armstrong led what would be esteemed by some an uneventful life, but, nevertheless, a busy and happy one. He had no taste for the doubtful sweets of public life or elective office, and if he tasted none of their tri-umps he was at the same time spared their disappointments and defeats. His interests were bound up in the church, the school, his farm and his home, where his family received a training which was afterwards reflected in their lives as useful and honorable members of society. His interest in religious and educational affairs and his activities in connection with the Annan congregation and the first school there, have already been noticed. These were continued up until within a few years of his death. He formed a wide connection of friends in both town and country among both old and young, as he was a most companionable man—one who made friends by showing himself friendly. In his early years in Scotland he had learned the trade of a carpenter and naturally was interested in it all his life, but the life of a farmer with all its drawbacks and disadvantages (and those who have followed that occupation alone know what they are) he preferred to that of a tradesman, as being more suited to his independent temperament and his desire to be his own employer. This was one of the traits of character which, in Mr. Armstrong’s day and time, made the Scottish Lowlanders among the most successful agriculturists in Canada, and it was nowhere more apparent than on the Lake Shore Line and Concession A. Backed up by energy, thrift, and perserverance, it transformed the Lake Shore Line in time from what was not the most promising of agricultural districts into one of the gardens of Grey County. It took hard work to bring about such a result but of men such as David Armstrong and his kind it might well be said that “toil was their best repose,” and the green old age to which many of them lived proves that hard work, if it be not beyond one’s strength, seldom indeed kills. It was a supreme source of satisfaction to these pioneers to know that in a few years the land on which they had settled was going to be their own, and that they and their children would not be paying rackrent forever and a day to some dissolute scion of the Scottish landed aristocracy. It was this hope that nerved them to endure the hardships and trials of pioneering, and, for some of them at least, the heartache and indescribable loneliness of homesickness, perhaps the hardest trial of all. Mr. Armstrong was in the settlement at the very beginning of things and saw and helped in its gradual development. He could tell from his own experience how with these trials were mingled some of the joys that make life most worth living; the satisfaction that springs from thrift and self denial, the joy of cheerfully lending a hand to some less fortunate neighbor and, above all, the supreme enjoyment of a hearty hospitality which made every man welcome at his neighbor’s door and a part of the household as long as he stayed inside of it. He died in July, 1893, in his seventy sixth year, and is buried at Annan.

WALTER AITKEN

Like so many of his future neighbors on the Lake Shore Line, Walter Aiken was born in Hawick, in the year 1812, the same year in which Great Britain and the United States engaged in one of the silliest wars ever waged between two “civilized” nations, and Napoleon left the bones of four hundred thousand Frenchmen to whiten the steppes of Russia between Moscow and the Niemen on his disastrous retreat from the city that had been burnt about his ears.

Every neighborhood has its humorist—the man who can turn the most serious situation in a joke, and excite the risibilities of his neighbors at the most unexpected moment and in the most unexpected manner. In the language of the old school primer—“Watty was a sad wag.”

Of Mr. Aitken’s early career little is known to us. However, this much is known, that he came to Canada at about twenty seven years of age and was then a tall young Scot, standing over six feet in height On the same ship with him were forty five other emigrants from Hawick to Canada, one of them being the lady Mr. Aitken afterward made his wife. The story of his courtship, and of his hope long deferred which happily won out at last, would read like a tale of romance and we are only sorry lack of space precludes its insertion here. He settled first at Galt and came to the Lake Shore in 1847 and was shortly afterwards happily married. His farm, situated about a mile northeast of Annan, is still in the possession of v daughter-in-law, Mrs. Margaret Aitken.

Mr. Aitken, or as he was more familiarly known, “Watty” was a stranger to the ways of the bush. He could swing a pick with the best of them, but the proper use of an axe was a mystery. Two sons of a neighbor were one day helping him at the chopping and the same evening, when all three were sitting about the table, the conversation turned upon what they would each choose if they could have whatever they wanted. Watty remarked, looking at the two boys, “Callants, I want nothing better for this world than to be able to chop like you two.” This little incident will serve to illustrate some of the trials of the earliest Scottish settlers in learning to chop. In due time, however, the farm was cleared. Its most valuable feature now is an apple orchard, than which there are few better in Grey County.

Mr. Aitken has been dead, at time of writing, these twenty seven years, but some of his choicest stories and wisest sayings are still current in his home neighborhood. His humor was spontaneous, and sometimes highly effective in reviving the spirits of a gang of tired loggers, or in enlivening proceedings at the social gatherings of the early days whenever they gave symptoms of dragging. In fact one sometimes wonders whether there was not a streak of Irish hidden away somewhere in his mental makeup. The most commendable part of his humor was that nobody could ever complain of being made the butt of it for a more kindly man, or one who was more considerate of the feelings of others, never drew the breath of life. He was never guilty of a faux pas, but seemed to know intuitively when he was skating on thin ice and where the danger signals were flying. His keenest witticisms were delivered with such a preternaturally grave countenance that one would suppose he were the chief mourner at a funeral, instead of an inveterate fun maker who was enjoying the joke fully as much or more than his listeners were.

Aside from his joyous proclivities as a jokesmith, Mr. Aitken was a citizen of exemplary character and the very highest integrity. His goodwill toward all men betokened a conscience at ease with itself and the world at large. His disposition seemed permeated with the milk of human kindness, and he was an entire stranger to that spirit which is eternally carping at and criticizing the weaknesses of one’s neighbors, which a great novelist once fittingly described as only an unconscious admission of the fault finder’s own inferiority. It will be long before we look upon his like again and in this last respect if in no other it would be well for the best of us if we were more like him. He died in 1897, at the ripe age of eighty five years, at peace with himself, his Maker, and the world which was the poorer because of his passing.

JOHN HUTSON

The last of these sketches may appropriately be devoted to one of the earliest, if not the first actual settler on the Lake Shore Line. As nearly as can be ascertained John Hutson came there in 1841.

He settled upon the fifty acre Crown Land lot where the Leith road intersects the Lake Shore Line, and on the south-east side of the latter road. The south-west corner of this lot in time became the centre of the village of Annan, or, as it was first known, the Leith Corner.

Mr. Hutson saw it develop from a tract of hardwood bush to a village of four stores, two hotels, one school-house, one public library, one Presbyterian church, a drill hall, two blacksmith shops, one shoemaker's shop, one harness maker’s shop, one tailor shop, a manse and ten other dwelling houses. The learned professions were represented by a Presbyterian minister and a physician.

He was a native of Dumfries-shire, as was also his wife, and his occupation before coming out to Canada was that of a shepherd. The duties of a shepherd were quite distinct from those of the other hired men on the large landed estates of Scotland. They had little experience with hard labor but led a solitary life out on the hills, of

1. Andrew Sibbald. 2. Walter Aitken. o. William Johnstone, 4. James Gibson. 5. Hugh Reid. 6. John Couper.

ten out of sight of a human habitation and sometimes doing the work of a drover for a day or two on an empty stomach. Their position was no sinecure, as the responsibility connected with the job was very great; the man who performed his duties faithfully and won the name of a good shepherd needed no other word of commendation from anybody. One of Scotland’s most famous poets, James Hogg, the author of the Queen’s Wake won the sobriquet of “The Ettrick Shepherd.”

They had, as a matter of necessity, to be regular and temperate in their habits and in consequence lived frequently to be old men, as they seldom suffered from the infirmities superinduced by hard and exhausting labor. In such a respect Mr. Hutson was a splendid specimen of his class. Tall and well proportioned, even in his later days he was as erect and straight-limbed as a Life Guardsman, and before coming to Canada he was often interviewed by recruiting sergeants of crack regiments of the line and besought to take “the King’s shilling” and enlist with them. When referring to these interviews he would remark very modestly that he never would have been of any service as a fighting man, and his acquaintances who knew of his kindhearted and unassuming disposition could never imagine him as “seeking the bubble reputation in the cannon’s mouth.”

While serving as a shepherd it was part of his work to attend to the slaughtering of the sheep, but he never overcame his aversion to that part of his duties and after settling on his little farm and doing the work of slaughtering both sheep and swine for himself and his neighbors, he nearly always contrived in some way to avoid the actual killing.

For many years he, in common with all the early settlers, had to put up with many hardships and inconveniences, these being aggravated by reason of his bachelorhood and the fact that he kept house for himself. After about twenty years on the Lake Shore of the single state he took unto himself a wife, and it goes without saying that his last days were his best ones.

He died in 1889 while in his eighty-second year, leaving his wife and family in a comfortable home and the legatees of what in his lifetime had been his most highly prized possession, a small but carefully selected library, the favorite volumes among which were, we need scarcely add, the Scottish poets.