EPISODE 516: EDWARD FREEMAN…THE GRANDFATHER I NEVER REALLY KNEW

EPISODE 516    PART 1: HEAD GARDENER EDWARD FREEMAN ….WHO WAS HE?   THE GRANDFATHER I NEVER REALLLY KNEW

alan skeoch

Jan. 19, 2022

pics…left to right…Alan Skeoch, Eric Skeoch, Edward Freeman (grandfather),  circa 1945

EDWARD FREEMAN was my grandfather.   I thought I was close to him but now realize, thanks to my cousin Ted Freeman, that

I never really knew him.  He never told me a word about his life in England as head gardener on the Eywood Estate except

some weird comment about tipping his hat.  “Never liked tipping my hat to Gwyers.”   That comment meant nothing to me.  What’s

the big deal about tipping a hat?  Some do it to indicate a good morning or a sudden meeting of an aged friend.  No meaning

except greeting.

Well, I now know that the issue of tipping the hat in England in 1900 had a lot of meaning.  It meant you knew where you 

stood in the hierarchy of English life.  It was a deferential act.  “I am tipping my hat because I know you are better than I am.”

It acknowledged and accepted inferior status.

  This was drilled into me when I became a teen ager and our 38th Scout Troop went camping

with a British scout.  We did not get along at all.  “You know the trouble with you Allan…you are COMMON.”  In short, he regarded

me as an inferior person.   At that moment as we sat around our campfire I  thought, “Does this son of a bitch

want a fight for some reason?”  I am not a fighter so let the comment slide away.   But I did not tip my scout hat to the bastard.

And Granddad’s comment about his hat began to have meaning.

He never said another word to me on that subject.  He never really said much…but he loved our visits. That was unsaid.

He listened in amusement to the events of our youth.  He even got involved

when I had a bad case of pin worms and mom and granddad pulled me from under the bed to give me the cursed enema.

He made Eric and me each small wheelbarrows…hand  carved.  He smoked his pipe and tended his large kitchen garden

with the neatly trimmed cedar hedges retaining heat in the garden rectangle.  He managed a huge rhubarb patch beside the

backhouse…something we have never been able to do ever since.  From that patch he made a barrel of rhubarb wine. 

He carved picture frames containing old black and white]

photos of some distant place called  “Eywood….with an ‘E’ not an ‘H’.”

The pictures I have of granddad Freeman have nothing to do with England…no grand English estate….no scramble to

make his way through a class system….no 15 year apprentice ship…no need to grow a beard to make him look older.

OLDER?  Granddad had always been old.  He was born in 1871 which means he was 80 years old in 1951when I was in Grade 7

  reading cowboy westerns by Zane Grey and Luke Short.  A North American kid unbroken by being ‘in service’

…he would have been 89 in 1960 when I had the chance to sleuth out the Freeman roots roots in Herefordshire. 

But by then he was dead…died in 1958.

Alan Skeoch, Eric Skeoch, Edward Freeman, Arnold Skeoch (out of picture)

Edward Freeman, former head gardener of Eywood,  PICTURE TAKEN CIRCA 1950 in Canada

Of course I knew Granddad.  He made me a wheelbarrow….he spent a lot of time cutting and splitting firewood….and

even more time keeping his garden spotless.  But I never knew him really.  I never knew his life as a kid.  I  only knew mine.

I knew I  failed him a couple of times.  Like when I stole one of his special chisels and

got caught;  I hid in the long grass Timothy field…ashamed…  Because I got caught.  If I had

succeeded that memory would have faded.  He never chastised me.  Looked amused.  My biggest failure

was refusal to shoot a porcupine chewing maple buds high up in a sugar maple tree back in the bush.

“Granddad, I found a live porcupine back in the maple bush.”

“Fetch the rifle…we’ll get it.  Show you how to shoot.

“Shoot?”  I did not want to kill.   But killing seemed to be a rite of passage for farm kids.

I was a city boy really.  No gun. But I went along with granddad.  I remember he was crippled by then and had to

hobble to the back field using a sturdy cane.  He had me carry the rifle.  I hated that moment.  I was too

gutless to say No.  What I did know was that the porcupine incident would be one of the last … one of the

only times Granddad and I would share an experience.

“There it is…way up there in the maple.”

“Take careful aim and shoot it.”  I Took aim….careful aim to deliberately miss the creature.

“Try again.”  “Try again.”  “Try again.”  There was no escape so my final shot hit the poor thing.

“Just wounded it, Alan, now you are going to have to climb the tree and knock him down.

What a traumatic event.  Must have been 70 years ago but I can still pick the spot in the bush.

The big maple is gone now.  I climbed that tree with a stick in hand.  The porcupine looked at

me…little beady black glossy eyes the size of ball bearings.   I  poked and poked.  Blood dribbled down on

my face….even some quills fell.  But the porcupine held fast.  Finally I gave up.  And Granddad 

gave up.  Both of us hobbled back through the winter snow to the big stove in the front room. 

“Well, Lou, someone is going to find a dead porcupine.  Let’s keep Laddie tied

up for a while,” he Said to Grandma (Louisa Amelia Freeman)

And sure enough a dog did find the porcupine…got quills in its lips and mouth requiring

a visit to the veterinarian.  Word spread up the road.  Granddad never ratted on me.

But I never really got to know him.  But Thought I did. Until this January 2022 when I sent

a note to my cousin Ted Freeman who spends the winter in Texas.  I had asked him about

Grandma and Granddad Freeman.  Simple questions like the  life of a head gardener

on a 1500 acre country estate in England circa 1900.

“Granddad didn’t like tipping his hat to the Gwyers,” Alan  “And he did not like being head

gardener for people like the Gwyers.”

“How did you know that, Ted”

“We talked a lot as we did things on the farm.”

“Ted, I stayed with grandpa in the  farm house every other week-end but we never talked

about his life as a boy.  I never asked.”

“My middle name is ‘Edward’, named after grandpa.”

“Ted, my middle name is also Edward…never thought that was important.”

“More important than just grandpa I think   The Edwards family took in grandma

after she was born.  Illegitimate .”

“Mom did mention that.  Some man by the name of Dr. Price was the father.  I was

told that grandma almost became a street child in Birmingham if she hadn’t been rescued

by Mrs Webb, whoever that was.  Mom seemed to believe that grandma was rejected.”

“Yes, she was rescued by Mrs Webb and brought up on the Edwards Farm along with

a boy.”

“No education then?”

“Quite the contrary.  Dr. Price paid for half of grandma’s education.  Eventually she graduated

from the Hawkins Ladies Academy in Kington.  She graduated as a lady.  Very high up the

social ladder.  So high that granddad would be emxpected to tp his hat to her.  Which he never did.”

“What is a lady?  Means nothing to me.

“Meant  a lot in 1890’s..meant she had risen above her station in life.  Louisa Amelia Bufton was a lady.”

“When did you talk to granddad?”

“Lots of time.””

“Dad and I helped him with the haying….Dad liked to rest the horses and we sat down 

and talked.  He liked to light his pipe and talk about the past.”

“About Eywood?”

“Sometimes.  He said he did not like the Gwyers.”

“Only head gardener from 1898 to 1905 “

“Prestige job but not worth the aggravation “

“Some head gardeners grew old in the job because pay was so poor.  So maybe granddad sensed that

decided to take a cjce on a better life in Canada.”

“Was the risk worth it?”

“He thought so and tried to get his brothers and sisters to follow him.  Cliff, Chris and Annie did emigrate.”

Emigration cost money.  Edward and Louisa with their children Frank (8 or 9) and Elsie (5) boarded the Victorian

in 1908 bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia and then a train all the way to Toronto..

“Where did granddad get enough money to migrate?”

“He told me he bought some stocks and wold them at a profit”

“

The Passenger Steamship ‘Victorian’ built in Belfast and launched in 1904 for transatlantic trade.  Converted to a warship in 1914 and finally scrapped 

IF BEING A HEAD GARDENER WAS SUCH A PRESTIGIOUS JOB THEN WHY QUIT?

THE ENCLOSED GARDENS OF EYWOOD CIRCA 1960