NOTE: I try to make the stories have broad appeal even if family centred. Maybe to trigger readers own memories.
I never asked enough questions of my grandparents. And I fear my attempt here to record
the past is ignored by those closest to me…our sons and their children. I know many friends read the
stories…Russ, Dan, Faye, Jeannette, Bryce, Owen, James, Mary, Ted, John, Noreen, Sam, Oksana, Doug,
Chris, Robert, Sandra, Brad, Aidan and lots more. Marjorie proof reads each story which is a big help. No one has yet complained when
I use use curse words to put a title drama into the project. So far 532 stories. Too many to read. One negative result? I have gained
three pounds just when I thought I was losing weight.
EPISODE 532 QUESTIONS WITHOUT ANSWERS (Questions I never asked Granddad…failed him)
alan skeoch
Feb. 12, 2022
THE FREEMAN FAMILY, CIRCA 1890. I AM NOT EVEN SURE WHICH ONE IS EDWARD FREEMAN. SOME SAY THE TALL
BOY BEHIND THE FATHER BUT GRANDDAD WAS SHORT.
HARRY HORSMAN IN FRONT OF EDWARD FREEMAN’S ’SHACK’ NEAR KRUGERSDORF 1914. FIND THE TARPAPER.
(Granddad, how long does it take to fell a tree and cut one of those logs in the picture?
Did Harry help with the cross cut saw? Is this your house? How many logs are needed to build a house?
How long did it take for your house to burn to the ground? Why did you not start all over again?}
So many questions flood my mind Questions for which I will never find answers
because the people who knew the answers are long gone. When they were
around I was too wrapped up in my own life. Such is true of all of us I suppose.
Take Edward Freeman, my grandfather, who is so fascinating to me these days.
Yet I know so little about him because I never asked. Sure he told us the
story about the forest fire and feeing on a work train flat car while burning embers
showered down. Were it not for my cousin Ted Freeman, I would not have
known the full drama as the bridge builders waited for the men on the handcar
to emerge alive from the inferno at the last minute. He could have told me so much more…
had I shown any interest. I was just too wrapped up in myself…like most grandkids.
Just for the hell of it, I have written a few questions I should have asked granddad 70
years ago. Why should you read them? Because, if you are the same age as I am, a
lot of questions like mine come to mind about your own families.
Questions (that will never be answered)
1) Granddad, why did you quit your job as head gardener at Eywood Coourt? You had
a home far better than you ever had for the rest of your life. Surely the embarassment
of tipping your hat to your betters was not that bad. Maybe you did not quit, maybe
Mr. Gwyer let you go! (i.e. you were fired.) But that seems doubtful as your memories of
Eywood are so positive.
2) Granddad, from 1909 to 1912 you tried to make a living selling carrots and such
to Torontonians. How could you possibly make a living selling vegetables you grew
in distant Etobicoke? You had to buy a horse and buggy as well as all the tools
How did you keep the wireworms out of
the carrots? How did you keep the cabbage worms out of the cabbage? Didn’t the
Colorado potato bug ruin your potatoes? And the corn borers must have chewed
the corn. And all these vegetables could not provide an income for12 months.
You probably had some chickens that had to be hidden from foxes, raccoons and rats.
How did you control those nasty chicken lice on their bums? Seems the market garden
was a failure.
3) Granddad, you told Cousin Ted that you built a tar paper covered shack
on that 12 acre bit of land that had to be cleared first. How much money
did you have left after paying costs of emigration? Where did that money come
from? Ted says you told him you made money on the stock market in England?
What stocks?
4) Granddad, in 1908 you travelled to Manitoba to check out homesteading but
when you got back to Toronto, Grandma (you called her Lou) refused to go
west because doctors and schools were few and far between. Tell me about
that conversation.
5) Granddad, is it true that grandma was raised as a lady because her father, Dr Price,
paid for part of her education at the Lady Hawkins academy in Kington?
Mom said grandma was illegitimate and turned loose of the streets of
Birmigham until rescued by a person known as Aunt Webb. Which story
is true? If she was so highly educated as a lady then the streets of Birmingham
story may not be true. I have sent a note to the Hawkins Academy to see if
a girl named Louisa Bufton was enrolled around 1885. No answer.
6) Granddad, who was Dr. Price? There was a very famous Dr. William Price
living in Wales and places where Mrs Bufton lived, a famous but also an eccentric man who did not
believe in marriage. He sired many children and took some responsibility
for them. Dr. William Price. Could there be two men named Dr. Price in the same place? Same man or not? Why was grandma named
Louisa Amelia Bufton and not Louisa Price?
7) Granddad, why did you, in 1912, decide to homestead in New Ontario. This was
a rough wilderness plagued by horrific forest fires. You must have been aware of
the 1911 Porcupine fire…yet You took the train
north to Krugersdorf in 1912 and secured a 160 acre homestead there.
Free land as long as you cleared 16 acres and bill a cabin. Where was this
farm located? What kind of house did you build?. Is this picture below
the house? I believe that is Harry Horsman in the picture. He liked your
14 year old daughter, Elsie, she eventually became my mother. He was all alone and lonely
according to mom who I thin liked him as a friend or a bit more than a friend. Is this
picture the log house that burned in the Great Matheson Fire of 1916 or did it
burn earlier in the 1913 Englehart fire?
Picture taken in Krugersdorf of Harry Horsman in front of what may have been the Freeman home until it burned to the ground.
8) Cutting trees with cross cut saw needs two people. Who was your helper?
Did Harry Horsman help you clear those 16 compulsory acres and help build the log house?
How tough was it to clear those 16 acres. Were many of the fires that plagued
Englehart and north to Cochrane started by homesteaders trying to clear
their land? You could sell the logs but had to pile the branches…easy to start forest fires
back then, was it not? By the way, granddad, I have a bunch of love letters Harry Horsman
sent to Elsie. I must tell his story again. Years ago I made an illustrated film about Harry.
Mom gave me his letters after Dad died. I wonder how many women keep letters of old
boyfriends. Too bad about Harry. Dead in the Somme offensive of 1916. The same year you
left Krugersdorf. What happened to your homestead? Seized by the government?
9) Why did you stop working on the homestead and take a job as a carpenter —a bridgebuilder —
with the Temiskming and Northern ontario Railroad? Had you given up on the idea
of becoming a farmer?
10) What were the men like that you worked alongside? Did grandma really work in a local hotel
to earn the money to buy that pump organ? Why was music so important to both of you.
Violin, pump organ, and singing. I remember you playing The Devils Dream on the violin
in 1950’s. You looked at my hand and said, “Alan, you have long fingers and should take
up the violin.” I think Ted had longer fingers. He still plays that same violin.
11) Just what was buried beside the Krugersdorf house when that forest fire swept down?
Did Grandma really push and shove the organ out of the burning cabin? How did it
survive without catching fire.?
12 Granddad, did you ever regret going to Canada? Seems you had a better life in
England. Was it all a big mistake? You spent the winters carving oak picture frames
for old photos of the people on the Eywood estate…like Mrs. Sears the cook who’
became godmother to mom (Elsie). Those framed pictures hung in the front room
of the farmhouse. Why were they so highly valued? Were those pictures really
pictures of ‘regret’? The frame of mom is massive, see it below.
13) Granddad, I found a postcard that mom brought back from Herefordshire after
her 1933 trip to England. You sent the card to Uncle Chris urging him and all your
brothers and sisters to migrate to Canada. One reason you stated was for them
to get away from your father who you hated while you loved your mother and feared
for her health. Tell me more about them. Was he an alcoholic? Did he really try
to commit suicide when they lived in Lyonshall? (maybe best if I not ask those
questions) Eventually Anna, Chris and Cliff did migrate. Aunt Annie died at our house when
I was small. She gave me a little porcelain money pig the week she died. She gave
Eric A tinware globe of the world. Funny the things I remember. I still have the pig.
14) Granddad, would you say you were the victim of misleading advertising
by the Canadian government.? Your trip to ‘new Ontario’ in 1912 must have
contrasted with the posters which painted a very rosy picture.
Did Grandma get upset when things just did not work out? She never
complained. Only complaint I ever heard from Grandma was those winter
evenings when you played the violin which started Laddie howling in harmony.
“Dad, stop encouragng Laddie.” Why did she call you dad and not Edward?
Just getting ready for winter occupied much of your time in Canada. I remember these piles
of hardwood that took so much effort each year.
15) Granddad, why did you not tell me about your early life. Being a head
gardener was a very elevated position in the stratified English social structure.
Didn’t you regret your decision to give all that up. Were there not regrets?
Seems there were things of which you would rather not speak.
Was life at Eywood Court good? Why did you leave? Were you pushed? There are Push and Pull factors, which was
dominant?