Upper Canada life: 1861 - 1871
Welcome back to The Coubrough Times. When we last saw Annie and Jim, it was 1861 and they had just settled into the farm near Dresden, Ontario. But time has moved on and it is now 1871 for them. For me, it is 126 years later and I have spent much of the last few months reading about my great-great-grandparents and  how things were in their day. I have come to feel that I know my them and their children as people, rather than just names and dates. I hope these pages help you feel the same way.

Between 1861 and 1871, life in Upper Canada had changed more than a little. Things had improved somewhat for the Coubroughs after 13 years of hard work, but survival was still a struggle. Much of the land was still covered in bush, the roads were few and barely passable and there were still no stores or churches in the township. (Some of the surrounding townships did have such amenities, and were even close enough to visit occasionally.) What land was cleared was mostly poorly drained, heavy clay that gave little return for effort expended. Jim and Annie weren't quitters, though. They were determined to make a new life in this land and they did.

Politics
Jim and Annie had seen many changes since the last census-taker had made his rounds. The country had survived the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870, though the battles were mostly fought further east near Fort Erie.⁽¹⁾ The first of these "raids" had actually taken place on Campobello Island, New Brunswick, in late April, 1866. This worried New Brunswickers so badly that they reversed their opinions and voted in favour of confederation with "the Canadas."

The name of the place where the Coubroughs lived had changed, too. On July 1, 1867, the colonies of Upper Canada, Lower Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia had united to become a nation called Canada. This new country had four provinces: Ontario, Quebec (previously Upper and Lower Canada), Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. A population of 3,816,680 occupied an area of 370,045 square miles. It seems that Canadians have always liked long summer weekends: July 1 was chosen as Confederation Day because it fell on a Monday in 1867!

Soon after Confederation, political strife began to rear its ugly head in Manitoba. The Canadian government bought Rupert's Land from the Hudson Bay Company and sent survey crews west to divide up the prairies for settlement. The Métis (many of whom were of French Catholic descent) decided they didn't like the idea of their land being given away to English Protestant farmers, so, with Louis Riel at the helm, they took over the Hudson's Bay Company fort at Lower Fort Garry. In an effort to "make Canada respect us," they executed one Tom Scott because he was "of bad character." This was not a popular move in Ontario and contributed to Riel's eventually being declared an outlaw. In any case, Ottawa saw provincial status as a way to pour oil on troubled waters: Manitoba became a province in 1870, with its French-English duality entrenched as a condition of confederation.

The addition of British Columbia was much simpler. By 1870, the gold fields had played out and most of the miners had gone. This left only a British and Canadian elite, along with a few ranchers and professional people. These folks being left holding a huge debt decided that they should ask Canada for assistance. They wanted a wagon road over the Rockies, but were promised a full transcontinental railway, to be completed within ten years.

By the end of 1871, with the addition of Manitoba and British Columbia (1871), Canada stretched "from sea to shining sea." The prime minister, Sir John A. MacDonald, could now begin to implement his dream of a coast-to-coast railway. (This was, in fact, part of the price for B.C.'s joining confederation, but it would be several years before it was begun and many more before it was finally completed in 1885.) Saskatchewan and Alberta were still the "Northwest Territory," but they were now much safer from American incursion.

Closer to home, there had been both a federal and a provincial election in 1868. Being the male head of his household, and a landowner, Jim would perhaps have been allowed to go to the market square and vote for his man, but, as a mere female, Annie almost certainly would not have been accorded such a privilege. Voting was still done by a show of hands so it was pretty tough to keep your political leanings a secret. In any case, the man sent to Ottawa to represent Lambton was one Alex MacKenzie of Sarnia, while Rufus Stephenson of Chatham was the man for Kent. Another citizen of Sarnia, J.B. Pardee, represented Lambton at the provincial legislature in Toronto.

Much of this was far away from western Ontario, but it was in all the papers. Sensationalism sold newspapers then, just as it does now. Politics was not the only thing in the papers, of course. There were also advertisements, fashion news for the ladies, gossip columns, birth notices, serialized fiction, and obituaries.

Economy
After Confederation, times were pretty good in most of Ontario. In contrast to our own times, the new federal government took in money faster than it was spent. The weather was generally good, with the right amounts of rain and snow at the proper times. The economic depression of the early 1870's would not start for a couple more years yet. There were taxes, of course, but not yet on income so people got to actually keep some of what they earned. It was a time of good crops in most of the province and they found a ready market in the growing cities. It was fashionable for those who could afford it to speculate in railways and there was much cash flowing in the upper levels of the business world. But, while Jim may have been able to travel to Chatham or distant Sarnia by rail, it isn't likely he dabbled in railway stocks.

Money
Other things had changed as well. When Annie and Jim first came to Ontario, British currency was in wide use, though the public records had been kept in dollars since 1858. By 1871, the Canadian dollar was gaining popularity, though British coins and American "eagles" were still legal currency, except at Post Offices and banks. (An eagle was a gold coin worth $10.) Eagles, double eagles ($20) and half-eagles ($5) were taken at face value, but British coins could only be used for amounts up to ten dollars. The dollar itself, was defined in terms of the English pound: a dollar was to be worth one-fourth of a pound, the cent to be one hundredth of a dollar and the mill to be one tenth of a cent.

Paper money was also in circulation, but most of it was printed by the banks rather than the government until about 1865. There were $1, $2, $4, $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 bills, but, even after the government started printing them, many people preferred coins. The banks were all far away in the "cities." The closest banks to Annie and Jim were the Bank of Montréal and the Canadian Bank of Commerce in Sarnia (60 miles) or Canadian Bank of Commerce and the Royal Canadian Bank in Chatham (45 miles). Gold was gold, after all, and how could you know those bits of paper weren't just a scam to part honest folks from their "real" money?

Mail service
Postal service had improved over the past ten years, though it was still pretty expensive. There were only two rates: letter and parcel. You could, though, choose to send a letter with no postage so that the receiver had to pay for it. This was more expensive, but handy if you were writing home for money. A half-ounce letter for "local" delivery (not outside Canada) was five cents if you paid when you mailed it, seven cents "if unpaid." It cost one cent to mail a letter to someone who used the same post office as you, and two cents extra if it was delivered by a letter carrier. They would "re-direct letters from one place to another without any further charge."

Parcel rules were much less lenient. They had to be paid in advance (25 cents for each pound) and could not weigh more than three pounds. They also had other restrictions. "No letter must be enclosed. No parcel shall contain anything liable to injure the mail. The size must not exceed one foot in length or breadth or six inches in thickness."

Jim's nearest Post Office was at Dawn Centre, a quarter-mile away. It had opened in 1861 and was "called Rutherford after a noted Presbyterian clergyman." The village was still known as Dawn Centre until many years later. Letters or parcels could be mailed there, but to buy a money order or send a telegram they had to travel further afield to Oil Springs (seven miles) or Petrolia (20 miles). They most likely didn't frequent the Montréal Telegraph Company's office: At 25 cents for 10 words and each extra word one cent more, telegrams were reserved for extreme emergencies and rich folks.

Travel
Traveling in the Dawn Township of 1871 was not much fun. It would be quite a few years yet before all the concession roads were open for their entire length. The roads that did exist were scarcely more than trails through the heavy bush that still covered most of the township. The best of these were only "turnpiked;" that is they had the stumps removed and they were graded. The area's heavy clay soil made road-building a formidable, back-breaking task. In dry weather, these roads were packed hard like cement. When it rained, they turned into sloppy, sticky clay mud that made them all but impassable. Not surprisingly, most people traveled only when they had to. Conditions were slightly better in winter, when sleighs slid easily over frozen swamps and snowy roads.

Home
The family was growing up and life must have been easier with four adults to share the work. But there was still plenty for everyone to do. There were no shopping malls; indeed the first general store would not arrive at Dawn Centre for several years yet. So, all the laundry was still done by hand with home-made soap. Clothes were boiled over a wood fire--outside whenever possible--with water hauled in heavy wooden buckets from the hand-dug well.

Soap was made from water which had been strained through wood ashes (to make lye water, a very strong alkali solution) and carefully saved fats of all kinds. These were generally boiled together in a large iron kettle in the yard. Soap was nearly all made outdoors as the fumes are quite strong. For most people, making soap was the only way to get any for a long time. Many families continued to make their own even after it was available in stores as it was often very expensive. The same soap was used for washing everything: clothes, dishes, floors, tables and people.

There were chickens and pigs to feed and cows to milk. There was always the garden to be planted and harvested. Hogs had to be butchered, then salted and smoked, and jam and pickles and other preserves had to be "put up" against the coming winter. On many farms these were all women's work, as was making butter and cheese as a means of storing any milk that could not be immediately consumed.

Inside the house, things hadn't changed much, except that the girls were now all big enough to help with the work. Annie and her girls probably had a large kitchen garden where she undoubtedly grew the huge amounts of root vegetables that were needed to get through the winter. She most likely had turnips (or "swedes" as they were called then), beets (or "mangel-wurzels"), carrots, beans, peas, onions and perhaps some potatoes, though some Scots refused to eat such things. She possibly had some corn, though this would have been fed to the livestock as it was not considered fit for humans. Though they likely had some spinach for fresh greens and, possibly, some herbs, she probably didn't have cucumbers or tomatoes. Cucumbers were too delicate and required a lot of water that would have to be carried by hand if it failed to rain. For this reason, they were often thought of as being only for rich people. Tomatoes--love apples as they were known--were often considered poisonous and no one in her right mind would waste garden space on such a thing. One thing Annie would have almost certainly had was "pie plant," or rhubarb. It was the one plant that could be counted upon to grow, no matter what the summer--or the soil--was like.

In the early spring, after a long winter of turnips and oatmeal, fresh greens were a welcome change. It would have been the job of one of the younger girls to gather dandelions, purslane and any other edible green things to be found. Any vegetables found on the family table were sure to have been cooked, usually by lengthy boiling in lots of salted water. Annie would have been scandalized by the suggestion of a salad; everybody knew that raw vegetables were bad for the digestion. Of course, were we to go back and have a winter supper with them, we would likely have a coronary attack just thinking about the amount of salt and sugar consumed.

Beef was stored in brine strong enough to float an egg­about three pounds of salt to five gallons of water­and had to be soaked in several changes of water to make it palatable. Jam was whatever fruit was available and sugar, boiled until thick enough to set (fruit pectin such as "Certo" was not invented until the 1920's). Sweets were very sweet, by our standards. The old recipes used much more sugar and cream than we would consider in these cholesterol-conscious days.

Eggs and butter in winter were rare treats. The only ones available would have been stored in brine, just like the beef, but perhaps with some sugar added. Another rarity, especially in late winter, was milk. While many housewives made cheese of some sort that would have kept for months, fresh milk would be very hard to come by when the cows went dry before calving. The cheeses were also sometimes stored in brine to keep them from going mouldy.

A staple food of most Scots families was oatmeal. Even though many of us still eat it, Annie and Jim would barely recognize the bland, insipid stuff we call oatmeal. Theirs would have more closely resembled our modern cracked wheat, except not perhaps so finely ground. When grain is ground in a stone mill, it may have to be ground more than once to produce a finer product such as flour. For cereal, which would be boiled anyway, it was run through the mill only once. The other big difference was the amount of time it took to cook. It was often put over the fire after supper and cooked for a while before bedtime. It would then be moved aside and left to cook all night. It required frequent stirring to keep it from burning while it was over the fire. Annie probably cooked the oatmeal­and all of the other meals­in a fireplace. Cook stoves were available, but they were very expensive. Owning one was generally restricted to folks with much more spare cash than the Coubroughs likely had.

While most cooks would have been offended by the idea of a cookbook, there were beginning to be a few around for the benefit of "unfortunate girls" who had been unable to learn cooking in the proper place: at their mothers' elbows. Here is a recipe from a reproduction edition of one of these old books. Note the use of cream of tartar and soda. In many places, especially if there was no drugstore, it was very difficult to obtain baking powder that would actually raise biscuits without poisoning anyone. Note also the amount of sugar. Most modern recipes use only about half as much. Many old recipes were written just like this. It was assumed that the reader would know how to cook them.

If Annie and her girls got tired of cooking and laundry, there were always clothes to make or repair. When they had to make new clothes, they first had to shear the sheep, then wash and dry the wool, all by hand. Once the wool was dry, it had to be carded to smooth out the fibers and remove all the burrs, straw, etc. They may have been able to get a woolen mill to do this, but if there was one within a reasonable distance, they may not have wanted to spend the money. (There were no tax deductions for business expenses!)

After the wool was carded, it had to be spun into thread for weaving. Annie seems to have been an accomplished weaver, and since she was known to have made "50 yards of woollen cloth," she quite possibly owned her own loom. (Perhaps she was a weaver at home in Scotland.) In any case, once the thread was spun, it had to be woven into cloth before it could be made into clothes. I don't know if she made that much cloth every year or only in 1870 that the census asked about, but it would have been about enough for everyone to have one new outfit a year, with perhaps a bit left to sell for some much-needed cash.

Used clothes were not thrown away if they were worn, out-dated, outgrown or if you were just plain tired of them. They could always be made over into something else or for someone else. If you were the youngest you likely never had much of a choice as to what colour your new dress would be. On the other hand, no one else had much of a choice either. Most folks still used dyes made from plants so the colours were usually fairly dark and subdued. The brighter chemical dyes were available by now in the cities, but, as with most other new inventions, they were expensive and not to be found "in the bush."

Of course, life was not all work, though it must have often seemed that way. There were no churches yet either, but many families held their own Sunday services. In summer, perhaps they went to church at Florence (in the neighbouring township of Euphemia), five miles to the east where there had been a Presbyterian church since 1859. There were also neighbours on the adjoining "quarter sections," who perhaps joined the Coubroughs at church, at social functions in the nearby schoolhouse, or in each other's homes. Jim and Annie perhaps also enjoyed the company of James C. and Annie Thompson Brown who lived about a half-mile north of the Coubrough farm.

Family
By 1871, when the next census was taken, things were different on the farm. Jim would be 40 on his next birthday, but Annie had aged more quickly: At 47, she was now 7 years older than Jim! Their religion was now listed as Canadian Presbyterian. Matthew, at 17, was no longer a schoolboy, but a farmer as well, though still living at home. As for the girls, Flora (Jenny) was now 15, Mary 12, and little Barbara 10. All of the girls were 'going to school.'

They still owned their 50 acres with 10 'improved.' Besides their one 'dwelling house,' they also owned a 'barn or stable.' They had one 'waggon, car or sled,' and two 'ploughs or cultivators,' but no 'carriages or sleighs,' or 'reapers, mowers, horse rakes, thrashers, or fanning mills.'

Jim still had no wheat, rye, barley, peas, oats, buckwheat, corn, potatoes, turnips, 'mangel wurzels or other beets,' 'carrots or other roots,' beans, 'clover or grass seed,' hay, flax, hemp, hops, tobacco, grapes, apples, pears, 'plums or other fruit,' and no maple sugar to report, but he still had one acre under crop, so he likely had some sort of grain, even if he never sold any. He still had no horses, but he did have two 'working oxen', three 'milch cows,' nine sheep, two 'swine,' one 'other horned cattle,' and no 'hives of bees.' There were two sheep, one 'cattle' and one swine 'killed or sold for slaughter or export.' They made 200 pounds of butter, but no cheese.

Though they didn't make any linen or trap any furs, they had 37 pounds of wool, which they likely used to make their 50 'yards of home-made cloth or flannel.' Making her own cloth would seem to indicate that Annie owned a loom, and possibly a spinning wheel. She and her girls were certainly busy making all that butter and cloth by hand.

The area boasted four businesses:

William Anderson's 'carpenter and joiner shop' in 1870 used 2000 feet of 'flat walnut boards' (value $40) to make 'all sorts of house furniture', valued at $400.

At the 'blacksmith forge,' John Brown⁽²⁾ used 'assorted iron and steel' to do 'all sorts of country blacksmith work and repairs,' worth $150.

George McGuire's 'ashery' used $20 worth of 'brush' to make 64 cwt⁽³⁾ of 'black salts⁽⁴⁾,' valued at $120.

Joseph Graham had the most lucrative business: His sawmill used "560 logs, value $1280," to produce "20,000 board feet of lumber worth, $20,000."

This year's enumerator, one Simon Burns, made observations on his way around the township:

'There is 3 School Houses in the Township, one in the seventeenth con one in the eleventh one in the twelth capable of holding fifty to sixty scolars each

There is not a Church Store or Tavern in the Township

The side road between lots fifteen and sixteen is ditched from Florence in the Fourteenth con to the Fifth and the line between the Seventh and Eighth or county road ditched nearly all the way to the Town Line of Enniskillen a distance of nearly eleven miles and all the other concessions are more or less choped (sic) out and ditched'

1997
I recently returned from a short trip to western Ontario, where I visited Rutherford Village (Matt's sister, Flora Jane, and her husband, Billy Atwell, lived there for a while), Dresden, Petrolia, Oil Springs, Sarnia, Florence and both of the old homesteads.

The folks who now live on Matt's and Liz's farm were kind enough to allow me to take pictures of the house and barn, both of which he said were "well over a hundred years old." Both house and barn have been expanded to meet the needs of a modern farm, but the original parts are clearly visible. Watch for more in upcoming issues. The land where Jim and Annie had their homestead was sold to a natural gas company in the 1950's. The only thing left standing on the farm is a windmill of uncertain age.

The village of Rutherford (formerly known as Dawn Centre) is a very small, cross-roads kind of place with a gas station, two churches, a large "farm service centre," and the Township Hall. These were all in the future at the time of our story, as was the little park with a plaque telling the story of Donald Allerton Johnston, a native son who founded the first Kiwanis club of North America. While in Rutherford, I took a couple of pictures of a house that seems to have been occupied around the turn of the century by Flora Jane and William Atwell. I also located the Presbyterian church which stands on land sold to the church, in 1879, by one James Charteris Brown

While in Sarnia, I visited the Lambton County Land Registry Office where I found copies of many legal documents referring to both Jim's and Annie's and Matt's and Liz's farms. One of the documents was a bill of sale for the "S½ of the E½" of Lot 15 in the 7th Concession (Jim's and Annie's farm), dated May 11, 1887. The seller was one Coll MacDonald, the buyer was Annie Coubrough, and the price was $312. This was the same price that Mr. MacDonald had given when he bought the land on January 2, 1858. Given the lack of profit shown on the transaction, the similarity of names and the fact that Annie was the sole title-holder, possibly this Coll was a brother or cousin. From the dates on his tombstone in the Gould cemetery (1828-1904) he was too young to be her father.

On a similar note, there is a bill of sale on record showing that Liz was the sole owner of the land they bought from her father. The bill was dated January 30, 1901 and the value was $1200 for 50 acres.

A third find was a transcript of Annie's will, which left the land to her husband for his lifetime. It would then pass to her daughter, Flora Jane Atwell. The will was probated in December, 1904, and the executors signed a bill of sale in May of 1908. One would assume this meant Jim had also passed on by that time. It is interesting to note that one of the executors, William Atwell, signed the document in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, while his wife had signed it six weeks earlier in Dawn Township. It would seem that he had gone ahead to get organized before he moved his family in April, 1909.

Also solved on the trip was the mystery (to me at least) of one Annie Atwell who was supposed to have been the daughter of Flora Jane and William Atwell. The trouble was, no one in the family seemed to have heard of her. As it turns out, she was who she was supposed to be, but the poor little thing was only twenty-two days old (June 17, 1880­July 8, 1880) when she died. She is buried in the Gould cemetery in Dawn Township.

On the same trip, I stopped at the County Library in Wyoming (Ontario). They have micro-films of many old Dresden and other local newspapers. Unfortunately, some are poorly filmed and very blurry, so I had a hard time reading them. But watch this space for some of the items I found.

Other branches
As I have mentioned before, I believe all or most of the people bearing the name Coubrough are related somewhere along the way. In that line, I have made several discoveries. The first is that there seems to be a handful of people around who bear the name Cowbrough. This was very exciting because that is one of the spellings found for our name in the old records. It should be noted that many of the old records have several spellings of the name, even in the same family. This discovery could lead to more "relatives," if we can manage to connect them.

The most amazing discovery I have made over the past few months is that my Great-great-grandfather James was not a space alien! (His wife Annie MacDonald still is). It would seem that he came from a fairly large family that originated at Campsie, north of Stirling, in Scotland. His grandparents seem to have moved to Eastwood Parish, where Pollokshaws is located, sometime between April 1789 and May 1791. 

Question Corner
Here are some of the things I am currently working on:

1. Who was Annie's family? We know she had at least one brother, Ronald, who was living with Matt and Liz in 1901. The Coll MacDonald who sold her the land may have been another brother. Other than that, she seems to have sprung out of nowhere. Does anyone have any ideas?

2. There seems to be no record of Matt and Liz ever being legally married. However, if they were married by calling the banns (announcing in church for three Sundays in a row that they intended to be married), there might not have been a record. Still looking.

4. Where did John Couburgh of Ellrig spring from? There were reportedly others of the name in the Campsie area where John came from, but we haven't yet found them.

5. Jim and Annie arrived in Upper Canada early in 1858. They also seem to have arrived in Halifax very early in 1854. What I am trying to find out is when they left Scotland, did they come by themselves, or in the company of friends and relatives? Why?

 

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Editor's corner
If you can answer any of the questions in this issue, or if you have some of your own, be sure to e-mail me. I would be happy to hear from you. I am also looking for family stories-­funny or sad-­that you would like to share with the rest of the family.

Finally, I would like to say "Thank you very much," to all of you who responded to the first issue. I enjoyed all those nice chatty letters.

e-mail: myrna@coubrough.com

1. The Fenians were Irish Americans who thought to force Britain to free Ireland. The idea was to invade Canada, conquer all British therein, and negotiate Ireland's freedom. They did not conquer Canada, but they did defeat the Canadian militia in at least two battles.

2. John was the grandfather of the woman Matt would marry, but as Liz was only about six at this time the wedding was a long way in the future.

3. By 1871 a "hundred-weight" was actually 100 pounds, down from its old size of 112 pounds.

4. Black salts were also known as "potash" and were sold in Europe for making soap.