Happy Summer, everyone, and welcome to another new decade in Old Ontario. This new decade is different from any in living memory, marking, as it does, the birth of a new century. Life over the past ten years has been mostly good, though, of course, there have been some not-so-great times. And opportunity still knocks for those willing to work. We carry many of our old ways forward with us, but this decade holds new adventures that will change the Coubrough family--and Canada--forever.

At the far end of the twentieth century, more "new" Coubroughs have been discovered in various parts of the world, and some long-lost connections have fallen into place. The "one original" Coubrough eludes us yet, but we have seriously narrowed the field of possibility.

This will be our last visit to some old friends, but we will also meet some new ones. On his 1904 cross-country, pre-election tour, Mr. Laurier spoke to a huge crowd in Toronto: "Let me tell you, my fellow Canadians, that all the signs point this way, that the twentieth century shall be the century of Canada and of Canadian development. For the next seventy-five, nay, for the next hundred years, Canada shall be the star towards which all men who love progress and freedom shall come." Let us go forth, and see what Canada's Century holds.
 

1901 - 1911

Matt, 47, and Liz, 38, (1901) still live on the SW-¼ of Lot 20, Concession 4 in their four-room, two-storey house. Though there will be four more children before the end of the decade, some of their older siblings have moved out to make room. For instance, Miss Flora Jane Coubrough is now (1907) a clerk in her Uncle John Brown's store at Edy's Mills, about 8 miles from her parents home. Also by mid-decade, some of the boys have "gone West," where there is land for the taking. In 1903, Liz's dad, Mr. James C. Brown, sold the local school board a small piece of the NW-¼ of Lot 20, Concession 4. A fine red-brick school now stands 500 yards from Matt's front door, and the middle children can walk to school. The babies, Mary, Lockie, Ethel, and Earl, are yet too young for such enterprises.

Jenny and Billy Atwell still live in Rutherford, where Billy is still involved with the Sawyer and Massey Company, which seems to be a sawmill. Billy is in business with Neil MacDonald (cousin of Matt and Jenny?), and Lachlin Mac Neil (husband to Liz Coubrough's sister, Maggie).

Matt's and Jenny's "baby" sister, Barbara, still lives in the US, with her husband and their two daughters. She writes, but does not visit often.

The "Last, Best West" beckons, promising cheap land and a better life. Moreover, the Canadian Pacific Railroad has made it easy to get there. The old Queen has passed on, the crown has gone to her son, Edward VII, and society has relaxed accordingly. In our modern "Edwardian" era, social conventions are less restrictive, even for women. More and more girls, especially in the cities, are finishing high school, then going on to college or university. Increasing numbers are going to work, instead of marrying right away. Most jobs for female graduates will be in offices or in the "helping professions," of nursing and teaching.

For the first time since the death of Sir John A. MacDonald, Canada has had the same Premier for more than a few months. All aspects of housekeeping, farming, and transportation continue to improve under the influence of technology. A brilliant future--birthright of every Canadian--glows on the horizon. Top of page
 

Politics

Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who had come to power in 1896, is still the premier and will remain so until 1911, when the Tories will return under Sir Robert Borden's leadership.

By the end of the decade, Manitoba's border has moved north to the 60^th parallel, and two more provinces have been chopped out of the North West Territory. The creation of Saskatchewan and Alberta in September, 1905, caused a huge political turmoil from which Canada has still not recovered. People and politicians in the new provinces assumed that they would keep their Ontario-style school system, even resigning themselves to separate Catholic schools. Then they discovered that Mr. Laurier had secretly promised Catholic Bishops that French-speakers would return to the full language rights they had been given in 1875 (and whose withdrawal caused the notorious "Manitoba Schools Question").  Top of page

This discovery so outraged prairie politicians that Mr. Laurier was forced to withdraw his promise. In turn, removing the guarantee of French language rights infuriated Québec politicians like Henri Bourassa. Most Québec industries were owned by British or American capital, and, while few ordinary Quebeckers were interested in moving west, they could all see there were no jobs in Québec unless you worked for an English-speaking company. M. Bourassa's provincial government was so convinced that it was better to remain French and Catholic than to "become American," that it did nothing to improve matters for ordinary people. Instead, M. Bourassa told them the evil "Anglais" were taking advantage of them. The people of Québec felt they were oppressed, and they were. But it was not English Canada doing the pressing, as they were told. Canada is still reeling from the impact of one of the most successful propaganda campaigns in our history.

For a nation who sees itself as peaceful, Canadians sure go to war a lot. We were in Spain for the Spanish-American War and in the Transvaal for the Boer War, to say nothing of our homegrown Rebellions of 1837 and 1885! While it seems an awful shame that all those young men die on foreign soil, Britain's wars are our wars. We must support the Mother Country, lest she abandon us.

On the other hand, by the time the boys came home from South Africa, we had begun to see ourselves as an independent nation. After all, we had given a lot of men. Of course, no mere colonials could ever be smart enough to run an army, so it is only right that British officers should be in charge. Some folks here at home, though, especially our own officers, think Canadian boys will fight more effectively if they always train and fight together with the same group of men, rather that being split up as reinforcements for all-British units. Some zealots even think we should have Canadian officers commanding our troops!

On top of all that, Mr. Laurier has decided that he will give Canada its own little navy of five ships (1905). A lot of people think this is ridiculous. We should just give the money to Britain, where it will do more good than our little "tin-pot navy" could ever manage. Mr. Laurier thinks that building our own ships, and manning them with Canadian crews, will seem like he is trying to help Britain, while still keeping control of Canadian tax dollars in Canadian hands. Unfortunately, some folks--chiefly M. Henri Bourassa--see this as very near to treason. The Navy may yet suffer setbacks before it floats.

I'm glad that we are starting to have some national spirit, but I can't help thinking we should keep closer ties with our Mother Country. After all, Britain made us what we are today. Trouble is, the government is filling the West with farms. When they finally created Saskatchewan and Alberta, the federal government retained control of all land and resources⁽¹⁾. Thus, they can sell homesteads where ever they like. All forest and mineral rights--and profits there from--remain the property of Ottawa.

Homesteading the prairies has filled the country with all kinds of odd foreigners. Galicians [Ukrainians], Czechs, Croats, Jews, Poles, Serbs, Hungarians, Slovaks, Germans, Icelanders, Scandinavians, Americans, Mennonites, and Chinese are all bringing their weird foreign habits and strange ways of doing things to our country. Many of them don't know the first thing about farming, so they stay in the cities and towns, or move there when their homesteads fail. Either way, they take jobs away from real Canadians. Nearly all of these foreigners will work very cheap: even poor wages here are better than what they left behind. As long as wealthy businessmen want cheap labour, government will be unwilling and unable to do anything about it.

There are still a few British immigrants, but not enough to keep Canada as British as it should be. We could even put up with the pesky Frenchmen in Quebec, if they would quit complaining about how mistreated they are, and how they should be more equal than everyone else. They even grumble that foreigners coming to Montreal and Quebec City learn English instead of their heathen French.

Some of the noisiest immigrants are the Americans. They are the brashest and most demanding, but at least they speak English. Some of them are even pretty good dry-land farmers, having had experience in Kansas and other such places. Many people, especially those whiners who can't seem to grow anything, think the southern plains are too dry to grow good crops. This is obvious nonsense: Everybody knows rain follows the plough. Even nay-sayers had to be impressed by the rainfall and the bumper wheat crop from Saskatchewan last year [1910]. It looks like things will be a little drier this year, but you can't expect perfect farming weather every year.

In spite of all the changes over the past few years, Canada is still a wonderful place to live. At least, hundreds of thousands of immigrants think so: Canada's population is 1.2 million people, according to the 1911 census.

Though few of them would admit to partaking of such a disgusting masculine pursuit, many women are becoming politically active. In fact, it seems to me, women today are so busy demanding pasteurised milk, the right to educate themselves and their daughters, and a total ban on alcohol that they don't have time to look after their families properly. Oh, they say they are defending the sanctity of the home, and their rôles as wives and mothers. These women even believe that they can accomplish more by gentle persuasion of their men (who are the real authority, you know) than the women could by sullying themselves with anything as corrupt as politics. But more and more women are sending their daughters out to be educated as nurses, teachers, and even doctors. In fact, they campaigned for a university program with nutrition as its main focus, and it seems like someone listened: The University of Toronto graduated its first class of professional nutritionists in the spring of 1906.

There are a few eccentrics, men and women, mostly in the freethinking West, who even believe women should have equal legal and property rights. In Edmonton, a preacher's outspoken wife, Emily Murphy⁽²⁾, has made such a fuss that the Alberta Legislature has actually passed a law guaranteeing a wife's right to one-third of her husband's property⁽³⁾ if he dies before her. Also on the legal front, Albertans think so well of themselves that they disdain the old Canadian courts, and claim the Ontario courts are too far away to be of any use. In 1907, the upstarts created their own Supreme Court of Alberta.

Speaking of crackpots, some civil servants obviously have nothing better to do than cause trouble for honest citizens. In 1909, a bunch of them, together with their American counter-parts, formed an International Joint Commission, and signed a treaty to prevent pollution of the Great Lakes. I suppose it suits the new fashion of conservation, but it sounds to me like another plot to ruin businessmen, who will have to waste money on expensive new machinery and even more expensive new processes, just for the sake of a few fish. It's not right, I tell you. The earth was put here for us to use, not to save! The only good part is the Yanks have to put up with the same thing so they won't have any advantage.

In 1867, a Scandinavian named Alfred Nobel invented an explosive he called dynamite. When he died in 1895, his will provided that income from his estate would finance a series of annual awards for people who had most contributed to a humanitarian cause. The first of his prizes was awarded in 1901, when the Nobel Prize in Physics was given to a German named Erich Roentgen, who has discovered something called x-rays. These rays apparently allow scientists to see your bones without taking off any skin or flesh, though why anyone would want to look at their bones is beyond me.

A lot of workers have begun to think they have the right to earn a wage will allow them a decent standard of living. This thinking directly conflicts with the manufacturers' right to a fair profit. Even the least militant workers seem to think they are entitled to enough wages that they can send their children to school instead of to work! Some of the leaders of the union movements have been arrested several times, but they never seem to learn. But then, they are the same people who think that utilities like the light and telephone companies should be in public hands, rather than being monopolies. They think it wrong that men like Max Aitken should be paid $1.5 million to create Canada Cement by putting many men out of work in the process of merging several small companies⁽⁴⁾. A man has the right to make an honest $1.5 million, doesn't he?

Union leaders think labour laws should be changing faster; government and business think Canadian Labour is the biggest collection of malcontents ever known. After all, hadn't they already shortened the workday to twelve--and even ten--hours? What more do the lazy louts want? What is driving them to join the unions: 20,000 in 1900; 120,000 by 1911?.

These rabble-rousers seem to have the support of at least some politicians. The government created a Department of Labour (1900) to deal with the unionist grievances, and Robert Borden, the Tory leader from Nova Scotia, has been demanding all kinds of serious political reforms (1908). He wants public ownership of telephone, railroad, and telegraph systems, and, of all things, to make the Civil Service efficient. Imagine hiring and promoting competent people, instead of letting the government take care of its friends! And can you believe it? Mr. Borden is actually trying to stop corporations from making political contributions! No wonder the more sensible party members decried this as socialism, and Mr. Laurier easily won the 1908 election.  Top of page
 

Economy

The economy has been pretty good for most of the decade. There was quite a sharp recession in 1907, but it was fairly short and didn't cause any real problems. In fact, the economy has been so good that there is a new newspaper, the Financial Post, [1907] devoted solely to finances and the economy.

Canadian wheat, from our Prairie Breadbasket, is the best in the world. It won the Gold Medal at the St. Louis World's Fair [1904], and sells for top pricecs all over the world.

The prairies had a bumper crop in 1901, but farmers had the nerve to be outraged when only one-third of the crop actually left the country (for market) before the Great Lakes froze over. Blaming this on poor railroad management and lack of freight cars, farmers have demanded the government do something to fix this so-called mismanagement. They have formed The Territorial Grain Growers Association, and they have plenty of support: the Winnipeg Free Press, contractors, promoters, and even some politicians are backing farmers' demands for a second railroad.

Mr. Laurier and his Liberals did eventually approve a National Transcontinental Railroad⁽⁵⁾(1903), but it was not quite what we expected. It was shocking to learn that the railroad that expanded north to the Canadian Shield was set up so taxpayers bear most of the costs, while most profits go to the few already-rich owners of the Grand Trunk! The NT did, however, help create mining and forestry industries in the northern parts of several provinces, especially Ontario. Discovery, at Cobalt, early in the decade, of one of the world's richeds silver lodes, fuelled the general prosperity of 1903 and 1904.

Not all politicians are over-paid time servers, of course. In 1908, they got us a branch of the Royal Mint at Ottawa, so we can now make and manage our own money, instead of depending on folks in England to ship us a batch occasionally. And just this year (1911), the government created a Department of External Affairs whose sole purpose is diplomatic relations with foreign countries, especially Britain.  Top of page
 

Home

Canadians have a lot more spare time than they used to have. It has become the fashion for otherwise respectable people to attend sporting events that were once the sole province of young boys and students. In 1909, the Governor General, Lord Earl Grey, donated a trophy to be awarded for the Rugby Football Championship of Canada. The championship game was played on December 4, 1909, at Toronto's Rosedale Field, where the University of Toronto beat Toronto Parkdale Canoe Club, 26-6, in front of 3,807 city people with money to burn and nothing better to do. That first game was such a success, generating $2,616.40, that a championship game has been played every year since.

Of course, in this hectic age, sports are not the only public entertainments available to those with money to spend. Just the other day [1906], I saw in the newspaper that, in Montreal, you can go to a special theatre to watch moving pictures. You can even buy freshly roasted peanuts there from the new [1906] Planter's Peanut Roaster.

If you tire of technology and sports, you can always watch to see what the rich and famous will do next. Men have been smoking in public for ages, but just last January [1910], the Baroness Rosen, wife of the Russian ambassador to the US, made headlines when she was seen smoking at a White House reception. Naturally, the high-and-mighty were scandalized, but I am sure that many women who now smoke only in secret will soon follow her example.

In the summer, there are picnics everywhere. What better fun than to leave the work to do itself on a sunny day, and go off to run foot-races, wheel-barrow races, three-legged races, sack-races or play ball? Unless it would be to sit down to a picnic lunch with ice-cream?

We have enjoyed ice cream for many years, whenever there was ice and energy enough to work the freezer. But friends of ours told us they sampled ice cream served in a thin waffle, of all things, rolled into a cone--an idea said to have been born at the 1904 St. Louis Worlds Fair. What will they think of next?

If it is too cold for a picnic, how about a dance or a box social? It can be quite comical to watch young men bid up the price of the fancy-box lunch they think was made by their favourite girl. Naturally, no girls would play tricks, like trading boxes! At our most recent Social, we raised enough money to buy quite a few new books for our school.

Many city women still follow the British custom of afternoon tea, here mostly an excuse for the rich to show off their cooks' skills at fancy and dainty foods. The most stylish refreshments--salted almonds, Turkish Delight, stuffed olives, fudge, maple creams, and pineapple sherbert--are not available to most pioneers, or even in more settled rural areas.

For the woman who follows her husband West, there is none of that. Why, I had a letter recently from a former neighbour of mine, who said that the closest place to buy a lemon was in Winnipeg--a mere 200 miles from where she lives. She has now been out there long enough to grow and harvest a huge vegetable garden, and has persuaded her husband to let her keep a few chickens. Otherwise, nearly all her food is very plain, or comes from a can. Being a city girl, she never learned to milk a cow, so even her milk comes from a can.

It was to late for a garden when she got out there; the first winter they lived on oatmeal and beans, with an occasional rabbit or prairie chicken. Some of her neighbours with fewer resources still live on beans and whatever they can get from the land. She sometimes feels sorry for their bachelor neighbours who know how to cook nothing but oatmeal and pancakes. Occasionally, men come from miles around for a barn-raising or other work-bee. The women all get together, too, and the work that that goes into cooking and cleaning up after, is as nothing compared with a chance to visit other women. Occasionally, her husband will invite a bachelor for a meal, or she will bake them some bread, and give them a jar of her favourite Rhubarb Conserve to eat with it. She found the recipe in a cook book put out by Blue Ribbon Manufacturing Company (the spice folks) in 1905. It is almost as good without oranges or lemons, if you can't get them.

4 pounds rhubarb, 4 pounds sugar, 1 pound raisins, 2 oranges, 1 lemon. Cut rhubarb into ½ inch pieces. Do not peel. Boil rhubarb, raisins and sugar 20 minutes, add orange and lemon juice and rind of oranges. Boil until thick.

The country is beautiful, my friend writes, but life is very hard for her and her neighbours. The winters are worse than they have ever known. The wind never stops blowing, and lonely settlers have gone mad after a winter of hearing nothing else. Horrible blizzards that can last for days sometimes pile the snow up so deep that cattle and horses starve to death for lack of feed. And cold: Once even the coal-oil froze solid!

As if the winters aren't bad enough, in the summer they contend with prairie fires that burn thousands of acres of grass at a time. If anything survives that, there are hordes of grasshoppers that eat everything in their path--even laundry on the clothesline! Reading her letters makes our hardscrabble Ontario farm seem positively luxurious.

There are so many new inventions for the home that it makes your head spin. I suppose they make life easier for the new breed of housewife; the one who is so busy going to school and preaching from her soap-box that she doesn't have time to keep a decent house or cook proper meals. Many these things are only available in the cities, as yet, but I'm sure it will only be a matter of time before they invade every where.

A man in the US, who was likely tired of charred toast made by his new-age wife, has invented [1910] an electric device to do the job. Now, if he could just make it shut itself off before the toast burns....

Electric clothes irons have been around for twenty years [1882], but they never really caught on. They took forever to heat up, then cooled off even faster than the old sad irons. Moreover, even today [1911], many electric companies run their generators only from sunset to sunrise, so no electricity was available when any sensible person would consider ironing clothes. Now an American has invented an new, lighter iron that really works. He even persuaded some electric companies to leave their generators on all day, so folks can use his new invention. Ironing is easier than ever before, but wouldn't it be lovely if clothes ironed themselves?

It used to be that when you wanted a certain item, you went to the local store and bought it, or ordered it from a mail-order house. Both occasionally placed notices in newspapers, listing their goods and the prices. Now there are advertising notices everywhere. We have heard that a man in the US has persuaded the United States Postal Service to let him to send advertising notices to people whose names he doesn't even know [1905]. And he gets a special postage rate to mail large quantities of circulars to "Boxholder."

There appears to be no escaping technology. On a recent trip to our local circulating library, I found that the new [January 13, 1906] Scientific American has an advertisement for another new gadget called a radio. Many people have shared their homes for years with Mr. Edison's talking machines, which allow you to enjoy professionally recorded music at any time of the day. Now, for just $7.50, you can hear music and people talking from miles away--as it happens! I have no idea what earthly use it could ever be, except maybe as a toy. I expect it will pass like any other fad.

A few years ago a New England man come up with a new angle on convincing alcohol-drinkers of the error of their ways: At train stations and on street-corners, he tried to sell drinks of water in paper cups! But it seemed rather wasteful to buy water in a throw-away cup when you could get it free from the dipper in a public bucket.

Now, though, many people believe "germs," are spread by just such things as that dipper in the public water pail. The salesman re-thought his idea, and began marketing a single-use, germ-free Health Kupp⁽⁷⁾. Now [1908] these cups are in such wide use that you can even buy ice-cream in them!

During a recent [1907] stay at a Philadelphia hotel, we saw a strange thing: disposable paper towels. They are a lot like bathroom tissue, except bigger and thicker. They are dreadfully expensive, and you can only use them once. I doubt they will ever replace rags.

The people who inhabit the prairies are eccentric in more than politics. Not satisfied with talking by telephone to people in the same town, they built a line all the way from Winnipeg to Regina [1906]!

A trip to the stores these days is very interesting. The variety of new products for sale is staggering, though I can't imagine buying some of them in public: Hair dye at the drug store, for example.

All kinds of people have dyed their hair through the ages, though many would never admit it. The old-fashioned methods ranged from merely smelly to downright dangerous. But in 1909, a chemist in France invented French Harmless Hair Dye. ⁽⁸⁾They say it gives nice-looking colour without poisoning you. I wouldn't buy that kind of stuff in a store, no matter how safe it is. Everyone knows what kind of women dye their hair.

On a more practical note, there is a new [1905] ointment called Richardson's Croup and Pneumonia Cure Salve.⁽⁹⁾It contains menthol, and is said to be just as effective as a mustard plaster to cure a cold. It has to be a lot more convenient. Do your feet hurt? Put Dr. Scholl's "Foot-Eazer" arch supports [1904] in your shoes. Prone to lying awake at night? Swallow a German invention called a "sleeping pill" [1903]. I wouldn't touch those pills, myself: I have heard they are called "barbiturates" because they are made from the urine of a woman named Barbara.

Next door, at the general store, we saw yet another American invention: a new kind of shoe with rubber soles [1910]. Some folks call them "sneakers," because you can walk softly ("sneak" around?) in them--as opposed to clumping about in boots, I guess. They are designed as athletic shoes, so most people around here call them "running shoes."

Less disgusting than sleeping pills, and likely just as effective, is a new child's toy. Known as a "Teddy" bear [1902], it is said to represent a bear cub US president Teddy Roosevelt refused to kill on a hunt because it was too young.

We also saw an astounding new device that uses electricity to make pop-corn pop[1907]. Though most electric appliances are huge, heavy, and not very reliable, this corn popper is much smaller and lighter than others we have seen. It is billed as being safe enough for even children to use, but I'm not sure I trust a claim like that.  Top of page
 

Travel

Not so long ago, a horseless carriage was a noisy novelty. I still can't see why anyone would want to ride in such a dirty, dangerous, machine, but a lot of well-off people (who should know better), seem to be enamoured of the abominable contraptions. They are every where, and just a couple of years ago (in 1907) the MacLaughlin Company started making them here in Canada.

Everywhere you look, the world is full of crazy people who think nothing of risking their necks on some harebrained adventure. Only a few years ago (1903), some American bicycle builders named Wright actually flew their vile contrivance on a beach at some place called Kitty Hawk. Only eight years later, in 1911, another lunatic, Galbraith Rodgers arrived at Pasadena, California after having flown his outfit all the way from New York. I suppose we'll next be hearing of someone who just had to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. Why, I've even heard that some girls want to take up this ridiculous pursuit. This sort of foolishness is what comes of letting girls go to school and get jobs, instead of getting married and raising children, as they were meant to do.  Top of page
 

The family

By 1902, poor Annie has been sick for two years with "chronic bronchitis." On August 9, she went to her final reward. By the terms of her mother's will, Flora Jane Atwell became the guardian of both her sister Minnie and the original family farm. Jenny's father had the use of the farm for the rest of his life, but though he lived on in the old house, his health was failing, too. By the spring of 1904, he had been suffering from heart disease for a year or more, and on May 11 he followed his wife to the better world.

Jenny remained the sole owner⁽¹⁰⁾of the land until March, 1908, when it was sold to one William Johnston. The proceeds would pay for Jenny's trip west with her younger children. Jenny's eldest daughter, Lizzie, is a milliner in Stratford, Ontario. In 1908, at the ripe old age of 26, she married James Percy Robertson, of Windham, Ontario, in her home town of Rutherford, Dawn Township.

Possibly, Jenny was the correspondent for the Rutherford Ripplets section of the Dresden Times. Her husband was a paid-in-advance subscriber, and her family seems to be mentioned frequently. Her brother's family is sometimes mentioned in the Concession 3 Gleanings.

Jenny's oldest son John Sherman goes by his second name, probably to avoid confusion with other members of the family. He seems to have gone west in 1906, but returned for a visit in 1907, as reported in the Dresden Times for Thursday, October 31, 1907: Mr. Sherman Atwell, who has spent the last year in the West, has returned.

By the spring of 1909, Matt and Liz's family has grown to 16 children. Archie, age 2-½, became a "big brother" when his sister Mary was born in 1903. She was followed by Lochlain in 1906, by Ethel in 1908, and by Earl in 1909. [Lochlain would grow up to be the writer's grandfather.]

Both of Matt's parents have gone on, but Liz's father, Jim Brown (age 77 in 1911), is still hale and hearty. He talks of going to Saskatchewan with his daughters to take up his own homestead. Jim's wife has been gone since 1893. His son John is firmly settled with his store at Edys Mills. John married Ethel Stephenson in 1902, and they have three children: Ethel, b. abt 1903; Anna, b. 1904, and Jack, b. 1911. Jim's younger daughter, Maggie, has been married to Lachlin Mac Neil for some time, and they have one son, Archibald. Jim's younest child, Simon, headed north to the Klondike goldfields in 1898, but hasn't been heard from since⁽¹¹⁾.

Most of Matt and Liz's family is already grown up, or nearly so. Annie married Robert Nelson (Nels) Eden at Rutherford on May 27, 1907. They have three children by the end of 1910: James William, 1907; Harvey Matthew, 1909; and Robert Gordon, 1910.

Flora and Maggie waited until they had moved west to be married in Weyburn. On November 1, 1910, in a double wedding, Flora married Howard Arthur Ott, and Maggie took Albert Henry (Ab) Dowswell for her husband. Ab and Maggie have one child, William Arthur (Bill), b. 1911.

Their eldest son, Jim, was the only other child of Matt and Liz who was married by the end of 1911. He had gone west with his father in 1905, but in the winter of 1910-1911 he took the train "back east." At Rutherford, on February 22, 1911, he married his one true love, Lizzie McGuire. They travelled west in time for the spring planting.

Late in 1905, probably after the harvest, Matt, in company with his three oldest sons and his brother-in-law, Billy Atwell, had taken an excursion train west in search of homestead land in Saskatchewan. Matt and his sons, as well as present and future sons-in-law, all settled near Ogema. Billy Atwell settled further north, near Rosetown. Good land was not always available in large parcels, so while Harve and Jim ended up across the road from each other, not every one was that close. Some of the original family homesteads weren't even in the same school district as the others. For instance, Matt was in the Mount Joy district, while Ab Dowswell and Nels Eden were in the Ogema Rural District, and Bill, Jimmy, and Harve were all in the Adell district. Not that the school districts mattered: there were no schools there anyway.

The men spent most summers working out and winters making improvements that would eventually get them clear title to the land. Some of them shared accommodations with others, but they were all "bachelors" until the spring of 1909, when Jenny Atwell and her sister-in-law, Liz Coubrough, loaded their households and their children on the train, and headed west to rejoin their men.

When I visited Dresden last summer, I came across some items in the back issues of the local paper which I thought were of interest. From the Dresden Times, March 4, 1909:

Matthew Coubrough intends moving to the West shortly. We regret so much to lose Mr. and Mrs. Coubrough and their family of jolly girls and boys.

Miss Rhoda Atwell left on Tuesday for London [Ontario] where she has accepted a position with the Robinson Costume Company.

Jas Brown, one of the oldest settlers in Dawn, has sold his farm to William Johnston of the same township. It is rumoured Jim is going west to grow up with the country.

March 26, 1909

Mrs. Wm Atwell, having sold her farm, is holding a clearing sale of livestock, implements, etc., next Saturday. [This item was marked "too late for last week."]

March 15, 1909

Mr. Wm Atwell and family are preparing to move to their home near Saskatoon about the middle of April.  Top of page
 

1999

Other branches

In February of this year, my mother took me to Australia. One of the places we visited was the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, where they have an excellent Family History section. A search on Coubrough produced two results: Alexander and Victor Thomas John, who appear to have been brothers, were both in the Australia New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs). Both were at Gallipoli (Turkey, 1915), where the elder, Alexander, was wounded badly enough to be sent home to Australia in December, 1915. The other, Coubrough, V.T.J., was on the Honour Roll as having died at the Somme in July, 1916. Unfortunately, Alexander had died in 1972, so I could not talk to him.

I also called the Coubroughs I found in the telephone books of the cities we visited--on the chance they might know something I didn't. All the people I called seem to be descendants of a William Coubrough who moved from Glasgow to Sydney sometime around 1900, but that was all I could find, so far

Question corner

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

1. Still looking for Annie's family, but with no more success than usual.

2. Still looking for the origins of the Coubroughs in the Stirling area of Scotland. With further scrutiny of the Campsie Parish records, there seems to be a strong possibility that our family line goes back in a different direction from what I had thought. I have long known that Grampa Matt's great-grandfather was named James, and that his father was probably also named James. Trouble was, I had the wrong James! (My list has 58 James Coubroughs; 47 have no middle name.)

I now think that Grampa Matt's great-grandfather was the son of James, b. abt 1735, who was the son of still another Matthew, b 1700, who married Janet Morrison. This Matthew was the son of Isobel Lyle and John Coubrough, who was probably the son of Jonet Sheirer and Matthew Coubrough, born about 1625, and probably the son of yet another John.

This is not absolutely guaranteed to be the correct line. Before 1855, the records usually only gave the names of the child being baptized and his parents. Sometimes the father's trade and place of residence, as well as names of witnesses, were given, but not always.  Top of page

Editor's corner

As always, if you can answer any questions in this issue, or if you have some of your own, please write or give me a call. I would love to hear from you, no matter how small you think your detail is, or even if you just want to say "hello." I am always looking for stories and old photos to share with the rest of the family. All photos or other items can be returned.   Top of page
 

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1. Other provinces kept these rights at confederation.

2. In 1916, Mrs. Murphy will be the first woman police magistrate in the British Empire. She and 4 friends will begin the "Persons Case" in 1917. It will be 1929 before the Privy Council, Empire's highest court, recognises women as persons under the law.

3. Dower Act, 1911.

4. Later known as Lord Beaverbrook.

5. It would eventually become the Canadian National Railway.

6. Conserves are thinner than jam. To thicken, either boil longer, or follow package directions to add Certo. Do not reduce sugar.

7. Later called "Dixie Cups."

8. The company was later known as L'Oréal.

9. Later renamed Vick's VapoRub.

10. Jenny was the sole owner of the land, but, as women were not considered persons before the law, she was not fit to decide the fate of real property. She actually had to mail the bill of sale and the land title to her husband in Saskatchewan for him to sign before she could sell the land.

11. He married Mary Beattie about 1900. They lived for a while in Wyoming, where Mary died in 1904. Simon moved to Tacoma, Washington, where he died in 1938. They don't seem to have had any children. (Update: January 2002 Simon and Mary did have 2 daughters. See the January 2002 edition of this newsletter.)

 

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