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The Coming of the Loyalists
(From Walter S.
Herrington, History of the County of
Lennox and Addington
[Toronto: The
Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited, 1913], 184-88.)
"The following reminiscences of Mr. Peter Bristol of Napanee, now in
his ninety-third year, but who still styles himself a Fredricksburgh
boy, were furnished by him to the writer in an interview:"
'I was born on lot twenty-three in the Second Concession of
Fredericksburgh on December 27th, A.D. 1820. I remember distinctly the
incidents of my boyhood days, even the funeral of my grandmother, which
occurred in my third year. She was a dear old lady, and the ceremony
took place at my grandfather's house, to which a number of planks had
been brought to form seats to accommodate the neighbours. I was
crawling about the floor, childlike, under on of these benches, when on
of the assembled friends stepped upon my fingers, at which I howled
lustily and disturbed the solemnity of the ceremony. The corpse was
lying at the time on a plank in a corner of the room, for, although the
funeral was in progress, the coffin, which was being made by a
carpenter in the door-yard outside, was not yet ready for the remains.
There was no elaborate expense in connection with the burial of the
dead, - a plain pine box, unpainted and uncovered, was considered all
that was necessary. She was buried at the old Lutheran church at Big
Creek.
'My father lived in a log house of one room until I was ten years of
age. It was two stories, and in order to reach the upper story we
mounted a ladder in a corner of the lower part of the dwelling. The
furniture was of the simplest character, and little of it. My father
was considered an average prosperous farmer, fully up to the times, and
had one hundred acres of land, of which only five acres were cleared at
my earliest remembrance; yet he managed to raise and educate, so far as
there was opportunity, a family of thirteen of which I was the second.
He had one horse and but one yoke of oxen up to the time he built a
small frame house when I was ten years old. There wre wild animals
about at the time; and when I used to go to bring the cows home to be
milked I have seen as many as five deer at a time. Wolves were very
common, and we had to gather our sheep in every night and shut them in
a closed pen to protect them from the marauding intruders.
'My first school days were spent under the care of Miss Margaret Perry,
who afterwards married David Williams of Ernesttown. The school-house
stood just over the town line in Ernesttown, on the farm of Davis
Hawley, grandfather of Sheriff G.D. Hawley. It was a small frame
building about a mile from my father's house, with a very few pupils in
attendance, among them being the sisters of the late Zina Ham. I had no
books except a spelling book, and the only subject to which I devoted
myself the first summer was the mastering of the alphabet.
'A few years after this an Irishman called Paul Shirley, came to the
neighbourhood and offered his services as teacher for the winter in a
log school-house situated in the front of the third concession of
Fredericksburgh, near or upon the land of Jacob Detlor. My father, John
Ham, Jacob Detlor, and Henry Ham took the matter in hand, and made a
bargain with Shirley, and I went to that school that fall and winter. I
walked through the bush about a mile and a quarter with my sister to
school, stopping on the way to pick up the Ham children who accompanied
us through the woods over two streams which in the autumn we crossed on
fallen timbers. I then took up the study of geography and grammar. I
also attended school on the farm of the father of the late Sheriff
Pruyn and had to travel two miles and a half. This was the last I
attended in this county. The reason I was shifted about from one school
to another was that the district was not divided into sections, and the
schools were not kept open with any regularity, and my father would
send me wherever he thought I could receive the best training.
'My people were Methodists, and attended service first in one
school-house and then another, whichever was most convenient. Most of
our clergymen were local preachers, farmers who went out on the Sabbath
day and conducted divine service. I remember seeing in the pulpit, or
rather behind the teacher's desk in the school-house, the following
gentlemen expounding the gospel: Rufus Shorey, Davis Hawley, John Ham,
and George Sills. The service consisted of singing, conducted by two or
three old men and women, prayer, generally a very long one, and an
exhortation without selecting any text from which to speak. The first
regular preacher I ever heard was when Elder William Case came to our
neighbourhood.
'The crops consisted of wheat and corn principally; I was twenty years
old before I saw any barley or knew what it was. Every farmer made
maple sugar, raised his own potatoes, wheat, pork, poultry, beef, and
mutton, but pork was the chief article of diet in the way of flesh. I
have known my father to pack at one time three large barrels of pork
for the family use. Tea was a luxury and cost one dollar to one dollar
and a half per pound.
'The clothing was made principally of linen for summer, and full-cloth
and flannel for the winter, all of which were woven at home. We grew
our own flax, and after pulling, (it was never cut), we spread it out
on the sod, turned it over weekly with a wooden fork, and when
sufficiently rotten it was dried and gathered up and bound into
bundles, and was next put through a process called crackling. This
consisted I putting it through a machine which broke it up so that the
fibres were loosened and could be separated into strings. It was then
drawn over a board with hundreds of nails projecting tow or more inches
through it so that it presented a surface of small spikes; and by
drawing the flax over it the nails acted as a comb and removed the
woody substance from the fibres. The fibres were then spun into thread
by the women, and wound into balls as large as a man's head. After this
it was leached by immersing the balls in a weak solution of lye, and
put in the loom for weaving. Two thirds of the children's clothing,
both boys and girls, consisted of this gray linen, which was not dyed
but retained its natural colour.
'I remember the first time I saw the village of Napanee. I was about
five years old and went with my father and mother in a lumber wagon,
the only wheeled conveyance we had, to visit Henry Kimmerly who had
married my mother's sister and lived on what is now known as the Daly
farm on the Deseronto Road. We crossed the river on a floating bridge
near where the new iron bridge now stands. Roblin's Hill was then very
rough and steep. There were a number of dwellings at Clarkville at that
time; but the village on the north side of the river all lay east of
the present John street, except a few scattered houses on the knolls in
the western part of the present site of the town. The old McNeil house
then stood where its ruins stand to-day and was the finest residence I
had ever seen. In coming from my father's house to Napanee we passed
two or three frame houses; all the rest were build of logs. Where the
Campbell house now stands there was a small grove of second growth pine
and other scrub trees. As I grew older I used to accompany my parents
upon this trip about once a year.
'We did not deal in the stores at Napanee when I was a boy, as there
was no market, and there was one in Kingston; and my father took his
produce either to Kingston or to Bath, which latter place we considered
the business center of the county. Henry Lasher conducted what was
called a farmers' store in Bath. It was managed by him for the farmers,
who formed themselves into an organization and saved for themselves the
profits which usually went to the middleman; but Lasher bought them all
out one after another. Later on the Davys grew up there, Peter and
Benjamin, and became influential men, and monopolized the business, but
not until Lasher had made a fortune.
'As time passed on we got more in touch with Napanee; but did not visit
it often or trade much there until it became the county town and I had
grown into manhood and was shifting for myself. My old friend Henry
Forward was one of the principal merchants, and conducted a general
store on the south side of Dundas Street just east of the Harshaw
Block. Old Dan Pringle, as everybody called him, kept hotel on the
corner where Smith's jewellery store is, and that was headquarters for
the farmers from our neighbourhood; although the Brisco House
afterwards became the popular resort for the Ernesttown,
Fredericksburgh, and Adulphustown people. When I first became at all
familiar with Napanee or, as it was very commonly called, The Appanee,
Clarkville was of much more importance relatively than it is to-day,
and the greater part of the village was on that side of the river.
'The first brick building I ever saw was the little house east of
Madden's store on Dundas Street; and so far as I know it was the first
one built in Napanee.
'I remember the first election I ever witnessed. It was over
seventy-five years ago, about the year 1836. John Solomon Cartwright
and George H. Detlor, the Tory candidates, were running against Peter
Perry and Marshall Spring Bidwell. They ran in pairs; Perry and Bidwell
were called the rebels by the other side. There was only one
polling-place in the county and that was at Bath. It was a little booth
on the edge of the village. I was quite a young man at the time and
didn't know much about the issues; but I could understand that the
people were greatly excited. The taverns of Bath were crowded with men
wrangling about the votes. Whisky was flowing freely, and there were
plenty of drunken men and brawls in the streets. There were lots of
taverns all over the country. There was Charter's tavern near the head
of Hay Bay, John Davy's over near Sandhurst, and Griffiths in the
second concession about four miles west of Charter's. Ernesttown must
have had a dozen at least.
"'There was quite an excitement in the county over the Mormon
missionaries who went about the different townships preaching and
baptizing the converts. Quite a number were baptized in Big Creek.
Brigham Young was here himself, and, if I remember aright, he preached
at Bath. That must have been nearly eighty years ago. The headquarters
of the Mormons was not in Utah then, but somewhere in Ohio. Joseph File
and his family, John Detlor, Junior, and two Lloyds went away with the
missionaries to their 'Promised Land'. But they all came back but one
of the Lloyds who died out there.'"
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