Abolition of slavery in Canada--Log-houses, their fireplaces and
cooking apparatus--Difficulty experienced by settlers in obtaining
money--Grants to U. E. Loyalists--First grist mill--Indians--Use of
whiskey--Belief in witchcraft--Buffalo in Ontario.
Among the doings of the first parliament of Upper Canada there is none
on which we can look back with greater satisfaction than the abolition
of slavery in this country. Persons who have not looked closely into our
early history may be almost disposed to express surprise that such a
piece of legislation was passed. The subject is so interesting that I
will speak more fully on the point. Great Britain abolished slavery in
the British West Indies as late as 1833, and paid twenty millions of
pounds for the slaves to their owners. It is difficult at this time to
tell why our forefathers in Ontario were so much in advance of the
Mother Country as well as the United States, for we find that they
abolished slavery from Upper Canada in July, 1793. Of course, there were
not many slaves in Upper Canada at the time, still there were some, but
it seems that no compensation was ever paid to the owners for such
slaves. Just think at what a fearful cost of treasure and precious lives
the United States was called upon in the War of Secession to stand in
order to rid their country of slavery. Had they abolished slavery at the
time our forefathers did, no doubt the great war of the rebellion would
have been averted, and besides, in 1793, when we abolished slavery, they
could not have had very many slaves at the most, and even if they were
paid for, they would not have cost anything like so great a sum as Great
Britain paid for her West India slaves in 1833.
Then I maintain that our forefathers in Upper Canada in 1793 were far in
advance in public spirit and true philanthropy of our American cousins,
for we do not find that the Americans at this time made any great
agitation to rid their country of the curse of slavery. If there were no
other fact to be proud of in our early history, this act of our
forefathers is one on which we may justly feel gratification. I will
insert the Act abolishing slavery in full. In July, 1793, the first
parliament of Upper Canada at its first session, called together at
Niagara by the Lieut.-Governor, John Graves Simcoe, passed an Act as
follows:
“CHAPTER VII.
“Section 1--Hereafter no person shall obtain a license for the
importation of any negro or other person who shall come or be
brought into this province after the passing of this Act, to be
subject to the conditions of a slave; nor shall any voluntary
contract of service be binding for a longer term than nine years.
“Section 2--This clause enables the present owners of slaves in
their possession to retain them or bind out their children until
they obtain the age of twenty-one years.
“Section 3--And in order to prevent the continuance of slavery in
this province the children that shall be born of female slaves
after the passing of this Act are to remain in the service of the
owner of their mother until the age of twenty-five years, when they
shall be discharged.
“Provided that in case any issue shall be born of such children
during their servitude or after, such issue shall be entitled to
all the rights and privileges of free-born subjects.”
By this simple Act of our first parliament our country was effectually
rid of this pest without the shedding of a drop of blood or the
expenditure of a single dollar in money. All honor to our forefathers
for their wise act, and a cheer for our banner free province.
Our forefathers at this time, and long after, had no stoves in their
log-houses. All cooking, as well as heating, was done by the fireplace.
A crane swung on hinges into this great fireplace and could be swung out
from the fire at pleasure. Attached to this crane was an iron, having
notches therein, and fitting over this pendant iron rod was another
shorter iron, with a link as of a chain on the end thereof. This link
fitted into the notches on the first-mentioned iron. By this means the
lower iron could be raised or lowered into or above the fire at
pleasure. Thus our forefathers did their first cooking in Upper Canada.
The corn cake, or wheaten cake, when they had it, was baked in the
ashes, and wonderfully sweet old persons thought it. The fact that it
was covered with some loose ashes did not detract from its sweetness, as
they were soon brushed away, leaving the toothsome cake within.
The first improvement in the culinary art of our forefathers came with
tin bake-ovens. These were tin trays, as it were, open on one side. They
would be set before the fire-place, with the open side fronting the
fire. Thus the rays of heat would be collected, and in a measure
confined within the oven, and the bread or cakes within were soon nicely
browned and baked. It was considered an immense stride by our
forefathers when they got these bake-ovens, and for years they did not
aspire to anything better.
Ovens out of doors were built by some of stones. They were generally
conical in shape and open in the centre. An immense fire would be built
in this out-door oven, and when burnt down to real live coals, would be
all drawn out. Its stones would thus be thoroughly heated. Into the
cavity in which the fire had been, the bread would be inserted and the
door stopped up. Enough heat would remain in the stones to thoroughly
bake at least two batches of bread. But this was done at a fearful waste
of wood, which, of course, was of no account at that time. The advent of
stoves changed all that, and now a fireplace of wood in an Ontario home
is more a luxury than a necessity, and but few are to be found. But many
of my more elderly readers will remember the huge gaping fireplaces of
the past when a great “back-log,” two feet or more in diameter, would be
drawn in with a horse into the house, and the horse unhitched, leaving
the log before the fireplace. Once at the fireplace it was an easy
matter, with handspikes, to
[Illustration: FIREPLACE AND HOUSEHOLD EFFECTS IN USE IN UPPER CANADA IN
1813.
(By permission from the J. Ross Robertson collection.)
]
[Illustration: KITCHEN UTENSILS. UPPER CANADA, 1813.
(By permission from the J. Ross Robertson collection.)
]
roll it to the back side of the fire. Since matches were not then
invented, the fire was something to be closely guarded, lest it might go
out. But this big back-log would usually keep a fire on for some three
or four days, being covered up at night with the ashes and embers that
it might smoulder all the night.
Wild leeks were then used as an article of food. As soon as the snow
disappeared in the spring they would be found in abundance in the
forests, and were gathered as the first spring vegetable. Their unsavory
smell, or that imparted to the breath of the eater thereof, seemed to be
no bar to their use. When all partook of the leek not one could detect
the odor from the other. Likewise the cowslip, a little later in the
season, which grew in shallow ponds, furnished a dish of greens to our
forefathers.
To show how difficult it was at this early day for the poor settler to
obtain money, I will relate an anecdote of about 1807. Levi Annis was
living at this time with his father, in the county of Durham. During the
summer and fall of 1806 they had chopped and burnt a fallow of
thirty-one acres, which they sowed with fall wheat. As a preparation for
sowing, the land was not ploughed at all, but it was loose and leafy and
ashy from the burning. The wheat was sown broadcast by hand among the
stumps. It was covered by hitching a yoke of oxen to the butt end of a
small tree, with the branches left hanging thereto. The oxen drew this
to and fro over the fallow among the stumps, and thus covered the wheat.
This was called “bushing in,” and was the first harrow used by our
forefathers among the stumps. However, the fallow upon which the wheat
was so brushed in produced as fine a crop of fall wheat as ever grew,
falling not much below thirty bushels per acre. Now this wheat could be
exchanged for store goods at will, but not for money. Levi Annis,
however, took the first load of it to Bowmanville, and was told by his
father that he must get $5.50 on account of the whole crop to pay his
taxes, for he must have the money to pay his taxes, but the rest he
would take store pay for. The merchant with whom he dealt actually
refused to advance the $5.50, saying he could get all the wheat he
wanted for goods. The young man had to drive to another merchant and
state his deplorable case to him and his urgent need of $5.50, and that
if he would advance him the money he should have the whole crop of
thirty-one acres. Finally the second merchant took pity upon the young
man in his dilemma and advanced the money. Thus it was with the utmost
difficulty that he could get $5.50 in cash out of thirty-one acres of
wheat. This shows us to-day how difficult it was for our forefathers to
get money.
Most of the refugees from the United States at the time of the American
Revolution of the last century, who sided with Britain, and came to
Canada and this section, came by way of Niagara. This north shore of
Lake Ontario was then a wilderness, with no clearing or settlements at
all. Where Toronto now is was an Indian camp when some of those refugees
came through and over its present site. Of course, such refugees are
termed “United Empire Loyalists,” and right well they deserve the name,
for many of them left lands and houses and goodly heritage in
Massachusetts to come over here and live under the old flag. The Royal
grants which they received were given to them ostensibly for their
loyalty to the Crown, but I sometimes think that our Royal governors at
those times used them as a means of peopling the country, and it would
almost appear that this consideration had as much to do with the grants
for loyalty as for real _bona fide_ settlers. The United Empire
Loyalists came around the head of Lake Ontario, and stopped first beside
the various creeks which flow into Lake Ontario, for two reasons: one,
to enable them to catch the plentiful salmon in those creeks; and the
other, that they might cut marsh grass for their cattle at the marshes
formed at the streams’ mouths. There was no grist-mill nearer than
Kingston, and these refugees had to go in bateaux with their grists
(when they had any) all this way. They skirted close along the shore,
and pulled their boats up at night and slept in them. Twice per year
was, for many years, the greatest number of times they would go with the
grist. Rather hard lines for those who had left the comforts and
civilization of the Eastern States for the wilds of Canada.
John D. Smith, at Smith’s Creek, now Port Hope, erected a grist-mill
some time after 1800 came in, and his was the first grist-mill between
Toronto and Kingston. The boon which this conferred upon the sparse
settlers can hardly be realized at this day. Many of these settlers
became Indian traders, for the Indians at this time far outnumbered the
whites; and semi-annually all the Indian tribes came to Lake Ontario to
fish. Their trading was done by barter. A party of traders would set out
into the woods with their packs of goods and fire off three guns in
succession, which was the signal to the Indians that traders were there.
Next morning the Indians would invariably come to the rendezvous to
trade their furs for ammunition, blankets and trinkets. The furs were
sent by bateaux to Montreal, and were for many years the only commodity
which would command the cash in the market.
The next commodity which brought cash was black salts and potash. This
was before the square timber began to be exported from this locality.
Just about the time that the settlers began to subdue the forests, the
War of 1812 broke out and sadly disarranged all the plans of the
settlers. Some of the sparse settlers, known for probity and
reliability, got contracts under the Government as despatch bearers
between certain stations, and for this received weekly, during the
unfortunate time, Spanish milled dollars, in which they were then paid.
The military impressment law was, of course, in full force during the
war. The cannon and military stores were hauled along the shores from
Montreal to Toronto, as the war progressed, as it was not safe to trust
them on vessels on the water for fear of capture by the Americans. The
mouths of streams had to be forded. The writer can call to mind many
anecdotes of his forefathers of that interesting time in our history.
The straggling settler would be ploughing among the stumps with his yoke
of oxen, when a squad of British soldiers would come along and make him
unhitch from the plough, and hitch on to the cannon without any waiting
or time even to go in for his coat. Usually two yokes of oxen were
attached to each of the small cannon. On arrival at the garrison at
Toronto the owners of the oxen were invariably well paid in cash for
their services. Two persons with oxen from this locality were once
pressed into the service. One yoke happened to be tolerably fat, and the
owner sold them to the military authorities in Toronto for a good price
in money, for beef for the troops. The money obtained for that yoke of
oxen enabled the owner to buy and pay for 200 acres of as fine land as
to-day can be found under the sun.
Nor was it infrequent for the passing soldiers to be billeted upon the
inhabitants for a night.
Indians used to spear fish when the first settlers came here, along the
lake shore and off the headlands. No matter if the water was rough, the
Indian would stand in the prow of the dug-out log canoe, holding some
sturgeon oil in his mouth. Now and again he would spit this oil out upon
the water, which would so calm it for a moment or two that he could see
the fish and spear them. By such sleights the Indian invariably
succeeded in procuring food from the forest and flood, while the white
man could hardly do so until he learned from the Indian how to take game
and fish. It was always the policy of the first settlers to treat the
Indians kindly. They did this because the Indians gave them like
treatment in return, and also because they far outnumbered the whites
and could easily have destroyed them. An Indian was never to be refused
something to eat if he came along hungry. My forefathers have told me
that an Indian came along one day nearly famished and asked for food.
Through some mishap he had been a week without food. A lot of cold meat
was set before him and a quantity of corn bread. The old settler sat
beside his fireplace and saw with surprise the eagerness and dexterity
with which he managed to appropriate this cold meat. And still the
Indian ate on, without apparent flagging, until at last the four pounds
or so of cold meat was gone. Then he gave a grunt of satisfaction and
sat before the fire. Soon he appeared in great distress and began
rolling on the floor. To cure the surfeit the settler knew no better way
than to grease his abdomen and pull him about. Just what virtue the
grease had the settler did not know, but thinking that his body must
necessarily stretch to master all that meat, he knew no better way to
produce the stretching than by greasing him. And grease him he did, with
the Indian all the time roaring with agony. However, after sundry
greasings, rollings and groanings, he got relief, and sat once more
beside the fire. On going away he told the old man what a good meal he
had had, and that he ever would remember him. It is a fact that the
Indian in his forest home used many times to be for days without food,
when game was not secured. When he did get game he gorged himself, but
of the manner of relieving a surfeit in the woods the white man does not
seem to know whether it was by grease or otherwise.
At a logging bee in those old times whiskey was ever present. All the
settlers in the locality would invariably turn out and help at the
logging. Wonderful stories they tell of logging an acre of land in an
hour and a half by three men and a yoke of oxen. Old men to-day tell me
that they were mere lads then, and were the “whiskey boys” at these
loggings. Whiskey was partaken of by the bowlful, and no ill effect
seemed to follow from it. If a man were to drink one-half the quantity
of whiskey to-day he would be more than drunk, and sick on the morrow.
It must be that the whiskey of those days was better than the modern
stuff. It was not supposed to be at all wrong to drink whiskey in those
days, and they tell of an Irish immigrant who settled in Pickering, who
had no cows, and had to provide food for his family during the winter.
He procured two barrels of whiskey, which he and the family used with
the cornmeal porridge during that winter. There were young children in
the family at the time. It was not maintained that the whiskey was as
nutritious as milk would have been, but yet they all came out in the
spring in good condition, none the worse of the thrice daily consumption
of whiskey.
Barns were sometimes moved from the manure pile about them. Manure was
not considered of any value upon the land, for the land was rich enough
without it. In a series of years the manure would accumulate about the
barns, impeding access thereto, and they were actually moved away to get
away from the manure, and then the manure burnt. Of course, we would not
think of such a proceeding now, but there are farmers in Darlington, in
the county of Durham, who burn their straw even now. When threshing, the
straw is spread over a field, as delivered from a machine, by a boy with
a horse-rake. It is then burned, relying for manure upon the ashes which
the straw makes. This is not told as an example of good farming, but it
illustrates the exceeding richness of Ontario soil.
Since the early American colonists burnt witches at Salem, their
descendants, who came to Upper Canada as U. E. Loyalists, brought the
belief of witchcraft with them; and many of them who came here about
1800, and before, really did believe in witches. I have heard my
forefathers relate a witch story in all seriousness which I think worth
repeating, as showing to us that the New England people who burnt
witches were really sincere in the belief. About 1800 a settler in the
spring of the year did not enjoy very good health. Nothing serious
seemed to be the matter with him but a general inertia, or seediness.
There was no medical man to consult, so he did the next best thing by
consulting his nearest neighbor. The neighbor upon being told his
symptoms at once pronounced him bewitched. An old woman in the locality
was at once picked out as the bewitcher. Now for the remedy to break the
spell of the witchery. A ball must be made of silver, and they melted a
silver coin and made a rifle ball of it. An image of dough must be made
to as closely resemble the supposed witch as possible. And it was made.
Just as the sun rose the bewitched must fire at it with his rifle and
the silver ball, and the dough image was set up on a top rail of the
fence, and as the sun rose he fired and just grazed the shoulder of the
dough image. In about an hour the old witch came to the house in great
haste, and wanted to borrow some article. Were they to lend her the
article desired the spell would come on again, but refusing, the spell
was broken; of course, like sensible men, they did not lend the article.
Even they went on to say further that the witch was hit and wounded
slightly on the shoulder, where the dough image was struck by the silver
ball. However, be that as it may, they asserted that the sick man
speedily got well and was never again bewitched by the witch in question
nor any other. Of the efficacy of the unerring aim of the silver ball I
do not vouch, but I do vouch for the real _bona fide_ belief of the old
narrators of the whole tale.
There were buffalo in Ontario once, without a doubt, and I think I can
prove it. When my people first came here, their own and two other
families for some years were the only settlers between Toronto and Port
Hope. They had cows, but by some fatality their only bull died. Somehow,
three cows strayed away one summer and did not return until late in the
fall or approach of winter. Next spring these cows had a calf each, and
these calves partook partly of the mother, with the head and
foreshoulders of the buffalo. Having a shaggy mane and long hair on
their foreshoulders like the buffalo, they were without a doubt part
buffalo. The progeny of this half-buffalo stock increased, but they
never became thoroughly domesticated, and when a bull, some years after,
could be obtained, they had to be killed on account of their
viciousness.