My father found it necessary to return to Niagara to secure the patent for the lands he had selected, and also to provide for wants not previously known or understood.  The journey was long and tedious, travelling on foot and on the lake shore, and by Indian paths through the woods, fording the creeks as he best could.

At the Grand River, or River Ouse, there was an Indian reservation of six miles on each side of the river from its mouth to its source, owned by two tribes of Indians, Mohawks and Cayugas, whose wants were well-supplied with very little exertion of their own, as the river and lake abounded with fish, the woods with deer and smaller game, and the rich flats along the river yielded abundance of maize with very little cultivation. They were kind and inoffensive in their manner and would take the traveller across the river, or part with their products for a very small reward.

On my father’s application for the lots he had chosen, he was told by Council that the two at Ryerse Creek could only be granted conditionally, as they possessed very valuable water privileges, and that whoever took them must build both a flour and a saw-mill.

My father accepted these conditions, secured the grant for his won lands, but left my mother’s for a future day, and at once made arrangements for purchasing the necessary material for his mills — bolting cloths, mill-stones, iron, and screws, etc. — and then with a back load of twine, provisions for his journey, and his light fusee, he commenced his return home, where he arrived in good health, after an absence of twelve days.  It is only the settlers in a new country that know what a pleasure a safe return can give.

Long Point now boasted four inhabitants in twenty miles, all settled on the lake shore.  Their nearest neighbour, Peter Walker, at the mouth of Patterson’s Creek [now Port Dover], was three miles distant by water and six by land.  But from this time, 1795, for years to come, there was a constant influx of settlers.

Few days passed without some foot traveller asking a night’s rest.  The most of the travellers would set to work cheerfully for a few days, and assist in cutting roads, making sheds, sawing boards, or felling timber.

The winter was now fast approaching, and much was to be done in preparation for the coming spring.  My father succeeded in hiring five or six men for as many months.  The great object was to get some land cleared so that they could plant maize, potatoes, and garden vegetables for the next year’s consumption.  They had also to make preparations for sugar-making, by hollowing out troughs, one to each tree that was tapped, sufficiently large to hold the sap that would run in one day.

Their evenings were devoted to netting the twine which my father had purchased at Niagara for that purpose. My mother hired Barbara Troyer as a help, and time passed less heavily than she had imagined.

My father had brought with him a sufficient quantity of flour and salt pork to last them a year; for fresh meat and fish he depended upon his gun and spear, and for many years they had always a food supply of both.

My father had a couple of deer-hounds, and he used to go to the woods for his deer as a farmer would go to his fold for a sheep. Wild turkey and partridge were bagged with very little skill or exertion, and when the creek and lake were not frozen he need scarcely leave his own door to shoot ducks; but the great sporting ground — and it is still famous, and the resort of sporting gentlemen from Toronto, Woodstock, and indeed all parts of Canada West — is at the head of Long Point Bay.

I have known him, several years later, return from there with twenty wild geese and one hundred ducks, the result of a few days’ shooting.  Pigeons were so plentiful, so late as 1810 and 1812, that they could be knocked down with poles.

Great would have been the sufferings of the early settlers had not a kind and heavenly Father made this provision for them. But deer were not the only animals that abounded in the woods; bears and wolves were plentiful, and the latter used to keep up a most melancholy howl about the house at night, so near that my mother could scarcely be persuaded that they were not under the window.

The cow, for security, was tied to the kitchen door every night; during the day she accompanied the men to the field they were chopping, and fed upon browse, which kept her fat and in good heart — the men making a point of felling a maple tree each morning for her special benefit.

Their first sugar-making was not very beautiful, but they made sufficient of a very bad quality for the year’s consumption. The potatoes gave a great yield; the maize was eaten and destroyed by racoons; the apple and pear pips grew nicely, as did the peach, cherry, and plum stones, and my mother’s balsams and few flowers from the new rich soil were beautiful.

Continued...>

Copyright 1994-2014 John Cardiff and Port Ryerse Environmental and Historical Society

1796/1797 >