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The
George Beacom Family
My
father Mr. Geo. Beacom was born in 1854 in Fermanagh, Ireland.
When he was 18 years of age, he decided to come to Canada.
After
27 days journey over the Atlantic in a sail boat, and the remainder by
train, he arrived in Goderich, Ontario to visit a brother who had come
to Canada a few years previous. He soon got work at various different
jobs for a while, finally he got steady work in the salt wells at
Goderich, Kingston and Warwick. He worked there for ten years,
then he got the urge to go west.
He
arrived in Winnipeg in May of 1882. It was a very wet
spring. Winnipeg at that time consisted mostly of tents and log
shacks, boats were rowing up and down the streets, with water
everywhere.
He
was
told to go to Emerson where he would be able to buy a team of
oxen. Well, he found a team of young or supposed-to-be-young oxen
for sale. He made the deal and paid $275 for them, but in a few
days he found out that they did not have any teeth. Anyway a deal
is a deal, so he purchased a wagon, three bags of flour, a walking
plow, and several necessary articles, and he drove out to the land
office at Deloraine and filed on a homestead on 22, 3, 16. This
land was situated nine miles northeast of where Killarney now
stands. That time it was known as Oak Lake. His closest
neighbors were Mr. Peter Finnen who lived two miles north, and Mr.
Isive Leece, four miles to the east.
The
first thing that had to be done after he arrived at his homestead, was
to build himself a sod shanty, a sod stable for he had a cow, nine hens
and a team of oxen, also he worked up a little land to grow some
potatoes and a few easy grown vegetables. A little later some
land to grow a little oats feed.
The
nearest town was Brandon, which was 60 miles away and the only
transportation were the oxen or on foot. So he mostly chose the
latter. He made several trips to get mail and other necessary
provisions, but it was very awkward getting his groceries home. I
once heard him say that he got a man who lived at Lang’s Valley to
bring a keg of syrup as far as his home, and he and another man pulled
and dragged it the rest of the way home.
His
main diet in those bachelor days was syrup and bannock, this was a kind
of bread made with flour, sour milk, soda and salt. Of
course, he had milk and eggs, wild ducks were plentiful and many times
I have heard him say about one time he shot two cranes with one shot.
In
the
spring of 1884, he built another house and in June he was married to
Catherine Shaw of Warwick, Ontario. Mother had the honor of being
the first bride in the Hullett district and my sister Mary the first
baby born there.
As
time
past he bought more land, a team of horses, also got more cows.
Those cows were milked and Mother made butter, and the butter was
exchanged at the store for groceries and clothing. There were no
cash, you just traded your eggs and butter for something else.
In 1886
the CPR ran a branch line from Winnipeg to Deloraine and things were a
lot better after that. But it still was a long and bitter
struggle, getting land broke and working it up in condition to grow a
crop. But with the coming of the railway more settlers came and
it wasn’t too long till all the available land was settled on.
In
1892
they built a new school on the section 28, 3, 16. They call it
Hullett because a lot of the settlers had come from Hullett,
Ontario. The first board of trustees consisted of Mssrs. Peter
Finnen, A. S. Shaver, and George McCullock and Miss Lillian Benyon was
the first teacher, who afterward became a well-known writer.
After
the school was built, they had a place to hold church and Sunday school
and many other entertainments. Church was held there summer and
winter from the time the school was built till after the cyclone of
1942. Before the school was built, they used to hold church services
and prayer meetings in the various homes.
Their
chief entertainment was going visiting their neighbours. But now
the telephone takes the place of that, for now if you want to visit or
to get some other information, you reach for your telephone, and in a
few minutes, you have got the information that was needed, but it has
lost something that the old timers enjoyed, a friendly chat with their
neighbours and perhaps a cup of tea.
In
the
early days travelling was very crude. At first there was the
wagon or a stone boat or even a cow hide stretched out with a box or
two to sit on and a wash tub with cushions for the baby to lay in, rig
up a whipple tree to hitch the horses to, and away they went over the
prairies. But later on, they got a two-wheeled cart, a democrat,
or a surrey and the buggy and finally the Model T Ford.
There
were five children in our family, three girls and two boys. My
brother Wilfred died in 1890 when he was only four months old; father
passed away in 1933; Mother in 1922; (Mary), Mrs. W. Day in 1947;
(Ada), Mrs. W. I Fowler in 1923 and Albert and I are the only surviving
members of our family. We resided at the homestead till after the
cyclone of 1942 when our home was badly destroyed. We moved to a
farm one mile east of Killarney on Sec. 1. 3. 14. where we now reside.
(Here
is a story if you wish to see it).
Dad
once told us in his bachelor days he walked over to see a
neighbour. It was in the winter time and the days were very short
and night came on before he left for home. As there were no
fences or roads of any kind, he used to pick a star which he thought
was in the direction of his shack and by following it as a guide, it
would lead him home. But he had not gone far before clouds came
up and covered the sky and it began to snow quite heavily. He
walked and walked and he began to get tired and decided he would have
to dig a hole in the snow and lay down till day break. He thought
better of it for he was very warm, so though he would walk slower to
cool off a bit. Anyway, he had not gone far till he walked or
stumbled up against the side of his own shanty. He said he let
out some louds cheers that he knew could be heard for miles. He
also said that it was one night the cold shack looked good to
him. Be it ever so humble, there is NO place like home.
Miss
Maude Beacom
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