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William
Freeman
My
father, the late William Freeman, was born at Mitchell, Ontario,
October 16th, 1844, of Irish parents, and was the oldest of a family of
five. In later years he moved with his parents to Keppel, Grey
County, and after a few years he went up to Lion’s Head in the Bruce
Peninsula. He was the first man up there.
He
bought a hundred-acre farm which was solid bush, cleared some land and
built a long house. Then he married Ellen Maloney of Keppel and
raised a family of four boys and one girl – William, Thomas, George,
John and Sarah. There was no doctor in the district at that
time. If you wanted a doctor, you would have to go on horseback
or on foot twenty-two miles to Wiarton to get one. There was one
church in the village which was the Church of England which was
well-attended.
Spinning
wheels were a common thing in those days. My mother would card
the wool into rolls, spin it into yarn. Her father was a weaver,
so she would take the yarn to him and have it woven into cloth.
They would save all the ashes, put them in a barrel and leach it into
lye and would make all their own soap.
Then
Father got the fever for the West. In 1892, March 28th, he moved
with his family to Killarney, Manitoba, and settled in what is now the
Hullett District. He rented the east half of Section 32-3-16 from
a man by the name of McQuan, better known as “24 per cent”. There
were forty-five acres broken on the place. He bought a yoke of
oxen, ploughed it and sowed it by hand, harrowed it in with the oxen,
and had a good crop. He bought his first cow from a fellow by the
name of Tom O’Neal who batched in a shanty on the east end of Rock
Lake. He walked all the way there and led the cow home.
Wood
was the chief fuel in those days. He made a good many trips to
Pelican Lake bush with the oxen and brought home some big loads of
wood. One man said that if you could have kept the Freemans and
the fires out of Pelican Lake bush, there would be lots of wood there
yet.
Then
he
moved to Oak Ridge district and bought the farm on section 20-3-17,
which he farmed until he retired.
In
those days the Reverend W. R. Johnson held church service in his farm
home in the summer months.
In the
early days, bears were quite plentiful, so there have been quite a lot
of bear stories among the old-timers. One was told about Jim
Freeman. There was a big black bear coming east down by his
place. When it got quite close, Jim took down his rifle, took aim
and shot. The bear dropped, as he thought, right in its tracks.
So when the smoke cleared away, Jim thought he would go and look at his
prey. He gave the bear a kick with his foot. The bear
jumped up. Jim turned and made for the shanty, with the bear
close behind, both doing their best. Luckily there was a horse
rake between the shanty and where the bear was, so Jim made a dodge
around the rake, and when he looked back, the bear was lying dead at
the other side of the rake.
William
Freeman passed away at the age of 89 years. His wife Ellen
Freeman passed away at the age of 84 years.
Written by
Thomas R. Freeman
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