Category: Stories

(Wayne’s Storyworth)

Before the government decided that only their supporters could sell milk , farmers had a way of making a few dollars by selling milk, cream and butter.(More on this in a future story about Chester).

We had many chores on the farm in the 60’s . I was six years old in 1960 and was expected to contribute to the vast enterprise of dads farm when I was able to walk and carry something. Often what I had gladly done to be more like dad quickly turned into something that I wished I had never learned how to do. Things like ,bringing in the wood , slopping the pigs, gathering eggs, shoveling shit, milking cows, and making butter.

I liked running the separator cause you just had to pour raw milk into it, turn the crank and watch the cream go into one pail and the milk go into another (there was a fly wheel in the separator so you didn’t need to turn the crank forever). You used a clean rag to strain the shit and flys out of the raw milk as you poured it into the separator (see the video on facebook.com/watch/?v=695736686004977).

The cream was carefully carried to the milk house and saved for a few days until you had enough to make some butter (The milk house was close to the farm house and was dug into the ground to keep the milk cooler than in the farm house).

We had all the things you needed to make butter. The wooden butter mold must have been made by somebodies great, great, grandpa. Once the butter was churned you would add salt to it and kneed the butter with your sterile hands and then pack it into the sterile wooden butter mold.

Yes of course we had a butter churn. The churn was a little bigger than a 5 gallon pail and like the separator it had a crank on it. Inside the churn was two wooden paddles with holes in them. There was nothing modern like a fly wheel on the churn so you had to churn the crank continuously (hard to believe I found a picture of a churn just like it). Dad and mom both hated sitting there and churning that crank. They had better things to do and it was really boring. Of course they could delegate this job to the boy that was sitting there watching them work up a sweat. It seemed like you had to turn the crank for ever. As the milk thickened it became harder and harder to turn the crank. You would switch arms as one got tired. I really hated making butter. You could try to tell your little sister how much fun it was but that only worked once.

So what was I to do. I started crying and begged mom to not make me churn butter any more. Well mom always had my back. She pushed the request up the food chain to the wizard of the family, dad.

Dad got out his best haywire but couldn’t figure out how to do it with just haywire. This required something more hi-tech. The baler had a gas motor and some belts on it and that may have been his inspiration. Dad had an electric motor he has savaged from an old cloths dryer and some used fan belts from the tractor.

He attached the churn and the electric motor to a board about four feet long (used his best haywire). He hack sawed off the churns crank handle and replaced it with a pulley he found that fit the used belt. He had to buy the pulley to go on the electric motor because he couldn’t find one in the garage or granary that fit.

I know dad was afraid something might go wrong so we both moved as far away as we could get in the porch where the contraption was being tested and he had me stand behind him.. Dad filled the churn with fresh cream and plugged the electric motor into the wall .

Now for some basic engineering . The motor was most likely 1800 rpm since that is the most common speed used in cloths dryers . The two pulleys were pretty much the same diameter. This meant there was no speed reduction between the churn and the electric motor. So the old churn tried to spin up to 1800 rpm too.

As it accelerated some of the hay wire on the board let go. The wooden paddles in the churn went flying out of the top. The cream plastered the ceiling and the walls and us. Thank god the belt came off.

Dad put the project on hold for a while. But the cows kept making cream and now we had no handle to turn on the churn ( I was happy about this).

Dad patched up the churn (one wooden paddle was broken and the bottom a little dented). Dad figured out the need for some speed reduction between the electric motor and the churn. Looking at the clothes dryer you could see that the pulley on the churn needed to be much larger , like the size of the drum on the clothes dryer.

Where was he going to get a pulley this big. Well in the milk house loft there was an old spinning wheel. The wheel on spinning wheel might be just the size he needed.

Some how dad managed to mount the spinning wheel wheel on the churn where the crank had been.

For the next test we both stood outside the porch with me behind him (buster too) and the porch door closed. He used an extension cord and plugged it in (with just water in the churn this time).

Amazing . It worked perfectly. Now churning butter became a fun job and dad and mom could get back to farming.

Because of the milk laws there wasn’t any money to be made in milking ten cows. As time went by we ended up just milking one cow and there wasn’t enough cream to justify making butter any more.

The enemy

As with the Pennells, it has been a challenge to get any solid proof of heritage. However, when the Crews immigrated to Canada, they brought with them tales that, regardless of how much work and research is done, cannot be verified in any way. The original source of these stories seems to be from Effie Scott who was the granddaughter of Eliza Hone.

Tale #1: Marie deFawcett

It has been verified that Rachel’s father, William Henry Crew was a successful brickmaker in London, England. His sons, Richard and William (the younger), as well as John Bradfield all worked for him in London. James Hone (Eliza Crew’s husband) was living with the Crews in 1851 and reports that he is a brickmaker as well.

In 1851, the Crews lived at 4 Parkplace with Samuel Sheppard’s family (Susan’s brother) and another family (relationship unknown).

The story that has been handed down through Effie Scott (Rutherglen, Eliza’s Crew descendant) and perhaps from Alice Pennell (Rachel’s daughter), was that Susan Crew’s mother was Marie de Fawcett.

This is from a document authored by Myrtle Connolly, nee Keech, who’s great-grandmother was Rachel Crew.

Marie deFawcett was a descendent from the Imperial House of Orleans, an important part of French Royalty. The first Duke of Orleans was the son of Charles V of France and was born 1372. His name was Louis de Valois.

The following is from my own “book” I authored in 1994.

Susan Shepherd’s parentage is still somewhat of a mystery. Her mother was definitely [NOT proven and unlikely] Maria deFawcett, but its possible that deFawcett was Marie’s married name and that when she married a second time to a William Shepherd, he adopted Susan. Its possible that Marie was a French Hugenot who fled France after witnessing the murder of her parents. [not possible as Marie’s life is not contemporary with the Hugenots. Possibly her parents or grandparents]. DeFawcett, according to the French Hugenot Society of England, is an English name, not a French one.

I did some digging into the Hugenot immigration to England and my notes say that around 1705, Hugenots settled in south England, Canterbury, Kent, Sandwich, Faversham, Shoreditch, London & Spitalfields. Since the beheadings of Marie Antonoinette and Louis XVI didn’t take place until 1793, the Hugenot movement must have continued on until the end of the century. The only surviving daughter of the King and Queen, Marie-Theresa didn’t get herself out of France (a 2nd time) until 1815. (Wikipedia)

1841 England Census finds William and Susan Crew with their children on John Street, Bethnal Green. Since William allegedly had a “successful” brickmaking business that employed at least 4 men (Charles Pennell, Richard Pennell, William Crew (the younger) and James Hone), I did an internet search of the history of Bethnal Green to see if I could find anything.

Huguenot influence was diluted by outsiders from other parts of London. Over 80 per cent of Bethnal Green’s population in 1851 and 1861 had been born in London.  Although Bethnal Green was still the main silkweaving parish, the industry was in decline and weavers were under-employed. Occupations such as tailoring, furniture making, and costermongering replaced it but none was prosperous, sweated labour was prevalent, and the population was caught in a downward spiral of poverty. A modern analysis has placed Bethnal Green as the second poorest London parish in 1841, the poorest by 1871.

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Dickens made Bethnal Green the home of Nancy in Oliver Twist (1838).

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The most detailed report on Bethnal Green was published in 1848 by Dr. Hector Gavin, health inspector and lecturer at Charing Cross hospital, who hoped to enlist the rich in ‘the great work of sanitary improvement and social amelioration’. He wrote before development around Victoria Park, when the ‘most respectable’ area was Hackney Road. The rest of the parish, including the area on either side of Green Street, was ‘filthy’, ‘appalling’, and ‘disgusting’. The older districts bordering Spitalfields contained paved streets and larger houses but the former were broken up and the latter overcrowded. Elsewhere roads were unmade, often mere alleys, houses small and without foundations, subdivided and often around unpaved courts. An almost total lack of drainage and sewerage was made worse by the ponds formed by the excavation of brickearth. Pigs and cows in back yards, noxious trades like boiling tripe, melting tallow, or preparing cat’s meat, and slaughter houses, dustheaps, and ‘lakes of putrefying night soil’ added to the filth.

Bethnal Green: Building and Social Conditions from 1837 to 1875 | British History Online (british-history.ac.uk)

Bart Jones, an avid Crew researcher in New Zealand, is convinced that this whole France, Hugenot story is nothing but gossip and has no validity at all. I’m about 75% in agreement with him. My hold back in completely rejecting the whole story, is that I believe firmly that within every piece of family gossip, is a thread of truth that has been exaggerated or “bent”. Also, when my DNA analysis came back from both Ancestry and 23andMe, both shows small signs of Northeastern France.

I also think that there’s a misconception that if a surname starts with “de”, that indicates its a French surname. This isn’t the case. The prefix “de” means “of” and is used in French, Spanish, Italian, etc.

For instance, when a woman married and took her husband’s name, she’d add “de” in front of the husband’s surname. Somewhat the same as “Handmaid’s Tale”, where Offred meant “of Fred”. Margaret Attwood could have written “deFred”. But I digress…

“De” was also misused, as common people began to realize they could pass themselves off as aristocracy by added “de” to the beginning of their surname. For example, my name would be Wendy deSmith. Hmmm…. well sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

The surname Fawcett isn’t French, however saying it with a French accent is like mispronouncing Target and Leon’s Furniture. North Americans think they sound higher class.

I was able to find the marriage of William Crew to Susan Sheppard. He was a widower. His first wife was likely Ann Swallows.

Susan’s parents were Charles and Ann, as stated on her baptism in 1798, Tring, Hertfordshire. No mention of Marie deFawcett.

In find it interesting the sequence of events leading up Susan’s death.

• 1861, Susan and William were living with Richard and Rachel (Crew) Pennell.
• 1869, William died.
• April 2, 1871, Susan is a pauper in a “workhouse” (an institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment)
• May 1875 Richard and Rachel boarded the S. S. Niger for Canada.
• December 1875 Susan dies.

This post really needs to be read with the post on Miss Rosamond Crocker. There is information in both that are eerily similar.

So there are two Marie’s that escaped France: Marie Theresa (dau. of Marie Antoniette) and Louise Marie (sister of Marie Theresa’s husband). The story of William Pennell assisting in these escapes could very well be the fodder for the Marie deFawcett stories, and somehow the story went from the Pennell side to the Crew side.

And also, the “de” did NOT designate Marie deFawcett as French. It only showed that she was of a culture that used the “de” to either show aristocracy or to show Fawcett was her husband’s surname, not hers. This was a French, Spanish, Portuguese, practice.

Can’t help but wonder, where “Fawcett” came from?

Yesterday (March 26, 2023), while staring at the known ancestry chart of Susan Sheppard, I saw a name I’ve seen before that somehow suddenly looked different. Susan’s husband was Henry Crew. His mother’s name was Elizabeth Foresee (sounds a lot like Fawcett) and Elizabeth had a sister Mary, which brings me to Tale #2.

Tale #2: Duke of Rutland

This is a story that my Aunt Edna told me.

Susan Shepherd had a sister, Mary, who worked for the Duke of Rutland a “Nurse maid and seamstress”. Supposedly, there are memories handed down by Effie Scott, that Eliza recounted visits made by Mary coming to visit her sister Susan by horse and buggy on her days off. Knowing the above description of Bethnal Green, Mary must have found those visits deplorable.

The story goes that the Duke of Rutland was so grateful for Mary’s services, that he willed her a considerable sum of money. Mary remained a spinster, and when she died she left the small fortune to her sister Susan, who, for some reason, never claimed it.

Never wanting to leave a “small fortune” behind, I wrote someone who could look into a database of the employees of the Duke of Rutland during the early 1800’s. It was really no surprize to receive an answer that no such person by the name of Mary Sheppard was ever in the employ of the Duke of Rutland.

However, I did research who would have been the Duke at the time Mary would have been old enough to be a “governess” and would that Duke have needed a governess.

John Manners was the 5th Duke of Rutland. He married Elizabeth Howard who had 10 children and died in 1825, only 5 years after the birth of their last child. John remained a widower until his death at age 79. So there was a need – I just can’t find out who looked after his children after Elizabeth died.

However, the most damning thing about the story is that from Belvoir Castle to Bethnal Green is a 13 hour bike ride or a 2 day walk. Somewhere in between is a buggy ride, and not something one would do on her “day off”.

by Wendy V. Smith (originally written January 2011)

From 1956 to 1968, I lived on a farm in rural Ontario with my mother Joan, father Lloyd, my older brother Wayne and my two older sisters, Carol and Donna.  We had cows, pigs, sheep, lots of cats and Buster the dog.  Every spring, everyone helped Mom and Dad plant a massive vegetable garden. Family roles were very defined then: I helped Mom in the kitchen while Wayne helped Dad with the farm chores. That being said, Wayne loved cooking and baking and learning how to do all the things Mom did. In fact, when Wayne got married, his wife Rita took up cross-stitch because it was the ONLY thing Wayne didn’t know how to do already. Wayne even quilted.

One spring day, when we were little, Wayne and I decided visit the sheep grazing in the field to find any new lambs that had been born during the night. This is a story I remember….

Continue reading “The Black-faced Lamb”

by Wendy V. Smith (Originally written 2011; edited for Blog November 2019)

To me, the dog and the cats were pets but to my parents the dog protected the house against the bush wolves and coyotes while the cats kept the mice and moles down to a minimum.  This is a memory of the cats and especially of Bobby, the Cross-eyed Cat…

One day my Dad brought home a box of 4 kittens.  Smokey was solid gray female cat, the colour of dark smoke.  Blacky was, well, solid black male.  Candy was light gray and white male, very pretty reminding me of sweet candy. And Bobby was a dark tabby female resembling a bobcat. Bobby’s front legs were unusually short and she had one eye that looked the wrong way earning her the nickname “The Cross-eyed Cat.”  She must have been left too long without human contact as a kitten, because she had a wild nature, unfriendly and rarely could be caught, touched or petted.  My brother Wayne and I suffered from long bloody scratches down our arms in our many attempts to socialize her that only contributed to furthering her anti-social behaviour.

The following is a little story of Bobby a few years after they arrived in that box when I was about 8 years old and Wayne was about 10.

Continue reading “Bobby, The Cross-eyed Cat”

by Wendy V. Smith (originally written Jan 2011; edited for Blog November 2019)

Our 200-acre farm was split into two 100-acre sections.

Across the road had the section with the creek and Aunt ‘Liza’s abandoned house.

The other section had our house.

To me, this seemed like an enormous playground for us.

As long as it was daylight, and I had Wayne and Buster with me, I was rarely afraid during many adventures.

Buster was the best dog in the world, a farm dog that never came into the house, surviving only on table scraps.

At night, he would make his way to the cow barn, slip in through a hole in the side and sleep with cows where it was nice and warm. 

After every meal, Mom made sure there were left overs to scrape into Buster’s dish outside.  This is a story of Buster and the Porcupine.

Continue reading “Buster and the Porcupine”

By Wendy V. Smith (February 2011), revised and edited with memories from Wayne L. Smith (May 2016)

Every year my cousins from Buffalo, New York, came for a visit and the summer of 1964, when I was 8, was no exception. While Sharlene and I spent time playing with dolls and baking in my Easy Bake Oven, Phillip and my older brother Wayne did target practice on tin cans at the horse barn with his rifle. Yes, he was 10 and he had his own rifle, which in itself was not unheard of within farming families. Yet even Wayne was surprized at how that rifle ended up in his hands. This is a story of combined memories of a rifle, a treehouse and Uncle Phil.

Continue reading “The Treehouse”

by Wendy V. Smith (January 2011; edited July 2, 2020)

This is a memory of a summer day in Rutherglen…

Dad decided to go across the road into the bush along the Blue Sea Creek to clear some wood.

Wayne and I had been making some extra cash by picking lyco.

“How much, Dad?” asked Wayne downing his orange juice.

“Ten cents a pound.  There’s some burlap bags in the granary you can have.  But let’s get going.  I got a lot of work to do over there.”  Burlap bags were large rough scratchy woven bags used to store oats and grain.

“What’s lyco?” I asked.

Continue reading “Dad Has An Accident”

by Wendy V. Smith (January 2011, edited July 2, 2020)

Wayne and I shared one bedroom on the second floor of our old farm house.  The bedroom window looked east, out through a large fragrant lilac tree over a very large glorious crab apple tree, to an immense vegetable garden, and beyond that one could see a row of very tall spruce trees that my grandfather planted as a wind break. This is one of my memories…

“Time for bed kids. Off ya go,” called Mom

“But its still light outside, Ma,” I whined. “How can we go to sleep when its light outside?”

“You have school tomorrow and its eight o’clock.  You won’t see light with your eyes closed.”

Unhappily, Wayne and I made our way up the creaky stairs and down the creepy hallway.

Continue reading “Fireflies In The House”

by Wendy V. Smith (January 2011; edited July 2, 2020)

Donna is 11 years older than me and Carol is 8 years older.  Donna and Carol were members of the 4H Club where young people learned how to do things that people did living in farming communities.  For example, they learned how to take care of a calf and how to make clothes.  Carol liked making clothes, but she didn’t like anything about the farm. She thought the farm was stinky and she was afraid of the chickens. This is a story Mom loved to tell at family gatherings, plus other stories of Carol and Roy ….

Continue reading “Carol and Roy”

The first year that registers in my mind is 1963 because that was when I was in Grade 1.  I must have printed 1963 hundreds of times at the top each page of my workbooks at school. It was my first year at Rutherglen Central School.  My best friend Lorna was one of our closest neighbours and she lived about a mile down the Trunk Road.  Things were measured in feet, inches, yards and miles back then.

In 1963, downtown Rutherglen had a Lucky Dollar general store with a post office in the back.  There was McNeily’s Dance Hall, a train station, Graham’s Store, two churches and one small graveyard filled with more graves than stones.  The Lucky Dollar was across a busy highway from the school so only the kids of Grade 8 were allowed to go over during lunch hour.  Sometime good fortune would find a penny or a nickel in my pocket, which I would entrust to one of these older kids with instructions to bring me back a bag of candy which always would include jaw breakers and black balls.  It only took two seconds of sucking a black ball to make a toothy smile look toothless.  

The following is a combination of several memories which I’ve put together in one story.

Continue reading “Cows In The Yard”