CHAPTER 67 PEACHTREE FARM
(Helen and Christopher) Mother had sad associations with the Ward Street house. After Father resigned from the Bank to spend all his time preaching, it was necessary to find a more economical way of living. The rent of the Ward Street house was $20, whereas that at the next home was only $5. Father's salary no longer being available, the only visible income was now Mother's modest private income. This time of poverty was very good for us. We learned many valuable lessons; not least, we learned to trust God for supplies.
Peachtree Farm was well north on Hope Street, not far from Corbett's Pond and the electricity plant. The house was frame, two storeys. At the front was a small hall and drawing room which could be cut off in winter to avoid heating them. Behind was a large living room with a southern exposure, off which opened a bedroom and a large kitchen. Upstairs were three bedrooms, which did not extend over the kitchen. Off the kitchen on the south side was a wide covered verandah where the family ate their meals in warm weather (and in one exceptional year at least once every month all winter).
The house was heated by a kitchen range, a small coal heater in the living room and a large one in the front hall, lit only when the drawing room was used. The upstairs was heated through stovepipes from below. In winter, water would often freeze and had to be poured from the jugs into the basins to avoid cracking them.
Water came from a well with a wooden pump outside the kitchen. It was excellent water. Somerville enjoyed pumping it, even in cold weather.
The house stood on about 3/4 acre of land, mostly in orchard and garden. In addition, a lot was rented immediately north, in which potatoes were grown for us and corn for the cow. Later the lot north of that again was bought for $50. Altogether this gave about 1-1/4 acres with a dozen or so apple trees on the "home" lot and a further dozen on the purchased lot. The trees included three very big Baldwins that bore prolifically, one Spy, one King, one Snow, one early Duchess and Tolman Sweets. The Tolman Sweet apple was large, hard, sweet and green, ripening after Christmas. One day Mother saw a boy up a tree picking apples. "What are you doing up there"? she asked. "Oh", said he, "I'm just looking for my cow."
An old gardener had lived there previously who had grafted five or six kinds of apple branches into one tree. There were also several black and red currant bushes, a raspberry patch, a plum tree and a peach tree (which never bore while the family lived there), which gave the place its name.
(Christopher) A large pail of apples general stood in the middle of the table and we children sat round the table doing our lessons and eating apples. I remember that at 10.15 p.m. the train from Peterborough passed and that was the signal that we older ones must go to bed.
There was a barn with two stalls and a large chicken house. The family had a cow, two pigs and about fifty hens.
(David) My first memory is of being carried along by the belt of my pants or pinafore, by a man. I was dripping wet, having been fished out of a telephone pole hole near Peachtree Farm. There are other memories of that old house; of crawling under a clothes basket on the front verandah along with a cat, kneeling on it and being severely scratched; of watching our dog lie behind the big black kitchen range with the bantam hen on its back, or of the dog lifting the bantam off the kitchen table with much fluttering and protesting.
When the family moved to Peachtree Farm Dorothy was in her last year at Miss Harmon's School in Ottawa, Christopher and Somerville were at Trinity College School and Helen was at Aunt Dora's school.
(Somerville) As Dad was away a great part of his time visiting various communities east and west of Port Hope, looking after the garden fell to Christopher and me. Since Christopher soon began spending his summers on survey parties in Western Canada, the brunt of the garden work was mine. I also took care of the livestock, which meant rising about six to milk, feed, etc. get my own breakfast and be off in time for school at 8.30 a.m., with a similar routine repeated in the afternoons. Helen delivered the milk - two quarts daily to the Petreys, who lived at the corner of Hope and Ward Streets, about a mile south of us. The price was five cents a quart. We had a surplus of milk and cream in the spring and summer and enjoyed making it into ice cream. Eggs we sold at 15 cents a dozen, although at times the price fell to three dozen for 25 cents. We sold our apples "on the trees" at 75 cents a barrel for Spies and Baldwins and 50 cents a barrel for other varieties. We used the culls and windfalls for ourselves and would open the fall season with perhaps ten to fifteen barrels in the cellar. With the milk, eggs and fruit and vegetables from our own "farm" we had the basic requirements for a wholesome diet and never lacked plenty of good food. I am sure the simple life and the responsibility taught us the value not only of money but of time. It also engendered in me a firm resolve to do well at school and win a scholarship at the university and made me determined not to have to make my living by working with my hands. Our way of life did not interfere with our work at school. Both Christopher and I generally stood at the head of our classes. I won a prize for general proficiency every year I was at Trinity College School.
(Helen) There was a large pasture just behind Peachtree Farm, which people could rent for pasturing their cows. At the bottom of the pasture was the Ganaraska River and across the river the railway.
Mother had had children's classes before, but after little Hope died she didn't feel she could. She had dreams - she was psychic. When anything happened to anyone in the family she always knew. In one of her dreams she thought she saw a house full of children and somebody said to her : "This house is going to fall down in a very short time and these children will listen to anything you say". She felt this was a warning that she should speak to the children. So she began her classes again. One winter she went through the 11th chapter of Hebrews, elaborating on the verses, one afternoon a week for boys and another for girls. The schools were very co-operative and used to announce the classes. If a child was kept in at school and said that he was going to Mrs. Willis' Bible class he was allowed to go.
We used to go into the town to have the meetings, twice a week after school, in the meeting room. It was quite a walk, more than a mile. We went down Ontario Street, past a long field across which the winter wind blew bitterly.
There was a sewing class on Saturday afternoons and a Sunday School at the family house. There were suppers for the children, which were great events.
There was a very good evangelical Anglican clergyman, Mr. Daniel, whose children were about the same ages as the Willis children. The Daniel children used to come for tea and all were very good friends.
Mother had great pleasure in her friendship with Mrs. Rigby, wife of the headmaster of Trinity College School. They used to meet once a week to read history and then had tea. Dr. Rigby later performed Christopher's marriage ceremony.
Father, Mother and I went to Nova Scotia for the summer of 1905, while Christopher and Somerville worked on Mr. Fair's farm. Dorothy was in England with Aunt Dora. We visited a little place called St. Mary's Bay where oxen were still being used for farm work. That was the year Dorothy went to McGill University, living at Royal Victoria College, from which she graduated in 1909. That winter Father preached in lumber camps near St. John, New Brunswick, and after returning home spent some of his spare time collecting accounts for Mr. Wilson, publisher of "The Guide", Port Hope's daily paper.
(Christopher) Somerville had a scholarship which gave him most of his school fees, but I had none. The last year I was at Trinity College School we were poorer than we'd ever been before and there was no money to pay the fees for the Lent term which began in January. As the time approached there was still no money, but Mother said the Lord would provide. And then a letter came from the headmaster to say that I had qualified for a scholarship some time before but it had been open only to boarders and I was a day pupil. However, the School Board had decided that it should be opened to both and I was awarded it. So I had some "back pay" coming to me, enough to cover what was needed for the balance of Somerville's fees and all mine.
I finished school the early summer of 1906 and went surveying in the Northwest, from Brandon to Regina, for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. I had passed the McGill Science Matriculation examination and got the job through Mr. Hobson, whom I went to see in Montreal in the winter of 1905/06. I went up to the North West at the end of June and came back in November and cleared just a dollar! Later I got a job with the Canadian Northern Railway near Bala.
(Helen) Dorothy, Somerville and Helen spent the summer of 1906 with Aunt Dora at a cottage she had just built at Fairy Lake, Muskoka. Father, Mother and David visited the meetings round Smith Falls, Ontario. David was about five, an "enfant terrible", and Mother said she walked in the Valley of Humiliation, staying at the various farmers' homes.
Arthur Glascott came from Ireland that year to live with the family. He was devoted to Mother and she was very good to him. His mother was one of the Cayleys, with whom Mother had lived before she went to the North West.
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