Part 4

The Squire and the school teacher each played his part in the administration of the affairs of the neighbourhood. Each carried some weight and commanded a certain amount of respect; but both yielded first place to the clergyman. While there were several other denominations, the Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Methodists formed the great mass of the population. The Anglicans were the pampered class; they received most of the public favours and were correspondingly haughty and independent. For the first fourteen years of the settlement the clergymen of this church enjoyed a monopoly in the matter of marrying. It was a common occurrence, before there was a Protestant parson or minister duly ordained residing in the province, for a Justice of the Peace to tie the knot, and in rarer cases still for a military officer to perform the ceremony.[#]

[#] All such marriages were confirmed and made valid by "The Marriage Act" passed in 1793; and it was declared lawful for a Justice of the Peace to solemnize marriages under certain circumstances, when the parties lived eighteen miles from a parson of the Church of England.

In 1798 the privilege of performing the marriage ceremony was extended to the ministers of the Presbyterian Church, and as they did not insist upon the wedding party going to the church, the "meenester" secured many fees which otherwise would have gone to his Anglican brother of the cloth. The great democratic body of Methodists were severely handicapped, and did not come to their own until 1831, when the gate was thrown wide open, and the clergy of nearly every recognized religious denomination were placed upon the same footing in respect to marrying as the Anglicans and Presbyterians.

Some of the extreme Loyalists could not reconcile Methodism and loyalty to the Crown, and the records inform us of more than one persecution for preaching the doctrines of the Methodist Church; in fact, one duly elected member of the Legislative Assembly was refused his seat in the House, because he had upon occasions filled the pulpit in a Methodist meeting-house. It is only fair to those who supported such extreme measures to explain that these extraordinary occurrences took place at a time when the feeling in this country against the United States was very strong, and the Methodist body in Upper Canada was under the jurisdiction of a General Conference across the line.

The life of a preacher even in our day is not one of unadulterated bliss. But as far as the comforts of this world are concerned, the modern clergyman has a very easy time of it when compared with the life of the pioneer preacher of a hundred or more years ago. Then the clergyman travelled on horseback with his Bible and a change of clothing in his saddle-bags, preaching ten or twelve times a week in churches, schoolhouses, taverns, and the log cabins of the settlers, wherever a few could be collected to receive the Gospel message. In all kinds of weather, he might be seen plodding along through the heavy snow drifts, or fording the unbridged streams, upon his holy mission to the remotest corners of the settlements. No complaint escaped his lips as he threaded his way through the lonely forest, now and then humming a few snatches from some old familiar hymn. Perchance he halted beside a spring for his mid-day meal, and fervently thanked God, from Whom all blessings flow, as he hauled from his spacious pockets the sandwiches furnished by his host of the night before.

His circuit extended sometimes for fifty, sixty, or an hundred miles, and he rarely spent his evenings at home, if he had one, but slept where night overtook him, glad of the opportunity to share a bunk with his parishioners' children, or make himself as comfortable as he could upon a mattress on the floor. His uniform may have been frayed and not of the orthodox cut; his sermons may not have possessed that virtue of brevity which so many congregations now demand; they may have fallen far short of some of the sensational discourses of to-day; but he was a faithful exponent of the Gospel, the plain and simple truth as he found it exemplified in the life of our Saviour. That the pioneers closely followed the tenets of the Golden Rule is largely due to the self-sacrificing efforts and exemplary life of the early missionaries.

Among the Methodists no other religious gathering could compare with the camp-meeting. It was the red-letter week of the year, given up wholly to prayer, singing and exhortation. In selecting a location for these annual gatherings there were several details to be considered. The first essential was a grove, high and dry, and free from underbrush, accessible both by land and water. The auditorium was in the shape of a horseshoe, about one-half acre in extent, surrounded by tents made of canvas or green boughs supported by poles. Across that part corresponding with the opening in the shoe was a preachers' platform. In front of it was a single row of logs--the penitent bench--and the rest of the space was filled with parallel rows of logs--the pews.

Thither by land and water came the devout Methodists of the district; but then, as now, the women far outnumbered the men in their religious observances. With them they brought chests of provisions, their bedding, and Bibles. Morning, noon, and night, the woods resounded with songs of praise, the warning messages of the preachers, and the prayers of the faithful, pitched in every conceivable key. The surroundings seemed to add an inspiration to the services. When the great throng joined fervently in "All hail the power of Jesus' name", to the accompaniment of the rustling leaves, the hearts of all present were deeply moved. During the closing exercises, marching in pairs around the great circle, with mingled feelings of gladness and sorrow, they sang lustily the good old hymns and then, with many affectionate leave-takings, dispersed to their several homes.

The Methodists looked upon dancing not only as a very worldly but also as a very sinful form of amusement, and as the violin was closely associated with the dance it also was placed under the ban. The Loyalists were musically inclined, but during the first years of the settlements little opportunity was offered for the development of their talents in that direction. Later on singing in unison was extensively practised, and singing schools were organized during the winter months in nearly every neighbourhood. There was a great scarcity of musical instruments before the introduction of the accordeon and concertina, both of which were invented in 1829.

The members of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, as they were more commonly called, were sorely handicapped by reason of their refusal to take an oath under any circumstances. By their strict adherence to this article in their creed they were debarred from holding any public office, or giving evidence in any court of law. That this was a great hardship, from which no relief could be obtained except by legislative enactment, goes without saying. One of their number was regularly elected to the first Parliament and trudged through the forest to the seat of government at the assembling of the members. From purely conscientious scruples he refused to take the prescribed oath, so his seat was declared vacant, and he trudged back home again.

It is not to the credit of the other denominations of Christians, that no steps were taken to relieve the Quakers from the disability under which they were placed, until after twenty-five years of patient endurance. It is true the disability was self-imposed; but they were actuated by the purest of motives, and their exemplary lives and standing in the community entitled them to more consideration from their fellow citizens. The relief first extended to them, after the lapse of a quarter of a century, was only partial, and allowed them to give evidence in civil courts by a simple affirmation instead of an oath. The Legislature having to that extent admitted the principle of affirming instead of taking an oath, could find very little to justify its course in postponing for another twenty years the admission of the Quakers to their full rights, by accepting their affirmation in criminal courts and in all other matters in which an oath was required.

The Quakers took a most decided stand against the law of primogeniture, whereby the eldest son of a man who died intestate inherited all the real estate of his father to the exclusion of all the other sons and daughters. In this respect they were in advance of their age and insisted upon an equitable distribution among all the children of the deceased. Many a young Friend was given the alternative of dividing among his brothers and sisters the real estate thus inherited according to law, or of submitting to the humiliation of being expelled from the Society. To their credit it can be said that very rarely was there any occasion to enforce the latter alternative. The statute abolishing primogeniture came into force on January 1st, 1852.

The Quakers were uncompromising in their opposition to the liquor traffic, and could be relied upon to support all measures for the advancement of temperance. They were progressive in educational matters; they established and maintained efficient schools, and generally took a deep interest in all matters directed towards the general improvement of the country. Beneath their quaint garb and solemn faces, there frequently was found a deep sense of humour, all the more effective when expressed in their peculiar form of speech.

*CHAPTER VI*

*PROVISIONS AND PUBLIC HIGHWAYS*

The staple articles of food among the pioneers were much the same as in our day. Pork formed the chief item of meat. The hams and shoulders were smoked and the rest of the carcass preserved in a strong brine. The flour was coarser than the article we get from the modern roller mills, but none the less, rather the more, wholesome. Corn meal was used much more extensively than now; it was boiled and used as porridge for breakfast, a thick covering of brown sugar being sprinkled over it; what was left over became quite firm as it cooled, and was eaten for supper with milk, or cut into thin slices and fried. Corn meal griddle-cakes were also in great demand. Johnny-cake was not popular, as it was regarded as a Yankee dish; and it took a good many years for the Loyalists to reconcile themselves to anything in any way associated with their former persecutors.

Wild strawberries, raspberries, plums, and gooseberries were to be had for the picking, and the thrifty housewife always laid in a good supply. The raspberries and plums were dried in the sun and put away for future use, or made into a jam, like the gooseberries and strawberries.

The maple furnished the most of the sugar, but cane sugar was afterwards imported--not the white lump or granulated sugar of to-day, but a moist, dark-brown, unrefined product known as "Muscovado".

Tomatoes were not considered fit for human food until after the middle of the nineteenth century. If grown at all, the fruit was used merely for purposes of ornamentation, suspended from strings in the windows under the name of "love-apples". Many believed that they would cause cancer in those eating them--a notion that is not even yet wholly dead in some places.

Although our fresh waters abounded in fish of a superior quality, the Loyalists were not what we would call a fish-eating people--perhaps no people ever were or are as a matter of choice. Most of us enjoy a fish dinner once in a while; but few, if any, of us would care to accept it as a steady diet, or as a substitute for meat. The rigors of our climate and the outdoor life of hard work seemed to call for something more sustaining. The bays and rivers teemed with maskalunge, bass, salmon, pickerel, and pike, and in the late autumn months the whitefish and herring were very plentiful. The "mascos" were speared at night by the aid of a jack-light; they were even shot from the shore as they were lazily swaggering along in the shallow water. In the early spring, a mess of pike could be secured at any time with very little effort; every inlet and creek seemed to be alive with them. The whitefish always has held first place among our merchantable fish. In the summer season they were caught in nets upon the shoals of the Great Lakes, and in October and November the seines were thrown across their path as they were running up the lesser bodies of water. I have heard an octogenarian, whose truthfulness even in a fish story I had no reason to doubt, declare that he had frequently, when a boy, speared fifty or sixty whitefish in one night.

If we examine the map of any of the first townships, we find that the road allowances are in straight lines, intersected at right angles by cross-roads, also in straight lines. About the only exceptions are the roads along the waterfront, which of necessity must conform to the irregularities in the shores. How few, however, of the roads in actual use are straight! We find them twisting and turning in every direction and intersecting each other at various angles.

During the first few years of the settlements a path through the forest was all that was required. A low piece of ground, a steep precipice, or even a fallen tree, which would present no difficulty to the modern road-builder, might at the time have been deemed a sufficient cause for departing from the blazed trail. Once such a path was laid out and improved from time to time, it became a very easy matter for it to be recognized and adopted as a regular highway. In time the cause for the deviation may have passed away, but the crooked road remained. The writer knows of several "jogs" in public thoroughfares which were so constructed in order to pass around buildings carelessly erected upon the road allowance. Many of the most important highways in Ontario appear to be the shortest practical lines between certain towns or villages, and were unquestionably laid out as a matter of convenience, with an utter disregard for the road allowances reserved by the government surveyors.

During the second session of the first Parliament of Upper Canada the Legislature passed an Act to regulate the laying-out, amending, and keeping in repair the public highways and roads of the province. Under its provisions the whole matter was left in the hands of the Justices of the Peace, who were declared to be commissioners of highways to lay out and regulate the roads within their respective divisions. They were also given power, upon the sworn certificate of a majority of twelve of the principal freeholders of the district, summoned for the purpose by them, to alter any road already laid out or to construct new ones. We can readily imagine how many of the crooks and turns in our roads were thus introduced in the first instance to serve the temporary purpose of some friend of the commissioners, or to satisfy the whim of some influential land owner.

By the same Act was introduced a form of statute labour, which has deservedly met with little favour and much condemnation; but has undergone little change for the better from 1793 to the present time. Men possessing little or no qualifications for the position are appointed pathmasters to act as foremen over their friends and neighbours. Annually they turn out in full force, do a good deal of visiting and some work, and frequently leave the road they were supposed to repair in a worse condition than they found it.

To overcome the accumulation of snow in the roads a very simple remedy was provided as follows: "In case any highways are obstructed by snow at any time the overseers are hereby ordered to direct as many of the householders on the road as may be necessary to drive through the highway." So long as the present system of statute labour remains in force and gangs of unskilled workmen persist in annoying the travelling public by rendering the highways practically impassable, this section might, with appropriate modifications, be re-enacted to-day.

*CHAPTER VII*

*DOCTORS, DOMESTIC REMEDIES, AND FUNERALS*

Our forefathers were subject to the same physical ailments as ourselves, but they do not appear to have suffered to the same extent from disease as we do in our day. The surgeon was rarely called upon to exercise his calling, and then only when amputations were felt to be necessary, or some mutilated member needed mending. Fashionable operations were unknown. The vicious tendencies of the _bacteria_ in the human body were not then discovered, or, if they had, war had not yet been declared upon them. Men went about their daily occupations, too busy to bother with the microbes that the modern scientists tell us are gnawing at our vitals. Their greatest fear was from epidemics like smallpox, which occasionally swept through a neighbourhood, leaving a trail of sorrow in its wake. Of licensed practitioners there were but few; and they were, for the most part, attached to the military posts. Occasionally, if the roads were passable, and they felt in the humour and saw a prospective fee of respectable proportions, they might be induced to visit a patient in the neighbouring townships. In this, as in all other matters, the settlers did their best to serve themselves.

In no community of this or any other age have there ever been lacking the services of skilled specialists in any line very long, before some unqualified individual volunteered to supply the lack. It was not long before the quack doctor with his vile decoctions appeared among the pioneers. Strenuous efforts were made to legislate him out of existence, but he managed to evade the statutory prohibitions and has even survived to the present day.

During the first few decades of the Loyalist settlements it was not so much a question of whether the quack _could_ practise in the townships,[#] but the question more to the point was whether the educated and skilled physician _would_ practise. The settlers had become so expert in treating most of their complaints, that they rarely deemed it necessary to secure the services of the medical practitioner; and, when the real physician did take up his abode among them, he not uncommonly engaged in some other calling as well and practised his profession as a side-line.

[#] The first statute providing for the licensing of practitioners in physics and surgery throughout the province was passed in 1795. Up to that time the quacks had it pretty much their own way. The Act was found unworkable and was repealed in 1806; a new and more effective Act was passed in 1815.

The mother or grandmother, as a rule, was the doctor, nurse, and apothecary for the whole family. In the month of September, or perhaps October, when the phase of the moon was supposed to be favourable for the purpose, she organized an expedition to the woods in search of a supply of herbs to replenish her medicine chest. In some cases she dug in the ground for roots, in others the bark, leaves, or stems were sought, and in others still the fruit or seeds possessed the necessary medicinal properties. When she had gathered in her stores, she tied them up in bundles and hung them up in the attic, or stowed them away in some convenient nook until required. Her collection contained specifics for nearly every ache and pain.

It may be that in those days there was not the mad rush for excitement and wealth, and the average citizen kept better hours, ate more plain and wholesome food, had some respect for the different organs of his body, and did not make such ridiculous demands upon them as are made by some of the high livers of to-day. It may be, too, that mother's simple remedies went a long way to correct the excesses and indulgences of the weak and careless and to restore the health of the sickly. In any event the mortality among the pioneers does not appear to have been any greater than it is to-day. It may not be out of place to enumerate some of the uses to which some of the common herbs were put, as they possess the same, if any, medicinal properties to-day.

For coughs and colds, a syrup was made from the roots of the spignet, another name for spike-nard. The tuber of the blood-root was dried and then grated into a fine powder; this was snuffed up the nostrils as a cure for polypus. Catnip has lost little of its popularity as a medicine for children. There are few, if any, of us who have not protested vehemently against having our mouths pried open to receive a spoonful of tea made from the leaves of this common weed; the first symptoms of a stomach-ache were sufficient to set the vile decoction brewing and almost any affection of the throat called for a dose of the same liquid.

The word "tansy" is derived indirectly from a Greek word meaning "immortality", because the yellow blossoms, when dried, lose very little of their original shape and colour. It is doubtful if the name had anything to do with the prescribing of tansy-tea as a tonic. It was extensively used for this purpose, and I can readily conceive a patient, after taking a dose, being quite ready to eat the first thing in sight to overcome the disagreeable taste left in his mouth by the medicine. Hop-tea for indigestion and cherry bark tea for regulating the blood were remedies widely known and extensively used.

Reference has already been made to the danger of children falling into the tub of hot water used in scrubbing the unpainted floor. This and the open fire-place were sources of great anxiety to the mother of a young family. The frequency of severe scalds and burns from these causes created a demand for a soothing and healing salve. A favourite prescription was black alder, lard, resin, and beeswax.

Smartweed steeped in vinegar was applied to bruises and swellings where there was no abrasion; it gave instant relief from pain and reduced the swelling. For use upon dumb animals, particularly the legs of horses, wormwood was substituted for smartweed.

For lame feet and other troubles requiring a soothing poultice, the leaves of the plantain were used. The stems and ribs were first removed, the leaves allowed to wilt and were then crushed by rolling them between the hands.

A healing ointment for abrasions and open sores was made from the leaves of the ordinary garden bean. These were cut up, mixed with lard, and heated over a slow fire. While still hot, the liquid lard, which had absorbed some of the juice of the leaves, was poured off and allowed to cool, when it was ready to be applied to the affected part.

Even the roots of the burdock, a most persistent and troublesome weed about most country homes, were put to an useful purpose. These were preserved by being dried, and when required were steeped and the tea thus produced was administered as a cure for indigestion and to regulate the blood.

The mandrake, mandragora, or may-apple, has attracted much attention from the days of King Solomon to the present day. It has figured in literature in many capacities, all the way from a death-dealing agent to the main ingredient of a love potion. From its roots our forefathers made a tea which they used as a gargle for sore throat.

The roots of the nerve-vine were chewed to quiet the nerves; hence the name. The roots of elecampane were utilized for man and beast; when steeped they produced a soothing and healing lotion for open wounds, and made into a syrup, were administered to children suffering from whooping-cough. Spearmint tea was given to "break up" a cold; and an infusion of mullein was administered to give relief in the more advanced stages of the same complaint. The more bitter the medicine, the more frequently was it prescribed. Thus wormwood tea was regarded as a general tonic to be given in almost all cases where other remedies failed.