The Bowles of Canada and their Roots in Ireland and England
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back to The Bowles of Peel co.'s Origins
in Ireland
The
Tipperary Bowles
by
The
Reverend Richard P. Bowles
deceased Jan 1960 at 92 years
Families who have lived continuously for many generations in the country of
their origin are much more likely to have knowledge of, and to be deeply
interested in, their ancestral lineage than those who emigrate to another
land. Pioneer life in a new country is so distinctly a break with the past
that it may be regarded as originating a new line of descent. The older
ancestry fades into the past and is forgotten. Not until the fifth or sixth
generation arrives will there be any interest in the new family history. In
the case of the Bowles' who came from Tipperary and settled in Chinguacousy
Township in the Country of Peel, the sixth generation is now putting in an
appearance. As a result, I, the oldest Canadian member, with one exception,
of the fourth generation, find myself much importuned by my grandchildren
and other young kinsfolk of their generation to put on record what I know of
their great‑grandfather and their great‑great and even great‑great‑great‑
grandparents. My own memory reaches back no farther than my grandparents.
For anything beyond their day I am dependent on what I heard in casual
conversation with my father, my uncles and my grandparents.
From my
Uncle John I first learned that the Bowles' were of English stock, one of
whom found his way to Ireland with Cromwell's army of subjection. I can well
believe this English origin. My own limited knowledge of English history
tells me the name was known in England as far back as Cromwell's time. When
I had occasion, some years ago, to make a study of homiletic literature, I
was a bit set up when, in my reading I came upon the fact that one of the
first English works of that sort was written by one Oliver Bowles. Of course
I was at that time acquainted with the poetry of George Bowles, said by some
to have been the most popular poet of his day. Another poet also of some
distinction was William Lisle Bowles. In these later days, some forty years
or so ago, the name of Sir Gibson Bowles did frequently appear in the press
by reason of vigorous speeches in the British House of Commons. To be
reminded of these names pleases me as indicating a stock or strain not
altogether below mediocrity. My pride in the name is chastened, however, by
the reflection that the first bearer of the name was in all probability, not
a total abstainer.
This
scion of the English stock, sent over to Ireland by Cromwell, evidently took
root there. Sent to subjugate, he himself fell a victim to one of the
opposite sex. Whether she was of the wild Irish soot so unpleasantly
described by Macaulay, or a pretty colleen of the type of Abie's Irish Rose,
we do not know. This only seems certain, that the blessing of the Lord was
upon them unto the third or fourth generations, down across a century or
more. Tradition has it that these Bowles' of whom we have no history had
served in the Irish Constabulary by which England made effective her will in
the green, rebellious, freedom‑loving island. Whether members of the famous
Constabulary or not, it seems quite probable that, by the time of the fourth
or fifth generation of them, their English blood had become at least eighty
percent Irish. They were no longer cold‑blooded, calculating, rational and
highly reasonable folk. Rather, they had become warm‑hearted, hospitable,
sociable, highly emotionalized, a bit irresponsible, impetuous, hilarious
and blessed with a high disregard of consequences. To this conclusion I am
led by my appreciative knowledge of my grandparents and my uncles and, more
particularly, my own father. Yes, the Bowles' may be English in origin but
without doubt they are now, in disposition and temperament, not to mention
the persisting brogue of their speech, thoroughly Irish.
Definite knowledge of this family history dates from about 1770. It comes in
the person of one George Bowles, whose dust now mingles with the soil of
Canada in Sand Hill Cemetery, in the First Concession of the Township of
Albion, and about equal distances from the villages of Mono Road and Sand
Hill. This George Bowles, my great‑grandfather, remained in Ireland when his
son, my grandfather Charles Bowles, came to Canada. George had married,
about the year 1795, a German Palatinate by the name of Barbara Young. Of
the name "Barbara" I am a little uncertain. Of the name "Young" I am quite
sure. I have designated her a German Palatinate. In doing so I use the
language invariably in use whenever my father referred to the nationality
and race of his grandmother.
Strictly speaking, the word indicates a sovereign principality rather than
its inhabitants. The German Palatinates here referred to were the D.P.'s of
their time. By the exigencies of war and religious persecution, when the
people were expected to take up with the religion of their rulers, be the
same Protestant or Catholic, these people were compelled to forsake their
country. It is difficult to get a satisfactory account of them. The best
written account I have ever seen was a brief article written by C.C. James,
who in my day was a student at Victoria College and later, until the time of
his sudden and untimely death, was the Deputy Minister of Agriculture for
Ontario. He numbered among these German refugees one of his ancestors, and
such information as he could find he published in a magazine article.
Apparently groups of these pitiful refugees, toward the close of the
century, found such refuge as they could in England, in the south of Ireland
and in New York. Poverty, homelessness and starvation were for a time their
lot. They seem, however, to "have had what it takes". From Ireland a group
of them found their way to different parts of Ontario and I would judge a
considerable number of them settled in the County of Peel. I know not the
source from which I derived it, but I have somewhat indefinite impression
that they, by association and marriage, got mixed with not only the Bowles'
but the Cooks, the Dulmages, the Steeps, and other Irish Canadians.
Certainly Sparling, Switzer, and similar names indicate a German origin. All
these names were once plentifully sprinkled over the County of Peel,
especially so in Chinguacousy and Toronto Townships.
I
confess I feel considerably interested in my great‑grandmother, Mrs. George
Bowles,
nee Barbara Young. I have the impression that the original Bowles', whether
in England or Ireland, were not noted for their interest in religion, yet in
my grandfather's life, and down through the lives of his three sons and
their succeeding generations, religion has been a conspicuous and dominating
force. How much of this was due to the environment or pioneer life in
primeval forests, with its heart‑longings and loneliness, I do not know.
Some of it no doubt had its origin and nourishment in the zeal and warmth of
Methodism which, as has often been pointed out, was the sort of religion
eminently suited to pioneer life in a new land. The only characteristic of
Barbara Young of which I have any knowledge was her intense religious life.
Of that I did often hear my father speak. He remembered well her German
Bible which was her most prized possession. George Bowles (I) and his family
came to Canada about the year 1829, and my father, George Bowles (III) was
born in 1832. From childhood he would know his grandmother. Two things he
told me regarding her. One was his vivid remembrance of her sitting before
the immense fireplace in the old log house reading by the hour her German
Bible. The other was the prominence she gave to her concept of the Devil.
Satan was to her a very real person, an ever near and dreaded adversary
doing her bodily and spiritual harm. This element in her piety did not
commend itself to Peter Sparling who belonged, I believe, to the second
generation of these exiled Germans. Peter was, I judge, a unique character
who frequently found his way into my father's "on the record" remembrances.
There was a wild streak in him. He loved to tell tall stories with which his
lively imagination had abundantly provided him. One of these stories which
he palmed off on my grandmother was a follows.
"You
have heard", he said to grandmother, "of so and so." Yes, she had heard of
him. "Well", proceeded Peter, "he has been bothered with someone stealing
his cabbage, so the other night, hearing a noise in the patch, he picked up
his axe and ran out. It was dark, he saw no one, but thinking he heard
something, he threw his axe at it and came in. The axe hit the thief on the
neck and was so sharp it cut his head clear off. But the fellow clapped it
on
with
his two hands and held it there until it froze on. Next morning the
intruder, being cold, came into the house and sat down by the hearth to warm
himself. When there he tried to blow his nose, holding it between his thumb
and finger. The fire had thawed the head loose and sure as you live he threw
his head into the fireplace". This was too much for the old lady who, up to
this time had listened attentively. "Peter Sparling", she said, "you are a
liar".
Peter
loved to cup up capers and didos of all sorts. He was a tall talker and a
superb "blow". "Blow" was the common word by which, in my day, the boaster
was described. Once Peter determined to cure the aged Barbara of her Satan
obsession. Knowing how for hours she would sit before the hugh hearth fire
in religious meditation and German Bible‑reading, and concluding that Satan
had a prominent place in these exercises, Peter secured the cloven foot of a
dead animal ‑ just what kind of animal I do not know. He ascended the roof
of the house and, with a long string, kept gently lowering and raising the
cloven hoof down the chimney just far enough to be seen. The effect on the
old lady was all and more than Peter hoped for. It threw her into an
hysteria of terror. What the after‑effects on her religious thinking were I
do not know. It is not likely Young Peter's clever trick had any exorcising
effect on her religious beliefs. To me the story measures the distance
between the scientific mind of today and that of the common folk of a
hundred and fifty years ago. That distance is no greater than that which
separates the medical science of today from the popular "anatomy of
melancholy" of a century and a half ago. Our humanity has done a lot of
house cleaning in these recent years and burned much rubbish.
Well
George Bowles and his Palatinate wife did not long survive their arrival in
Canada. George died shortly after coming and was buried in a little field
just north of the farmyard buildings. His wife survived him a score or more
years. When at Providence Church a cemetery was established, their bodies
were exhumed and removed to this burying place, now known as Sand Hill
Cemetery. There today lies the dust of a considerable number of their
descendants.
I take
pride in reminding my son and grandchildren that their Canadian citizenship
is not just a new affair of yesterday. It dates back through generations.
There came with George Bowles and his wife a son, David, and a daughter,
Rose. Rose married a farmer near Streetsville named George Douglas. He was
a Presbyterian and I believe, strange as it seems to us today, this served
to insulate the Douglasses from the Bowles. Of course, twenty miles was a
long way in those days and that, too, may help to explain why they saw very
little of each other. I never saw Aunt Rose, as Father calls her, at our
house, but I saw her many times at her own home in Toronto, to which she
moved when her husband died.
Rose
and Douglas had four children. There was George, who continued on the farm,
and the hospitality of whose home I frequently enjoyed when, as a young
preacher, I was appointed to the Streetsville circuit. Then there was
Charles who became a medical doctor in Detroit. I saw him once when I was a
lad and I have yet an image of a handsome, cultured gentleman; knowing he
was an educated man and a prosperous physician, I recall the reverence my
boy's heart paid him. He was the first of the connection with a title and
in those days in our home even a B.A. was highly exalted. Some few years
ago, in reading the history of the city of Detroit, I came upon the cut of a
hospital bearing the designation "Douglas Memorial Hospital".
The two
daughters were Ellen and Maggie. Neither married. They, with their mother,
for many years kept a boarding house at 145 Mutual Street, Toronto. Ellen
was a member of Knox Church. On one occasion I went with Ellen to an evening
service and heard her favourite pastor, H.M. Parsons, preach. On another I
heard the eloquent Macdonnell. My estimate of Presbyterianism was much
heightened by those services. It needed to be for, as a Methodist, I grew
up with a poor idea of other Churches. Maggie went to the Bond Street
Congregational Church, where once I heard the then famous Dr. Wild preach.
He was expostulating on the folly of worrying over the results of any past
action. He gave as an illustration the way, as a boy, he used to bend his
body and even twist his mouth when the stone he threw was not going where he
had thought to throw it. Some years ago I took part, with Dr. Parsons, in
the funeral services of Ellen. They are all gone and I doubt if there
remains in Canada any one to perpetuate the name.
David
Bowles was much younger than his brother Charles or sister Rose. He settled
down on fifty acres adjoining Grandfather's homestead. He married Aunt
Margaret, the sweetest, the kindest, the most Irish lady I ever knew. I wish
I could write of her in the glorious fashion in which Whitcomb Riley has
written of Aunt Mary. Uncle David and Aunt Margaret had four sons and one
daughter. There was, as in all the Bowles families, one named Charles. He
was the blacksmith of Mono Road. Frequently I watched him with admiration as
he made a number of horseshoes, or welded a piece of steel to a worn‑out
ploughshare. Later he was made Governor of the County Jail at Orangeville.
He was noted for the friendly treatment he accorded his prisoners. Many
times he could be seen playing checkers with one of them in the jail yard.
He had a son, George Wilford, who once thought he would be a Minister but
later turned up a reporter on the staff of the Evening Telegram. He was a
delightful chap with a good store of funny stories and a unique
laugh‑provoking way of talking. When he died a few years ago the press of
Toronto took notice of his going with much eulogistic comment. There was
also a daughter named Ottie who married Arthur Trimble and who died some
twenty years ago. There was in Aunt Margaret's family also a son called, as
might be expected, George. George went to the States at the time of the
Civil War, lured there partly by adventure and partly by the large sums of
money some U.S. parents were paying to get substitutes for their drafted
sons. He came back on a brief visit when the war was over. He had become
dark and swarthy. There were many black specks on his forehead which we
youngsters took to be gunpowder gotten in the storm of battle. After he had
returned to the States he kept writing my father. He had been made sheriff
or something or other in the State of Maryland. One letter came saying he
was propped up in bed quite ill. Another soon followed from his wife saying
he had died of "consumption". Whether he left any descendants I do not know.
Another
son of Uncle David and Aunt Margaret was named David. Two memories awaken in
me when I think of this David. One is of seeing neighbour Thomas Janson
going through our houseyard holding one end of a long string, to the other
end of which was tied, by its hind leg, a black squirrel which, in terror,
was running hither and thither in a frantic effort to get itself freed.
"What in the world are you up to now?" exclaimed my father, amazed at the
sight of Tom Janson and his squirrel. "It's for David Bowles", was the
reply. "I have heard that the flesh of a black squirrel will cure
consumption." Well, in this case it failed. Shortly after, on a pleasant
summer evening, I was bringing home the cows from a field near Uncle David's
when a wild, strange, crying sound such as I had never heard before shivered
my young soul with a ghostly terror. Looking westward through the orchard
trees I saw Aunt Margaret pacing the little verandah of her house, wailing,
wailing, wailing. "David is dead. David is dead." It was the genuine Irish
wail. Many years after my wife and I, standing on the deck of a liner about
to move out from Cork bound for New York, heard the same moving,
heart‑breaking cry, this time to the words, "Mary! Mary! I'll never see you
again!" Near by stood Mary, a beautiful girl silently wiping the tears away
and looking tenderly down at her mother on the wharf. The boat moved slowly
out and the wailing died away in the distance.
Another
son of Uncle David and Aunt Margaret was Tom Bowles. No one called him
Thomas. He inherited the little fifty acre farm Uncle David had got. He was
well known as Constable Bowles. I have heard it said he could chat to a
prisoner he was taking to jail in such an off‑hand, friendly and familiar
fashion that he never had to use the handcuffs. Tom Bowles lived to the good
old age of ninety years. When too old to work he gained for himself the
title
of
Champion Groundhog Hunter. He, too, sleeps in Sand Hill Cemetery. He had
left behind three daughters, Annie (Mrs. Russell) living, I think, at
Mimico; Norma (Mrs. Jim Elliott) at Mono Road, and Reta (Mrs. Shaw) on the
old homestead. A son and daughter are dead.
In
Uncle David's family there was also one daughter. She married a man by the
name of Graham, for some time the Clerk of the Town of Clinton. I spent a
Sunday at their home when I was in the town for some Sunday anniversary.
There were several good‑looking daughters and one son, but I have lost all
track of them. Graham, I recall, wrote poetry and had published a little
booklet of his verses. I read some of them but they did not much interest
me, being neither good nor bad. I was, however, much interested in his
explanation of how he came to indulge in verse‑making. One day, so he told
me in confidence, when he was young, he was walking across a rocky piece of
land and, tired, lay down on the rock ledges to sleep. But he could not
sleep because the wind, blowing among the rocks and stones, filled his soul
with music such as he had heard never before. It filled him with a strange
ecstasy and then and there the rhymes began to come with no effort of his.
The music kept coming back again and again, always bringing with it some
rhyme or song. Only when he heard it could he compose. When it did come he
could do no other. Some statistician, so I read the other day, has
calculated there are forty thousand poets in America. Blessings on the
unheard‑of thousands! Their works should not be held against them. They are
not to blame. The music did it. Their muse could not sing without an
accompaniment but, given that, could refrain. And so, when in the rural or
perhaps the city press, or in some author‑published little booklet, I come
upon empty rhymes or even bits of doggerel, I indulge in no contemptuous
criticism. I just say "Doggone it", or "Hang it all, the music did it".
On
writing this, I have gone far afield from my first objective, which was to
put down some hearsay and some personal knowledge of the descendants of
Charles Bowles, so far as I know the first of the name to pioneer in the
Canadian backwoods. As I have already stated, this Charles was the eldest
son of George and his German Palatinate wife. About the year 1824, he took
to wife one Nancy Barrie. With a small boy's curiosity, I once asked my
grandmother how it came about she married Grandfather. "Ah", she said, "the
first time I saw him he was walking past our house going home tired after
his day's work. I remarked to my mother that he was a very homely,
poor‑looking fellow. My mother rebuked me saying he might be my husband
yet." Building on this remark, I believe Grandmother regarded her marriage
as a Devine fulfilment of prophecy. Shortly after marriage they gathered up
their possessions and, with the aid of a donkey and cart, set out from
Kilkenny for the port of Wexford. It meant a journey of some forty miles or
so. They made it, and from the port set sail for Canada. After about six
weeks they landed at Quebec, or, as she always pronounced it, "Kwaybec",
with the accent on the first syllable. There the Captain permitted a few of
the men to land and a few hours later Nancy saw her Charles returning to the
vessel reeling and staggering like a drunken man. The newly arrived
immigrants had been too generously received by some of Quebec's inhabitants.
They called the drink "grog" and Grandfather, being innocent of its virtues,
drank freely. Many times Grandmother told me this incident, always adding,
"It was the only time I ever saw your grandfather the worse for liquor".
Well,
many were the stories I heard from Grandmother as I lay on the floor in
her
dining room and plied her with a small boy's questions. "Tell me", I would
say, "about your life in the shanty." And she would reply, "Oh honey dear, I
was never so happy in my life. It was when we had heaped the wood up again
the back‑log and the fire roared up the big chimney and the door was shut
safe for the night and it was dark outside and the wind roared in the great
forest trees, it was then I was happy." Or I would say, "Did you ever see a
bear?" "Only once", she would say, "although there were lots of them in the
woods. This time your grandfather said to me, "There is a hog in the grain.
I must go put it out." He had not gone far when his hog jumped up on a log
and over a brush‑fence and scampered into the bush." I thought this a fine
story and speculated much on Grandfather's surprise when he saw his hog was
a black bear. "Did you ever see wolves?", I would ask, and she would repeat
the story how, looking for her cows one time, she stood up on a log and two
startled wolves ran out from under it and loped off into the forest. Or I
would say. "Tell me about the deer you saw", and she would say, "Yes, I
often saw deer. Once a herd of more than twenty trotted along over there
where your Uncle's barn now is." My love of the adventurous satisfied for
the time, I would ask, "What did you eat and where did you get it?" And she
would say, "Oh, we liked johnny cakes and maple syrup". "Indeed", she would
say, "I have more than once carried a half a bag of corn meal from the mill,
nearly three miles away over at what they call now Scott's Lake. She would
tell me of the trials of physical strength she endured. I think I heard a
dozen times how she carried nine harrow pins from the black‑smith shop five
miles away, each pin weighing five pounds.
From "Kwa'bec"
Charles and Nancy made their way, I know not how, but probably by stage
coach, a covered lumber wagon without springs, and by boat up the St.
Lawrence and up Lake Ontario to Muddy York, as my grandfather always
designated Toronto. Then for two years he worked as a stone mason, building
same cellar walls and many high chimneys for the log houses then being
erected. But he had not come to Canada to build chimneys. It was the lure of
the homestead, the cheap or the free land which brought him hither. One day
a friend introduced him to a stranger who offered to sell the deed of a
hundred acres. He bought it for $120.00. He then secured a yoke of oxen and
an ox sled. One morning in the spring time of 1828, they hitched up the oxen
and put all their belongings on the sled and headed northwest from Toronto
for their promised land, their New Jerusalem. The first day they made good
time and spent the night at Tullamore. The second day's journey was more
trying. The road degenerated into a mere trail through the woods. Over roots
of trees, around fallen logs, down gullies, across little streams and up
steep banks they made their toilsome way. The day wore on, the trail grew
less and less distinct. Night was approaching. They both grew apprehensive.
Were they indeed on the right trail? Well, Grandfather was not sure. Perhaps
they had better get ready for a night in the woods. The sun went down and
lo', in the darkening shadows, they saw through the trees a light. Was it
the settler's shack they had been told was near their own? They pushed on.
Yes, it was Adam Glazier and his wife who welcomed them like old friends,
took them in for the night with pioneer hospitality. They hoped next day to
be in their own house and their spirits fell when Glazier told them there
was no house on the place. To get his homesteader's deed the man who sold
them the place had thrown down four logs and took his affidavit he had done
all homestead duties. But their host cheered them by telling them there were
neighbours to the south who would, on the morrow, come with him and with
their axes, and in a day or two their new house would be ready for them.
That
old shanty in which they began their back‑woods life much interested me.
Particularly I inquired how they kept the rain out. I was told the roof was
made of poles covered with long strips of hemlock bark. Later on, bass wood
logs were split, scooped out into troughs and laid, first a row with concave
sides down and next a row concave sides up covering the spaces between the
first laid rows, and running the rain off into the troughs and spilling it
over the eaves. Of course, the huge fireplace at one end with its vast
chimney was the chief feature. Not everyone knows that in the log houses of
these settlers the fireplace was large enough to accommodate a back log of
such bigness it had to be rolled into it with hand spikes. Nor do they know
this back log would hold fire for months. The "back log" we speak of now is
a pile of unfilled business orders ‑ a very apt metaphor.
How
long this shanty was their dwelling I do not know, but from the fact their
second log house was standing when, in 1856, they built the brick house
which still stands on the place, I conclude the period of shanty life was
brief. When a four year old youngster, I was quite familiar with the old,
empty and forsaken log house which supplanted the first shanty. It was a
respectable story‑and‑a‑half building. I heard the roof of it crash in under
a heavy weight of snow on a dull Sunday afternoon more than 80 years ago. I
can recall how later it was demolished and its long logs, with the aid of a
horse‑power sawing machine, reduced to stove lengths. I even remember many
comments on the excellence of the dry‑as‑bone beech fire wood. Here let me
say something about the 1856 brick house, in which I and my brothers and
sisters were born and raised. I have read that the Crimean War was a stupid
blunder on the part of the British. Perhaps, but it was a bonanza to
Canada's settlers. It sent the price of wheat up to $2.50 per bushel. All
through Ontario today brick houses, nearly all of the same pattern, stand as
monuments to Sebastopol and the Charge of the Light Brigade. It's an ill
wind that blows nobody good. What $2.50 per bushel meant in those days will
be appreciated when it is realized this brick house was erected at a total
cash outlay of not more than one hundred and fifty dollars. The brick cost
nothing. A kiln was purchased and, in a day of inflation, half of it was
sold for the price paid for the whole. My grandfather mixed the mortar for
the brick‑layers who were paid by the day. How much may be judged by the
fact that the carpenter, Thomas Sparrow, was paid twenty cents a day and his
board. The lumber, precious pine boards without a knot, cost only the price
of getting it sawed. Two dollars and a half went a long way in those days.
My father bought fifty acres and paid for them with his first crop of wheat.
The price was twenty‑five dollars per acre.
Those
outward facts of the pioneer life of their ancestors will be of interest to
more than one hundred descendants living today, but more interesting perhaps
will be a brief setting of the unforgettable impressions I carry of the
personal characteristics of those who were actors in those early scenes. My
grandparents I remember, of course, only in their old age. I recall my
grandmother even as she approached ninety years. She was physically erect
and, with jaunty step, she could make a visit to a neighbour a mile away.
But mentally, and especially emotionally, the condemnation of the years fell
heavily upon her. She would complain that she was sick and no one cared.
Then my father would drive fourteen miles to Brampton to tell the Doctor.
The Doctor would come, examine her, prescribe a bottle of innocent medicine,
tell Father he was amazed at her excellent physical condition and, having
drunk a cup of tea with us and collected a fee of eight dollars, would
return. His visit was worth it, for it put Grandmother in good spirits for
several days. When at last, in her ninety‑first year, she fell sick and
Father said, "I will fetch the Doctor", she said, "No George, this it is",
and soon she fell asleep.
I think
I had a real affection for the old lady. She much petted me when I was a
very young boy. Every summer she would gather a large armful of wheat
sheaves. She would pluck off the heads of grain and separate the straw at
the top joint. These, using seven straws, she plaited into a long, inch‑wide
ribbon. She clipped off the projecting ends, moistened and ironed it smooth.
Then she sewed these into a circular crown the size of my head, and then the
sides and then a broad rim. The rim she edged by sewing around it black
tape. With a red ribbon tied around it, this hat was a thing of beauty as
well as use. The first time she had, with gleeful pride, plaited a hat for
me and placed it on my head and told me how pretty it was, I did
straight‑way walk over to the fireplace and, wishing to see a blaze, threw
the hat in. Of this bad caper I never heard the end. Every now and then she
would, with great laughter, bring it to my remembrance. Indeed, I think my
affection for her had its origin in the good interpretation she put on my
misbehaviours. Once she asked me to do something. I said I wouldn't. She
said, "My boy, I will remember that against you for ten years". "Ten years",
I made answer, "you won't live the half of it", and that evening she told my
father she thought I was an unusually clever boy and gave as proof my smart
retort. But my father thought it was impudence and gave me a severe lecture
on good manners.
One
thing about my grandmother I did not relish. It was her Class Meeting
experience, which she gave only once or twice a year. I can see her yet,
rising slowly as her turn came. Soon there was a suppressed sob. Then her
right hand began to move up and down waving the end of her shawl with the
regularity of, but much more slowly than, the wag sign of a railway
crossing. With her handkerchief, her left hand wiped the tears from her
eyes. Then in a wailing, weeping voice that threw zero into my bones, she
began her confession. She was a great sinner, she told us, but she was sure
the Lord had forgiven her, and here her voice, in a crescendo of sobbing and
weeping, high‑pitched itself into an Irish wail. Then she began, in a softer
note, to praise God for his goodness to her, prayed for forgiveness and,
with a pathos which brought me to the verge of tears, expressed her hope
that when she died the good Lord would take her to Heaven. I am sure that if
I had a sound movie of Grandmother giving her experiences and I should turn
it on, my grandchildren would split their sides with unholy laughter.
Of the
Methodist Class Meeting itself, let no light or evil word be spoken. Never,
when a boy, did I return home from it, across the fields and through the
woods on a Sunday morning, that I did not feel myself reaching out for a
good I did not possess. And I have a distinct remembrance of times when, in
deepest seriousness, I pledged myself to live the life of which I had heard
in the experience given that morning in the Church basement. The old order
changeth. The time was even then fast coming when the Methodists would
refuse to bare their hearts to one another by telling in set forms of speech
their religious experiences. Egerton Ryerson was even then pleading with
the Conference not to make attendance on Class Meeting a test of membership.
His brother, John, bluntly expressed his own feelings by saying he would as
soon meet a bear with her cubs as go to a Class Meeting. The Class Meeting
was a form of service from which those not of its mind had better absent
themselves.
My
memories of my Grandfather Bowles are not as vivid and numerous as those of
my Grandmother, what I suppose is natural enough. I recollect, of course,
his features and countenance, but as in a mist and lacking clearness. I do
also remember most distinctly the tone and quality of his voice. To me as a
boy his speech was like music. Through it ran an unbroken note, mild and
soft as velvet. It came of the Irish brogue, a dialect short on consonants
but long on vowels. Consonants are of the mind and are the carriers of
ideas. Vowels are from the heart and are the bearers of feelings. Hence the
brogue with its prolonged vowel sounds. Like the music of the great organ,
it keeps up a rolling undertone. So much did my grandfather's voice charm me
that many times when I began preaching I was asked how long I had been out.
There is, I think, a close connection between the soul of one and the tone
and quality of his speech; and Grandfather was in disposition mild and
gentle and not easily provoked. Back of his gentleness, however, there was a
quick temper and a sharp spirit. Never without an inward chuckle do I recall
a little incident in which I helped to stir his wrath. My brother Watson and
I, lads of ten or twelve years, were, on a pleasant day, strolling down the
lane to the woods. Watson was deeply engaged in whittling a stick into the
shape he desired and I was sleepily dreaming a boy's dream. Suddenly out of
the woods came Grandfather, driving ahead of him some rebellious cattle.
These he wished to put into a field through a gap by which both he and we
were near. He called to us to turn the cattle. Absorbed in our own doings,
we gave him no heed and the cattle dashed past us up the lane. "Why did you
not do what I told you", he said, and stooping down quickly, picked up a
clod about the size of a goose egg. We turned and ran. That clod whizzed by
my ear, caught my brother squarely between the shoulders and exploded into a
cloud of dust. We both quickened our pace and, arriving home, decided it
would be wise to tell no one of this incredible happening. I think
Grandfather thought likewise, for I never heard mention of it. Now, after
seventy‑four years, I recall it with what the great Fobbs called "an
internal gloriation accompanied by a distortion of the countenance". Many
times the remembrance of it has set up in me a most delectable reaction. I
tell it here that the descendants of this pioneer ancestor may know that,
while he was gentle and patient and his voice was low and sweet, he himself
was no sissy, and his personality was not to be trifled with by anyone.
Grandfather was a deeply religious man. Before any church was established in
the settlement, it was his habit to walk every Sunday morning five miles to
Campbells Cross to a Methodist Class Meeting. He was hungry for fellowship
and, "As the heart panted for the water brook, so did his soul thirst for
God". In addition to the loneliness and longings of which I have already
made mention, there was another feature of his life which must surely have
directed his thoughts toward heavenly things. It is pleasant enough in the
hot summer to spend a few days in the woods "boundless contiguity of shade"
but, to spend the year round swallowed up in an interminable forest, with
vision restricted to a few acres and distance to be found only in vistas
which led up to deep skies by day and to stars by night, was a far different
thing. Such an environment would, I should judge, solemnize and uplift the
thoughts of anyone, even the vulgar and most worldly‑minded. How else
account for it that in my boyhood, when the second generation has arrived
and the forest had been pushed back to a little strip of wood‑land at the
rear of the farms, and turnpiked roads had been opened and communications
everywhere established ‑ even then such was the religious impact from those
pioneer days that I can recall only one member of the community who did not
regularly present himself in the House of God.
Physically, this pioneer ancestor was rather small of stature, weighing not
more than a hundred and fifty pounds, but he was wiry and tough in muscle.
And he did his full share in redeeming the good earth from the oppressive
tyranny of undergrowth and fallen logs and mighty trees of all kinds and
sizes. With his oxen and handspike he gathered them into huge piles, many of
them the size of a barn. He set fire to them, and, for the space of three
weeks or more, he would keep a watchful eye over their burning, until the
great heap was reduced to ashes. And thereby hangs a little tale which has
had for me a fascinating interest. On the roadside at the northwest corner
of the lot there stood a group of trees known to us boys as "The Big Trees".
Of course there were big trees elsewhere, but they were not "The Big Trees".
There were, as I recall it, five of them; two maples and three beeches. One
of the maples, and the biggest, was umbrageous with its great wide spreading
branches. I used to climb up and sit on one of them and dangle my feet and
enjoy the cool shade. And sometimes I would prowl around among them enjoying
dangerous adventures leaping from one branch to another. Up there birds
built their nests and down below the sheep, which then in numbers grazed the
roadside, took their siestas. Even the tramps, who then were quite numerous,
would occasionally, on warm summer nights, sleep by the side of one of the
trunks. I know this because nearby frequently could be seen the warm ashes
and embers of their fires. Only once, however, did I see one. He was
evidently an early riser because I was going very early in the morning for
the cows. He was attending a little fire and warming his breakfast in
preparation for his day's journey nowhere.
These
vivid memories cause me to wander from my theme, which has to do with
Grandfather and his hewing down of forest trees to clear his land. He told
me how it came "The Big Trees" were there. "It was Saturday evening", he
said. All day he had been swinging his axe hoping to get the last of the
trees cut down before dark. He grew very tired and hungry. He looked at a
group of young saplings and said, "I'll come and cut them down on Monday".
So he put his axe over his shoulder and trudged home. On Monday he forgot
about them. And so the young saplings stood and grew into "The Big Trees".
It is a scene for an artist ‑ this axeman resting a moment, looking at the
bit of work not yet done and the sun setting, then turning homeward too
wearied to do any more and thankful the morrow would be the Day of Rest. I
had it much preached at me that procrastination was a terrible evil, "the
Thief of Time and the Kidnapper of Hell", but here was a procrastination
which most assuredly the Lord had blessed.
Grandfather lived into his 84th year. When ill and knowing the end was near,
he expressed a wish to see me. So they brought me from High School at
Brampton. On seeing me as I entered his room, he lifted himself up in bed
and, like an Old Testament Patriarch, put his hand on my head and blessed me
in the name of the Lord. Shortly after he asked for water and, having drunk
of it, said, "Soon I'll drink at the Fountain Head". They were, I think, his
last words. When the morning was breaking "God's finger touched him and he
slept". Many kind words of appreciation I heard spoken of him at the
funeral, and this I most distinctly remember, "He was fair‑minded and had
good judgment".
To this
Charles Bowles and his wife, Nancy Barrie, there were born a daughter and
three sons, and their names were Eliza, John, Thomas and George. The
daughter died shortly after her marriage to a man named Wilson. I still
recall how, in the month of October on a certain date, Grandmother was wont
to go into mourning and, with tears and lamentations, remember her only
daughter's death. I never heard my father speak of his sister. From a casual
remark I heard my mother make, I gathered her marriage was an unhappy one.
The
three brothers, John, Thomas and George, formed a unique trio. It is not
possible for me to regard them as just ordinary men, they had qualities of
mind and heart which, under other circumstances and in another environment,
would have put them in places of leadership. They were brought up in the
backwoods. The amenities of social culture were, in their youth, denied
them; so, too, the liberalizing influences of contact with other and various
sorts of people. Their school education was limited to a few months under
the guidance of a teacher of whom I never heard my father speak a respectful
word. Any one in those days could authorize himself to teach, rent a
building in any community and take in any who would pay the fee he asked. I
could get from my father only little information about his school days. He
appeared to have very unpleasant memories not worth talking about. Indeed,
the only story which comes to me of what went on at the school was of a chap
who used to bring to school with him a big, savage dog, by virtue of which
he made himself the Bully of the school. Uncle John tired of this and told
the owner he was not afraid of him or his dog. "Bring on your dog", John
would cry, as he stood armed with the fire poker. The owner warned him the
dog might kill him. At last the fight came off as the school looked on. With
a terrific growl the brute leaped at the defiant school boy. Swiftly, by
good chance, the poker caught the dog in a dog's weakest spot, the joint of
the front paw. With a yell of pain he limped on three legs back to the
protection of his owner. Well, I give the story for what it is worth, the
only one of his school days I ever heard my father tell. His only comment
was that John never knew fear of anything.
I am
averse to speaking any depreciatory word of that backwoods pioneer life in
which these three brothers were brought up. No doubt its deprivations and
crudities would seem to their grandchildren barbaric enough. Yet, on the
other side, they were spared the pretentiousness, the ostentation and the
sham which thrive in modern society. Those very conditions which denied them
the liberalizing and refining influences of social life did, without doubt,
provide atmosphere and good rootage for truth and reality and self‑reliance.
There
were two qualities common to those three brothers. They were hearty men.
They were alive to their finger‑tips and warmly emotional. Dullness found
no place in then. No doubt the strong quiet, taciturn man is to be praised.
But these men were not that sort. They were astir and vociferous. They spoke
not in subdued accents but with uplifted voices. All three of them had a
flair for public speech.
The
second characteristic which was common to the three; they were farmers
dependent on their farms for the support of themselves and their families
but their interest were largely in things unrelated to their farming. I
heard them many times in conversation, and I cannot recall ever hearing them
discuss how to feed hogs or fatten cattle, or fertilize soils. Never did I
hear them debating the feed value of different kinds of fodder. The Preacher
and his last Sunday's sermon was a frequent topic. I have (seen them in) hot
argument as to whether Adam Clark's commentary on the Bible or Benson's was
the better; my father sticking up for Benson, the volumes of which he had
perused from Genesis to Revelations. So, too, they loved to give their views
of the characters of great men, living and dead. They were quite familiar
with MacCauley's History of England. Once I listened to a heated argument as
to whether Oliver Cromwell was or was not a Christian. My father contended
he was and, as he had read Caryle's "Life and Letters of Cromwell", was too
much for Uncle John, whose mind was filled with pictures of the awful
cruelties inflicted on the Irish.
I have
heard them all agreeing that the Presbyterian doctrine of the perseverance
of the Saints was not only false to Scripture but a most highly dangerous
doctrine. Often they talked politics but, as the three of them were "Grits",
there was little debate or controversy. And, indeed, their discussions went
more to personalities than to political measures. They were Irish and Irish
interest invariably settled on persons rather than measures or things. And
so it was that, as a boy, I heard much of such men as John Hilliard Cameron,
Oliver Mowat, George Brown, John A. McDonald, Alex McKenzie, Richard
Cartwright, Charles Tupper, Edward Blake and others. I well remember how, in
their characterizing of these men, the contrast they used to make of
McKenzie and McDonald. Over against the smooth ways and friendly suavity of
Sir John they would set the stern honesty and uprightness of Alexander
McKenzie.
But,
while the discussions of these three brothers ranged far and wide in history
and politics, national and parochial, their minds gravitated always to
religion and Church affairs. The three of them were local preachers, George
and John were also Class leaders and George, for thirty years or more, was
Superintendent of Cesar's Sunday School. Local preachers in Canada are now
almost an extinct species. In the days of which we are thinking they were
very numerous. Indeed, I think they outnumbered the regular ordained
ministry of Methodism nearly ten to one. On the "plan" of the Albion
Circuit, which entered in Bolton Village, there were, I believe, at one time
thirteen preachers including the Superintendent and his Colleague. I can
recall twelve "appointments" and I think there were others which had to be
supplied with service of worship each Sunday. Any member of the Church who
had the gift of public speech and a fervent spirit was like enough, after
some instruction in doctrine, to be licensed each year to occupy the pulpits
requiring their services. They were indeed a mixed assortment. Some were
eloquent speakers, well read, with alert minds, and frequently more
acceptable as preachers than the ordained Superintendent or his Colleague.
Other were quite the opposite and among them always could be found unique
and eccentric persons whose pulpit ministrations were a kind of their own. I
here put down some of the pulpit idiosyncrasies of which I heard mostly from
my father.
There
was one known as Father Ceasar of whom I did many times hear grateful
mention. He belonged to an earlier generation and was evidently a "man of
parts" as the Scots would say. He had a nice little library and when my
father began to preach he was glad to get advice and instruction from him.
Yet he, too, had his limitations. Once, after a helpful conversation in
which he had indoctrinated my father with good Methodist ideas, he remarked,
"Brother George", (he spoke with a slight lisp), "Brother George, I have
examined all the theologies of all the Churches and I must say I find some
little taint of error in all of them except the Methodist". There was one
Tom Greer who had the gifts of an orator, that is to say, "brains, brass,
and belly". The feeling of the people was that Greer never undervalued
himself.
He
indulged in blunt assertions of what he believed. Discussion whether the
story of Dives and Lazarus was just a parable or a realistic narrative, he
closed the matter by saying, "Jesus said there was a man Lazarus and if
there wasn't then he was a liar". On another occasion, after expounding a
supposedly difficult passage of Scripture, he capped his exposition with,
"This, brothers, is not my opinion only, but also that of many other
learned and celebrated Divines".
There
was one named Lindsay, and known generally as Buck Lindsay because of his
very prominent front teeth. I have a five‑year old boy's memory of this
local preacher. His mumbling, monotonous voice used to remind me of the
going of a wagon on a rough road. You would think, as he rushed along, that
he never took breath until he had reined up most unexpectedly. It was quite
customary in those days for the preacher to ask some one in the congregation
to finish off the service with prayer. And Lindsay, without the slightest
pause would conclude by saying, "Pray Bob", thus calling into action one
Robert Riley. He was an interesting person, this Buck Lindsay. Once in his
sermon, referring to "backsliders", he said, "I myself fell, yes, I slipped,
I slithered, I fell into the ditch and along came George Bowles with a rail
and lifted me out of the ditch and the rail was John III and 16". One could
not but be interested when, in his exposition of Old Testament sacrifice, he
would, in good Irish dialect, tell how the Jews had nothing better to offer
than pigeons and turtle doves and shay goats and hay goats.
In
revival services these men were gloriously at home. One of them, Bradley by
name, was accustomed to exercise his freedom in hilarious foolery. Seeing,
on one occasion, a mother and her two daughters coming forward to the
penitent bench, he cried aloud, "Praise God, here come the old ewe and two
lambs".
Of
anyone thinks these ridiculous and uncouth features of the religious life of
these pioneer days discredit its religion, let him remember that similar
ridiculousness and uncouthness characterized the medical and legal practices
of that time. W.S. Herrington's delightful little book "Pioneer Life Among
the Loyalists of Upper Canada" contains the following item:
"Advertisement ‑ This is to certify that I Solomon Albert is Good to cure
any sore inward complaint or any Pains, Rheumatek Pains or any complaint
whatsoever, the subscriber doctors with herbs and roots. Anyone wishing to
employ him will find him at Dick Bells. Solomon Albert"
As for
the administration of justice in the primitive days, there is the case of
the Justice of the Peace, resident in Albion Township, whose upliftedness
over his appointment to such high office provoked some mischievous
neighbours to provide him with an opportunity to exercise his magisterial
authority. They brought before him a culprit charged with assault and
battery in that he had struck a boy. "Molly", said the exalted J.P., "bring
me down my statutes." This being done he said to the defendant, "What for
you strike this boy?" The defendant denied he had struck the boy. "You lie",
said His Worship, "you struck the boy. I fine you five dollars or two days
plowing in the back field of my farm."
This
brings to mind the well‑known story of the Irish magistrate who refused to
hear Counsel for the other side on the ground it had a "tendency to confuse
the Court". It also testifies that the Church and its services had no
monopoly of the eccentricities and crudities of the time. And it bears
witness that the Church belonged to the people and was an organic part of
their life. It was not superimposed upon them by any upper strata of
society.
No one
should esteem lightly the local preachers of those pioneer days. As a class
they formed the intellectually elite of their community. In English
Methodism they provided for the Churches an effective ministry and, for the
preachers themselves, an excellent training in public speaking. Many of
them, such as Henderson and Snowden, have rendered high service in the
political life of the nation. Even in the uncultured pioneer life of this
country, only the few were eccentric and crude. Most of them conducted the
service of worship with dignity and propriety. And among those I can recall
the names of James Graham (who was a B.A. of Victoria College); Isaac
McKeon, school teacher; James Daley, farmer; Joseph Elliott, shoemaker;
Abraham Keelands, farmer; and last but not least, the three brothers John,
Thomas and George Bowles.
Of
these, James Graham was, no doubt, the best educated but he was not the best
preacher. What he said went over my head. He did command my attention but he
never roused my feelings. What I most distinctly recollect was the smile
which never left his face, and a habit he had of rising slowly on his toes
and coming back suddenly on his heels. Joseph Elliott I remember for his
natural enthusiasm and, at times, genuine eloquence ‑ especially when he
expounded the virtues of the Protestant Reformation and touched up the
iniquities of Rome. Isaac McKeon was my school teacher through the week and,
as he used to thrash me nearly every day for some offence, I was prejudiced
on Sunday and pronounced his sermons dry. Of James Daley I recall only one
sermon, his text being "the harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are
not saved". At times he lifted up his voice in terrific shoutings which kept
us all awake on a hot Sunday afternoon in late August, for his theme did not
lack timeliness.
Of
course I am prejudiced, but not one of these equalled any one of the three
Bowles' in my estimation. Indeed, the name "Bowles" got itself, in the mind
of the community, identified with the Local Preacher institution. My father
used to tell with much relish how once, driving along a road up in the
Caledon Hills, he overtook and gave a ride to a woman on her way to the
grocery store. Passing a Church he inquired of his passenger who preached
there. "Oh", was the reply, "mostly 'locust' preachers". "And what are
'locust' preachers?" "Oh", she said, "the Bowles' and such‑like". And on a
quarterly service occasion I heard the preacher once announce, "There will
be service tonight at all the appointments. Brother John Bowles will preach
at Macville, Brother Thomas Bowles will preach at Sandhill, Brother George
Bowles will preach at Mono Road and R.P. Bowles will preach at 'Browns'".
And he never cracked a smile, but the congregation did.
My
earliest memory of Uncle John, for whom I always had an affectionate regard,
was of one evening when I was frolicking in the farmyard while my father was
milking the cows and Uncle John, coming up the lane from the road, hallooed
us when he was fifty yards away. My father replied to his greeting with the
query, "What's the cause of all this smoke?" and Uncle John replied,
"Chicago is burned up". Evidently he had got the news somehow and hurried up
to tell it. It was like him to wish to share it. He was always eager for and
happy in the fellowship of others. Even to me, when but a lad not yet in his
teens, he was never indifferent and always had a cheery greeting.
He did
not preach as frequently as did my father, and I recollect only two of his
sermons. One was from the text, "Be ye also ready". The other was on the
parable of Dives and Lazarus. I have yet a distinct memory of his
description of Dives' funeral. True, he modernized it with carriages and
flowers and a black‑plumed, magnificent hearse. The rich and the great in
Church and State were all there. And the preacher pronounced an extravagant
eulogy. Then, quickly he turned to Lazarus. The beggar died also. No funeral
for him. "Turn his body in the ditch, like enough." (That word "turn",
whether a contraction of "thrown" or "trundled" I do not know, but it had
immense interest for me.) He then went on to have it out with Dives in Hell
and here he indulged in a bit of moral philosophy. Why did Dives want a
messenger sent to his brethren to warn them? Did he still love them? No, it
could not be, for one spark of love in Hell would turn it into Heaven. So he
concluded that it must have been some selfish motive. Perhaps his brethren
would upbraid him for something he had done or left undone, for which reason
he did not desire their presence in Hell. This interpretation was no doubt a
bit unrealistic, but the theology was good and the thought that there was no
love in the "dark and bottomless pit that burned with fire and brimstone"
much relieved my young mind.
Uncle
John lived a more laborious farm life than did either of his brothers. It
was well that he had a tough physical frame for his farm was heavy clay and
demanded much cultivating. Moreover, in the prosperous days after the
American Civil War, he had purchased a hundred acres for $5,500, which is
probably more than its present price in our inflated dollars. Suddenly
Washington put a tariff on imported barley which was almost an embargo. It
knocked the bottom out of the Ontario grain market. And farmers who had gone
into debt, for new farms felt for many years the pinch of poverty. Goldsmith
has a couplet in his "Traveller" which once I thought a great truth:
"How small of all that human hearts endure
That part which laws of Kings can cause or cure."
Now I
know it to be a miserable fallacy. And we are moving more and more to a
condition in which "laws and Kings" determine in a large degree the quality
of every citizen's life.
The
family of Uncle John and Aunt Mary consisted of six boys and two girls. The
eldest was Charles Fletcher who, now in or nearing his 90th year, resides
in California. Old he may be, but his mind is still alert. "Why", he writes
me, "was I brought up with such false notions of Voltaire and Tom Payne?"
Again he writes telling me how he has accepted many of the new ideas of
Higher Criticism. At the same time he affirms his religious faith and gives
me much news of the services of the Church he attends. I think his love of
flowers had much to do with his going south. His wife, Beckie Nixon, still
lives and a numerous family, mostly girls.
Agnes,
who came next to Fletcher, was, I recall, a lovely young woman, organist in
the Church, when she suffered a nervous collapse. From this, to the great
sorrow of her parents, she never recovered and died while still young.
George Henry came next and, being of my age, we were most intimate friends.
After graduating in medicine, he practised at Woodhill and later in Toronto.
If ever anyone deserved the title "The Beloved Physician", it was George. He
passed on a few years ago. His widow, Madge Graham, and two sons, Graham and
John, live in Toronto. Next was Lizzie, who married John Raine and died
recently leaving two sons and two daughters. Then came Isaac who now, after
a successful and honoured ministry, resides in retirement with his gracious
wife in Toronto. They have a son, Lester, and a daughter, Ethel, who both
went, like their father, to Victoria College. Next on the family register
was Albert who, after practising law and serving in many public offices in
Winnipeg, passed on a few years ago leaving a widow and two sons, one a
lawyer, the other a physician.
After
Albert came William David, now in Brampton and Clerk and Treasurer of
Chinguacousy Township. His wife still lives and one daughter, another
graduate of Victoria, has her home in Belleville. The youngest was John
Harvie, a wag if ever there was one, but not a "sad wag" ‑ rather a very
glad one. He gave himself to much jesting and tom‑fooling. Bantering and
leg‑ pulling were a joy to him and in the art of them he perfected himself.
He was a perpetual fountain of laughter and good spirits. Yet back of all
his fun-making and nonsense there was a personality of solid worth and high
moral principles. He was not avowedly religious and, as such, was lacking in
Methodist quality but he loved the Church and had a hunger for good sermons.
In his latter years he attended the Very Reverend Dr. Sclater's Church. He
passed out suddenly. His wife predeceased him many years and he left no
children.
Thomas
Bowles (Sheriff of Dufferin County) in one respect diverged radically from
his brothers, John and George,in that he alone took to public life. He began
life depending on his farm for his living but soon extended himself into
other realms. He drew up agreements of sale and deeds and wills. He valued
properties for mortgage companies. He was executor for estates and in many
ways his house became his office as well as his residence. He ran in many a
hot, vigorous, political fight for Reeve; and was indeed, for fifteen years,
Reeve of Chinguacousy Township, and I know not how many times Warden of Peel
County. He ran three times for Member of Parliament, being defeated each
time. He launched out into financial enterprises and was a Director of an
unfortunate fire insurance company, the illegality of which left him with
his name, along with other Directors, to a note for ten thousand dollars in
the bank. To meet this liability he made himself grain buyer at the newly
opened Mono Road Station. In this he was eminently successful and in a few
years discharged his bank indebtedness.
He
differed from his brothers also in that he had a love for the new and more
liberal way of cultured and refined living. No one would take him for a
farmer, for his everyday attire was that of a city gentleman. He drove a
spanking fine team of carriage horses when Uncle John and my father were
quite happy if the plow horse drove single and took his place with demur in
the buggy shafts. He mowed the lawn around his house. If my father had the
first self‑binder, Uncle Thomas had the first croquet lawn. If my father
preached many sermons, Uncle Thomas preached a few and played checkers. With
such worldly amusements George and John would have nothing to do and,
although I never heard them say so, I am sure they thought Thomas too
worldly. Later in life, however, they both followed in the steps of Thomas.
The influence of the changing times and the mellowing of years had their
effect on both of them. Only once can I remember hearing Uncle Thomas
preach. His theme then was the hackneyed one of the danger of
procrastination. From him, and for the first time, I heard the saying about
Procrastination being the Thief of Time and Kidnapper of Hell and I never
forgot it.
Uncle
Thomas had, in large measure, the gifts of the platform speaker. In those
days temperance oratory flourished. The anti‑temperance forces had a few
great orators, among them one known as King Dodds. In a temperance contest
Thomas Bowles met him head on one time at Sand Hill, and later reports
reached us that King Dodds told some city friends that the worst platform
licking he ever got was from a farmer by the name of Tom Bowles.
I have
reason to hold in high regard my memory of this Uncle for he took a real
interest in me. I recall that, when I passed the Intermediate High School
examination, he was the first to see the result in the Globe and immediately
hitched up his horse and drove two miles to make the result known. When my
father hesitated to send me to the University because of the cost Uncle
Thomas said, "Send him. I'll pay the cost." In such successes as came my way
I know he took as much joy and pride as if I were his son. All of which make
me wonder how great would be his pride today, were he living, in a grandson,
now one of three members of that United Nations Cease Fire Committee which
may be said to be "the pillar of a people's hope, the centre of a world's
desire".
There
were in Thomas Bowles' family four sons and three daughters. There was
Charles Wesley who retired from his farm to the town of Brampton some twenty
years ago or so where he died recently at the age of 84 years, and only a
year or two ago his wife, Beckie Wilson, followed him. They left a family
of, I believe, several sons and one daughter, but of their whereabouts now I
have no knowledge. There was Bertha who married Thomas McCartney, a
well‑known farmer in Caledon. Both are gone hence leaving two sons, Roy and
Melville. There was Isaac Robert who settled on the homestead, married
Lizzie Cunningham and had two sons and two daughters. Of the sons, Thomas is
deceased and Alexander (who, by the way, distinguished himself in the First
World War ‑ from which he returned a Captain, after which he ran a financial
house in London, England, and only the hard times of the Thirties saved him
from becoming a millionaire) now resides in Toronto.
Of
Isaac Robert I am constrained to put on record here some memories of him
with which I do frequently regale myself. The first day I went to school
Isaac took me under his wing. "Don't be scared of the teacher", he said. Six
of us were on our way down the lane making for the school on the Sixth Line.
Isaac marched in front. I can see him yet, and it is over eighty years ago.
One hand he threw over his head, and whirling on his heels, ran backward
waggling his toes in the dust and shouting, "Don't be afraid of the teacher.
I call him 'Bald Headed Tom'". He lapsed into silence, however, when his
brother, Wesley, reminded him that he did not call him "Bald Headed Tom" the
time the strap was thrown at him and he was called to the front for a
licking. At school among the boys Isaac was the acknowledged leader, perhaps
because he had a somewhat fractious and rebellious spirit. "Come", he said
to me once, "I'll show you". He took me to the back woodshed where he
climbed up on a beam and helped himself to a "chew" of tobacco from a plug
hidden on the plate. He had it covered with Tamarack bark and informed me
that Tamarack kept it moist and improved its flavor. Of course I must tell
no one. No one knew he "chewed".
The
same spirit showed up in later years when, instead of attending
"protracted" meetings in the Church, he could be found playing the fiddle
at some dance to the horror of his, for the time being, more sanctimonious
cousins. Isaac had wangled his liberal‑minded father into getting him a
shot‑gun and on Saturdays he would tell me he was going hunting and I could
meet him at a certain place. Oh, those blissful afternoons wandering through
the woods searching for game! I can not even now forget them. Later Isaac
settled down into a respectable Church member and a trusted and popular
neighbour.
I wish
I could describe the tempestuous school election which made him a Trustee.
From all I was told about it I think that, for intensity of feeling and high
words of enthusiasm and strenuous effort to get out the vote, it stands
unparalleled in Public School history.
Somewhat late in life Isaac made the mistake of selling his farm and
undertaking to make his living in the city. Just what it was in Isaac which
warmed my heart toward him I cannot say, but at his funeral a few years ago
I spoke of him as, if not the most admired, the most beloved in a large
circle of cousins.
Jennie
(used to be Martha Jane) was just about my age. When in our teens we were
great friends; so much so that my father warned me of the folly of cousins
marrying. But our close friendship never headed that way. Jennie married
Marshall Green of Orangeville. Both are gone, leaving two sons, Lester
Green, financial agent, Toronto, and John, insurance executor; also Kathleen
(Mrs. Gordon) of Kamloops, B.C.
Edgar,
after entering mercantile business in the town of Wingham, fell a victim of
tuberculosis, leaving a wife and one daughter both of whom have since died.
Annie
married Reverend E.A. Pearson. She still lives in Toronto with her son
Vaughan. Another son, Marmaduke, is in the United States, head of the
Leather Department of the firm of Armour and Company. The other son needs no
introduction ‑ Lester Bowles Pearson, just now waiting at Lake Success to
hear if he and the other two members of a Committee can have an interview
with the Peking Chinese Government. When I think of Lester's mother and her
genuine, unpretentious and unostentatious sincerity; when I think, too, of
his father's wisdom and ability, his unfeigned kindness, his gentle good
manners and, not least, his sincere friendliness which I had much reason to
value highly, I have no difficulty understanding the success of their son
Lester. If I did, I could go back to both his paternal and maternal
grandparents, and I could note also that his grandmother, Mrs. Marmaduke
Pearson, traced her lineage back to a granduncle of the famous and honoured
name of John Greenleaf Whittier.
Herbert
Bowles, the youngest son of this Thomas Bowles' family, lives quietly in the
town of Orangeville with his wife who was, before her marriage, Helen Snell,
and reared in Bolton Village or its vicinity. He has now, for about fifty
years, been practising his profession of dentistry and I am sure even his
patients would agree with me if I added "with gentleness and courtesy".
I come
now to write about the family of which I am myself, in my eighty‑ seventh
year, the eldest living member ‑ the family of George Bowles and Elizabeth
Pinch. I do so with some hesitation, knowing well that many things of great
interest to myself may, to those for whom this is written, seen
insignificant and not worth recording. Since, however, they maintain for me
a perennial interest, and the recollection of them even yet wakes in me a
joyous upliftedness, I am going to put them on record.
That I
should write of my father and mother at greater length than I have done of
my uncles and aunts, will be a pardonable offence. My mother was a child of
the Parsonage at Mono Hills when she married. Child is the proper word, for
she was scarcely seventeen years of age. Twenty years ago when I retired, a
gentleman in Toronto whom I never met wrote me a kindly letter telling me he
remembered well my mother as the "beautiful belle of the village". I suppose
a boy never stops to think whether his mother is good‑looking or not. Seeing
she is his mother, such trifling things do not matter. But I recall a
certain surprise, when my parents came to Cobourg to see me graduate, at the
number of my classmates who told me Mother, then only forty years of age,
was a beautiful woman.
No
photograph have I of her which does not overaccentuate the deep sadness of
her eyes. Often I heard her say she never had any girlhood because of her
youthful marriage. She bore twelve children, three of whom died in infancy.
One, Harry, died in his fifth year. Her first‑born, Charles Watson, died of
Typhoid Fever in his nineteenth year, and Liala, my sister, died a few after
her marriage to Reverend Gilbert Agar.
These
heart‑breaking sorrows left their mark on her. She did not have the humour
and sprightliness of my father. Sometimes I have thought the Methodist type
of religion ill‑fitted her psychological make‑up, for her religious
experience was more one of longing and out‑reach than of conscious
possession. Intellectually she was at least my father's equal. For her,
however, life was less a song and much more a problem than for him. She was
better educated in youth than was he, and in the first years of their
married life, as I have heard him frequently say, she corrected the
crudities of his speech, both as to grammatical form and pronunciation.
Indeed, I think she helped to refine not only his speech but his manners.
Once she told me I had no idea how crude and how lacking in social amenities
was the life on the farm to which he brought her as a bride. In later years
she took my part when Higher Criticism began to tell on my views of the
Bible. It mightily perturbed my father when I told him the Book of Job was a
poem and so was the Book of Jonah, and neither of them to be read as
historical narratives.
Father
would have none of these new ideas, but Mother insisted that sitting out on
an ash heap and scraping oneself with a potsherd and listening for seven
days and seven nights to three men rhyming off great speeches did not seem
to her just like anything that ever happened.
After
Father died, Mother lived most of the time with my sister at the little
village of Chipman near Lamont, Alberta. It was like her to take a great
interest in the hospital there, which she frequently visited and where she
made friends of many patients. In that hospital she died in her 84th year.
She was buried in Sand Hill Cemetery.
Her
father, Reverend Richard Pinch, in his younger days worked in "Her Majesty's
dock yards" on the island of Malta at Valetta. My mother had good memories
of swimming in the Mediterranean and of the glow in the sky over Mount
Vesuvius. In our parlour there hung a cheap stained chromo of this
well‑remembered childhood scene. For beautiful sunsets, and for the scenery
of hills and streams and woodlands, my father cared not a "hoot" but all
natural beauty deeply appealed to Mother. So it does to me, and I know it
has come to me by way of Mother. I may add that I have what I trust, will be
a treasured heirloom to my grandchildren, a silver goblet given to Richard
Pinch by members of his Methodist Class at Valetta and testifying to his
"Christian Piety". The date is 1853.
Of my
father, George Bowles, I could write a volume and, indeed, his life and
personality would make him fit subject for any biographer. It was a common
saying among his neighbours, "Oh well, there is only one George Bowles". He
was a most unique character and had, as they used to put it a century ago,
"a singular spirit". In him there met and mingled qualities which most
people would consider not only opposites but mutually exclusive. He was one
of the most downright serious men I ever knew and he was also one of the
merriest and most playful. Deep in his heart he carried a sense of
responsibility, not alone for his children but for every one "on whom the
influence of his life might fall". He lived out his days under a sense of
responsibility to his Maker. To Him every day he offered his sacrifice of
Praise and Thanksgiving. Few hours of any day passed in which he did not
quote to himself or to others some verse of scripture or the lines of some
hymn such as
"Forth in Thy name O Lord I go
My
daily labour to pursue
Thee and only Thee resolved to know
In
all I think or speak or do."
He was
a religious man, uplifted with a sense of spiritual relationship. Yet I
doubt if ever a day went by in which he did not cut up some caper, play some
joke on someone, or at least indulge in some kind of nonsense. At times he
was a problem to himself and more than once I did hear him rebuking himself
for too much indulgence in light‑heartedness, which he feared might hurt his
Christian influence or be a charge against his piety. But if either side of
his nature had a right to complain against the other, I think the lighter
might charge the serious side with aggression. For Father had the heart and
conscience of a personal evangelist. As a youth far into my teens, I knew
what it was to be confronted with questions which, like a surgical
operation, painfully explored my soul. Perhaps it advanced my religious
experience. It left me, however, with some doubt as to whether my religion
was an imposition from without or a true intrinsic growth.
Father's sense of responsibility took in all members of the household. The
hired men did not escape his evangelizing efforts, and I can recall at least
four of them who attended his Class and joined the Church while living in
our home. He wasn't always successful, however. I remember one chap, whose
name I cannot recollect, who, having listened to one of his exhortations,
remarked that what he said might be alright but, as for him, his highest
ambition was to become a bar tender. This shocked me and took the wind out
of Dad's sails. Afterward this same fellow, who helped us through a
harvest peak load, returned to his home in Listowel. There he introduced
himself to Alf Large and, knowing he went to Victoria College, asked him if
he knew a fellow by the name of Dick Bowles. On being told he did, he
remarked that he had been living with Dick's family for two months. "That
Bowles family", he said, "take to religion and learning like a cat to new
milk".
I have
already intimated that Father was a local preacher. As such he had, I think,
unusual gifts. There was in his voice an appealing note. And he loved a bit
of rhetoric. I recall a terrible sermon he had on the then quite common
theme of "Damnation". He had read Pollock's "Course of Time", a popular poem
of its day, and from it he got the following purple patch: "Where the fiery
waves of dark damnation roll, And music make of melancholy sort". He did not
trust to inspiration of the moment. He had no sympathy with a saying much in
vogue than, "Open your mouth and the Lord will fill it".
One of
my cherished memories is of Saturday night when farm operations ceased an
hour or two earlier than usual, after which took place the usual week‑end
ablutions in a washtub in the woodshed. Then he would repair to the parlour
and, seated at his desk, continue to write far into the night. I have one
very particular memory when, returning home late, I looked through the
parlour window and saw him bent over his manuscripts, the little coal oil
lamp lighting up the scene.
I think
also of another time when he was suddenly called on to preach a funeral
sermon for a member of the Sunday School. It was Sunday. He rose early in
the morning and went to the woods. Shortly after I, too, went there to bring
home the cows. There, under a tree, I saw him deep in meditation and prayer.
I tripped lightly by in my bare feet. Indelibly imprinted on my mind is that
scene, and this is the first time I have written about it, and to no one
have I spoken of it.
As to
the sermon on Hell, after Father had preached it on Sunday afternoon in
Cesar's Church, a good lady came up to him, and with a happy smile breaking
all over her face, congratulated the preacher, telling him it was the best
sermon on Hell she had ever heard. That smile ( ) badly on the
preacher. "Is that", he said, "the effect it has on believers? I will never
preach on Hell again." And he never did.
George
Bowles had a mind which eagerly sought knowledge. In his little library
there was Macaulay's "History of the Stuarts", and also a history of the
Reformation by D'Aubigne. As to the latter, he cautioned me that it was
written by a Roman Catholic and should be taken with a grain of salt. He
also had Peck's "Solar System and Atmosphere" and his "Sidereal Heavens".
After reading the latter he went out one night to study the constellations
in the heavens and, by applying his new knowledge, located the North Star.
The success of this last exercise so thrilled him he never forgot it ‑
indeed frequently alluded to it. His chief books, however, were theological.
There was Bemy's "Compendium" and Lowry on the Atonement, Benson's
"Commentary", Waton's "Institutes" and several others of that class.
He also
loved to wrestle with arithmetical problems, especially those which were
puzzling or which had a "catch" in them. They were really algebraic or
geometrical problems and he would solve them in his own way, spending hours
and even parts of several days wrestling with them and depending solely on
his own mental processes, without benefit of pencil and paper. I can
remember how once, with high exhilaration of spirit, he made known to me
almost immediately after my arrival on a visit, that he had worked out the
problem of how many feet of lumber could be gotten from a tree three feet in
diameter at the stump and two feet at the peak and forty feet high. At
another time he determined the number of rails it would take to fence a
field of so many acres, the length of the field being twice its breadth. It
gave him a hugh delight to propound some such problem to me and see me stuck
even with the use of my algebra and geometry.
But, as
I have said above, theology was his delight. If he met a Presbyterian
Minister he would contrive, by a skilful direction of the conversation, to
bring in the doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints or of Election and
Predestination, and woe be to his opponent if he misquoted a word of
Scripture. He could not rightly be called a fundamentalist, for he
entertained some very liberal views regarding portions of the Old Testament,
but he hated High Criticism with a perfect hatred. On it we found it
necessary to agree to disagree and avoid the subject.
When
someone twitted him that his knowledge was naturally very limited compared
with that of scholars who gave all their time to reading and study, his
answer was that certainly he did not know as much as they, but he would add,
"What little I know, I DO know, and I have the same right to it as they have
to theirs". Personally I found it a great joy to note how advancing years
mellowed and liberalized his mind. Old Puritanical notions vanished. No
longer did he emphasize as the great sins dancing and card‑playing and
such‑like. Mother could wear flowers in her bonnet she wished without
rebuke. He played croquet, and when I would visit him at Brampton after his
retirement from the farm he would say, "Come, let us have a game of
checkers".
In my
younger days I was over‑awed by my father's deep religious seriousness.
Always I have held in deep respect his spiritual experience and his sincere
faith. Later in life when I was, with some self‑reliance, standing on my own
feet and had a more realistic outlook on the world, what amazed me and
intrigued me with its piquancy was the way this higher life of his lived
itself out in organic unity with fun and playfulness, jesting and laughter
and nonsense. In his younger days there were occasionally signs of a rift
between them, but later on they dwelt together in perfect harmony, made
indeed "one music". No doubt his growing family of noisy, lively youngsters,
having reached maturity and doing their own reading and thinking,
contributed not a little to this development of his character.
Of the
capers he cut up, the fun and jesting and nonsense he indulged in, I could
write many pages. A few samples, no better, no worse, I think, than the
general run of them, will suffice. A Mr. Harrison hauled the milk from our
farm to the cheese factory and was himself given to jest and pranks. Every
morning as the milk was being loaded, Harrison and my father each tried to
out‑match the other with some "sell", as we called them then. They both knew
the Bible ‑ at least I know Dad did, and so did nearly everyone in those
days. So the "Biblical" joke would pass between them frequently. Father
would ask Harrison if he knew who was the father of Zebedee's children, or
refer him to some passage in the twenty‑third book of Hezekiah. Such jokes
persist unto this day, to wit, this one: Where does the Bible make first
mention of the use of the automobile? ‑ the answer being: Where it says,
"Elijah went up on high", a boastful saying often heard in the early days of
the auto but now fallen out of use.
Evidently one morning Harrison outwitted Dad, who was heard saying to
himself, "I'll get even with him". Next morning no milk was to go to the
cheese factory, churning being necessary. So the milk‑can was put under the
pump spout and filled with water ‑ about 200 pounds of it. Then it was
lifted onto the wheelbarrow and Father wheeled it down to the milk stand at
the road. Then he lifted and lugged it up onto the stand and waited the
coming of Harrison. "Lots of milk this morning", said Harrison, as he
dragged and lifted the can to his wagon. "Cows are milking good now", was
the reply. At the factory the can was lifted to the scales and weighed. Then
the lid was taken off and the contents almost found their way into the milk
vat. "Thank God", said Harrison, "there is only one George Bowles on my
route".
Here is
a more characteristic joke ‑ one which my daughter‑in‑law pronounced a
definition of the Bowles family, of which her marriage made her a highly
appreciated member. The eight acre field of oats by the woods was being too
frequently raided by a young sow supposed to confine itself to the woods and
cow pasture. Often as she was put out the sow returned. The fence had been
closely inspected in search of the aperture, but nothing disclosed how this
young pig found entrance to the growing grain. So Father, after putting the
invader out for the nth time, set down on a nearby log and kept a close eye
on the young porker. He waited patiently a long time. At last he saw the
troublemaker waddling slowly toward a portion of the fence which was partly
hidden by brush. To his amazement he saw the culprit disappear in a hollow
log which formed the bottom rail of the fence to reappearing the oat field.
"Ha' ha'", said Dad. And he did not do what any one else would have done ‑
plug the hollow log with a few sticks of which there were plenty lying
around; and go home. No he! With the help of a rail he shoved the log around
so that both ends of it were in the woods. Then he let down a gap and again,
for the last time, drove the young sow out into the woods and put up the
gap. Again he seated himself on the log near‑by and awaited results. He did
not wait long. Soon the invader came up, grunting and wagging her head from
side to side, and again entered the log. This time when she emerged and
found herself still in the woods she showed unmistakable signs of amazement
and disappointment. She grunted loudly then was silent and, wagging her head
from side to side and throwing her snout up in the air, went a few yards
distant, bit off some grass but, uneasy and unsatisfied, returned to the log
and repeated the performance. Again and again she went through this
fruitless exercise and Father, as it was about dinner time, came home to
tell us the story and make some of us chuckle and others to roar with
laughter.
If now
among the fifth and sixth generation of the descendants of George Bowles and
his German Palatinate wife there are any who see in these stories only a
silly and illogical performance, with labour and time wasted, he will know
that in him the strain has run out; that not a drop of the Irish Tiperary
Bowles' blood flows in his veins. I can recall the exact spot in the woods
where this last episode took place. I often think of it, and sometimes when
I do I reflect that not a hundred yards away stood the beech tree under
which I saw that same George Bowles wrestling in prayer that he might have
some message of comfort for a bereaved family.
Jokes
of quite another sort he used to indulge in. One morning he dropped into the
office of a lawyer whom he greatly respected. He put on a long face as he
made known to the lawyer that he and his wife that morning had a few words
and she had left him. Many were the expressions of regret and sympathy he
received and then the attorney explained the law. "But", said he, "do not
take any speedy action. She may be back in a week." "A week", said Dad, "why
she is coming back this afternoon." The effect on the lawyer was such that
Dad was very angry with himself and confessed he had played a mean one on so
good a friend.
He like
a smart retort or a funny quip. On buying a few rolls of wall paper, he
asked that it be tied up so that he could take it home with him. "Why", said
the clerk, "you are not going to put it on yourself are you?" "Oh no, on the
wall", was the reply; and he went out leaving the clerk and her customers
howling with laughter.
Dad
never resented a joke at his own expense. Indeed, I think he enjoyed such as
much as any he perpetrated on others. He was often consulted by some who had
an altercation with their neighbours. Once Mary Johnston of Sand Hill came
to him. Tom Scott's cow had broken into her garden and eaten all her corn
and cabbage. What would she do? "Well", Father said, "Tom Scott is a
reasonable man. Go and see him about it." "I did see him", she replied. "He
told me to go to the Devil and I came straight to you." This was the same
Mary Johnston who, in the Bible Class referring to the parable of the Good
Samaritan, said, "Yes, he found him wounded and lying in the ditch and set
him up on his ass and poured oil and wine in him." To substitute this
briefer word for the word "beast" is in most cases permissible, but in this
instance it so affected Frank Porter and some other young fellows that they
found it wise to retire from the Class lest suppressed vulgar laughter
should choke them.
My
friend, Reverend John Coburn, has written entertainingly of a well‑known and
much beloved minister, Charles Langford. Well, Langford was once Father's
pastor and, as such once requested him to go to Sand Hill on a Sunday
evening and oversee the service. "But", said Dad, "Mr. Hill is down for that
service." "Yes, I know", said Langford, "but he does not know the people as
well as you." "Well", said Dad, "if some one were to come to oversee a
service I was supposed to conduct I would be insulted." "Oh, he won't be",
was the reply. "He's a sensible man". Dad loved to tell this. Again, after
service, this Minister was having supper at our home. It seems he had quoted
a verse of scripture in his sermon not quite correctly and Father so
reminded him. But Brother Langford thought he was right. The Bible was
consulted and, seeing himself wrong and Father right, he said, "Oh, well, I
was once corrected by a man who could neither read or write". It was too
much for Mother. She had to go to the pantry for something, where she had it
out with herself. Coming from the guileless, innocent Brother Landford, it
seemed to her a telling joke at Dad's expense. Frequently when Father was
indulging in what looked like a display of his Bible knowledge, Mother would
remind him of the man who could not read nor write.
Looking
back now, more than four score years, I am happy to recall the home in which
I was brought up. It was not an elegant home, but it was disciplined and it
had a unity and spirit of its own. Otherwise it would have been bedlam. For
we were mostly boys, full of animal spirits, boisterous, given to arguing
and loud talking. If it lacked some of the refinements and the gentle
courtesies of Christian homes of wealth and culture, it did not lack the
moral simplicity, the love of truth and reality and the hatred of meanness
and pretentiousness on which only can be built reliable and endearing
character. I think perhaps the things most abominated were snobbishness,
boastfulness and stinginess.
There
were few homes where education was more highly valued. In listing the books
in my father's library, I over‑looked Webster's Dictionary. Many were the
occasions when it was brought to the dinner table to settle some dispute as
to the spelling or pronunciation or exact meaning of a word. I have a
distinct memory of how it did once settle a dispute as to whether there was
such a word as higgledy‑piggledy. Yes, there it was in the Dictionary, and
the preacher who had used it was justified. It was one of my early delights
to look at the little pictures to supplement the verbal definitions of some
words. It would be illuminating if the census‑takers, who will soon be going
their rounds, discovered how many families had a Dictionary in the house.
I
regret there were no Tales of Arabian Knights nor any good first‑class
works of fiction or poetry within my reach. Indeed, all novels were suspect
as being only a "pack of lies". They came, when they did arrive, by way of
the Sunday School Library, wherein, as I remember "Anna Ross" forsook the
pleasures of a luxurious but worldly home to become a missionary in a
foreign land. The first 'modern' novel I read was "The Knight of the
Nineteenth Century". Afterwards came "Barriers Burned Away" and then "From
Jest to Earnest". This latter one I read when I was about fifteen and I
still recall that for days after I was lovesick and went about silent and
moping. They were all the product of E.P. Roe's imagination. If some
enterprising publisher should put forth an edition today, I think there are
enough unsophisticated young folk ‑ yes, and older folk ‑ to make the
venture profitable. I.S. Arthur's "Ten Night in a Barroom" and "Uncle Tom's
Cabin" were the only other novels I had read when I entered the University.
As to
literary influence, the Bible and Hymn Book had free course. Indeed, Dad
boldly contended Charles Wesley was a greater poet than Tennyson. His
acquaintance with Tennyson was, to say the least, quite limited. He had read
Young's "Night Thoughts" and Pollock's "Course of Time", probably in volumes
borrowed from some pastor's library. Once, so he told me, he consulted a
favourite Minister to know if he would teach him Greek for he had a great
desire to read the New Testament in the original. Thereby hangs a tale.
There lived in Caledon East an intelligent, if not educated, critic of all
sermons and preachers. Once Father asked him how he liked the new Minister.
His answer was that he would like him better if he stuck to the Bible and
quit quoting from "some damned thing he calls the Original".
The
three brothers, John, Thomas and George, all lived to old age. Father was
the youngest, yet died the first. He was in his eightieth year. His two
brothers, I think died each in his 84th year. I was with Father when he
passed on and I can testify that his faith and his light‑heartedness were
with him to the end. The Celestial City and the Better Country were as real
to him as any earthly city or country. Only a few hours before he passed
into unconsciousness, a little thing happened which I can never forget. The
house cat came into the room, leaped up on the bed and took up a position on
the corner of the bedstead. There she stood a moment, her tail vertically
erect except about three inches of it which, in high nervous tension, she
curled and crooked and angled over in all directions. Then, with that superb
haughtiness and contemptuous air of indifference such as only a cat can
display, she walked with slow and stately step across to the other corner.
Dad was very weak and it cost me a great effort to refrain from laughter,
but he did not refrain. A bright smile lit up his countenance and, with a
chuckle, he said to the cat, "Ha! ha! but you think you're somebody". He may
have said something after that but, if so, I cannot recall it, and very soon
I thought he had fallen asleep. But it was not asleep and a few hours later,
when the morning was breaking, he "went over the top". In the first pang of
bereavement I went to the window looking eastward, I drew aside the curtains
and for several minutes kept looking into the "Awful Rose of Dawn".
It
remains for me to catalogue the names of George Bowles' family and so bring
to a close this "incondite miscellany" of "hearsay, memories and
reflections" of the tribe of the Tiperary Bowles'.
As the
small boy said to the teacher who asked him how many there were in his
family, "Well, first there's me". Here I am in the little cottage on a
little farm by the shores of Lake Scugog in the Township of Cartwright. To
this quiet place I retired twenty years ago at the conclusion of a ministry
of forty‑five years, half spent in the pastorate and half in Victoria
College. In a village church a few miles from here Annie Devitt, daughter of
James and Mary DeVitt, and I were married over sixty‑two years ago. We are
here because we both love the farm and the countryside. For my part I never
could understand why biographers of the great Bishop Hooker saw something
queer in his request for a country parish where as he said, "I might keep
myself in peace and privacy, and behold God's blessing spring out of my
Mother Earth and eat my own bread without opposition." No wonder their urban
snobbishness was offended at his "tending his own flock" and occasionally
"turning the churn".
In our
family were two daughters and a son. The sorrow of a great bereavement fell
upon us in the year 1906 when Muriel, then in her twelfth year, died of
typhoid fever. Then, about twenty years later, the eldest of the family,
Vera, died after eight years of a courageous and cheerful battle against
Tuberculosis. She had married Reverend J.E. Griffity, B.A., and she left a
little girl, Anne. Anne is now Mrs. Edgar Emerson, B.A. of Stratford
Collegiate Institute. They have two boys, Ian and Christopher, our
great‑grandchildren. Our only son, Wifred G. Bowles, B.A. after practising
law for seven (line missing in copy) about twenty‑five years ago, Jean
Edgington, B.A., of Woodstock. They have two children; Richard, now pursuing
a post‑ graduate course in the University of Toronto, and Patricia, now in
her first year in Victoria College.
I have
already intimated the death of an older brother, Watson, in his nineteenth
year, of Typhoid Fever.
Next to
me is John Albert, who still lives on his farm near Souris, Manitoba, with
his two bachelor sons, George and Howard. Another married son, Allen, is on
a farm nearby. Lavinia Ianson, his wife, died a few years ago and John never
writes me without mentioning her name and his own loneliness. Surely the
fountain of tears is hard but the fount of laughter, for he was blessed with
all the gaiety and humour of his father and when a school boy, was given to
disturbing the gravity of the school, including frequently that of the
teacher himself.
Sherlock ‑ Thomas Sherlock, I should say ‑ came next, weighing at birth
scarcely two pounds, but having what it takes, he lived unto his 83rd year.
He went West and farmed at Souris, Stonewall and Morden in Manitoba. He
finally settled on a homestead south of Swift Current, Saskatchewan. His
wife Maggie Ward, predeceased him several years. A year ago I received a
Christmas note from him and had scarcely read it when the phone rang and a
voice told me of the receipt of a telegram saying he had died ‑ passed out
in a few hours of weakness. In his latter years he had taken to
auctioneering, where he gratified his love of a considerable talent for
public speech. Two sons, Watson and Newton, live on farms near the original
homestead. A daughter, Edythe, now Mrs. Burton, lives in Trail, B.C.
Liala
was the fifth in the family. She married Reverend Gilbert Agar, but died a
few years after, leaving a daughter, Beth, who also lived to marry but died
in childbirth, leaving no offspring. After Liala came Harry, a lovely boy,
as I well remember. He died when four years of age.
Then
came Manly, D.D.S., who took a post‑graduate course in Orthodontia and spent
his life in Winnipeg putting into their proper places wandering and crooked
teeth. He married May Spink, daughter of Richard Spink. He passed on about
three years ago. His widow lives in Winnipeg. So, too, their son, Richard, a
lawyer, while their other son Bill, an electrical engineer, lives in
Montreal.
Next
came Newton ‑ Reverend N.E. Bowles, B.A., B.D. ‑ who after twenty or more
years as a missionary in China, filled pastorates in Brampton. They have
four children, three of them graduates, like their father, of Victoria
College. Rowell, the son, is in New York. After winning a scholarship, he
took a post‑graduate course at Madison, Wisconsin. He married Augusta Davis
(a co‑ed I think, but am not certain, at Wisconsin), but I am certain she is
a tall and graceful lady known familiarly to us as "Dusty". Rowell's
up‑bringing in China made him of value to UNHRA, in the administration of
which he was once or twice sent to China but now is in New York. There,
too, has gone his sister Gertrude, making two of the great number of
University grads now in the Great Neighbouring State. Then there is Muriel,
now Mrs. Duggan, living in British Columbia and busy bringing up a family of
three. Betty Joy is the wife of a doctor in Windsor. She has one boy, just a
baby yet.
And
last but not least of my family is my sister Unie (that is to say, Unett,
which was Mother's name). Unie remained home to look after Father and
Mother. When Father died she married Reverend J.I. Smith, who had fitted
himself to be a missionary among new Canadians in Alberta by learning the
Ukrainian language ‑ a task done with much self‑denial. Later he was agent
of the Bible Society. They are now living in Edmonton. They have a
daughter, Bessie, (B.A. of Alberta University). Bessie is now the wife of
Seth Halton, brother of Matt Halton, whose voice over the radio is familiar
to nearly all Canadians. They live in Victoria where Seth is editing a
daily. They have two young children.
So here
I bring to a close this hastily written stuff which I dedicate to all the
one hundred or so descendants of that George Bowles who married the German
Palatinate young woman, Barbara Young somewhere about one hundred and fifty
years ago, in Tipperary, Ireland, and not far from the village of Kilkenny.
Appendix
Charles
Wesley Bowles ‑ b. 21 Jan 1857, d. 21 Oct 1938
Rebecca
Wilson ‑ b. 7 Jan 1854, d. 21 Mar 1945
Married
‑ 11 Nov 1886
Both
lived in Peel County, Ontario
Children : Edna Jane b. 17 Aug 1888
Thomas Russell b. 26 Jan 1897
Annie Alberta b. 21 Dec 1895, d. 9 Jan 1962
Wilson Graham b. 31 Jan 1893
Charles Victor b. 24 May 1900
Edna
married George E. Cameron 1 Jan 1913
Residing in Orangeville, Ontario
Children : John Donald b. 10 May 1914
m. Elsa 4 Oct 1937
3 children, Douglas, Helen and Karen
Jean, widow, 1957, married to Earle Hibbert 4 Feb 1938
6 children, Joan, Sandra, Carolle, Lynn, David, and Sharon
Wilson
and Thelma married 1 Mar 1945
2
children: Rickey and Donald
Marion
and Cecil Irvin married 24 June 1945
4
children ‑ Steven, Glen, Allen, and Nancy Anne
Helen
and Gayle Honey married 7 Oct 1953
2
children ‑ Cameron Gayle, Patricia Helen
17
Grandchildren 1961
Mary
and Russell Bowles ‑ Biggar, Sask.
5
children ‑ Raymond deceased, Ronald, Lois, Patricia and Glenn
Annie
A. and George Earnest Train, of Detroit, Michigan
married 15 Sept 1920
Children ‑ Audrey Jane Train ‑ born 2 Nov 1925
m. Dr. Francis S., Gerbasi, 1 Apr 1958
Twins ‑ Douglas Charles and Donald George
Douglas passed away, 31 Mar 1937.
Wilson
and Leeta Clark, Caledon East, Ontario
Married 26 Nov 1921
Victor
and Fernetta Towne, Monrovia, California
Married 24 Dec 1937
One
son, Ronald William m Nov 1960
See The Bowles of Canada
See The Bowles of Ireland
See The Bowles of Great
Britain
This page was last updated
10/18/18