My dad, Robert Williams, now 78, sitting on the porch of the original brick house built by Caleb and Gloranah.
By 1840 Caleb and Gloranah were prosperous enough to build a larger brick house to the east of the log cabin that had served them so well. Bricks were supplied from the Kendall Brothers brickyard in Bloomfield. Pine was most likely sawn at one of the two sawmills below the farm on Trout Creek. The house had all of the essentials of the day including a beehive bakeoven, as well as an outhouse tacked onto the north wall of the woodhouse. In inclement weather the family didn’t have to brave storms on their way to the little building. In the kitchen was a dumb-waiter, a kind of elevator with shelves on pulleys which carried food to the cool of the cellar and acted like a refrigerator. This is the house described on page 12 of Emma Field , Book One as dignified and sturdy. The old log cabin became a pigpen.
Toward the end of Book One, Gloranah Williams gives Emma a jar of potato water which she wraps in a cream-coloured woolen blanket. That blanket is on display at the Prince Edward County Museum, Picton.
Patten Rail Fences made from cedar cut when the land was first cleared.
If, as the saying goes, “good fences make good neighbours”, the Williams’ have always had both. The first fences to be erected were patten-rail, made of cedar so resilient to the weather, the rails can remain in fine shape for centuries.
Caleb and Gloranah’s neighbours to the east were John and Mehetebel Cooper. John was a son of Obadiah Cooper who came to Prince Edward from Dutchess County, New York in 1802. He was a relative of Fennemore Cooper of Coppertown, New York, the author of “The Last of the Mohicans”. Obadiah fought in the War of 1812-1814 and his flint-lock rifle was used in “the killing of the last bear in The County.”* It was considered such an important rifle that a member of the Williams family purchased it several generations later.
I relayed the details of the shooting in Emma Field, Book One…with one major mistake pointed out to me just this past spring…what the heck was a non-polar bear doing out of hibernation on Christmas Day?
*Merton Yarwood Williams’s The Samuel Williams – Jemima Platt Family
The farm was purchased for Caleb Williams in the summer of 1814.
Four months short of his seventeenth birthday, Caleb Williams was “set down” on land that is still in the Williams family 200 years later. He had some supplies, his axe, a gun and doubtlessly a tent. The land sloped away to the south for a quarter of a mile to a beautiful stream of clear water which still flows southwesterly into West Lake. The soil was brown and loamy with barely a stone (and that is a big, big deal to farmers!). Caleb erected a log cabin before he began the arduous work of clearing fields with the help of his neighbours and a “negro (sic) servant”, who family records report, was at the time of his death “buried at the foot of the Dutchess (apple) orchard .”*
Gloranah Young was the daughter of United Empire Loyalists and a granddaughter of the founder of the lovely White Chapel (the first Methodist Church in Prince Edward County). For a little 19th –century steaminess the family history book says, “during one of Caleb’s visits to the Red Grange (no idea what that is!) Caleb found Gorahnah operating the dash (butter) churn. He suggested that she could come home with him to make his butter. She accepted.” The two were married May 3rd, 1820 and lived out the rest of their days on the farm they homesteaded.
*Merton Yarwood Williams’s The Samuel Williams – Jemima Platt Family
Cup and Saucer owned by Jemima Platt Williams, 1776-1853, settler on the shores of West Lake, within view of the sand dunes.
Samuel Williams came to Canada from the United States in 1784. Along with other United Empire Loyalist he began clearing land in what his grandson later reported as “howling wilderness”. In October of 1792 he married Jemima Platt, also from New York State, and they settled within sight of the “lovely Sand Banks which were shaded at the top by spruce and willow, rising at one point to a height of 125 feet above West Lake”*. The couple were to have 13 children, 3 of whom they settled on bush farms before Samuel died at the age of 55. Caleb was one of those three sons and the maple, beech, butternut and elm covered land he was given was located a mile south-east of the fledgling Quaker settlement of Bloomfield.
*taken from Merton Yarwood Williams’s The Samuel Williams and Jemima Platt Family.
The former West Lake (Quaker) Boarding School is located near the Williams farm at Bloomfield.
My burning desire to write a novel (which became “novels”) about a young woman growing up amongst the Quakers came to me as I was walking out of the former West Lake Boarding School in the fall of 1998. I had no need to write about my family, who for 200 years had lived not far from there. However, one day as I was merrily writing, John Williams (1830-1915) appeared strolling along the main street of Bloomfield. I had been using a family history book to anchor the events in Emma’s life in the time period and had read about the many accomplishments of the young man. I really didn’t want to build him into the story and certainly didn’t want to use his name, but no matter how much I tried to write him out, he wouldn’t go.
John Platt Williams II was the second generation of Williams’ on the farm located on a ridge just east of Bloomfield, Ontario. My nephew, Justin Williams, is the 8th generation and this year marks the 200th year our family has worked its land. Out of love for it and respect for the Williams’ who lived in Emma Field’s time I will write blogs about the farm over the remainder of the month.
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Have you ever heard of Crash Course? It’s an online, rapid-fire lecture delivered on topics as enormous as world history. Here goes a mini refresher crash course on today’s topic – Good Relations and the Land. 1534 Jacques Cartier arrives on the east coast of Canada. He parks a cross bearing the words “Long Live the King of France”. He meets Haudenosaunee (Iroquis) Chief Donnacona and takes his two sons back to France. There they were wined and dined and made the centre of interest.
Cartier returns with the young men, visits the Haudenosaunee settlements of Stadacona (Quebec City ) and Hochelega (Montreal) population 1,000. Cartier stays the winter. Haudenosaunee get sick. Smallpox? French get sick with scurvy. Haudenosaunee boil cedar leaves to provide Vitamin C. Cartier’s men kidnap 9 people including Chief Donnacona and leave for France. All but one dies. Remaining one does not return to Canada.
Cartier returns with 1,500 settlers. Haudenosaunee are not happy to see them! Iroquois aligned themselves with the Dutch and British to the south. 1608 Samuel de Champlain establishes a settlement at Quebec City. The Haudenosaunee throughout the St. Lawrence River are nowhere to be seen. Disease? War? Moved south? Champlain aligns the French with the Wendat (Huron) to secure the fur trade and defeat the Iroquois. Enter the time period Joseph Boyden writes about in The Orenda! War. Savagery. Bloodshed. But hold on a minute! Bruce G. Trigger writes in Natives and Newcomers, “There is little evidence of warfare between Hurons and 5 Nations Iroquois in prehistoric times.” Here’s the crash course of the crash course:
Wendat and Haudenosaunee not at war. European comes, offends and harms Haudenosaunee, then settles many people on Haudenosaunee land. Eighty years later another European comes. No Haudenosaunee to be found. French secure fur trade with Wendats. Wendat and Haudenosaunee south of the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence River fight viciously!!
John Ralston Saul says this: “We don’t know what to do with the least palatable part of the settler story. We wanted the land. It belonged to someone else. We took it.” Hm. And I would add, we also made enemies of people formerly at peace and then turned around and called them savages! Holy Smokes – have we got some work to do before we can be considered good relations!
If what I wrote about on June 26th is true and transgenerational trauma happens whenever horrific events of one generation impact future generations, wouldn’tit make sense that First Nations, Métis and Inuit of this country should have a profound distrust for the education system that turned their ancestors into strangers in their own families? And if “perpetrators” can pass guilt and shame to their descendents, wouldn’t it make sense that the authorities in this country would unconsciously mould an education system that is inequitable to the Aboriginal members of our Canadian family?
I have heard one aboriginal leader say that residential school gave him a ticket to a better life. It provided the only means he had of acquiring a good education. What was true for him was not true for many of Canada’s past and current Aboriginal students.
A few quick facts:
-33% of on-reserve high school students graduate each year. In contrast, the eastern Ontario school board where I teach is aiming for a 90% graduation rate.
-The federal government which is solely responsible for financing aboriginal education, only funds aboriginal students two-thirds of the average funding per student that the provinces provide to other schools.
-19% percent of on-reserve schools in Alberta and Saskatchewan have irregular power and water – some reserves have no school at all.
-And this is the big opportunity for the future of Canada: 28% of the Aboriginal population is under the age of 14. Canada’s Aboriginal population, increased by 20.1% from 2006 to 2011, while the non-Aboriginal population increased by 5.2% in the same period. It behoves all of us to give our Aboriginal children every opportunity available to every other child.
Turning Things Around on Remote Reserves
Within the next few days I expect my son will be marking the end of the school year with the grand burning of a semester’s worth of notes. (As a teacher it makes me cringe. As a former child it makes me infinitely happy!) His burning will be happening at the very time that over 4,000 aboriginal children, mostly on fly-in reserves, will begin oiling their mental cogs with six weeks of fun learning activities led by counsellors in The Lieutenant Governor’s Aboriginal Summer Literacy Camps.
Taka Hoy and Katie Armstrong, both university students and counsellors with the program, spoke at the launch of Emma Field, Book Three last fall. The pictures they showed of children laughing, baking and sporting “pig snout” masks as they read one of Robert Munsch’s books were pictures of children experiencing the full joy of learning!
The distance between literacy (and joy!) and mental health, and literacy (and joy!) and school success is a short one. Says David Onley, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, “Where the literacy camps have been in operation, both the dropout rates and the suicide rate is much lower.”
Rebuilding the trust in Aboriginal children and throwing open the doors to a brighter future –I’m all over it!
All funding for these camps is raised by the office of the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario and held in trust by Frontier College : www.frontiercollege.ca
In Emma Field, Book Three, Randall Pierce comes to his grandmother to ask her to teach him The Thanksgiving Address which is offered every significant gathering of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). Orenda Pierce relays to him the steps in the address which offer thanks to the many and varied parts of creation that support life. In acknowledging the kinship with the natural world, she weaves together the prayer which acknowledges the sacred web of life and the peace and harmony that can be found in doing so.
Imagine that! Imagine if the morning announcements in every classroom in Canada began with “We give thanks for…the sun, the waters, the plants…”. Imagine if in The House of Commons and every board room across the country men and women paused before beginning their work of the day to acknowledge the sacredness of the very air we breathe and soil on which we walk! Don’ t you think we’d be making different decisions? Don’t you think it would be much easier to be in good relations with one another and the natural world?
The offerings of thanksgiving in Haudenosaunee culture are not just reserved for the start of significant events. The continual cycle of thanksgiving follows the change of seasons and the ripening of crops in ceremonies that give thanks to what has already been provided as staple foods. The Maple Dance in March gives thanks for the ‘sweet water’ of maple sap. The Thunder Dance of April gives thanks for the arrival of spring rains. The Sun Dance of May, the warming of the earth by the sun, the Seed Blessing or Planting Dance for the three staples of corn, squash and beans. All year long there is a continual cycle of thanksgiving for the gifts of creation.
And imagine that! Our holiday of Thanksgiving seems to give us pause to consider the bountiful harvests we enjoy, but imagine if we also paused to appreciate and give thanks for the many berries that grow on Canadian soil, the sap that flows through the awakening maples and the corn that is pollinated each summer. Such a simple, grace-filled act could do no harm and would perhaps give us the moment to consider how intricately connected we are to the fruits of the land – the land we are systematically and dare I say deliberately destroying!
In 1977 the Haudenosaunee Council offered a message about their people and beliefs to the rest of the world through a United Nations conference. The document was called A Basic Call to Consciousness: The Haudenosaunee Address to the Western World and was a call to the “consciousness of the sacred web of life in the universe.”
“In the beginning, we were told that the human beings who
walk about the Earth have been provided with all the things
necessary for life. We were instructed to carry a love for
one another, and to show a great respect for all the beings
of this Earth. We are shown that our life exists with the tree
life, that our well-being depends on the well-being of the
Vegetable Life, that we are close relatives of the four- legged beings.
In our ways, spiritual consciousness is the highest form of politics.”
A spiritual connection to all living things that pervades all aspects of our lives and culture here in Canada – wouldn’t that be a fine thing to uphold? Wouldn’t it be a fine thing to bind us all together?
Circles are strong. Spheres are too. Muskox arrange themselves in a circle, tails toward the centre, so they can surround and protect their young. Life on this fragile and strong planet is protected by the wafer-thin sphere of ozone. And the aboriginal tradition of meeting in circles protects each participant so that they can contribute without fear of reprisal or criticism. In so doing something bigger is created. As the eminent Canadian aboriginal architect, Douglas Cardinal says, “When you put your knowledge in a circle, it’s not yours anymore, it’s shared by everyone.”
Such meetings happen when a group of people arrange themselves in a circle and pass a symbolic object to someone who wishes to speak. Once finished the object is respectfully passed around the circle in sequence to the others who may wish to speak. The process of using an object slows the pace and focuses the attention on the person who is sharing. Widely used in restorative justice circles, this method is also being used in schools as an alternative learning practice.
June 15th, 2014, was Aboriginal Sunday in the United Church of Canada. It was also Father’s Day. Rather than spend 20 minutes listening to a sermon, at Merrickville UnitedChurch, we formed a circle so that we might honour men and have a taste of the power of Aboriginal circles. We left our front-facing pews (most of us rather begrudgingly) and formed a circle where each person answered with words or silence the following questions: “What do you appreciate about your father, or father-figure?” “What would you wish for all young men?”
The tension we felt doing something so new soon melted as people passed a small wooden cross and recounted short summaries of the fathers they had known. Shoulders relaxed and people leaned forward as they heard of a father who had swelled with pride over his daughter’s art work and another of a man who often didn’t see eye-to-eye with his son, yet passed on his respect for the land, animals and hard work. The process caused me to sort and sift my thoughts until I understood that I most valued my father’s strength and integrity and wished that my son would find his own strength and purpose.
The circle was filled with respect, humility, compassion, honesty, truth, sharing, hospitality and divine love. Can anything be more holy?
Thank you to the Aboriginal members of this Canadian family for being good relations and sharing the process with us so that our own spheres might contain good relations. Just imagine if we could use this respectful approach to protect your land and resources!
Handsome Lake, founder of a First Nations alcohol recovery program, was born two hundred years before Alcoholics Anonymous came into existence!
I first came across his name while I was researching for Emma Field, Book III. “Handsome Lake!” I thought. “I’ve got to find a way to weave this man into the story!” But alas, the Seneca leader and prophet was born approximately 100 years before Emma and it seemed more truthful to speak of his influence through Orenda Pierce, a strong clan mother from Six Nations. (And yes, I had picked her name long before Joseph Boyden’s book was published. The name means magic power.)
Handsome Lake, who became a warrior, was born in 1735, to a culture in disarray.
White immigrants had flooded into native territory. Their presence put pressure on game as well as trade, travel and land. European farming practices, conducted by men, out-produced the methods employed by Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) women. Then the Revolutionary War, and the subsequent Sullivan’s campaign destroyed half of the native population and left many others as refugees; near starvation and sick from disease.
There is a line of thinking that says when a culture is strong, it is able to provide an anchor for the struggling individual. In Handsome Lake’s time the culture itself was crumbling and individual after individual turned to alcohol and witchcraft for solace.
From Native American Roots.net:
“In 1798 five Quakers arrived at the Seneca town of Jenuchshadago. The Seneca were hungry because floods and frost had damaged their corn harvest. After consideration of the Quaker request to live among them and teach them, Cornplanter (Handsome Lake’s brother) told them: “Brothers, you never wished our lands, you never wished any part of our lands, therefore we are determined to try to learn your ways.” In this way the teachings of the Quakers reached Handsome Lake.
At the time when the Strawberry festival was about to be held in 1799, Handsome Lake, who had become a notorious drunkard, was very ill. He was a babbling invalid who has wasted away to a mere skeleton. His relatives viewed him as a victim of malaria and, more importantly, of its cure, rum.
His relatives heard him call out “Niio!” (so be it) and they saw him stumble out of his cabin and fall. His daughter Yewenot and her husband Hatgwiyot carried the limp figure back to his bed. Thinking that he was dead or dying, they sent for his closest relatives, Cornplanter and Blacksnake. When Blacksnake arrived he found that Handsome Lake had no breath or heartbeat, but detected a warm spot on his chest. After a couple of hours, Handsome Lake returned to this world and told of meeting three men sent by the Creator.”
The first message from the Creator contained four words that summarized the evil practices of the people: whiskey, witchcraft, love magic, and abortion/sterility medicine. In subsequent visions, which were transcribed by a Quaker school teacher, Handsome Lake relayed a moral code which outlawed drunkenness, witchcraft, sexual promiscuity, quarreling, and gambling. It emphasized the importance of seasonal festivals and the nuclear family.
“By 1803, Handsome Lake’s teachings were bringing about a spiritual renaissance among the Iroquois. He continued to express the “good word” and to stress the need to keep the land instead of selling it. His spiritual movement became a new religion called the Code of Handsome Lake.” The religion has continued to sustain aboriginals on both sides of the Canadian/American border into the current day.
Back to the idea of Epigenetics…Rupert Sheldrake coined the phrase “M-field” (Morphogenetic Field) for the times when humans break through a barrier, and the capacity for others to do the same is opened up. When Roger Bannister broke the 4 min. mile he created a new M-field and many runners suddenly began to run the sub-4 min. mile. The same happened with the human capacity to fly when the Wright brothers opened up a new M-field. And the capacity to recover from alcoholism opened up with the M-field created by Bill W. of Alcoholics Anonymous and Handsome Lake 1 ½ centuries before. Is that epigenetics? Only science will, in time, be able to tell, but for now I find it enormously hopeful to think that it might be!
The Emma Field Novels 