At The Sound of Bells

Beneath the obliterating mist of years,

The long forgetfulness from startled eyes.

A church beside a country road appears

Was part of twilight and the fading skies.

The homestead with its orchard on the hill,

Remembered joy, inseparable from pain,

The bells are requiem for the long ago.

• Inez Barclay Kirby

It was on my eighty-fifth birthday that my beloved son, Edwin McRae Hill, requested me to jot down for him occurrences, bits of my personal history, and any thoughts that came to mind from out the far distant days before he and I knew each other.  The following notes I have set down as they happened to occur to me, which accounts in part for their being rather disconnected.

About the year 1855 my paternal grandfather, Alexander McRae, a native of Dingwall, Scotland, who had lived for some years in another part of Pictou County, Nova Scotia, secured a tract of land bordering on Toney River, in Pictou County.  Being a miller by trade, grandfather proceeded to build a dam across the Toney (which was the a sizable, rushing stream) one and a quarter miles from where it emptied itself into Northumberland Strait, the waters lying between Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.  There he built two mills, a grist mill and a saw mill.  These were run by a large waterwheel, operated by water coming over the dam; at least, the wheel seemed huge to me on the very few occasions when I was permitted to go, with adult escort, beneath the mill to see it.  Children were not permitted alone there, as the place had all the requisites for a quick drowning.

A grist mill is one to which farmers bring their grain of all kinds to be ground into the different kinds of flour or meal.  In pay for his services, the miller takes from the finished product a certain number of pounds as “toll”.  Of course, each man’s grist has to go through the mill separately.  The McRaes, father and son, became very well known to the farmers of the district who were their patrons over the years and were considered very trustworthy, so there was never any dissatisfaction over the matter of tolls.  This fact was made known to me by descendants of those patrons, whom I met in my later years.

As far back as 1816, arrangements were being made for the establishment of a college in Pictou, the Shiretown of the county.  It was to be a theological school.  Churches were being established and preachers to man them had to be secured from Scotland, so were not easily obtained.  To supply this need, Pictou Academy was formed.  It was completed in 1818 and has been an outstanding institution to this day.

All this was long before my time, but family history has it that my father, showing a mental aptitude and a desire for a higher education, was entered at the academy with he expectation that he would become a minister in the Presbyterian Church.  I do not know in what year he entered nor for how long he attended, but before his course was finished he had a disagreement with his teachers regarding the Creed, which it was necessary for him to adhere to in every detail before he could become a minister.  This he felt unable to do and withdrew from the school without graduation.  No doubt it was a disappointment to his parents, for he had received public notice as the first farmer’s son to enter the college.

I think it was not long after this that he left home.  He spent some years in the Great Lakes region of Canada and in parts of the United States.  He taught school in summer seasons and during on deep winter trapped furs in the forests around Lake Superior.  He also worked in mills and one season was head miller in a large mill in Kentucky, in which all helpers were negro slaves.  They grew fond of him and shed tears when he left them.  I have a letter written by him to his father in 1851 in which he said, regarding his travels, “I have gained more experience and knowledge of the world than I could have in twenty years at home.”

I was never told the details of his return home and resumption of work in his father’s mill and farm, but I think it was not long afterward (it may have been at my grandmother’s death) that grandfather retired from active work and turned over to father the grist mill and a portion of the land and to Uncle Roderick the saw mill and remaining land.

My father was by nature a poet. He loved nature, the birds, the flowers, the native forests, his beloved River Toney, and that beautiful countryside.  He wrote many verses, to some of which he added the airs of old songs, and often sand for his children.  To my great regret, he never attempted to have his odes published and but few of them are now extant.  He was an ardent reader and, since public libraries were then unknown, he bought many books.  At the time of my earliest recollection he had a large library.

On the resumption of life at Toney River (I have been told by descendants of his companions there), he became very popular with the young folks of the community.  I suppose it was the result of his having gained a measure of worldly experience, coupled with his social disposition and education, that made him seem “different” from the native swains.  In those days, careers other than marriage for women were never thought of, unless one happened to be a poetess or wished to sail to foreign lands as a missionary to the heathen.  That being the case, naturally alert young women tried to do the best they could for themselves in the matrimonial field, and my father was considered a “good catch”.  But although caps were set for him on all sides, he enjoyed the friendship of all but fell for no particular one.

Winter evenings were long in the country.  To help pass the them, father started a singing class, or school, as they called it then.  The object was not voice culture, as it is known today, but the pupils were taught to “sing from notes”.  The teacher’s only instrumental aid was a tuning fork.  They met in the school house, so as to have the use of a blackboard.

The class was very popular with the young generation and was approved by their elders, who in that day supervised their activities closely.  One of the pupils was a young orphan girl, Mary Robertson, eighteen years of age.  She lived on a farm near the school, where she kept house for two brothers, they having lost both parents early in their lives.  She was quiet, demure and pretty and knew none of the wiles used by the older girls.  Nevertheless, the event which was to be of great moment in my occurred when then teacher fell in love with and married her, for it was she who became my dearly loved mother.  In her I could never find a fault and I can think of but one word that nearly describes her, and that word is “angel”.

At the time of their marriage, Grandfather McRae still had some of his family around him in the large, old, interesting McRae house, which stood on an eminence from which one could look down on the mill property, the winding public highway, and the picturesque wooden bridge spanning the river.  So it was necessary that a new house for the young couple be built.  Accordingly, just across a field of clover from the old house a new cottage was built for my father, which he named “Sunny Summit”.  It also stood on the hill, surrounded by a stately evergreen forest.  It is somewhat described by him in a song he composed for mother when he was wooing her.  I remember but one stanza:

“Come, Mary, my kind little Mary,

To my cottage that stands on the hill,

Overlooking the dark, winding Toney,

The smooth, glassy pond and the mill.”

Their life there began in 1865 and mine in 1868.  The thirteen years I lived on “Sunny Summit” were the golden ones of a happy childhood, a well-provided for home, and carefree outdoor paly amid a beautiful setting.  The house still stands and, although eighty-nine years old, greatly belies that age.  I love every one of its eight rooms and hospitable entrance hall and deeply regret that I can never again sleep beneath its roof. 

Winters were severe and snows deep in Nova Scotia in the time of my childhood, much more so, I have been led to believe, than in the present century.  Education was not compulsory, and children were sent to school at their parent’s discretion.  Public school opened early in the autumn and continued late into summer – usually, as I remember, into July – for the benefit of children too small to withstand the rigors of the deep winters.  My formal education began in the year 1876, in the little gray one-room schoolhouse one-and -a-quarter miles from my home and near the spot where the Toney River spills into the blue waters of the Northumberland Strait.  I have but one clear memory of my first day at school.  That is of the moment when the teacher approached my desk with pad and pencil and asked my name.  Then she said, “And how old are you, Cora?”  I remember distinctly my answer: “I am eight years.” Beyond that terse interview, I have no further recollection of the day, momentous as it must have seemed to me at the time.   However, I had learned to read long before and had consumed many story books and items of information from my mother’s magazines, my favorite of those being “Godey’s Ladies Book”.  So, I was well beyond the Primer and Frist Reader classes and during the five years I was a pupil in the Toney River school I had no trouble finishing the Sixth Reader (the highest class), with the attending requirements in arithmetic, spelling and penmanship.

I attended school only in mild weather and enjoyed the company of several cousins and other little girls on the one-and-a-quarter mile trek to and from school.  I did not like to go alone, however, for occasionally I had to pass a horse or a cow that had been turned loose to graze by the highway, and I was mortally afraid of them.

School days were happy days.  The building was but a short walk to the banks that rose above the beach of Northumberland Strait and, when the teachers went home to lunch at noon, we often went there to play.  Those waters were a lovely blue showing off their whitecaps to good advantage, and the beach was shell-strewn.

Toney River, for most of the distance that I knew it, was bordered by high banks on either side and, at the time my forebears settled there, these were covered by “the forest primeval”.  The stream was wide and deep.  As years passed, however, the forest was slowly but surely reduced by the logging industry and it became increasingly evident that the river and the power of its waters to operate machinery was also being reduced.  So, while we children lived happily, oblivious of the fact that just around the corner on life’s road there was approaching a new era for us and an entire change in our way of life, our parents, daily realizing the failure of the power, knew that something had to be done.   Father saw that the only way to continue the business would be to install steam power and, since he had been making only a good living but amassing no fortune, he considered the change impossible to make.

For some years previous to this, my father had been interested in what was termed the “Free Thought Movement”, which, as I now recall, seemed to have taken by storm the part of the country bordering on Boston and New York.  Father subscribed for and read publications advocating freedom of thinking on religious matters, especially freedom from church domination, and favoring unorthodoxy in general.  One of those I remember, published, I think, in Boston, was entitled “The Banner of Light”.  It advocated spiritualism.  Another, from New York, was called “The Truth Seeker” and was edited by one D.M. Bennett.  Father was rather inclined toward spiritualism and it was for a lecturer and writer on that subject, Cora L. V. Richmond, that I was named. 

I was, I am sure, in one of those periodicals that father learned of a new town being founded in southwest Missouri, to be inhabited by “free thinkers” only, and where no lots would be sold to anyone belonging to any Christian sect.  The project was undertaken by a wealthy man, G. H. Walser, who had the distinction of being the best criminal lawyer in the State of Missouri.  He owned all the land on which the town was platted.  It was in the midst of rich farm land and was underlaid with soft coal.

My father, I am sorry to say, got in correspondence with the promoter and received every encouragement to emigrate to the far-away place.  The outcome was that in the autumn of 1881 the decision was made.  The dear old home was sold and preparations were hurriedly made for the journey of over two thousand miles.  There were seven of us children, the youngest aged just three months.  I vividly recall the sad ever of our departure, when neighbours from miles around gathered at our home to say farewell.  While they sat all around the room, father stood up and sang for them the farewell song he had composed for them, while many tears were shed.  I shall always keep my printed copy of that song, one verse of which ran:

“Adieu the winding Toney, farewell the old grist mill,

My cottage home so cozy, in the spruce grove on the hill.

The dear birthplace of my children,

I shall love it ‘til I die,

When far off in Missouri my luck anew I try.”

To us children, although very sad at parting with our many cousins, the whole thing was a thrilling adventure, but in more mature years I knew it was anything but that to my dear brave mother.

Relatives and friends volunteered to deliver us and our baggage to the ferry boat that would take us across Pictou Harbor, where we connected with the train.  We were honored by having His Honor, the Mayor of Pictou, and other dignitaries, come on the boat to shake my father’s hand and wish us well.

The trains of that day boasted no “sleepers” and were heated by a small heating stove in one end of each car.  We had to bed down with pillows as best we could on our daytime seats.  The trip required one week and by the second day out my mother’s trials began.  Baby Johnny was bottle fed and was accustomed to fresh milk, but for the trip canned milk had to be used which, it soon became evident, did not agree with him.  He became ill and of course required all mother’s attention, so the care of our two-year-old sister, Janet, devolved upon Sister Emma and me.  We adored her and she was not difficult to handle, so all went fairly wee with us, except that before the trip was half over she accidentally dropped her much loved new hat out of the window, to the despair of the three of us.

It was mostly a “through” trip and I recall only three changes of trains, one when we children were rudely awakened after midnight and hustled off the train at Chaudiere Junction (somewhere in Canada).  There was another at Chicago and one at Kansas City.  Finally, we arrived at the little village of Liberal, in the southwest corner of Missouri, thoroughly sick of trains, mother all but completely exhausted, and the baby in weak condition.   We rejoiced to find the only hotel was just across the street from the depot and I will always be deeply grateful to the motherly middle-aged lady who ran the place.  She insisted on taking over Baby Johnny and on my mother’s going immediately to bed.  I don’t know how she did it, but in two or three days she had the baby back on his feed and as well as ever.  Mother, being a strong woman, was quite recovered after a night’s uninterrupted sleep.

As soon as our trunks, with bedding, linens, etc., arrived from home, father rented a little cottage near the hotel to house us for the winters, as it was early December.  The house provided small heating and cooking stoves, to which we added the minimum of other furniture, a table, beds, and chairs, which we procured from people having them for disposal, there being no furniture store in the town as yet.  It seemed a bare place to me and must have seemed primitive to mother, but she was not one to complain when the best possible was being done.

With the coming of spring, father bought a lot, had a little four-room cottage built, and at once began to turn the place into a garden spot by planting small fruit, flowers and trees.

The country was strange to us children.  A prairie country, where we could see for miles, contrasted greatly with the wooded landscape of the old home, and our all-out freedom there with the restrictions of a town lot and neighbours just across the fence.

The first spring and summer were very trying for all of us.  It was supposedly the change of climate from the far north seashore to the south that caused each of us children (who had never been ill before) to have a spell of sickness.  My five-year-old brother Alec had a severe case of fever and was never again so sturdy as before.  My ailment was “fever and ague” chills and I will never forget how chilly they were nor the heat of the fever that followed each one.

Our parents somehow kept going, however, and father’s garden provided us with vegetables and fruit that summer.  Not a few settlers (of the “free thought” variety) were coming in and buying land for homes.  Most of them were progressive and intellectually inclined and the town seemed to have a prosperous future at that time.  There was a Town Hall meeting house, which stood in lieu of a church and had a stage fitted for theatrical performances.  In this building they had “Instruction School” for children every Sunday morning.  It was there I was first told the story of  George Washington and the cherry tree.   There were also morning and evening meetings for adults, where speeches were made and discussions held on many secular topics.  There were also frequent lectures by visiting intellectuals, but they were never able to secure a visit from Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, then so noted as an agnostic orator, whom they much desired.  I feel sure of one thing, however – that during the eight years we spent in Liberal it was visited by every species of crank existing in the nation at that time.  Many came intending to remain, but after finding that Mr. Walser was running the town