Sherman Dayton's Snowplane

Today's blog post is an easy bit of "cut and paste" for me as the story was already written and it is a wonderful read about days gone by.  Sherman Dayton (1905-1987) was a mechanic at McMurchy Brothers Garage in Reston in the 1920's and went into business for himself later.  As his story below tells, in the 30's money was very hard to come by so he took on building a snowplane to act as a livery or taxi for people and things that needed to be moved quickly in deep snow.  Uncle Hazen Bigney was a carpenter and built the body of the plane for Mr. Dayton in 1936.  The picture below was in the Boulton albums but the eleven page story that makes today's post was copied from the original belonging to John and Verna Olenick.

Les Parker - Telephone Trouble Man 

Sherman married a Reston girl, Helen Rankin Guthrie, in 1931.  They had three children and she passed away young in 1946.  He and his family moved to Newdale, MB where he continued his unique inventions and mechanical abilities to build a successful business.  He remarried Annie Mae Fraser and was an active part of his community until he passed away in 1987.  S. H. Dayton's name continues on in the John Deere dealership in Shoal Lake, MB.  I wonder if he ever found the snowplane?  Corrections, additions and further information are always welcome at ssimms@escape.ca or in the comments below.  

Boulton and Kendrick Connection

Time to get out the red pens for a correction to The Boulton Blog books!  This picture taken about 1910 has always hung at the Boulton farm and I bought another copy at an auction sale in Souris a few years back.  It is a remarkable picture and easy to see why copies were made for the family. A recent email from cousin Lee corrected the identity of the lady sitting on a chair in the front middle of the group. The handwriting on the back of her copy belonged to Ida Mae Bigney White, daughter of Susan. The elegant lady on the chair had previously been identified as Louisa Roe, the mother of the two little boys in the picture.  It didn’t really seem right and indeed the true identity of the woman is a generation older than Louisa.  She is Abigail Kendrick, a sister to Ann Boulton(sitting to her left) and her daughter Annie Kendrick is standing at the far right behind her.  Discovering who it was made me curious about the Boulton-Kendrick connection.

Randy's great grandmother Ann Boulton is pictured in this group of 5 in the front right with her 2 years older sister Abigail on the left. Their mother Ann(Higginson) Boulton is between them and brothers William and Thomas are standing behind.  This photo was taken in the late 1880’s in the Brockville, Ontario area.  I thought it was the only photo of Abigail (Boulton) Kendrick that I had seen but apparently not. She was in Reston in about 1910! Abigail married George Kendrick in 1862 at Leeds and Grenville in Southern Ontario.  They had two children Thomas Oughton(1865-1945) and (you guessed it - they loved this name) Annie who was born in 1863.  The Kendricks farmed in southern Ontario, where George died in 1900 at the age of 69.  I don't have any other evidence of how long they stayed but a visit for the sisters after 8 years would have been welcome indeed.   

 Annie remained unmarried but she continued to write letters to the Reston connection in the 1940’s.  I have a couple of them and they are newsy - shared connections, health issues and the weather.  Annie died in 1958 at the age of 94.   Her brother Thomas Kendrick married Sarah/Mary Jane Spotten in 1902 and had a daughter Abigail Gladys in Winchester Township near Ottawa.  Gladys married William Francis McDonald and had a large family.  

The first Abigail’s husband George had one brother that I know of, Richard Kendrick. That family was no doubt another reason for the visit west in 1910. Richard (1850 -1925) and his wife Hester (McIntosh) (1855-1939) arrived in the Reston area on May 1, 1900. That first night was apparently spent with the Boulton family, three miles east from their homestead. The two families had been neighbours at New Dublin, Ontario. Richard and George Kendrick’s father Samuel arrived from Dublin, Ireland in 1823 and the Boultons had lived in the area since leaving the United States as Loyalists. The Kendrick family consisted of 8 sons and a daughter ages 24 down to 4. (Photo courtesy of Ancestry user dwain01) They built their home on 22-6-28 in 1900.  Richard was a blacksmith and carpenter as well as a farmer. The district and school were named Dublin by the Kendricks after their former homes. 

Eldest son Nelson purchased and operated his own steam threshing outfit and operated it in the district for many years. The above picture hung in a bedroom at the Boulton farm and the postcard below with identifying names on the back was borrowed from a collection of John and Verna Olenick.  

A Kendrick family reunion in the year 2000 celebrated 100 years of Kendrick ownership and a cairn on the property was revealed to mark the occasion.  Kendricks and Boultons continue to be neighbours and Reston community members all these years after it began. 

Thanks for sharing your picture, Lee.  It made for a pleasurable day of research , lost in the past ignoring the present! 

Reston Cemetery Stories

My summer 2020 project was to photograph and record the gravestones at Reston Cemetery on the Find a Grave website.  I was amazed to find over 1400 names remembered in stone there and no doubt many more are buried without a stone as well.  Some engraving is almost illegible with time but luckily the right light and the list in the Sequel to Trails along the Pipestone helped complete the task. Historical birth, marriage and death records in Manitoba can be found on this website and were helpful to fill in relationships and unreadable names and dates too. Find a Grave uses the GPS technology in the photo to help locate the plot in the cemetery. With a free membership, anyone can add photos of the people to their memorial.  

A lease was drawn on the NE 16-7-27 on September 14, 1897 and the title of the cemetery was formally registered in 1901.  Apparently, early records were destroyed in a fire on the east side of main street in 1916.   Some of the earliest stones are from 1894 and the first Boulton connection to this cemetery is mentioned in a previous post here.  Anne Mossop, Jane McAulay and the Blackmore babies were among the first burials. The many infant graves remind us about the high infant mortality before the luxury of vaccinations and health care that we enjoy now.   

Kinsley Baird, Clayburn Dickie and twins Martha Delia & Albert Edward Pickard  along with so many more children’s names will live on in their stone markers. The delicate white stone used seems to have suffered the most weathering.   

Mrs. A. Milliken

The story of Mrs. A. Milliken came together with the help of one of her kin,  Marilee.  It struck my 2020 self to be so wrong to be remembered on a stone by your husband's name.  We found her identity to be Jean Isabella (nee Douglas) but I have come to realize she was likely very proud to be known as the widow of Alex Milliken.  After the early death of her husband, she and her son William came from Scotland to Canada in 1904 to make a home with their Milliken relatives. James and Peter Milliken and their wives were early pioneers of the district and were responsible for the name Reston being given to our community after their home in Scotland. Find a Grave makes it able to reunite the family on her memorial page even though her husband was buried in England and her only son in BC. 

Veterans Graves 

Several white rectangular military stones mark the resting places of war veterans buried although many more are buried with regular stones.  Reston Cemetery is counted among the Canadian War Grave Commission sites as one active serviceman at his death is buried here.  Thomas Wilson Guthrie died in October of 1918 on his way to fight overseas.  He met his fate at age 26 in Quebec of influenza, a victim of the Spanish Flu. 

Reston boys buried overseas were able to be  linked to their family in Reston Cemetery as is the case with Melvyn Brandon, E. E. Smith, Eric Holton and Rayment Pigg. I will continue to work on this part of the project as I am sure there are many more. 

Arthur Owen Davies

Gravestones usually supply the birth and death dates with a dash between them. It is the dash that is left out of the story but this stone intrigued me to find out more. Arthur Owen Davis was born December 29, 1867 at Wigan, Lancashire in England. He is buried in Reston Cemetery after his death on March 15, 1902 at Antler, Assiniboia in the Territories. (This was three years before Saskatchewan was created as a province.) The amazing thing about this stone is that it tells his manner of death. Arthur was unfortunate enough to die a snow storm near Antler. I can only guess that he was highly thought of to have this memorial erected to him. Inscriptions are common on the older stones and this one includes "Thy Will Be Done".

March 19, 1902 clipping from the Calgary Herald with more details :  

Reston, Man., March 19. Word has been brought in from Antler that Section Foreman Arthur L. Davis, who was lost in the blizzard of Saturday last in trying to reach his farm boarding house from Stimson's store, has not been found. All hopes of finding him alive have been abandoned, a large search party being unable to ascertain his whereabouts to a late hour last night. 

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March 19, 2022 Update (Yes, exactly 120 years to the date after the clipping!) I was contacted today with a link on Find a Grave to the resting place of Arthur's parents Reverend John and Mary Davies in Greenfield, England.  

Link here  https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/190684322/john-davies . Their stone is engraved with almost exactly the same inscription in remembrance of their son which leads me to believe it was them that had it erected here. I don't believe this was a coincidence but reminds me why I do what I do.  💗 

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Ellen Guthrie Bulloch wrote The Pioneers of the Pipestone that you can access online here in 1929 and sold copies as a fundraiser for the cemetery. Complaints of the disgraceful state of the grounds had been heard in the early 20’s.  The cause was taken up by local service groups and the situation improved. Spruce trees from Riding Mountain were planted in 1932-33. Today the grounds at Reston Cemetery are under the care of a board and meticulously kept by Ken Moore.  This care conveys the respect due the pioneers and those gone before who made our corner of Manitoba the wonderful place it is. 

Further information and corrections are always welcome to ssimms@escape.ca

A Trip to the New World in 1870

J. W. Bushby 1852- 1931

In the same little journal as this blog post originated, I've found and transcribed another few pages which detail Randy's great grandfather James William Bushby's trip from London to New York and back exactly 150 years ago.  He is a beautiful cursive writer and the ink is as black as the day it was written.  The words were hard to make out in places, likely because I am not familiar with a sailor's vocabulary so I've made a few guesses!  Although he was a carpenter, I am thinking he may have been part of the crew of this ship. He mentions painting and varnishing the bulwarks during the voyage but he pays $28 passage for the trip back.

Wednesday 6 April 1870

Left the London Docks at 4 o’clock in the ship Liverpool bound for New York. Second mate had a fight with one of the seamen. Anchored off Graves End for the night.

Thursday 7th

Heaved anchor in the morning at 3 in the morning and then dropped anchor off Sheerness about 9 am. Weighed about 3 o’clock. Very calm for the Channel Pilot.

Friday

Very calm - could make no headway.

Saturday

Sighted Dungeness Lighthouse and Dover Castle. Almost run aground when the pilot was at breakfast. Good wind.

Sunday 10th

Most people sick myself and Bob not included

Monday 11th

Tuesday 12th                  very calm

Wednesday 13th 

Thursday 14th

Wind more favourable. Bill Portland. Didn’t bout ship but twice passed.

Friday (Good) 

Didn’t have any hot cross buns. Passed the Marie & Joseph about 6 pm evening. No bout shipping.

Saturday 16 April

Wind fair going three knots. Made a devil of a row about 10 pm - crowing bellowing.

Sunday

Fair wind going five knots an hour. Pat the Irishman very bad. Going 7 knots in the evening.

Monday

Eastern wind still fair. Walker & Hearn had a fight and also the cook and the Spurgeon.

Tuesday 19

Dead calm in the morning with the heavy swell wind rose about 11 o’clock. Heavy seas. Carpenter caught a swallow rung under reefed topsails about 10 at night.

Wednesday 20th

Wind fresh. Good sea. Most passengers sick. Pig killed by one of the passengers. Spoke a vessel homeward bound.

Thursday 21st

Caught in a squall early in the morning. Tore the gib to bits. Main topsail heave seas running headwind. Stayed up all night. Very nigh running under close reefed topsails and gib.

Friday

Wind aft in the morning. Calm in the evening with a heavy rolling sea. Pat Sullivan taking very bad in the evening. His nose bled. Turned in and slept round.

Saturday 23

No wind dead calm with the swell on sighted a ship in the morning and kept sight of her all day from 6 in the evening.

Sunday the 24th

Sam Cooke had a clean shave. Bought some dripping. Going very slowly

Monday

Very calm. EB’s birthday

Tuesday 26th

Better wind - favorable

Wednesday 27

Wind aft. Sighted a ship

Thursday

Passed between 40 and 50 vessels. Spoke to five or six of them. Off Western Isles. Wind on her quarter.

Friday 29

Wind favourable. Shipping good many seas. Saluted an American ship which had lost her top gallant foremast in Latitude 32’ 36. Main sail split.

Saturday 30th

Caught in a squall early in the morning. Heavy rain. Shipped a good deal of sea. Raining hard all day.

May 1, 1870 Sunday

Wind almost dead ahead. Making very little headway. Very fine day.

Monday 2nd

Bought a knife off Chipps for 2/-. Nice wind but got around to the head about 10 o’clock in the night.

Tuesday 3rd

Foul wind. Bob bought a knife off Chipps for 4/- Ship rolled heavily. Sent five or six under the bulwarks - myself one.

Wednesday 4th

Wind about the same. Ship rolling heavily. Sighted a ship about 1/2 past 6 in the evening.

Thursday 5th

Wind about WSW. Skin & Grief had his neck lanced. Saw a steamer ahead up to 12 pm. Singing and larking.

Friday 6th

Headwind - making very little headway.

Saturday 7th

Fair Wind

Sunday 8th

Very rough in the morning. The roughest day we had up to present time. Almost calm in the evening. Ship in sight. Porpoises playing around her head. Also saw a whale spouting in the evening

Monday 9th

Almost dead calm. Foggy a deal of rain.

Tuesday 10th

Wind aft but very little. Saw two whale came close along side about midday. Had a nice breeze in the evening right aft

Wednesday 11th

Dead calm all day. Saw three blackfish whale.

Thursday 12th

Nice wind going seven knots 10 in the evening.

Friday 13th

Dead calm all day. Ship hove to nice wind spray up in the evening till about five k/hr in night.

Saturday 14th

Had a calm in morning till about 10 am. Freshening towards evening. 2 pts off our course about 800 miles from New York. Bought a plug of tobacco for 1/3 off Jack Welsh.

Sunday 15th

Made very good headway. Shipped a good many seas. Fine day.

Monday 16

Calm in morning. Wind aft about 10 am making good headway. Sighted a barque in the morning on weather bow

Tuesday 17

Barque in sight all day. Wind fair good breeze.

Wednesday 18

Barque still in the aft but gaining on us

Thursday 19

Balm in morning breeze sprang up gradually. Barque in our wake. Spoke a steamer about 11 am. Finished painting and varnishing bulwarks. 391 miles at 12 o’clock from New York.

Friday 20th

Had wind about ship at 3 am. Saw a Steamer and Schooner in the morning. 290 miles from Sandy Hook at 12 o’clock. 275 miles from Sandy Hook at 3 pm.

Saturday 21st

Dead calm 250 miles at 12 o’clock. Very foggy all day.

Sunday 22nd

Fine breeze up to about 12 o’clock when it died into a calm. Saw a steamer in the afternoon.

Monday 23rd

Pilot came on board about two in the morning. Several schooner and fishing boats around us. Sighted land 35 minutes past 5 in the evening. Had a fair wind and was carried up to Staten Island where we anchored.

Tuesday

Doctors inspecting who came on board about 9 o’clock morning. Tug boat came alongside and took all passengers to Castle Gardens. Took lodgings at 25 1/2 Washington Street. 1 dollar bed + three meals a day. Morgan’s people slept in second room. 

Wednesday 25th

Went to Eli Benedict at 41 Pier North River N.Y. where we changed our coin. Got our tickets for Buffalo. Started at 6 pm for Albany.

Thursday 26th

Arrived in Albany at 5 am started for Buffalo at 9 am.

** There is a gap in the entries here.  Many pages are written in pencil and have become illegible over the years.  Some pages  pages are numbered so I'll continue on page 24 after leaving off at 16.**

November 28, 1871

And thense to Mr. B.'s.  Had quite a little party in the evening.

November 29th

Bade farewell to Mrs. Bullock. Johnie drove us to Lakeview Depot where we proceeded on to Buffalo and took tickets for New York Harteda 4:20 PM.  After a delay of two hours delayed again at Rockville for an hour.

November 30

Got into New York soon after 9 am. Book passage by SS Spain for Liverpool for $28. Took lodgings in Washington Street and walked around the city for the rest of the day.

December 1

Went to Central Park in the forenoon and in the evening went to Bowery Theatre.  

Saturday 2nd

Got on the ship. Gangway drawn up soon after. Steamed up and started on our voyage. Fair wind in the afternoon but got ahead towards evening. Stopped about 9 pm for machinery inspection.

Sunday 3rd

Hot rolls for breakfast and coffee. Wind still ahead. Steamer ahead and one aft of us. Plum duff for dinner and salt junk.

Monday 4th

Fine day in the evening it began to blow as a matter of course. The passengers begin for spew. Got into a birth and slept.

Tuesday 5th

Pretty rough all day - very few passengers to the mess table. Rained nearly all day.

Wednesday 6th

Fine morning rained some frequently. Passed a steamer New York bound in the evening.

Thursday 

Dirty in the morning. Heavy swell - fair wind.

Friday 8th

Fine morning - wind ahead. Salt fish for dinner.

Saturday 9th

Fine day making good headway. Cleaned some cans for the Steward for a couple of coins.

Sunday the 10th 

Fine morning. Plum duff for dinner - making good headway 

Monday the 11th 

Sighted huge pile of rock along headland. Kept out of land the rest of the day.  Steamer came off about 5 pm and took all passengers for Queensland.

View of mountains on the Coast of Ireland on a Voyage from N. York to Queenstown & L'Pool seen on morning of 11th of December 1871 making the 9th day out. 

Tuesday the 12th 

Arrived at Liverpool about 11 am. Landed about 12. Passed the customs - walked around town some and then took lodgings. Went by Alexandra Theatre in the evening saw The Windmill and Notre Dame acted - very good. Had a glass of hot Brandy and water. The first I had in 20 months.Went home and to bed.

Wednesday 13 

Took the cars for London at 7:20 am. Arrived in London about 2:30 and took a cab from Easton.  Left Bob at his house and onto 88 Hill St. where my journey ended for a spell.