Robert Caswell
(edited
by Judy (Todhunter) Rosmus from Rob’s Memoirs)
Robert & Frankie
Robert
Wallace Caswell was the youngest of Andrew and Mary Jane’s brood. He was born in Biddulph (Granton) Ontario 3
May 1860. Robs early life we know from
his notebooks. He said that one day we
played hooky from school. The next morning, to our surprise, when we were ready
to go to school Mother had her bonnet on and was ready to go with us. We had no
idea where she was going. She never said a word but when we got as far as
Granton she kept right on and when we arrived and the school she rapped on the
door, school was called to order when the teacher came out Mother explained
that we had been playing hooky and arranged that at any time that were would
have to stay home she would give us a note of excuse signed by mother. That
ended the happy truant days.
Robert said his “real life work began” when he went to work
in J.D.’s (brother James Dickson) general store at Palmerston. Disliking
indoor work Robert quit the store and turned to completing a house that AK (brother
Alex) had started next to his father’s and had abandoned when he started college. Robert was sixteen at the time and had used
tools since he was small, but the largest project he had undertaken previously
was to make one dining room cupboard for his mother and another for a friend of
hers.
Mary Jane and
Robert would have been alone in the big 2 ½ story Victorian. Robert decided that once AK’s house was
completed, the two of them might live there and the larger house leased out to provide
income for her.
A German family
came to Palmerston to open a cabinet factory.
Robert applied for a job and was put to work finishing the factory’s
interior, together with two apprentices.
His good work attracted the attention of the older men in the shop, and
he was put to making a tool chest for himself, a bench and a platform –
essential apprentice work, before he was put on regular jobs. When the cabinet shop folded he began working
for a contractor.
Mary Jane
thought Robert too small and light for carpenter work, so he bought himself a
practice telegraph outfit and learned Morse code. Shortly a Dr. Standish came to town and
opened a drug store and telegraph office. Robert was hired to run the store and
serve as one of two telegraph operators “store hours were from 8 am to 10
pm. He got along famously with the
doctor, but when the doctor’s wife and children put out their shoes for Robert
to shine on Saturday night he did it just once, then quit.
Robert went to
Toronto to perfect his telegraphy and lived with AK’s family that winter. He went to telegraphy school and then
returned to Palmerston and spent the summer there. On AK’s advice, he took a tent with him, having
bought the duck and sewed up the tent for half the price of a ready-made tent.
During the
winter of 1881-82, Rob was employed by the Canadian Pacific Railroad as a
relief operator. He would go from one station
to another along the CPR and relieve the regular operator for a week or more at
a time. But first he had to get to Winnipeg.
Robert
travelled with AK, and his family from Palmerston to St. Paul, Minnesota, where
spring floods on the Red River of the North had submerge several towns. AK was able to leave without difficulty, but
those headed to Manitoba filled the railway station, sleeping or sitting
wherever they could find a little space.
Finally word spread that a train was leaving for the north. He and another young fellow found a weak spot
in the six foot fence surrounding the boarding platform. To avoid ticket takers and the police, they
went through the fence. At an opportune
moment they slipped aboard without being seen by the ticket checker. No ticket checker went through the train at Minneapolis. Fortunate they were to be aboard the train,
for the spring weather of the last few weeks was followed by a snowstorm and
the mercury fell far below zero.
Repeatedly the train was stopped, and finally it came to St. Vincent
where the red River must be crossed. A transfer
boat had been brought in from Fargo, N.D. and they were among the lucky who
rode across river and prairie for several miles, occasionally glimpsing farmhouses
submerged to the second story. At
Emerson the two boarded the train to Winnipeg.
On arriving at
Winnipeg, Robert was anxious for mail, but the post office was in St.
Boniface. A new bridge had just been
swept away, so he had to cross the railroad bridge. The return trip by flat-bottomed boat with
“the river a boiling torrent” and the water within two inches of the top of the
boat’s sides had little to recommend it over the bridge.
At the C.P.R.
offices Robert was immediately given a job as telegrapher. When passenger trains could move again he was
sent to Poplar Point, a little short of Portage la Prairie to reopen the office
there. Promised that he could room and
board with the section crew, he found a deserted station with a single board
bench four feet long. Reporting his
plight, he was promised food and utensils, which did arrive the next day. “Still no trunk and nor bedding”. There was a farmhouse in the distance, and on
the third day he set out for it. A half
hour’s brisk walk turned into an hour’s.
He was given supper, a bed and breakfast. It turned out that her name was Caswell, and
she and her husband had come directly from England and taken up a homestead.
A few days
later the section crew arrived, as did the regular telegraph operator. So did his trunk and bedding. The other operator had a bed which he offered
to let Rob use during the day. One day
was enough. The bed and its owner were
infested with lice, and the poor fellow didn’t know what was wrong or how to treat
it. The section hands had compassion for
Rob, gave him medicine for the lice, instructed him to boil his clothes
thoroughly, and let him share their quarters.
Rob was transferred to Meadow Lea and while there he decided to visit
his brother Andrew; being that he lived two miles north of Sewel. Rob boarded a train and reached the Sewel
station about five o’clock in the evening.
There he found that Andrew lived about twenty miles out. Two farmers were going in that direction and one
had a wagon and a span of oxen. Rob
joined them, hoping for a ride, but alas, they walked beside the oxen. The man with the oxen reached his home first,
and Rob continued with the other.
Eventually they came to a creek where the bridge had been washed away,
save for one log. The other crossed and
in the pitch dark, Rob followed him with the sound of the rushing waters
filling his ears.
Next morning
after breakfast Rob was given directions to a country store ten miles
away. Soon he was confronted by a barrier
of water at least a quarter mile wide.
He had gone too far to turn back, so he waded through the water which
was about a foot-deep.
On reaching the
store, the proprietor told Rob that he should follow north on an old cart trail
made by fur traders until he saw a trail branching to the east. Four or five miles out he saw a house but no
trail, so he kept walking until he had gone twenty miles. There a farmer told him the house he had seen
was the one he sought.
Hurrying and
tired, he turned off the trail to the house he had seen. “To my joy it was the home of my cousin James
Carswell and family. James was not home
but his wife was…” From her hand he
received the first food he had had since early breakfast.
The shortest walk
was to Robert Styles’ place out across two valleys, making the walk five miles
instead of about fifteen. Although light
was already fading when he left the James Carswell place, the long northern
twilight probably helped him. Even then,
it was dark before he reached the Style’s home.
And if Mrs. Carswell had not followed for a ways and called out when he
took the wrong direction – who knows? “I
was so sore, I could hardly walk.” He
stayed there two nights. Then Andrew
harnessed up his oxen and took him to within four miles of Sewel, turning back
so that he himself would not be overtaken by dark. “During all that tramp, I had only seen four buildings. The country was just a wide open wilderness
or prairie, where a fellow could get lost, very easily.”
Rob and Andrew
had agreed to join forces during the summer and do carpentry, which paid twice
as much as office work. He stated out at
$4 a day and soon was raised to $6. Just
where they worked Rob did not state. At
the end of the summer Andrew returned to his farm at Neepawa, while Rob kept at
work until winter ended construction. “I
went to the Scott furniture factory in Winnipeg where it was warm and
comfortable for the winter.”
George Grant had
been born on the farm next to the Caswells.
He had become interested in a temperance colony project which had
received from the government thirty-six townships on the South Saskatchewan River
in central Saskatchewan. George Grant
had been in the party that selected the land during the summer of 1882. Grant had looked Rob up on his way west. “…by that time I had been joined by brother
John and his bride who had come up to be a Canadian farmer once more. Brother Joseph and sister Margaret and family
were also interested.”
“And by this
time there were four brothers, one sister, and families and my mother in
Winnipeg. We all wanted homesteads and
we suggested that he select homesteads for all.
There were two more brothers and one sister and families coming. We asked him to select homesteads for us
which he did outside the temperance colony as there was to be no homesteads
within the colony, which was not true.”
In preparation
to go in with the first lot of settlers in 1883, Joseph bought a pair of oxen and
harness. “And at Moose Jaw we completed
our outfit. A wagon, plow, seed what,
oats and potatoes.”
“The Caswell
oxen had harness bits on their mouth lines and were as handy as a team of
horses. That’s why they were so handy to
help other in trouble.”
We brought
sufficient groceries for the summer – a sheet iron stove with an oven and a
tent that I made before leaving Ontario in 1882. We were pretty well outfitted - we were the
first to get to Moose Jaw and had to wait for some settlers that were on the
way…”
The first party
got little help from Grant, for he was trying to be all over attending to many things. At Buffalo Valley the trail was shown on the
sketch crossing a creek. That sketch had
been made late the previous summer when the creek was dry. Now in the spring it was a raging torrent. “All except the Caswell outfit pulled down to
the creek before they found out that the creek was full to the top, of deep cut
banks and no possible chance of getting across.
We all had to pull up the hills at least three times.
At last we had
reached the border of the Promised Land – the Temperance colony. Brother Joseph and I had to cross the
Promised Land and settle as squatters north of the colony. Had we been told the truth about the
homestead lands we could have had our pick of lands close to the side of
Saskatoon for our first homestead, before the truth was known we had registered
as squatters twenty miles down the river on poorer land.
On May 23,
1883, Rob and Joseph parted from their friends and headed north to Clark’s
Crossing where they hoped to find a boat to take them across to the western
side of the river where their homestead were.
Alas, the ferry had been swept away at the breakup of the river ice, and
the only boat available was Clark’s punt, a little more than a shallow box with
a paddle. Along came a surveyor with a
canvas boat which could carry one wagon wheel with axel at a time. Each wheel and axel required a trip, six in all. Then the wagon tongue was put in the wagon
bed, the bed was eased into the water and towed across; finally on ox was led
behind the boat and its mate encouraged to follow with yells and stone-throwing. Then the surveyor’s all-wood cart was brought
across. Here we are at last, we crossed the River of Jordan and we are in the
Promised Land and may we be ever honest and true citizens of our beloved land
may God guide and direct one through lifes journey.
Quickly they
plowed a piece of land on the boundary between their half-sections, brought JF
Clark’s iron harrow across the river, seeded the soil, then cut a willow and
dragged it over to cover the seed. “The
season was good and we had enough seed for the next year and potatoes to eat
and seed.” When the surveyor came
through, Rob and Joe were allowed a half-section each, a quarter-section under
Homestead, and the other under pre-emption.
Robert & Frankie Marry
Queen Victoria’s birthday, a holiday for Canadians and May 24th,
1884 was also an important one in the Caswell annals. At Saskatoon Robert Caswell met Miss Frankie
Irvine. Five hundred miles away, John’s
first child, Albert, was born in Winnipeg.
Joe and Rob decided to go to Saskatoon for the celebration
being held there. By the time they arrived
a high wind had arisen and they could see people standing on the eastern shore
watching as the French-Canadian ferryman put his sixteen foot Peterborough boat
into the water. Three other young people
were also waiting to make the crossing.
Will Irvine and his sister Frankie had come out to obtain a homestead;
then the rest of the Irvines would follow.
They were staying with Joseph Fletcher, with whom they had come
west. The old French Canadian picked
them up and started back. With the wind
blowing upstream, the waves were so high that people on the shore lost sight of
them again and again.
The day was so bad that the sports program was postponed to
Dominion Day, July 1st. Again
Rob and Joe went to Saskatoon. That
evening Rob escorted Miss Irvine to a concert held in J.P. Lakes house, which
had been closed in but not yet finished inside.
They sat on plank benches to hear several people sing, another play the
violin, and at least one person recite.
During July Rob found various reasons to visit the Fletcher
farm in Saskatoon. While out on a walk
late in the month Rob proposed and Miss Irvine, as he regularly referred to her
in his memoir, accepted. That evening
they told her brother Will, “and he was pleased”. When Will told Joseph Fletcher, “he was not
pleased and advised him to object”. The
senior Irvines had already been told.
Rob went back to work. When he
returned the next week, “my bride to be told me what was what and we talked the
matter over and neither of us was inclined to be advised by Wills friend. We decided to put the question beyond any
interference and we laid our plans at once to go to Prince Albert and get
married. That was where the nearest
minister lived.”
They took Will into their plans. Although it was mid-afternoon, it was agreed
that Rob would go back to Clark’s Crossing, pack his clothes, take a good pony,
cross the river and go up the east side of Saskatoon. Halfway there he stopped at Frank Clark’s
farm, got him out of bed to borrow a driving horse and buggy. “It was just breaking day when we started for
Prince Albert.”
The couple stopped two nights along the way, the first night
at Batoche’s home. At Prince Albert the
minister – who was also the telegrapher – took the bride into his home. Rob stayed at the hotel. The wedding was performed on the evening of
August 4th, 1884.
“After the wedding was over I went to the telegraph office
and called up the operator at Clark’s Crossing, in my home, and told him to
tell my mother that I was married and that I would love her as I had in the
past. Her reply was that I could not
love two. I was her baby boy and she
could not see past that.”
Children of Robert Wallace Caswell and Francis Buchanan
Irvine:
-
Andrew Wallace Caswell, B: 10 Aug 1885 in
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, D: 08 Feb 1958 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, M: Eva
Marie Moody, 08 Jan 1913.
-
Walter Buchanan Caswell, B: 1889 in Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan, D: 25 Mar 1950 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, M: Mary McWilliams
Munro, 1917 in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
-
Calhoun
Caswell, B: 05 Apr 1890 in Medicine Hat, Alberta, D: 08 Dec 1948 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
-
Nora O. Caswell, B: 04 May 1893 in Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan.
-
Edna Violet Caswell, B: 04 May 1894 in Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan.
-
Minnie Florence Caswell, B: 10 Jul 1896 in Clarks Crossing,
D: 26 Nov 1896 in Clarks Crossing, Saskatchewan.
-
Muriel Beatrice Caswell, B: 25 Dec 1906 in
Saskatoon, Sask.
Robert 1885 – 86
The two years following Rob’s involvement in the Rebellion
were significant. They started out with
a seeming blow, when his crop was stuck by hail and rain on July 2nd
but it turned out more abundant than Joe’s, which had been spared. A month later, on August 8th, his
first son, Wallace, was born in Saskatoon.
Cousin Albert said that his grandmother would have named all the grandsons
Wallace, as she believed that her family was descended through her mother Ann
Wallis (Margaret Ann) from the Scottish hero, William Wallace.
“Scots who hae wi’ Wallace bled, Scots wha Bruce has often led, welcome
to your gory bed or to Victory!”
About two weeks later Frankie was fit to travel, and they
returned to the homestead. Rob and Will
Irvine build an additional bedroom on the cabin. The good wheat crop was threshed using
flails. As many farmers had planted no
crops due to the rebellion, the Dominion government bought up all that Rob,
Joseph and John could spare. Joseph and
Rob took two loads to Prince Albert to sell.
During the summer of 1886 the Central Saskatchewan Agricultural
Fair was organized. The Council of the
Northwest Territories sitting in Regina was applied to for a grant, but the
application was too late for 1886. “At
the fair of 1886 there was a good exhibit of cattle and fair exhibit of horses,
vegetables, grains, and ladies work. I
exhibited a pair of light draft horses, two cabbages borrowed from my brother.” Joe had gone to the fair a day earlier,
taking their exhibits. Rob went to pick
up John and his family and then realized he had not picked the cabbages he
proposed to enter. He slipped into
John’s and Patience’s cabbage patch, picked several, entered them and won first
place. (The cabbage patch is also attributed to
Joseph).
During 1886 Rob spent some time working as a carpenter
building the North West Mounted Police barracks at Battleford.
1887 – 1893
After four years at Clark’s Crossing, Robert decided to
return to the trade of telegraph operator.
He obtained a job with the Canadian Pacific. Again he was moved around some, but he was no
longer the low man on the seniority list and was not moved around so freely as
he had been in Manitoba during 1882.
“I
stayed with Uncle Rob for two years”, wrote Annie Finley “while I was going to
University. What a good time they had
playing rummy. Because Aunt Frank was
near sighted Uncle Rob used to try to cheat Aunt Frankie. Did he get away with it? Never! It was just a game with them. A friend of mine said she never saw an old
couple that had such a good time together.
Another thing, never a Sunday went by that each of the family came and
visited them for an hour or two.”
The
later years…
Rob sold his brick house
and lot about 1925-6 and moved to Gilroy, California. He bought a ranch financed by Will Colt. After Frankie died in 1927, Rob walked in and
told Will that it was all his – literally walked away from it and returned to
Saskatoon.
After
Aunt Frankie died, Uncle Rob was completely lost. Then he took up woodworking and did some
beautiful inlay work on tables. He also
joined a bridge club. One day I was in
Saskatoon and met Uncle Rob. When we
were talking, a lady passed us and he dashed and caught her arm to tell her
their bridge club was starting again.
This part of the conversation I heard: “Mrs. Ashton, we are starting
bridge again, but it is going to be run differently than last year. I always had to start off with you but in
spite of that, I won. Yes, Mrs. Ashton,
in spite of being a damn poor bridge player, you are a mighty fine woman.”
“Memories
of a Caswell house” after the Caswells moved out
In
1980 Sally Potter Clubb wrote a story on “Memories of Caswell House” which was
published in the Sept 13th issue of the Saskatoon Star Phoenix. She and he six brothers and four sisters had
lived with their parents in Rob Caswell’s old house from 1923 to 1927. All who lived in the Caswell Hill area of
Saskatoon knew the Caswell house and its spacious yard. It was located on a half-acre in the
northwest corner of Rob’s homestead on what was then the corner of Avenue A
(Idylwyld Drive) and 30th Street West.
Rob
had filed on the quarter-section in 1892 and obtained his patent in 1901. The patent describes the house as 22 1¼ feet
by 28 1¼ feet, with kitchen twelve by fifteen feet. “The original log house,” said she “was
enlarged and enhanced with red brick facing and a full length white wood
verandah facing west. A new front parlor
boasted French doors and stained glass upper windows. A kitchen stair case and a more ornate front
hall staircase led to five upstairs bedrooms.”
The
Caswell House was a summertime place, with its large and open playground space,
its study trees, and its old stone fence bounding the south and east. A high board fence on the west separated our
yard from that of the Caswell School. A
short concrete sidewalk led to 30th Street and a longer one,
bordered by lofty poplars, reached Avenue A.
Among the trees to the south stood a long log gazebo, a delightful
shelter wherein to read Grimm’s Fairy Tales, or serve a doll’s tea party…”
There
was also a small log barn for the family cow until one of Sally Potter’s
brothers and a friend climbed to the loft to experiment with home-made
cigarettes and burned the barn down.
(Courtesy of Willard “Pat” Colt and Margaret Atherton)
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