George Merrall's Immigration

As told to Hazel by her father...

Let's get crackin'.

My mother died when I was three years old. My father being unable to keep all seven of us, took the three youngest and went to the Isle of Thanet Union at Minister, and that is where I was brought up. Some people called it the poor house, the last resort, but I have often thought of it since and figured there should be more like it. You see, when anything happened like [what happened to] my Dad, they got a home, and fed and clothed and got good schooling.

There were on an average between 70 and 80 boys in the school, also the same in the girls' school. It was a big place, run by a board of guardians.My father was one of the bakers in the school, so he kept on there and put me through school, also my older brother.

When I was turning 13, the school was sending boys to Canada. My father consented to me going and I was accepted. Sometime in July 1883, they took seven of us to London. We were there one day and then off we went to Liverpool, and off to Canada.

We had a nice visage. I can remember how calm it was, as they had us boys running races on the deck, and they showed us whales in the distance. All new to us. We were about ten days till we got to Montreal. They kept us there one day and took us up on Mount Royal to look at the city, then off to Winnepeg. There they took us to the Immigration Hall. People wrote there for help, so we stayed there until they found work for us. They were awful good to us.

On the third day, they called us and said that they had call for two boys. They picked out myself and another boy, Ernie Endicott, to send. They put us on the train with our trunks and told us to get off at a town called Wolseley. They said it was about 300 miles. We got there okay, and there was a man there from the hotel, and he took charge of us. We were glad to have somebody to look after us. It was the first time we'd ever been away, and so far as we knew, we couldn't run away, so we had to take our chance now. So we went into the hotel, and he left us sitting in the bar room. We'd never seen anything like that before, men coming in for a drink at the bar. The floor was covered with sawdust, with spitoons all around, and some of the men were pretty drunk, but didn't bother us.

Ernie and I had belonged to the boys band and we had our flutes with us. The men saw the ends of the flutes sticking out of our bags and they come and asked us if we could play them things. So we stood up and gave them a tune. We gave them a polka, and they were all up on the floor having a good time, and we had to laugh with them. Afterwards, they passed the hat and collected over $5, and we thought we were rich. We went up to bed, two little rich boys in Canada, strangers in a strange land.

The next day the stage coach came to take us, and they only had room for one, so Ernie got to go, as he was the youngest and we had been taught to always look out for the youngest. So I stayed to take a chance.

I spent most of the day over by the grain elevator chasing gophers, as I had never seen them animals before. Around 6:00 they told me there was a fellow going out my way and he would take me as far as his place and see that I got to Mrs. Aldous'. At 7:00 that evening, he started out with me on his wagon. It soon got dark, so I couldn't see any of the country. We arrived at his house one o'clock. It was all bush country around there. They took me in and made me a bed on the floor in the kitchen. That night I didn't sleep. I was too scared. There were a lot of coyotes in that country then, and they sure did howl all night. And the dog kept bumping against the door. I thought they were trying to get in.

Louie Landon and his sister were awful good people, and they talked to me and told me about the country and the people I was going to, as they knew them well. Next morning, I was off on my last leg of the journey. He took me to a fellow's place, named John Teece. Mr. Landon told him where I had to go, so he pointed the trail out to me and showed me the house in the distance, which was between two to three miles. All I could see was like a big heap of mud on a hill, it seemed so far away. He told me I couldn't get lost, as the trail just led to Mrs. Aldous. So I started down the trail all alone, and then I broke down and was walking along sobbing. I got about a half a mile when I heard a shout behind me. I looked back and seen a buggy coming. So I dried my eyes, as I didn't want him to see me crying. When he came up, he told me to jump in, he would drive me home to his mother's, as he was one of her sons, Bob Aldous, and he had two children with him. At last I got to where I had to go. I was home at last with Mrs. Aldous, and there were two sons and one daughter with her at home, so that made the family I was to live with for ten years.

It was a mud house with a sod roof on it. The walls were about a foot thick. They mixed grass and straw with the mud and that made it hold together, so it was pretty warm. and they were all good to me, although I had to work long days, up at 5:00 and didn't get done til around 9:00. I often went to bed sobbing to myself.

At Mrs. Aldous' they soon learned me to milk cows and ride the horse, as I had to start herding the cattle. I had never been near cattle or horses before. I was pretty scared of them. They had many a laugh at me, but they were good to me, so I made it my home.