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BEECHEY: ‘We had too many die, too many buried here’

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Imagine if Mary Hawer Weeks, one of Tillsonburg’s earliest pioneers, told her story – in her own words.

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“I’m a good example of wimen, back in the early 1800s. We was nobody, back then. We was either Pa’s daughter or our husband’s wife. I was Mrs. Daniel Weeks when the information about my life was writ down. No one can find my Pa’s name so I cannot tell you about my life, except I was born about 1802 in Upper Canada and my name was Mary Hawer.

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“Nobody writ down my story and I don’t recollect none of that early time. I does know my husband was Daniel Miller Weeks, his father was one of them Long Point Pioneers and that is where Dan was born in 1801. They had land in Charlottesville Township and I figur’d we must have lived somewhere near, to meet Dan. Lots of wimen married young back then, but I didn’t have my first child until I was 25 years old. It coulda been that I married and my first child Mary Jane came right after, or coulda been that I married earlier and lost lots of babies. I expect that is so as I had a few losses between my three children that lived.

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“I can tell you we was known by our husbands, mainly ‘cause we wimen was busy from dawn to dusk with chores. Tendin’ the farm and the house while we was having children. There weren’t many stores so we growed our own food and flax and sheep to make our own clothes. Ben was a blacksmith, so he was welcomed anywhere he went. He wasn’t all that tall, but my, my, he were a big man. His arms was wider around than my legs was! Pretty handsome, he was.

“Mary Jane grew up, married John Haley when she was 18 and had about 6 chillin’. Now my second girl, Cleopatra Ellen came almost 10 years after my first. Now you all thought I was unejucateded, didn’t cha?  I couldn’t read or write but my Daniel could, and he loved read’n about all them dead people in history. Well, I liked Cleopatra. There was a women that people knew for what she done, not what her father or husband done. Now my Cleo didn’t much like that name ‘caused she got teased somethin’ awful, and sometime she’d use the name Ellen.  She was a good girl she helped out with her little sister Maria Caroline.

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“I’m glad people started a keepin’ records, like the census, ‘cause now I know what happened to my family after I died!  Maria lived with Cleo for a while, then she moved to Michigan and eventually married and they all moved to Everett, Washington, out in the middle of nowheres.

“What I liked about my Maria was the names of two of her little ones. The boy, he was Milton Shakesphere Slaght – now you tell me who their favourite book writers was! There was little Thankful Slaght too.  I like that name, she was named after Cleo’s girl Thankful!

“My Cleopatra got married afor I died, she married Stanton B.W. Carpenter in 1856. His family came up from the US of A too. He was a cabinetmaker, and in case you didn’t know early cabinet makers was undertakers too. Somebody had to do it!  What’s a coffin but a box?

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“Years ago we didn’t have a lot of deaths but that changed when the typhus come. Ya know, when someone died, it was as at home, so you jist asked the doctor to come and sign the paper. Then we call Myrtle she did the ‘lay out,’ that’s clean and dress up the dead person. Then Stanton would come measure them up and make a coffin. He was good, always sanded and polished it up pretty, even if they could only afford pine. He always put wax in the cracks so nothing would leak too. He did that even if they said they didn’t have the money.

“Sometimes Cleo had to help Stanton. But she couldn’t when little Stanton B.W. Carpenter Junior drowned.  He was only 7. We had too many die you know, too many buried here. I died in my sixties, but Daniel didn’t die ‘til after the graveyard closed, so Stanton moved everyone up to the new graveyard so we could all be together. But we had no markers, cause they cost lots, and the little wooden cross jist disappeared.

“Times is certainly different, lordy, the  money you spend today to spend buryin’ people, when death is just part of life.”

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