1940 U.S. CENSUS

It’s finally here!  If you have family that lived in the United States, the 1940 U.S. Census is up and running today, April 2, 2012. Some of the people listed will even still be alive today. As required by a confidentiality law, 72 years must lapse in the United States before a census may be unveiled.  As well as collecting the usual information, such as names, addresses, ages etc., census enumerators in 1940 asked things that had never been asked before – about personal income, migration patterns, employment, and whether households had servants or boarders.  While the images will be available on April 2, you can only search the documents manually.  In other words, all you can do is move from page to page with a click of your mouse – people’s names will not be indexed for some time to come.

Another interesting thing is that this census is being released only in digital format, and not in a microfilm version.  Institutions and individuals alike will have free access available.  This census will be the first to use cloud computing (hundreds of servers in the ‘cloud’) in order to handle the extreme workload of the servers in the first few days.  However, if thousands of genealogists try to access the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at 1940census.archives.gov  this morning, there may be some glitches to contend with – clouds or no clouds.  I think I will be waiting until they index the census by names.

According to Ancestry.com:

“Ancestry.com took delivery of the 1940 census from the National Archives at 12:01 a.m. on April 2, 2012. Currently we are in the process of loading all 3.8 million census images online. Once an image is online, you can browse it to see the information included on that page. When all images are uploaded, you’ll be able to browse by enumeration district to find your family’s neighborhood.”

Please remember, that if you don’t have access to Ancestry.com at home, the library provides free computer access for one hour a day, or you can book the genealogy room for an afternoon or evening.

Billy Moore: Boy Scout Pioneer

From The Carleton Place Canadian, 1987

By Mary Cook

It was 89 years ago that a young British immigrant to Carleton Place by the name of Billy Moore began what is now believed to be the second Scout troop in Canada.  The first was formed in Merrickville two years before.  But for Billy Moore, scouting was the best thing that could happen to the young boys of his adopted town of Carleton Place, and he wasn’t long in gathering together a group of boys and marching them over to the Anglican Church to prevail upon Canon Elliott for sponsorship.

 

Billy Moore had fought alongside Baden-Powell in the Boer War in Africa in 1899, and he was so impressed with the British Colonel and his values that when Baden-Powell started the world Scout movement, Billy wanted to be in on the gournd floor.  Billy’s friendships at the time of the Boer War include that of another young Britain, Winston Churchill.

 

Some of the very first member’s included Billy’s own son, Percy,  who was to later lose his life in the first world war.  Other charter scouts included Dawson Emerson, Cecil Bryce, Jimmy Prendergast and Skinny McGuire.

 

The first headquarters were in space loaned to Billy by the Bates and Innes Mills.  It was an old warehouse on Bridge Street, but it served the purpose well.

 

It was here that the movement went on to produce the four youngest King’s Scouts in Canada.  They were all under 13 years of age at the time.  These four young boys were Howard Foote, Jimmy Misner, Walter McIlquaham, and Gibson Craig.  Tests were much harder in those days than they are today.  King’s Scouts had to win five badges which was no easy feat.

 

Max Gladish has fond memories of his early scouting days under the guidance of Billy Moore.  “I remember it cost us five cents a week to belong.  My grandparents lived just around the corner from the Moore’s who at that time lived on Lake Avenue East.  My grandfather, George Turner paid for my first uniform in fact.  They were great friends of the Moores.”

 

Those early scouts remember the camping outings to McCreary’s Shore on the Mississippi as being a wonderful time of fun and learning experiences.  Max was the camp bugler, so he was the first out of bed in the morning.  Everyone slept in tents and Alice Moore, Billy’s widow, remembers taking a few Carleton Place boys into her tent in the middle of the night because they were homesick.  “One young man who will remain nameless because he is a grown man still living here used to cry for home every night.  Nothing would console him.  Eventually, we’d have to bring him in our tent and bed him down beside Bill and me.  This went on for the entire duration of the scout camp,” she laughingly remembers.

 

Billy Moore had a wonderful sense of humor, with just the right ring of discipline in his voice.  He could laugh at little mishaps and setbacks, but he was adamant about protocol in the movement.  Everything had to be done to the letter.  There was no such thing as ‘almost right’.  It was either right or it was wrong!

 

Eventually the scouts moved their headquarters to the Sample Rooms of the Mississippi Hotel.  This is where the countless travelling salesmen set up shop to show their wares to the valley merchants.  But room was made for the scout meetings, and they continued to meet here for many years, compliments of the McIlquham family, owners of the hotel.

 

Sometime before that period however, Tom Graham who was in the scout movement for a few years in the troops earlier days remembers meeting in a building next door to where Knowlton’s Grocery Store used to be….across from the present Maple Leaf Dairy.  He guesses that would be around 1914.  “Billy Moore was awfully good at what he did.  Sometimes though, he had relax the rules.  Some of us couldn’t afford the full uniforms, so we were allowed to go to the meetings with just a tie, or that little scull cap, or we never could have belonged.”

 

It appears that the Scouts moved around a bit with their meeting place.  Probably because most of the locations were obtained rent-free.  At one time some of the original members recall the meetings being held in the Orange Hall as well.

 

Max Gladish remembers how solemn the initiation services were.  Billy Moore demanded and got a high level of decorum.  “It was a bit awesome, but we really felt it was something special to belong to the scouts, and it all came together at initiations.  I can remember all the candles.  I don’t remember too much about the ceremony itself, but I do remember kneeling and the candles, and how Billy would move about initiating us, and stressing the importance of discipline, and being true to the Scouting movement.  He had a great sense of pride and he expected us too to be proud of being scouts.”

 

By 1937, scouting was well established in Carleton Place.  It had been organized for 27 years, and dozens of young boys had joined and gone on to high standing in the movement.  Billy Moore continued to be the leading figure, and he worked at broadening the horizons of scouting on the local level.

 

That was the year a young Max Gladish was one of the scouts who would be trying for his Royal Life Saving Society medal.  Billy Moore was determined that his boys would have a good run at it. “We were taken to the Chateau Laurier for the tests.  I’ll never forget the thrill of swimming in that big indoor pool.  If we were going to be trying for that medal Billy Moore wanted to be sure we had the best possible facilities.”  They passed with flying colours.

 

In the late ‘30s, there used to be a vacant lot on the corner of Albert and Beckwith Streets, across from the present Rebekah Lodge building.  Later Ed Beaton was to build the brick bungalow that is there now.  Billy Moore thought it would be nice if the scouts learned a bit about building.  So he got permission to build a log structure on the site, and he put his troops to work on its construction.  Bill oversaw the building, and the Scouts were understandably proud of the finished headquarters.  It stood on the site for many years.

 

Cliff Bennett, for many years a leader in the local Scout movement, has fond memories of his mentor.  “We all respected Billy Moore.  I recall a Regional Camporee, which was a competition camp for local patrols held at Hopetown.  Billy was the guest of honor, even though by that time he was in his ‘90s and that was in the ‘60s.  He was keenly interested in everything to do with scouting, although his active involvement had passed.  But he always kept up on the troops and I can remember going down to his house at the end of Allen Street next door to the curling club, where he lived out his last years.  Those visits were just like campfire days.  He would talk for hours about early scouting days, and his dreams for scouting in the future.  And he’d talk about the Boer War and his friendship with the scouting founder, Baden-Powell.  It was like being in another time frame.  I cherish those memories of those visits very much,” Cliff says.

 

Baden-Powell once gave Billy a flag.  He was very proud of it, and kept it for many years.  And then as he was less and less able to take an active part in the local scouting movement, he wanted someone who appreciated the history of Carleton Place’s troops to have the flag.  “He gave me the flag.  I was so moved.  But I knew the flag really belonged to the whole Canadian Scouting movement, and so I presented it to the Scout Museum in Canada,” Cliff says.

 

Many years ago, a trophy was made out of a bit of twisted wood.  It was nothing spectacular…just a piece of wood form the Ottawa Valley.  It became the Billy Moore Trophy.

 

Rare Collection of Early Scenes for Library Display, Carleton Place Canadian, 18 October, 1956, by Howard M. Brown

At the Carleton Place Public Library, a collection of scenes of local bygone times will be on display on Friday, October 26.  With several of the earliest maps of the Lanark County area, and a few public documents of the same period, it is expected to provide an attractive feature of the commemoration on October 26 of the one hundred and tenth year of the existence of the library.  A list describing some twenty-five photographs  and maps will be available.

Pictures of local scenes have been gathered covering a period from the first decade of the present century to as early as ninety years ago.  Among them are a view of the Carleton Place Rifle Company Brass Band at Brockville during the Fenian Raids of 1866, Carleton Place street scenes of the 1870’s , and groups of local foundry and railway shop employees photographed fifty to sixty years ago, provided by Mr. J. W. Patterson.  Copies of these and most of the pictures included in the exhibit, have been acquired by the Public Archives of Canada by reason of their interest in illustrating the local history of this district.

Persons willing to provide old photographs of local public interest for the same purpose are invited to communicate with Mrs. Evangeline Ruhl, Miss Bessie Brown, or Mrs. E. S. Fleming.

Views of the lumbering period of the past century represented one of the many gaps in the small collection which might be filled by pictures probably available in the town.  Similar notable subjects at present missing are early textile views and agricultural scenes.

Copies of four or five ancient maps, made available by the Public Archives for this exhibit, will provide possibly the best geographical record of Lanark County settlement ever placed together on public display.  A large scale map of 1833 is believed to be the first detailed map of the district showing lot lines, roads, villages and mills.  Another shows the names of many of the land owners of a hundred years ago in Carleton Place and six surrounding townships of the county.

Prominent among the old documents to be shown will be a three page list of the Library’s books in the first year of its existence.  Some 140 volumes are recorded.  By classes, these first books of the Library may be grouped as, geography and exploration 29, fiction and miscellaneous 23, philosophy and ethics 22, history 20, biography 18, religion 16, science, engineering and agriculture 15.  A copy of this venerable list has been presented by the manuscript division of the Toronto Public Library for use in marking the Carleton Place Library’s 110^th anniversary.  Another document of considerable interest, obtained in Photostat from the Librarian of the Public Archives at Ottawa, is a Carleton Place citizen’s petition of 1871, with over sixty signatures, dealing with selection of the location for the first Carleton Place Town Hall.  The building erected was the present Victoria School, formerly called the Town Hall School.  The petitioners were mostly south side residents advocating location of the hall on the south side of the river, a course followed twenty-six years later with completion of construction of the present Town Hall, in which the Public Library now has been located for almost sixty years.

For the rare opportunity of examining these graphic examples of our district’s storied background, no admission fee will be charged.

Public Library Open House on Anniversary, The Carleton Place Canadian, Oct. 11, 1956, by Howard M. Brown

At the Public Library Open House on Friday evening, October 26, there will be a display of photographs, maps and other interesting documents and exhibits relating to former days in Carleton Place.

A number of these historical reminders of persons and events of earlier times have been lent to the library board for the celebration of the 110^th anniversary of the founding of the library, by Howard Brown of Ottawa, formerly of Carleton Place.

For some years, Mr. Brown has been delving into the early history of the town and district and is a recognized authority on the subject.  It is expected Mr. Brown will be present to display the treasures which he has accumulated in his years of research into records and archives of the local past.

All citizens are invited to this Open House celebration of an important event in the town’s history.

Carleton Place Public Library in 1896-97

Public Library Plans To Celebrate 110^th Anniversary

Of Its Founding

From the Carleton Place Canadian, 16 February, 1956

By Howard M. Brown

 

The following material in connection with the Public Library has been found in copies of the Carleton Place Canadian on file in the Dominion Archives at Ottawa by Mr. Howard M. Brown.  In view of the library board’s intention to observe the 110^th anniversary of the founding of a library in Carleton Place, these extracts from The Canadian are of particular interest.

Carleton Place Public Library

Transfer of Management from C. P. Mechanics’ Institute  to C. P. Public Library Board

 

Extracts from Carleton Place “Central Canadian”

By Howard M. Brown

 

1896, Thurs., October 22:

“Dr. May, Inspector of Public Libraries, appeared before the Board of Management of that body last Friday and laid before it a proposition for turning the limited Library into one that should be free for all.  He showed that the annual cost to the town would be only $250 more than the present municipal grant, which is $100, and in addition the library would receive an annual endowment from the Provincial Government of $200 for the purchase of new books.  Sixty libraries in Ontario have been made free during the present year, including the City of Ottawa, and the towns of Renfrew and Almonte have signified their willingness to make their respective libraries free on the first of January next.”

1896, November 12:

“Town Council Proceedings – in the Opera Hall last evening.  Mr. C. McIntosh and J. C. McNie appeared before the Council as a deputation from the Public Library and asked the Council to take it over with a view to making it a Free Library.  Moved by Mr. McNeely, seconded by Mr. Cram, that the Memorial presented by the Directors of the Public Library be adopted, and that a bylaw be introduced at our next regular meeting confirming the transfer and establishing the Library as a Free Library.  Carried.”

1897, January 14:

“Carleton Place Council.  The New Representatives Have Their First Meeting…….All were present except Thomas Begley, Reeve, and W. R. Williamson.  The following took the oath of office:  A. H. Edwards, Mayor; Abner Nichols, Deputy Reeve; James Warren, William Willoughby, Daniel Watt, William Shanks, J. F. Cram, S. J. Berryman, H. McCormick and William Baird, Councillors. 

Mayor Edwards outlined the important matters to be dealt with during the year, viz. The completion of the Town Hall, the purchase of new fire apparatus, the overseeing of the building of the new C.P.R. Shops, the revising of the assessment rolls, etc. 

The Council resumed on Tuesday evening, all present. 

Moved by W. Baird, seconded by H. McCormick, that the bylaw appointing the new Library Board, be now read the second time, and that the first blank be filled with the name of Charles Cato, the second with that of George Fulton, and the third with that of J. C. McNie.  Carried.

The bylaw provides that the present Library shall pass, in its complete form, into the hands of a Board of Management composed of three appointees of the Council and three of the Board of Education, who shall have full charge of the Library and manage it as was formerly done by the Council of the Institute, under the authority of the Town.  It will be free from the first of February.  The bylaw as read the third time and passed into law.”

1897, August 12:

“The adoption of the open shelf system by the Public Library is a step deserving commendation.  Most visitors to a library are unable to pick out the right book from a catalogue.  A few minutes before a case enables them to make a selection to their taste, and puts them on friendly relations with the contents of a library.”

1897, September 16:

The officials of the Public Library worked last week moving from the old to the new rooms, worked with the thermometer at 92 in the shade.  The thousands of books were safely transported and placed in ordered array on the new shelves.”

CARLETON PLACE PUBLIC LIBRARY – 1846

From the Carleton Place Canadian, 01 September, 1955

By

Howard M. Brown

 

One of the earlier public libraries established in eastern Ontario inland from the St. Lawrence River, the Carleton Place Public Library, will reach its 110^th birthday in March, 1956.

 When organized settlement of the area between the Rideau and Ottawa rivers was begun in 1816, the first townships occupied by the emigrants were in what is now Lanark County north to the townships of Drummond and Beckwith.  The settlers knew the value of books and education and sought both.  The best known pioneer public library in the county probably is the Dalhousie Township library, founded near Watson’s Corners in 1828.  The Governor General of the Canada’s, the Earl of Dalhousie, then assisted this early library of the Scottish settlement by becoming its patron and the donor of over a hundred substantial volumes.

 The Carleton Place Library was established in 1846, a year before the Bytown Mechanics Institute was founded as the first library of the present city of Ottawa.  A report of the beginnings of the Carleton Place library has been found in the Canadian Public Archives in Ottawa, published in volume 1, number 10, of the Carleton Place Herald of November 30, 1850, then called the Lanark Herald.  It follows in part:

“I would lay before the public a statement of the affairs and general rules of the Circulating Library of this place.  The Library was established on the 14^th March, 1846, under the name of The Carleton Place Library Association and Mechanics’ Institute, professedly to provide a cheap and well assorted class of books, accessible to all classes of the community.  The terms were 2 s. 6 d. entrance money and 5 s. annual subscription, the payment of 25 years subscription constituting a person a free member.  The library was first opened with 16 volumes and as many members, the books increasing in the first year to 144 and does now consist of 363 volumes; 38 of them have been purchased in the last week.  They may be classed as follows:  Religion 89, Historical 67, General Information 49, Scientific 18, Agricultural 4, Voyages and Travel 19, Biographical 29, Narrative 11, Fictitious 41, and Miscellaneous 36.”

“The affairs of the Institution are conducted by a body of directors chosen annually by the members from among themselves.  As none of the officers receive any pecuniary compensation, the whole of the receipts go for the purchase and repair of books.”

“There is also provision for young persons who may wish to improve their minds by reading upon payment in advance of 5 d. per month, having use of the Library as long as they continue to pay that sum; but they are not considered members, consequently they have no right to vote at any of the meetings.”

“A few of the young men about the neighbourhood who are not of the orchard-robbing, bar-room-loafing hang-about-the corner class, have availed themselves of the opportunity of storing their minds with useful information, instead of their pockets with pilfered fruit, and are habituating themselves to habits of study that will materially forward their interests in the future.”

This libelous concluding blast accompanied the accession to the post of librarian by Johnston Neilson, stern village schoolmaster.  David Lawson, local pioneer librarian, had resigned his library duties in 1851 because of increased demands on his time in operating the community’s post office.

Officers of the local Library Association and Mechanics’ Institute for 1851 were James Duncan (blacksmith) president, William Peden (storekeeper) vice-president, David Lawson, secretary and Robert Bell, M.P.P., treasurer.  The additional 1851 directors were James C. Poole (newspaper editor), George Dunnett (store-keeper), and Duncan McGregor (blacksmith), all of Carleton Place, and Thomas Patterson and John McCarton (farmers), both of Ramsay township.

Public schools and school libraries also began to improve in the 1850’s with the introduction of municipal institutions with locally elected officers.  A local newspaper editorial in 1851 titled “The Fool’s Penny” reported the purchase of  “178 neatly bound octavo volumes, containing from 300 to 400 pages each, for school libraries of the Township of Beckwith out of the Tavern Licence money of last year, which was set aside for that purpose by the Township Council.”

These books were allotted among the 11 school sections of the township according to their populations, which totaled 2,354 persons.  The largest school section, No. 11, with 525 inhabitants, included the village of Carleton Place, where its school was located.

A contemporary of the Dalhousie library of Watson’s Corners was the Ramsay and Lanark Circulating Library, also apparently founded about 1828.  It served the area immediately north and north-west of Carleton Place.

Minutes of its 1847 annual meeting, held at the residence of Edward Leary (Lot 19, Con. 1 Ramsay) with Alex Stevenson as chairman, included a motion by John Robertson Jr. and J. Rath “that the library be removed from the house of Mr. Edward Leary and taken to the Episcopalian Church situated on Lot 16, 1^st concession of Ramsay.”

A  January 1847 letter to the Bathurst Courier, Perth, reporting this meeting, stated in part : “Monday the 25^th instant being the natal day of Scotia’s bard, the annual general meeting of the Ramsay library was held.  Another has been instituted in the township with success, yet the numbers of this have increased in the last year and it is at present in a thriving condition, numbering upwards of 600 volumes.”

“The business of the day being over, a number of the members and admirers of Burns retired to Mr. Edward Houston’s Inn to celebrate the birthday of the poet and the 18^th anniversary of the Society.  Mr. James Bryson was called to the chair.”

Ramsay township, into which the borders of the village of Carleton Place expanded after its early years, had as its second library that of the Ramsay Library Association and Mechanics’ Institute at Almonte, corresponding to the similar organization in Carleton Place.  An account of its 1857 annual meeting, held at the schoolhouse at Almonte, shows its library then contained 750 volumes. Its president, James Hart, and secretary, David Campbell, reported votes of thanks to James D. Gemmill of Almonte, then visiting in Europe, for a donation of forty volumes and to Robert Bell of Carleton Place, North Lanark M.P.P. , for “procuring to this institution the annual Government appropriation of Fifty Pounds.”

A decline in the Carleton Place library’s operations in the 1860’s is seen in the critical note of an 1864 local editorial calling “the attention of the inhabitants generally, but more particularly the young men, in this vicinity, to a notice in today’s Herald calling on them to reorganize the Library Association and Mechanics’ Institute.  We understand there are six or eight hundred books in the Library which have been almost unlooked at for several years.  Our young friends have abundance of time to read, and the knowledge so acquired will be far superior to that obtained at the corners of the streets.”

Public appreciation of the works of great authors was further encouraged by a long-lived series of open meetings during the winters, popularly known as Penny Readings.  These were sponsored locally under the name of the Carleton Place Mutual Improvement Association, formed at a meeting at innkeeper Napoleon Lavallee’s Carleton House (later the Leland Hotel) in December 1868 to promote a weekly course of public readings, with the admission set at one penny.  Among those attending the organization meeting were James Poole, Robert Bell, Robert Crampton, William Peden, James Gillies, and Rev. James Preston.  A principal supporter of this latter enterprise was Robert Bell, whose own library in Carleton Place was described in the Toronto Mail in 1887 as “the largest and best chosen private library in the Ottawa Valley.

In 1887 the Carleton Place Public Library, still associated with the Mechanics’ Institute of the village (population 3,600) was again in a thriving state, following a reorganization five years earlier.  Its position was described in a valuable and generally accurate history of Carleton Place in the Christmas number of the C.P. Herald, containing the following:

“For the Mechanics’ Institutes, as they exist throughout the Province, we are largely indebted to the Provincial Government, which makes grants of money for their maintenance.  The subsidies are regulated by the amount of subscription raised from private or municipal sources, by the extent of the libraries and by the various facilities that are afforded.  Provision is made for giving instruction in the mechanical sciences, such as draughting and mathematics, through practical teachers as well as through books of latest publication.”

“Our Institute has a membership of a little less than 200.  Mr. Lacy R. Johnson, who at the time of its re-establishment in 1883 was mechanical superintendent with the C.P.R. here, Robert Bell Esq., W. H. Wylie Esq., Mr. A. C. McLean and other citizens were the leading spirits in its establishment.  The library contains some 600 volumes.  The reading room contains about thirty of the leading newspapers and popular magazines as well as current scientific periodicals.  The Institute has given instruction to a large number of our mechanics and others, principally young men employed in the C.P.R. shops, in mechanical draughting, bookkeeping and general mathematics.  Some of the drawings were sent to the great Indian and Colonial Exhibition held in England last year.  The executive judges forwarded bronze medals to the draughtsmen, and to the Institute a diploma of merit and bronze medal.  The officers at present are: President, Wm. Pattie; Vice-president, Rev. A. Jarvis, Secretary, A. C. McLean, Treasurer, J. A. Goth.”

Peter McRostie, librarian of the Carleton Place Library from April 1887 to December 1909, symbolizes the public library to the elder residents of this town.  Born in Carleton Place in 1832 and raised in the old McRostie home on the riverside recently bought and renovated by Mr. and Mrs. Howard Dack, he became a farmer in Bruce County and later in Ramsay township, where he was assessor, school trustee and treasurer for some years.  After his return to Carleton Place he became librarian of the town library.  When the present Town Hall was opened in 1897, the library was changed to a municipal public library.  Mr. McRostie continued as librarian until within a year of his death at the age of 78.  He was succeeded in that office by his daughter, Miss Emma McRostie.

With the 110^th anniversary of the founding of our library approaching, some fitting recognition of its origins and its principal representatives of the past, such as a display of historical pictures and other exhibits of the stirring days of early district history, might perhaps be considered by the citizens of this area and the Library Board of the town.

 

Dave Findlay honoured by Carleton Place and Beckwith Historical Society

It’s wonderful to see Dave Findlay’s volunteer work being honoured with an ward by the Carleton Place and Beckwith Historical Society  Now’s the time for all you amateur historians in Carleton Place and Beckwith to submit an essay pertaining to an individual, family or group or organization, building or location or event within this particular community!  Entries are due by February 1, 2012. 

Ducks Nearly Unlimited, Indian Relics Plentiful, by Howard Horton Brown, Carleton Place Canadian, 17 August, 1961

This is the second of three articles recalling hunting and fishing activities of many years ago in the Carleton Place area.

A century ago in the Eastern Ontario paradise for hunters and fishermen which extended throughout the then united counties of Lanark and Renfrew, locally organized action already was under way to protect wild animals from wasteful destruction.  Its first supporters, as mentioned in the preceding instalment of these stories, were a few foresighted hunters and other leading citizens of Carleton Place, Pakenham and Almonte. 

Later, with a spreading realization of the economic and esthetic benefits to be gained by men from his protection of wild birds and animals, there came a gradual revulsion against wanton slaughter in the forests, fields and lakes.  Among the victims, the long-extinct passenger pigeon still was shot here in numbers in the early 1880’s, as shown by reports of partridge and pigeon hunting in the townships bordering the Mississippi Lake.

First Finds of Indian Relics

Of the native Indians who a hundred and fifty years ago had been almost the sole inhabitants of the Lanark and Renfrew area, only a few stragglers still remained seventy-five years ago in Lanark County.  One of district’s first residents to record his interest in the excavated relics of the reign of the Indian hunter was Andrew Bell, a son of the Rev. William Bell of Perth.  In the early settlement days here he wrote in a letter:

“All the country hereabouts has evidently been once inhabited by the Indians, and for a vast number of years too.  The remains of fires, with the bones and horns of deers round them, have often been found several inches under the black mound. .. A large pot made of burnt clay and highly ornamented was lately found near the banks of the Mississippi, under a large maple tree, probably two or three hundred years old.  Stone axes have been found in different parts of the settlement.  Skeletons of Indians have been several times found, where they had died suddenly or had been killed by accident in the woods.  One was found in a reclining posture with its back against a hillock, and a rough-made stone tobacco pipe lying beside it.”

Another Pioneer Conservation Society

The wild life conservation movement in this district had expanded by the 1880’s to the arousing of organized local support for a wiser harvesting of most of the usual products of rod, gun, spear, trap and net, and for protection of other obviously harmless or beneficial wild creatures.  Carleton Place Herald editor James Poole in an editorial of nearly a hundred years ago already had claimed any man who would shoot a robin or other songbird would be capable of robbing his grandmother or of committing any other crime or rascality.

An organization in Carleton Place with these newer ideas for the conservation of practically all main forms of wild life was formed in 1884.  Under the title of the Carleton Place Game, Fish and Insectivorous Birds Protective Society it continued to operate for some years.  Original officers of the group were William Pattie, president ; Jim Bothwell, vice president ; Walter Kibbee, secretary-treasurer, and committee members John Cavers, Tom Glover, John Moore, Jim Morphy and Jim Presley ; elected at a May meeting in the old fire hall on Bridge Street, when a constitution drawn up by Robert Bell was adopted.  Other members pledged to support the rules of this pioneering wild life protective society were William Beck, Peter Cram, Jim Dunlop, John Flett, David Gillies, Charlie Glover, Tom Hilliard, Archie Knox and Tom Leaver ; Hugh McCormick, William McDiarmid, Hiram McFadden, Jim McFadden, Jim McGregor, George McPherson, William Neelin, Robert Patterson and William Patterson ; Dr. Robert F. Preston, Alex Sibbitt, William Taylor, William Whalen, Will R. Williamson, Alex Wilson and Joe Wilson.  Out of town sportsmen among the first members were Duncan Campbell, John Gemmill, D. G. MacDonnell and Tom Mitcheson, all of Almonte ; Jim Rogers of Montreal and R. W. Stevens of Ottawa.

At this time fishing on Sundays was illegal here as well as hunting on Sundays.  Only about five of these men were said to be still living in 1928 when a story recalling the formation of the Carleton Place wild life protective society of 1884 was published.

A social event sponsored by the Society in its first year was a steamboat excursion to the present Lake Park, then noted as “the old Regatta Grounds.”  The “Morning Star” and her two barges, with a number of skiffs in tow, carried three hundred people to the picnic ; which featured a rifle shooting competition, a baseball game, tug of war and track events, croquet, boating, and dancing to the exhilarating airs of the Willis bagpipes.

Game Law Enforcement

Two unfortunate Indians were among those who felt the first punitive effects of the new society’s protective activity.  This local story was published in October of 1884:

“Last Wednesday two Indians from St. Regis were about to pack up and leave their camp between Appleton and Almonte, on the Mississippi River, when a representative of the Carleton Place Game, Fish and Insectivorous Birds Protective Society appeared on the spot and confiscated a number of muskrat skins.

The fellows had been warned by the Society to desist trapping the animals until November.  The two offenders were brought to Carleton Place.  They had in their possession 126 muskrat skins, one mink skin and one raccoon skin.  The taking of the latter is not an offence.  The poor fellows were in most destitute circumstances.

The magistrate inflicted a fine of $10 and costs and the skins were confiscated.  They doubtless intended to do the river above Carleton Place at once, as has been their annual custom.  The Protective Society is extending its influence very rapidly in all directions from Carleton Place, having a good representative membership in many points at a distance.”

Duck Shooting Toll

Ducks in the 1890’s remained abundant and were shot by the hundreds by the most experienced hunters.  An 1890 published report of two Carleton Place duck hunters’ successes gave totals early in the season of 200 birds for one and 272 for the other, with one shooting 154 ducks in three days in a northerly expedition.  Heavy tolls by the relatively small numbers of hunters seemed to make little impression on the duck population.