Woodstock Memories
Three volumes of Remberin' Woodstock contain columns
from
The Bugle, a weekly newspaper
The children of today may consider Saturday morning a time to lie in bed and watch cartoons on television but when I was a kid there was no such things as a talking box with pictures and Saturday morning was a time to get up early and help with the farm chores.
Friday evening, Cliff and I had helped Dad shake out a bunch of feed bags to use to bag the potatoes. With his new jackknife Ken cut lengths of bailer twine for ties. Several old milking pails had been rounded up and of course the potato hacks had been taken from the shed. Even the chute had been placed in the cellar window in readiness for the potato harvesting day.
I awoke to sun streaming through the bedroom window and the sounds of Mum preparing breakfast. After a feed of pancakes and sausages, washed down with a glass of milk, we hurried off to find Dad. When we reached the garden, he was pulling the tops and throwing them in a pile. Cliff and I grabbed the potato hacks and started the task of digging the potatoes. As usual the instructions were to be careful and not make holes in them with the sharp tines of the hack.
Now if we had lived in the Woodstock area of New Brunswick, our farm would have probably had a mechanical potato harvester that was hauled by horses.
Speaking of Woodstock, in 1986 a person by the name of Uncle George began writing a column in Woodstock’s weekly newspaper ‘The Bugle’. ‘Uncle George’s Attic’ was an instant success and at this time at least three books have been compiled from these columns.
The author states in the introduction to ‘Rememberin Woodstock”: “Your Old Uncle George has tried to weave with words a loose history of that time in Woodstock many of us remember. . . If you allow your ear to hear the words on the written page, you will return to that time when things moved a little slower and sounds were a little softer . . . When you were a kid . . . Maybe not a kid in Woodstock, but a kid somewhere.”
He tells of Saturday Night Uptown, Meetin’ the Night Train, Rememberin’ the Red Racer and the Bickle -Woodstock’s first new motorized fire truck, Basketball and the Hubba Hubba Boys Conquer Canada, the Human Fly and Daredevil Glew, a Rite of Spring - Fiddleheads, Ice Harvest, a Picnic for St. Gertrude and a Tip of the Tam o’shanter - curling.
You will walk with him along Queen Street and see Walter Cogger’s little Barbershop, Hendersons’s Furniture Store with Percy Colwell and Chris Appleby in the window, Kirk’s Market with the white sawdust on the floor, Hansen’s Book Store, Vanwart’s Furniture Store with a casket on display as the owner was also a funeral director, Bentley Harley’s Garage, Mary McDade’s Capitol Hotel, Jack Daye’s Barber Shop, Strong and Babkirk Coal Company and Welch’s Poolroom.
In his second volume, ‘More Memories of Woodstock’, he tells of Mary Bustard and her horse Bin, Buckwheat Times, Mail’s Here - Velma Harley was a rural mailman - maillady from 1918 to 1946, the Ol’ Swimmin Hole, There’ll always be an England, Boxer Reuben Johnston and much more.
Volume three, ‘Rememberin People, Place and Happenin’s in Woodstock’ brings alive memories of Albert Wort: Woodstock’s forgotten genius, the Right Side of the Road - CPR Station to Crick Bridge, There’s One Born Every Minute, When the Rt. Hon. William Lyon MacKenzie King came to Woodstock, The Invincibles - Carleton York Regiment 1937 - 1981, Rememberin Stewarts’s, Cook Hall - The Gentle Saint, Timmy Nelson and Grandma Fox.
Uncle George’s three volumes are filled with dozens of pictures of people and buildings in the days of yore in Woodstock.
In an interview with Deanna Bradley, Uncle George acknowledged that, “Everybody’s got an Uncle George that has stories to tell.” He urges people to “put down those memories, tell their stories”noting that once the older folk are gone those tales of the past are lost forever. “Today’s young people have very few cornerstones to build a future on because older people don’t take time to tell them about the past.” “The yesteryear has shaped the people we are today,” Uncle George maintains.
George says, “Each of us lives in our own time capsule.” Luckily he has opened his time capsule to let us catch a glimpse of the life and the people in Woodstock.
Copies of these books may be ordered from, Henley Publishing Limited, 110 Carleton St., Woodstock, New Brunswick, Canada, E7M 1E4. Telephone 1 - 506 - 328-8863.
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Query 909
Virgie - Hayward - Woodworth - Bishop - Steward - Btigham - Copp - Gunning
- Pye: I am searching for information of the Virgie family of Albert
County, New Brunswick. The father’s name is unknown. The mother Jane married
a second time to William Hayward. The children were Rosannah who was born
circa 1828 and married David O. Woodworth. William H. married Charlotte Bishop
and Mary E. Steward. Sarah married Thomas H. Brigham. John married. Martha
Jane Copp. Benjamin. Mary Jane married William Lovell Gunning. Lucinda married
Edward Pye. Malisa. Can anyone connect this family to the Verge family of
Nova Scotia? Any and all information on this family would be appreciated.
-Michele Daniels, 28 School St., Brewer, Maine, 04412, USA. E-mail to
Mdaniels67@aol.com.
Query 910
Petersen - Peterson - Peacock: I am searching for information
on my great grandfather George Henry Petersen who married Ethel May
Peacock in Saint John on October 27, 1917. A son Frederick Joseph Peterson
was born in 1918. I can not find a birth or death record for George Henry
Petersen and if he emigrated to New Brunswick. Can anyone help? Any
bit of information will be helpful.
- Julie Barker, 5229 Concession 2, New Lowell, Ontario, Canada, L0M
1N0. E-mail to ramdodger@sympatico.ca.
Query 911
Lost at Sea: Does your family have members lost at sea? I am interested
in names of fishermen and mariners lost or killed at sea and non-copyright
stories. These would be commemorated and recorded on my Canadian website
"Fishing? It was a Way of Life and Lost at Sea", http://www.lostatsea.ca.
-Sheevaun Nelson, RR#1, Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, B0J 2C0, Canada. E-mail
bluerocks@lostatsea.ca.
