Letter TO W.D.M.from E. McL. 1922

LETTER TO W.D.M. FROM EMILY McLAREN March 1922

 

Transcript of a letter dated 11 March 1922 from Emily F McLaren ( sister of Cordelia and husband of Duncan McLaren) of Cardigan P.E.I. to WD Meiklejohn

11 March 1922

Dear Will

Your Aunt Lin sent me your book for which I want to thank you very kindly for, also she sent me your long letter in which you say you are not a good speller. Well I could spin yarns as long as any one if I could spell well but before I get done of this letter you will be sure to see I do not yet. Maybe you will be able to make out what I am trying to say to you. I am your mother’s youngest sister but I am growing old. I will be, if I live, 70 years on the 12th day of April next. The only Alley of the old bunch in Cardigan – there are two young men Alley.

My brother Charlie’s son, a returned soldier and as good an Alley as I ever knew and he has two of your names William Alfred. I guess you both were called for my father and brother. Will’s parents are both dead. The government gave him a good job as he partly lost the use of one hand in the war. His only brother and sister are in the . The other Alley is a businessman in Ch(arlotte) Town. He is Alfred’s only son. His name is another Alfred Alley.

I have four of a family – all married. Two boys – Robert and Fred – my oldest girl is Cordelia – called for your mother – and Winnie a fancier name. My good man is called ‘the Old Ship Builder’. He has been a master builder for a number of vessels – some large some small but it seems to be a finished job on PEI anyway but as he is near 79years of age it will be not much difference to him he says. He could do the work well yet he has been a strong healthy Scotchman.

I must write on both sides of this or I could not get all I want to say in one letter for it must not weigh to much so you must excuse.

We have six grandchildren – our eldest grandson is Donald Stewart McLaren – so that is Scotch enough. My sister Maggie Brehaut‘s family are all in or about Portland Oregon. She was the next in age to me – she is dead some years. Your father’s friends on PEI are near all numbered with the past. John Mustard was the last of the men relatives. He died about a year ago. He left a family of three very small well to do bunch. John Mustard and your father were first cousins. The Gordon cousins are gone too but there are their families – all good looking well to do people. If you come on that trip you speak of you will not feel any ways ashamed of the descendants of the Meiklejohns on PEI . But you must not take to long thinking over the trip or I will not be in the flock to make a good cup of tea for you – they say that is one thing I can do well. But I see I have made one mistake anyway on this page – it should read ‘descendants of the Mustards not Meiklejohn’.

Melinda, my only sister living, writes a good letter for a woman of her age. I am always glad to see her writing on a envelope. I feel I have one of my own crowd left any way. I was never away from PEI and only nine months of my life spent in any place but Cardigan – this was in shipbuilding times – a very small little village but it is now dull dull. I lived one mile from the old Alley home – the place I was born in. There is a nice Presbyterian church and Roman C chapel and lots of nice homes to look out at. One sick woman came back home and built a house that cost fifty thousand dollars at least and we can look and see it any time we go to our dining room window. Yet it does not go far towards feeding us when we want our dinner. I was glad to see by your letter that you learn to share in this world’s good fortune, to have health, to work out a good living for yourself and family.

I would like to hear the young fry play. Glad they are fond of music. There is that much like their great grandfather Alley anyway. He was a nice singer. I remember so very little of your mother. I do not know if she sang. I just remember going to Georgetown where she lived after her marriage to see them and Bertha and Vida. She has my second name but I was never called it. My husband read your book and seemed to enjoy it very much. He is very fond of reading.

I was only three weeks old when my mother died so I never knew a mother’s care but yet never missed it for I had good luck to fall into Aunt Charlotte Alley’s care and she was a very kind aunt to me. She was what is called an old maid – father’s sister that lived with him for many years. She came to my home with me and died here.

Now I am coming to the place to tell you that it was on the Alley side of the house we got the Douglas blood not on my mother Margaret Lowden Aitken side at all. They are Scotch but not any of the Douglas as far as we heard of and the old stock of Aitkens are near all gone to the land of rest. We have still in some grand cousins – Bagsters – my Aunt Susan Aitken’s girls but (old maid now). Father was William Alley – their was one brother Charles and three sisters – one I never saw – she never came to PEI at all, Aunt Charlotte (that mothered me) and Aunt Emily – the one that I was called for. Their father, Thomas Alley’s wife was Catherine Ann Douglas (Gerty Darby’s mother had their name in full) and my brother George Alley was called for her father George Douglas. His wife’s name was Ann O’Haloran and from her I guess I take my liking to the poor Irish. But as to the Douglas Coat of Arms I have not got it but I have heard Aunt Charlotte say it was a hand holding a heart with three drops of blood falling from it, that that was their Douglas Coat of Arms. I have a book with a picture of a great number of C of Arms in it yet can not find the one, as far as my memory serves me, that she said was theirs.

My Grandfather Alley was a north of man. He was on PEI and left his boys here and died on his passage home to where his wife and my aunts were. But if by any means I ever get the Douglas Coat of Arms I will remember you. The book has our plaid. I think all right for a cover.

The place your grandfather Meiklejohn built a ship in is yet called by a few old folks “’Muckle’s Yard’’. Him and my father were good old friends I have heard. I remember wrote a song about building a ship to sail to was the last of each verse.

My eldest brother, Robert, is a blacksmith. He is called a grand horse shoer. But he is not a very strong fellow. Has a good wife and Maie, a lovely girl, and Donald and they will soon be able to earn for themselves. Maie now works in a store. My Winnie was bookkeeper in the same store for 10 years but she married last fall and went to live at Montague, six miles from Cardigan – a smart up to date village.

Charlotte Town is twenty eight miles from here by road but the sail road is 40 miles I think but we have two trains a day to and from there and in summer the motors are as thick as flies. You could sail into this river to about twenty five yards from our house. Cardigan River is said to be prettiest on PEI .

It seems to bad you are all so far away . Dear me how families do scatter. There are only two of my brothers or sisters in the one churchyard. George and Charley are in the graveyard at the church we go to only a short walk away.

There was a man to see me last summer. Asked me about the Meiklejohns. Said he went to school with John, Sandy and William. I could point you out the place their old home stood.

Well now what next will I write. I wish I knew something you would like to know but you see I don’t so I will just have to ramble on to fill up with some old stuff if I ever saw you at self I would have a better idea.

What are you – a Grit or a Torey in politics – we are Grits dyed in the wool and the election in December last pleased us fine but is only the fun of the thing for we have to work for every cent we get whoever is in power. Times in PEI are very poor – wartime prices was a very hard pinch on many and the big prices of produce I think spoiled a lot of our farmers. Wages are low now too and some would rather go idle than start in on the low wages again. I hope things may take a turn soon for the better but for all no one ever starved on one dear little isle ( The Garden of the Gulf).

We have good farms, mills, butter and cheese factories – plenty of them. Lobster packers do a big business from April till last of June. In the fall, from November on there are factories here and there for canning chicken (all the old hens) and beef that they can make up to put on the market that gives quite a few employment. But nothing comes up to the old shipyards for the men.

We have exhibitions in each county in the fall. There are three counties in PEI – Kings (County), Queens and Prince and they make well getting prizes for stock of all kinds and every kind of stuff they can grow on farm or garden and for cloth and anything women can make out of yarn or mats and knitting but the young girls are not much at knitting for they have machines now that turn out grand work. Dellie gets work done on them for her kidies and it wears so good. Better than hand made.

We do not get fruit as good here as you do – our climate is to cold. And we have just had a good cold stormy winter from December till March any way and if it will be fit for the farmers to start early in April they may bless their stars. Last year the crops were poor – no rain in time and that means no oats and that is a bad job and the potatoes were poor to for the bugs were bad with the dry hot summer but we have had so much snow this winter they are in great hopes of good crops this coming summer.

Well dear Boy if this letter ever reaches you and that you enjoy it in the least write to me and ask all the questions you like and I will answer as well as I can. If you can read my scribbling and so on. My girls are both good writers and Fred, my youngest son – but Rob never to be much of a pen man. Fred was in the West out to the coast as far as Oregon to see the Brehauts. Worked there for twelve years, met an Island girl out there, got married and came home, bought a farm near her old home and live there. He is quite a farmer – has no family at all and I guess never will but if they never make him laugh they won’t make them cry. But I think a home without a few kiddies is a kind of a dry get up.

Well now make up your mind and come to see PEI if you can but don’t take to long thinking about the trip. And if you ever answer this rambling scroll tell me how many of your family of brothers and sisters you still have. I knew there was five of each at first. Now good night. Give my kindest regards to your wife and family and best wishes for you all in this weary old world but I must say I always look at the bright side of the cloud for each and all of them have their silver lining. Well if we never meet in this world we must hope to meet in the sweet by and by.

Yours aff.

Aunt Emily F McLaren