Archives Visit February 28

Hi Group Awesome:

I'm putting up the notes from my visit to the archives today - some PSAC origin stuff and then a lot of materials from the Irvine family fonds. They were a real pioneer family - possibly their first child was the first white person born on VI. Take a look!


Archives feb 28

- A/C/25/P96 – useless – letter from HBC to Douglas re: shares in the Company
- Could not locate A/C/25 P961 or A/B/40 AN3.9

- A/C/25/H86 – sale of Maple Point (Craigflower area) from HBC to “Dunbar James Earl of Selkirk Edward Ellice Andrew Colvile Sir George Simpson and Henry Hulse Berens” may 17 1854 – 213 pounds sterling – about 213 acres!
- Granted land “upon trust nevertheless for the Puget Sound Agricultural Company”
- Victoria District Lot 30 Section 21
- Map included but copying not allowed


EARLY VICTORIA
Reminiscences of Jack “Long Gun” Irvine
Completed – September, 1942
Transcribed by: I.R. Castillo
(preserves grammatical and spelling errors of original manuscript)

“My parents came from the Orkneys…They sailed from the London Docks on the ship Tory Nov 9, 1850 & arrived in Victoria May 10th 1851…They came out as servants of the HBC to the best of my memory the salary was twenty lbs a year & board & as money was pretty scarce in those days I suppose it looked quite a handsome sum. There was an agreement signed that they had to stay a certain number of years, once they arrived there was nothing that they could do, but stay right on the job as there was no place to go, only the HBC fort, nothing but Indians & wilderness & the Indians were none too friendly in those days…after, when there agreement was finished, they were allowed to buy a piece of land & try farming my parents went up to the head of Portage Inlet & that is where I was born. Later they took up one hundred acres in the Cedar Hill district about three miles from the fort & that is where they passed away for myself I have lived here for seventy nine years & my health up to now is one hundred per ct good.

“The farm my parents took up was called Rose Bank farm, & had to be bought, it was about one hundred acres in the first place, but they graudally acquired more acreage, until they had over three hundred acres & all was, what you would call wild land. When they moved out to Rose Bank, there was one baby boy & he was born in the HBC Fort, in fact the first white boy born on Vancouver Island. Billy Irvine now passed on. Then a baby girl Mary Ann was born next Jessie after that your humble servant Jack, then Christina & last Margeret, still living on part of the old farm. In those days there were no schools. & when they boys got about seven or eight years old, a very kind land, Mrs Henery King undertook to teach a few boys for a couple of hours a day”

“When my parents first came to the Cedar Hill district, there was only about three familys & they were about two or three miles apart Henery King, James Tod, & Peter Merriman, but as time went on there were quite a few more families bought small farms. Sam Pollock, Sam Norn M. Finnerty, R. Scott, Jackson, Hoolihan, & others I don’t remember. There was a church built, St Lukes (English) & Bishop Hills had it devided by a curtain in the middle, & allowed it to be used as a school, that was my first experience of school days…the old church school had quite a crowd if there was a dozen kids attending”

“This was about the year 1869, 1870, & by that time I had to be a man & do quite a few jobs on the farm such as milking cows, feeding sheep, cleaning up cow sheds &c I was then about nine years old.”

“in those days there was always a fleet of men of war in Esquimalt harbor & the sailors sure were a lively lot, as there was nothing but Hacks to ride in & that cost quite a bit to hire they would go to a livery stable & hire a horse & they always wanted one with a long back so that three or four could ride at once. This is not fiction. I myself have seen three sailors on one horse, two looking forward & one turned the other way holding the horses tail like he was steering a ship. Those days are gone forever. When I was about twelve years old I was quite a hunter & used an old HBC flint lock gun, sometimes it went off & sometimes it failed to go off, any how I always brought home the bacon, that is in the shape of grouse, duck, Geese & partridges &c. I still have the old gun & if it could talk, well it would tell you a mighty fine story of old times”

13 – “I don’t remember what the people did for matches in those times. I have heard that the fires were never let out. I do remember that there were no matches to be had for quite a long time.”

19 – “I can remember the year 1869. That is about the time when I had to quite playing with the Indian Kids & get to work & do my share of the chores on the farm in the start there was not much land cleared & what crop was put in it was cut with a sickle. That was the start of course there was the potato patch & vegetables. All together not more than two acres. But more was cleared every year when we had quite a few acres cleared, the sickle was discarded, for a scythe. & then came the cradle, in these times if you saw a cradle you would think it is a Chinese puzzle. But along side of a sickle it was a wonderful tool & a good man could cut from two to three acres a day & in cutting grain with this Cradle the grain was all laid out to one side & a man or boy with a handful of straw pulled out of a sheaf. There was quite a knack in doing this, but once you got on to making a bnad there was nothing to it & you could bind up the grain as fast as it was cut.”

35 – “I mentioned wild pigs & at this time there were droves of them, they ranged from Mt Tolmie to the Tod farm at Cordova Bay & they sure did lots of damage to the farmers crops, especially if they got into a field of potatoes. As a rule they did all the damage at night & as they went back to the thick brush at daylight, they were pretty hard to get at to shoot.”

37 – “now for a change let us go back to the Indians it seems that I cant get away from the natives. Any how when I was a kid that is all the play-mates we had & I could talk Chinook like I belonged to the tribe”

38 – “I had the misfortune to get my hand caught in the cogwheels of a chaff cutter & what it did to my hand was not very nice. Two of my fingers were like sausage meat. & it was quite a time before I could be taken to the Drs I think it was about ten or eleven oclock in the morning & the Dr & his good wife were having breakfast when we arrived. my hand was done up in a towel, just to save the pieces. I was nine years old & as that was the first time I had been in a big house I was quite interested. I suppose I forgot all about the mashed fingers.”



From Irvin clippings file

Colonist, March 21, 1907 – “Pioneer resident mourned by many – Funeral of the late Mrs Irvine attended by host of sorrowing friends”
“The longest funeral cortege that has been seen in this city for many years followed the body of Mrs. Jessie Irvine of Cedar Hill to the Ross Bay cemetery yesterday afternoon.
The late Mrs. Irvine was one of the oldest residents of the city, having come here twenty years before British Columbia joined the confederation and when there was but one other white woman in town. She lived at Cedar Hill for 47 years and was known to everybody in the district. She was immensely popular, being known far and wide for the god old-fashioned hospitality which was always the rule at her house. Her death was felt as a personal loss by all residents of the Cedar Hill district and by many people in this city. (etc.)”

Colonist, Sunday, March 29, 1908 – FORTY YEARS AGO – The British Colonist, Monday, March 30, 1868”
Wholesale Slaughter – On Saturday morning Mr. Irvine, a farmer in Victoria district, found 34 heal of his sheep lying dead in the field. The bodies bore evidence of having been torn by Panthers. A hung will be organized. Where are the paper hunters?”

Colonist Feb. 21 1906 – “Pioneer’s Funeral – One of the largest funerals that has taken place for some time was that of the late John Irvine, whose remains were laid to rest yesterday afternoon in the family plot in Ross Bay cemetery.