Special Announcement!

Scottish Blackface Sheep

Each post during the month of March will be dedicated to sheep in Upper Canada/Canada West - who kept them, how many, which breeds were preferred, and of course their many uses.

Why sheep? Why not?

As a special bonus this month I've teamed up with fellow colleague and wool aficionado Caroline Bendiner. She's prepared guest blog posts on early 19th century methods of turning fleece into wool, as well as where you can see these methods being used today.

For March there will also be a number of extra posts related to sheep facts. Never again will you come face to face with an Ovis aries and not know that while it may have four stomachs, it has no top front teeth.

Don't forget to check back often, and of course feel free to comment - let's show our guest blogger some love!

It Takes a Village

A census is a wonderful tool for looking back at a population at a particular point in time. What were their names? Where did they come from? What did they do to get by? While census data is often bare-bones and provides the most basic facts, it can help us to understand a community and create a framework that can later be filled in by other source material.

In 1851 a census was completed for Galt, which included information on its 2,246 residents: Name, Place of birth; Religion; Occupation; Age; Marriage status; etc. If you've ever wondered what you might do for a living in a small Victorian village, take a look at the graph I've compiled below. Not every census taker had an occupation listed, and I have a sneaking suspicion that there were in fact more farmers... but this information, though incomplete, is eye-opening. You can check out the rest of the census in an easy to read PDF document here.

You do what exactly? Well, a Spinster is an unmarried (and not likely to become married) woman. She might be living and looking after the welfare of older relatives, or living with and looking after the education of nieces and nephews. Coopers are makers and repairers of casks and barrels. A Teamster is someone who drives a team of draft animals and a wagon. You can think of them as the equivalent of transport truck drivers today. Sadlers make, sell and.or repair saddlery. A Mill Wright is someone who builds and maintains mills and their internal machinery. Cordwainers are actually shoemakers who work with cordovan leather. Fleshers flesh hides and skins and tan them in the production of leather. They may also sell meat - in other words, a butcher. Pedlers are travelling salesmen, often going from door to door to trade and sell any number of items. Lime Burners process limestone (by means of baking it in large kilns) into a number of agricultural and home products such as quicklime for home construction, whitewash, and for spreading on fields as a fertilizer. A House Joiner is a type of carpenter that cuts and fits wood without the use of nails, screws, or other metal fasteners. Lastly, a Carriage Trimmer is someone who preps and finishes the lace, linings, and other trimmings for carriage makers.

Sources
Waterloo Region 1851 Census, Transcribed by the Ontario Genealogical Society in 2001.

The Log Cabin Myth

Pioneers lived in log cabins... right? Well, it really depends on the period and the area in question. It also depends on your understanding of the definition of what constitutes a "log cabin". These excerpts from Hugh Morrison's Early American Architecture: From the First Colonial Settlements to the National Period help to explain:

Log House in Orillia Township, Ontario
1844 Picture by Titus Hibbert Ware

"By 'log cabin' we mean a dwelling built of round logs, laid horizontally on one another, with notched corners and protruding ends.... Spaces between logs, if any, are chinked with moss, clay, or oak chips.... the log cabin did not exist in any of the English colonies in the seventeenth century and was used very little throughout most of the eighteenth century. Neither did the Dutch use it in New Netherland, nor the French in Canada. It was a form of construction unknown in England, France, Holland, and southern Europe generally; it was likewise unknown to the American Indian.
...
It is tempting to believe that our early ancestors, gifted with ingenuity as well as courage, invented such an admirable solution to their urgent problem of quick and durable shelter. 
Apparently they did not. The English colonists did built blockhouses and prisons using logs hewn square and notched at the corners for either lapped or dovetail joints. This is indeed a superior type of construction, but it requires many tools and much skill and more time. The log cabin, if it had been known, would have supplanted the flimsy dugouts and cabins and wigwams the pioneer settlers actually built.
True log-cabin construction is thought to have been introduced into this country [the United States] by the Swedes when they settled Delaware in 1638.... In the eighteenth century, German settlers in Pennsylvania built large numbers of log houses, using both squared-log and round-log construction. Since most of the Germans entered the country by way of the Delaware valley, they must have acquired the technique from the Swedes...." (12-13)

Sources
Hugh Morrison's 1987, Early American Architecture
Harold Robert Shurtleff's 1939, The log cabin myth: a study of the early dwellings of the English colonists in North America

Further Reading
History News Network 2015, "Top 10 Myths About Thanksgiving"

Guelph and Stirling, 1840s

To follow up on a previous post comparing (somewhat arbitrarily) early Galt and Edinburgh circa 1820, I present to you now a visual comparison of Guelph and Stirling circa 1840s:

Guelph in 1842, population: Approximately 1,300

1842 Pencil and Brown Wash Drawing of Guelph

Stirling in 1845, population: Approximately 2,159

1840 Engraving of Stirling and Castle by R.S. Michie