Day 14, Tuesday, July 10, 2007.
Today we arrived in Embro, Ontario and this is Family Tree Country. Well at least for us. This is the area Willa’s family on the Cormack side of the family came from. This would also include the Innes and Rutherfords. We spent the day talking to different people in Embro. One of the people Willa spoke to was the Mayor of Embro, Margaret Lupton, and in the discussions it turns out that Willa and her are related through her husband’s side of the Innes family. Small world. Willa happened to stop at the Historical Book Society office. They are working on a book for the area and the history of the area. They have most of the history on the different pieces of property and who owned them and a story about as many as they could gather. This is now being put into book form which will be held in 2 books of about 5-800 pages each. They will sell them for about $100.00 for the set which is about 1/2 the cost of production with the balance coming from grants, fund raising, and donations. Willa had been in touch with a lady from this area about 20 years ago with regards to family tre
e information. Willa found out where she lived and we made a call on her. Jean Coulthard is 93 years old this year and lives on a farm with her 3 sons just south of Stratford, Ontario which is about 20 miles from Embro. While Willa and Jean visited, one of Jean’s sons took Tegan and I for a tour of their farm or more correctly farms. They own 3 farms totaling about 320 acres of land. They mix farm with the emphasis on dairy and raising registered Holstein cows. Interesting enough the market right now is in Russia and they are shipping the younger stock that is ready. Very long pedigrees on these animals. They have them very tame and of course like cats are very curious. Tegan is petting them and they all want some attention, They have the longest tongues and just like sandpaper. A couple of the young calves are suckling on her fingers and this is quite an experience for her. They milk about 50 head of cattle which are all machine milked but the feeding is done by hand. It’s an older operation but very well organized and managed as far as I could see. The one farm has been in the family for 67 years and over time they bought the other two. Each farm has a house and two have good barns. Now the houses! They are 100 years or over. Two are made of brick and the third is cement block. They are absolutely gorgeous. Two story homes and the original wood work in the one we were inside. I would like to have had a tour of the other two homes but didn’t feel it was appropriate to ask. Doesn’t sound like a Realtor does it. At the second farm we met the other two brothers Alex and Gordon Coulthard and a grandson Murray Coulthard. One of the highlights of the trip is driving through some of the towns and often you will hear a name like Stratford, London, Woodstock and towns you don’t hear about like Arthur, Embro, Oxford, St Mary's, Elora and many others but it is the old buildings in these towns. The history is unreal, most are 100 to 200 years old maybe older and most are in such good condition. I am saying houses but it’s also the old stores, churches, and other buildings and these are not the commercial Historical sights that you pay to go into. Just driving through the town and a few times we got turned around in the town and toured some residential areas as well so had an opportunity to see lots of these buildings. After we left Willa’s relative’s farms we found a campsite and settled in for the night. We stopped at the Wildwood Campground near Stratford, Ontario. Willa wanted to catch up on laundry and so we hauled the laundry over and she started while Tegan and I went back and finished setting up, then I took Tegan to the beach. Turns out 14 days of laundry is a lot of laundry and I think it took Willa close to 3 hours to finish. I think we will be doing laundry a little more often. Met an interesting lady at the beach, Stephanie Du Laux. Her and her daughter have opened up a shop I think in Lambeth, near London, Ontario and it is a home décor and gift shop based on Fung Shway. They have a web site that I will check when we get Internet access. www.fungshwayway.com, if you are interested leave a note for Stephanie and tell her you heard about her website from the guy and his granddaughter she met on the beach, nice lady and seemed very knowledgeable in Fung Shway. We unloaded the bikes and Tegan and I did a little riding around. Later in the evening Tegan had taken a little ride down a very dark trail right behind the motorhome and came rushing back all excited and we had to go with her to see what she had found. It was like magic, maybe like Christmas in July - - - - - - - fire flies - - - - - all these little lights flashing off and on through the trees and for as far as you could see in the bush. It seemed that they only flashed just at dusk, as it got darker they weren’t around any longer. I had heard my mother tell stories of finding fire flies and putting them into jars but this is the first time that I saw them for myself. Another first. We seem to be hitting these firsts quite often on this trip. Willa’s mother’s cousin, Bob Cormack (Bob and his father were both Jockeys) will meet us tomorrow and try and locate the old homestead and old house around Woodstock. Bob took the pictures at our wedding and one of his daughters Cathy was our flower girl at our wedding. We hope to meet up with Cathy later in the week at Niagara Falls, where she lives. Always fun getting together with Bob. Well I know what tomorrow is going to bring, dead relatives, searching graveyards. By the way this is not boring stuff, I find it so interesting and met some great people who I feel as akin to as if they were blood relatives, which they are even if it’s only by marriage.
Today we arrived in Embro, Ontario and this is Family Tree Country. Well at least for us. This is the area Willa’s family on the Cormack side of the family came from. This would also include the Innes and Rutherfords. We spent the day talking to different people in Embro. One of the people Willa spoke to was the Mayor of Embro, Margaret Lupton, and in the discussions it turns out that Willa and her are related through her husband’s side of the Innes family. Small world. Willa happened to stop at the Historical Book Society office. They are working on a book for the area and the history of the area. They have most of the history on the different pieces of property and who owned them and a story about as many as they could gather. This is now being put into book form which will be held in 2 books of about 5-800 pages each. They will sell them for about $100.00 for the set which is about 1/2 the cost of production with the balance coming from grants, fund raising, and donations. Willa had been in touch with a lady from this area about 20 years ago with regards to family tre
e information. Willa found out where she lived and we made a call on her. Jean Coulthard is 93 years old this year and lives on a farm with her 3 sons just south of Stratford, Ontario which is about 20 miles from Embro. While Willa and Jean visited, one of Jean’s sons took Tegan and I for a tour of their farm or more correctly farms. They own 3 farms totaling about 320 acres of land. They mix farm with the emphasis on dairy and raising registered Holstein cows. Interesting enough the market right now is in Russia and they are shipping the younger stock that is ready. Very long pedigrees on these animals. They have them very tame and of course like cats are very curious. Tegan is petting them and they all want some attention, They have the longest tongues and just like sandpaper. A couple of the young calves are suckling on her fingers and this is quite an experience for her. They milk about 50 head of cattle which are all machine milked but the feeding is done by hand. It’s an older operation but very well organized and managed as far as I could see. The one farm has been in the family for 67 years and over time they bought the other two. Each farm has a house and two have good barns. Now the houses! They are 100 years or over. Two are made of brick and the third is cement block. They are absolutely gorgeous. Two story homes and the original wood work in the one we were inside. I would like to have had a tour of the other two homes but didn’t feel it was appropriate to ask. Doesn’t sound like a Realtor does it. At the second farm we met the other two brothers Alex and Gordon Coulthard and a grandson Murray Coulthard. One of the highlights of the trip is driving through some of the towns and often you will hear a name like Stratford, London, Woodstock and towns you don’t hear about like Arthur, Embro, Oxford, St Mary's, Elora and many others but it is the old buildings in these towns. The history is unreal, most are 100 to 200 years old maybe older and most are in such good condition. I am saying houses but it’s also the old stores, churches, and other buildings and these are not the commercial Historical sights that you pay to go into. Just driving through the town and a few times we got turned around in the town and toured some residential areas as well so had an opportunity to see lots of these buildings. After we left Willa’s relative’s farms we found a campsite and settled in for the night. We stopped at the Wildwood Campground near Stratford, Ontario. Willa wanted to catch up on laundry and so we hauled the laundry over and she started while Tegan and I went back and finished setting up, then I took Tegan to the beach. Turns out 14 days of laundry is a lot of laundry and I think it took Willa close to 3 hours to finish. I think we will be doing laundry a little more often. Met an interesting lady at the beach, Stephanie Du Laux. Her and her daughter have opened up a shop I think in Lambeth, near London, Ontario and it is a home décor and gift shop based on Fung Shway. They have a web site that I will check when we get Internet access. www.fungshwayway.com, if you are interested leave a note for Stephanie and tell her you heard about her website from the guy and his granddaughter she met on the beach, nice lady and seemed very knowledgeable in Fung Shway. We unloaded the bikes and Tegan and I did a little riding around. Later in the evening Tegan had taken a little ride down a very dark trail right behind the motorhome and came rushing back all excited and we had to go with her to see what she had found. It was like magic, maybe like Christmas in July - - - - - - - fire flies - - - - - all these little lights flashing off and on through the trees and for as far as you could see in the bush. It seemed that they only flashed just at dusk, as it got darker they weren’t around any longer. I had heard my mother tell stories of finding fire flies and putting them into jars but this is the first time that I saw them for myself. Another first. We seem to be hitting these firsts quite often on this trip. Willa’s mother’s cousin, Bob Cormack (Bob and his father were both Jockeys) will meet us tomorrow and try and locate the old homestead and old house around Woodstock. Bob took the pictures at our wedding and one of his daughters Cathy was our flower girl at our wedding. We hope to meet up with Cathy later in the week at Niagara Falls, where she lives. Always fun getting together with Bob. Well I know what tomorrow is going to bring, dead relatives, searching graveyards. By the way this is not boring stuff, I find it so interesting and met some great people who I feel as akin to as if they were blood relatives, which they are even if it’s only by marriage.
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