Claude Bartley Remembers, Part 3

I showed you this photo of the Bartley family in a previous post, but I thought you'd like to have it handy to compare it with a more recent photo of some of the Bartleys, including Claude. 

The Bartley family, [circa 1937-38?]
Front row, l to r: Eugene, Katrina, Wellington, Alice, Velma, Grace
Back row, l to r: Claude, Alden, Herman, Vivian, Martin, Austin
Photo courtesy of Sheila Lafferty

Left to right: Katrina,;Velma; Vivian; Claude's wife, Jean; Alice Flewelling Bartley, and Claude
Date unknown
Photo courtesy of Sheila Lafferty

Part 1 of Claude Bartley Remembers is here; and Part 2 is here. 

Claude continues with his memories of life in Beaconsfield, New Brunswick, living next door to the David and Edith Crabtree family farm in the 1920s and 1930s. [Comment in square brackets are mine].

April 19, 2014

Hi, Clair. Glad to hear from you again, (thought I may be bugging you).  I enjoyed reading Sadie Crabtree's Memoirs [they start here].

I mentioned before that we never had a car when I was younger, I guess my dad had a model T at one time but I think before my time.

We lived eight miles from the nearest town, Andover, New Brunswick and dad would make a trip to town every month or so, by horse and buggy, to get what groceries, etc. that were needed. I remember when I was perhaps six or seven years old, dad was going to take me to town with him with the horse and buggy, (I was so excited) we had to go by your grandfather's place and when we did your grandfather came out to the road and told my dad that he was going to town, (he had a car) and that my dad could go with him. (That was the end of my trip to town) of course I never had any "bad" feelings against your grandfather.

I mentioned before about walking across the U.S. and Canada border to work for relatives on their farm. Later I bought a six dollar bicycle from some one, ( I don't know who) that made the trip to work much easier, I used that bike quite some time. In 1942 I bought a 1932 Harley Davidson motorcycle and later that year I bought my first car, a 1935 Ford four door sedan, for one hundred dollars, that was the first car we had in the family that still lived at home.

My dad never drove so my younger brother Eugene got his license when he got old enough so he could drive.

I joined the Canadian Armed Forces, February 3, 1944 and was in until June 1946, so the family had the car to use while I was away. I was in the "front Line" only thirty days when the war ended May 8th 1945, I was in Germany at that time.

Again, enough for now.

April 26, 2014

One more Crabtree story.

I mention about being in the Canadian Army in WW 2.

When I returned back home I worked over the border on a farm where I had worked before.

In 1947 I went to work for my brother-in-law who had a Chrysler dealer ship in Perth NB. On the GI Bill I was trained as an auto mechanic, that same year my (now wife) and I decided to get married, we had dated for five years, so thought it was time to "Tie the knot".

Our first son, Murray was born Dec. 10th 1948, just two hours after my birth date, so we celebrate our birthdays together. (When we are together)

Having been born in USA, I always knew we would be living there.  September 10 1951 we moved to the Portland, Maine area where my oldest brother, Martin had moved his family, (two daughters) and his wife, moved from Northern Maine to Southern Maine ten years earlier. I enjoyed working on automobiles and intended to stay with it, but my brother had a small carpenter business going, he offered me a job so I took it, I worked for him twelve years until I started my own business in 1963. Retired from that in 1990.

My brother developed an area which is called Bartley Gardens, which is a very nice area, in the largest city of the state of Maine.

Now to get to the "Subject"

We started going to the church my brothers family attended. Two of your aunts, Bessy [Bess Crabtree Valley York] and Lois [Lois Crabtree Stockson], also your uncle Beecher [Beecher Crabtree] and his family attended, I don't recall seeing Beecher or Lois after they left Beaconsfield.

Our son Murray married your aunt Lois' daughter, Jenny [I think this would be Virginia "Ginnie" Stockson]. It only lasted a few years, not sure why.

We have two sons and two daughters. Murray is now a retired Medical Doctor. The other three are doing very well also.

Hope you can figure this all out.

I have enjoyed this little trip down "Memories Lane"

Have enjoyed this journey with you.

April 30, 2014

Good morning Clair.

We are making ready for our trip back to Maine, May 6th, our daughter, Gloria came yesterday to make the trip easier for us.

In your last e-mail you asked, "what I remember about hospitals and doctors in Canada"?

Mother with having ten children was never in the hospital, even in her older years I don't think she was ever in the hospital.

When my brother died in 1939, of spinal meningitis, the country doctor came to the house to check on him quite often, that is about all I remember.

As far as my wife and I, other than her being in the hospital when Murray was born in New Brunswick, we were never involved with doctors and hospitals in Canada. Then we moved to Maine in 1951.

Guess that is all for now, have a good day and God Bless.

May 8, 2014

Good morning Clair.

We are now back in Maine after a nice winter in Florida. We had a few set backs this time getting here but nothing major, arrived home about five hours later than planned, but didn't mind the delays too much. Will be a little while getting used to the colder weather, but it's not bad now, in the sixties in the day time.

More another time.                             

Claude

***

[Thank you again to Claude Bartley for sharing his memories with us; and to Sheila Lafferty for helping us to connect with each other and for supplying family photos]. 

Claude Bartley Remembers, Part 1

As I wrote in the last post, Sheila Antworth Lafferty put me in touch with her mother's cousin, Claude Bartley, neighbor to the Crabtree family in Beaconsfield, New Brunswick, Canada in the 1920s and 1930s.  Here are some of the memories Claude has kindly sent to me. [Comments in brackets are mine].

April 7, 2014

Hi, Clair.

I received the Crabtree Family Tree [the link to the Remember blog] from my cousin Carmen Antworth's daughter Sheila in Conn, that is where I got your e-mail address.

Going through this brought back many old memories, the Crabtrees lived on a farm next to my dad's farm in Beaconsfield, New Brunswick, Canada before moving to Maine. 

I remember going to school with Faith and there must have been more of the family that I went to school with because Lois was one year older than me [so Claude was born about 1925, as Lois was born in 1924]. The schoolhouse was on the line between the two farms. We used to carry water from the Crabtree's water supply to the school.

April 8, 2014

You asked about life growing up on a farm, if it was all work or some play?

The Crabtree and Bartley farms were very small and both families were very poor at that time.

There were ten in our family and of course all ten were not home at the same time. My oldest brother Martin (1909) was married in 1930, the year my youngest brother, Eugene, was born so there was quite an age spread there. My dad did well to feed and clothe us, I often think about how he did that, we only had a team of horses, no tractor and no car.

The Bartley family, [circa 1937-38?]
Front row, l to r: Eugene, Katrina, Wellington, Alice, Velma, Grace
Back row, l to r: Claude, Alden, Herman, Vivian, Martin, Austin
Photo courtesy of Sheila Lafferty

I think the Crabtrees was in about the same boat, although I do remember your grandfather having a car while in Beaconsfield.

As far as having fun, we had fun with things we would make ourselves, I remember making a pair of stilts out of two pieces of board and nailing square blocks on each one and walking around on them. 

Also when the McLellans [Alma's family] lived there the three oldest, Russell, Louie and Lawrence made a two seater ferris-wheel. It was a little scary, but we enjoyed riding on it.

By the Crabtree Blog, when it gave the McLellan family names it gave the three oldest boys names' as George, John and David, the birth dates were right I thought, but we knew them as Russell, Louie and Lawrence, perhaps nicknames? [Claude was correct about the names; the boys' names were George Russell called "Russell," John Lewis "Louie," and David Lawrence called "Lawrence."]

April 12, 2014

Little late getting back to you.

As I mentioned before about the difference in ages between my oldest and youngest brothers being twenty one years, the oldest of the family were up and gone before we got to know them very much.

Austin, the one older than myself, died in 1939 at the age of 15, that left a younger sister and brother and myself to help with the house and farm work.

Bartley's farm in Beaconsfield, New Brunswick
Photo courtesy of Sheila Lafferty

We had a very small farm (as your grand parents did). We had a team of horses, (no tractor). We grew potatoes, grain and hay and always had a large vegetable garden in which we all worked, 

Mother loved working in her gardens, (vegetable and flower gardens). We also had cattle, sheep, hens, and pigs. Mother was a very smart woman, she cooked a lot and kept us all in woolen socks and mittens, she also liked to sew. We never had electricity, pumping water and everything else was done the hard way, by hand, but not knowing any difference, we didn't mind what we had to do.

As I remember, your grandparents' family moved to Maine in 1934 and the McLellan family moved in on the farm the same year with seven boys [read more about the McLellan family here]. Audrey was born in Beaconsfield. It seems to me they were there a few years but the way the other dates I have they were there only about two years.

Enough for now, more later.

***
Part 2, and Part 3.

Why I Also Owe Thanks to Sheila, Milton, Laurie, Joey, Carmen, and Claude!

Family history research can be a mind-numbing search through records and more records, online and in various libraries and other facilities, but every once in a while, there is a great breakthrough. Sometimes that breakthrough comes through the kindness of strangers. Patricia Pickard (see the previous post), though no longer a stranger, is one such person who came into my life and helped me to understand so much more about my family. 

Would you believe that there are other people who have contacted me right out of the blue with information I would never have found otherwise?  That is what I would like to tell you about today. 

Several months back, I received a message from a librarian named Sheila Lafferty, who had seen my Crabtree family tree on WikiTree: 

My family came from Aroostook Pentecostal roots and knew the Crabtrees very well. Some are in ministry and still have close ties with the family. Flewelling/Bartley/Lawrence/Goodine etc. I knew Alma as a young person and she taught me how to quilt in my early teens. I was also a classmate of a Anna's granddaughter. [from] Sheila Antworth Lafferty (a librarian at UConn)

In later correspondence, Sheila told me a bit about her family. 

Harvey Flewelling was a brother to my grandfather Milton Flewelling. Another brother, Charles S Flewelling, became a missionary to South Africa from 1927-1969. He was on leave at home when he died so he is buried in Easton Maine. His wife went back to Africa and died there. Another sister, Mabel Flewelling Wright and her husband Moody Wright also were missionaries in South Africa. Two of their children stayed there and married Afrikaners.  

Sheila also sent me links to her two blogs:

Diary of an Aroostook Farmer; The farm journals of Milton Lloyd Flewelling (1901-1996), a farmer from Easton, Aroostook County, Maine. (Milton was Sheila's grandfather).

Diaries of Robert Murphy Fulton; Transcription of the Diaries of Robert M Fulton (1816-1897), resident of Mars Hill, Aroostook County, Maine. (Robert was Sheila's great great grandfather).

A view of the Crabtree homesite from the Bartley farm in Beaconsfield, New Brunswick, Canada
Photo from Sheila Lafferty

The first blog was especially interesting to me, as Milton's diary frequently mentioned his neighbor, "Dave," my grandfather, David Jewett Crabtree; and my Uncle Clifford Crabtree was featured as a part of the entry on the Washburn Pentecostal Church's 50th anniversary convention.

Sheila also sent me information and a newspaper clipping about my Aunt Alma and her family, which I used in the post, Aunt Alma: Memories. 

More recently, Sheila sent me a link to some of her historical photos on flickr. Among them are photos taken around Easton, Maine, the town where my grandparents were married in 1899. 

I don't know if Sheila realizes this, but she helped me find a whole branch of "missing" Connecticut cousins I had lost track of. She accomplished this by putting me in touch with her former classmate, Laurie MacDonald Pickard, daughter of my first cousin, Brenda Middleton, and granddaughter of my Aunt Anna. Laurie, in turn, put me in touch with other cousins and sent me my Aunt Sadie's memoirs, which had been typed up by another cousin, Joey Cichon III. 

In another email, Sheila said:

My mom, Carmen, daughter of Milton Flewelling, has been reading your blog. I will share it with her cousin Claude Bartley too as he may be of help too.  The Crabtrees lived next to the Bartleys in Beaconsfield. In fact Alice Bartley (sister to Milton, mother to Claude) was the witness on the birth certificate of one of the Crabtree children.

When Claude Bartley got in touch with me by email and offered to share his memories of growing up next door to my grandparent's farm in Beaconsfield, New Brunswick, I was overjoyed. I will share those memories with you, starting with the next post.