OGRES , MONSTERS , WITCHES AND GHOSTS
OGRES , MONSTERS , WITCHES AND GHOSTS
John B Lee
Many of the fears felt by first settlers were legitimate . The formidable dangers of the wilderness and the profound perils of inhospitable weather could easily spell doom for the hapless , death for the careless and an early grave for the weak and the sickly children of pioneers . Starvation . Disease . Predation . Pestilence . Floods . Big winds . Bad water . Fire . Pneumococcal winters . Fevers of spring . Trees felled wrong . Fingers blackened with toxins in the blood . Influenza . Invasion and reinvasion . Hail . Blizzard . Whirlwind . Famine .
My own ancestors and their neighbours began to arrive in the early to mid eighteen hundreds to take up the promise of clergy reserve land . The road that runs past our farm is called the Gosnell line and the community was referred to as the Gosnell Settlement . The Lee family and the Gosnell family were intermarried having arrived in the new world from County Cork just prior to the great famine that would devastate Ireland in the late 1840s . French place names were first replaced by Hessian names that were then supplanted by Anglo Irish names . The province of Ontario known as Upper Canada in 1791 , became known as Canada West in 1841 , and then Ontario in 1865 .
My great grandfather twice removed , Francis Emerick ’ s health was ruined by his having served in winter campaigns in the War of 1812 . His son , my greatgrandfather died from infection that set in after an accident from felling a tree at a logging bee . Relative Mary Webb Gosnell ’ s husband died in passage and my greatgreat grandfather intervened bribing an official on her behalf because a widow was not allowed to take possession of the promised parcel of undeveloped land .
Wolves and bears and stone horses threatened the lives of anyone careless or unlucky enough to come afoul of nature . Yet cabins , schools and churches were
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