| Notes |
- BIRTH:
March 21, 1870, Ira Weeks, Male, son of Isaac Weeks and Nancy Westbrook,
Occupation of Father - Farmer; Informant: Isaac Weeks at South Norwich,
Oxford Cty, March 28, 1870. Source: LDS Film # 1844884; # 4693 - 70.
1871 Census - listed with his parents, siblings
Weeks, Ira, male, age 1, birthplace Ontario, Origin German.
*1901 Census 93 Norfolk, c-2 Middleton, Page 6, Line 7-10*
Weeks, Ira, Male, White, Head, Married, Born Mar 21, 1870, Age 31, Birthplace rural Ontario, Origin English, Religion Presbyterian, Farmer
Weeks, Roxie A., Female, White, Wife, Married, Born Oct. 16, 1876, Origin German, Religion Baptist
Weeks, Clara S., Female, White, Daughter, Single, Born July 18, 1898, Age 2, Birthplace rural Ontario, English, Baptist Religion
Weeks, Pearl A., Female, White, Daughter, Single, Born Mar. 13, 1900, Age 1, English, Baptist
Schedule 2 1901 Census Info:
Middleton, Lot 6, Conc. 4 NTR, 1 wood house with 3 rooms, 40 acres, 1 barn.
Clipping of Obituary from Castor Advance weekly newspaper - Thursday May 31, 1951
Ira Weeks, 81, passes Tuesday
A pioneer of the Knob Hill district, Mr. Ira Weeks, passed away at the Castor Hospital on Tuesday, May 29th, at the age of 81. He had been in ill health for some time.
Born in Tillsonburg, Ontario in 1870, he came as far west as Lacombe in 1905 and the following year brought his family out and settled in Knob Hill area, 22 miles east of the present town of Castor. In later years he moved to Castor and six years ago went to live with his oldest son at Fleet. His wife predeceased him in 1911.
He leaves to mourn his loss, two sons. Homer* of Vancouver and Ross of Fleet; three daughters, Mrs. Clara Quaife of Rimbey, Mrs. Pearl Strome and Mrs. Hazel Wilkie, both of Castor; 24 grandchildren and 20 great grandchildren; 3 brothers, two in Ontario and one in Chilliwack, B.C. and a sister in Ontario.
Funeral services will be held on Friday, June 01, at 2:30 p.m. at the Markham Chruch, with interment in the Markham cemetery.
Matthias Funeral Home, Castor in charge of arrangements.
* - error - should be Omar
Thursday, June 07, 1951
Funeral services for the late Mr. Ira Weeks, who passed away on May 29, were held on Friday, June 1st, from the Markham Church, with Rev. R. Shantz officiating.
Pallbearers were Messrs. Joseph Wideman, Wilmot Wideman, William Seth, Rav Davey, and A. Geiger.
Beautiful floral tributes were received from: The Family; Knox United Church W.A., Mr and Mrs. Ernest Wimmer, Mr. and Mrs. J.F. Holloway;, Mr. and Mrs C.S. Johnson; Mr. and Mrs. R. Holloway; Mr and Mrs. D. Holloway.
Mr. W. Wideman and girls; Mr. and Mrs. D.C. Quaife; Friends of Fleet community and Mr. and Mrs. D. Morasch.
Source of Death Certificate: Vital Stats of AB, Pre Reg. # 154977; Reg # 08-003883
Family Legend by Ross Weeks and Pearl (Weeks) Strome
In the spring of 1905, Ira Weeks came from Tillsonburg, Ontario to Lacombe AB. He found work there for the winter, lived in a tar paper shack, and filed on a homestead. The next spring, his wife Roxy( ANDRESS) and five children came by CPR to join him. They lived for a month in Lacombe then put their belongings onto a wagon, hitched up the cayuses, Polly and Gin, and headed for the homestead, a 101 miles to the East.
For two nights we slept on quilts out under the stars and got to the homestead on May 08, 1906. On the way Dad had to buy a loaf of bread, costing 35 cents, a very high price in those days.
Dad had only $35.00 in his picket, no house and no well. The first thing he did the next day, he took his spade and went to draw about a quarter of a mile away and dug a shallow pit that soon filled with water so we had a temporary well. We unloaded the packing boxes and the cupboard and then set up a sort of shelter. It was just four big quilts fastened to upright poles, with a canvas over top, and we called it the "Quilt House". It stood right out on the open plain, just a little shelter for all of us and we lived in it until early winter.
To start our house, Dad dug a trench one spade-width all around a rectangle 6'x24'. Then all summer long, Mother dug the dirt out to a depth of five feet. While she was doing this Dad was busy cutting logs and hauling them from Beaver Dam Creek - 3 1/2 miles North of the homestead which was on NW 1/2-22-38-12-W4, about 6 miles NW of Bulwark. The neighbours came and helped put the logs up and the roof on. Chinking had to be done with small pieces of wood nailed over the cracks and then smeared with mud. The dirt walls were covered with rough lumber to keep them from caving in. We had just a plain dirt floor that winter.
When it came to digging the well, Dad dug while Mother pulled the dirt and mud up out of the well in a heavy bucket attached by a rope to a big windlass. It was heavy work.
It was beautiful country and we enjoyed going barefoot all summer. We had a good garden because Dad ploughed up a garden patch and we planted potatoes right in the fresh sod.
The following year, Dad bought four oxen, for which he paid $35.00 each. He had earned money by hauling freight loads of lumber and supplies from Stettler. He still had the cayuses, which he kept for many years. The little blue roan, called Polly, lived a long life for a horse, 38 years and raised many fine colts. Dad finally gave her to a neigbhouring family, the Stoffers.
Father ploughed sod for a barn and built it. He bought a roan cow from Mrs. (Maxfield) Williams who had a grocery store at Brownfield. Ross never liked the milk because to him it had a peculiar flavour. Besides the cow, we had some chickens and 2 guinea fowl.
Ross remembers an old song on the gramophone that said "J stands for Jersey City where the mosquitoes weigh a pound" and that, he says, certainly applies to the ones on the homestead. He remembers going with his father on one trip when they had to camp out for the night and sleep under the wagon. The oxen were turned loose to take comfort in a slough. The mosquitoes were so bad, that you couldn't leave your head uncovered or they would grab you by the ear or throat, and you'd have quite a battle going.
In the fall, Mother was really sick. She had pneumonia, and we though that she wasn't going to pull through, but God spared her for us. One windy night Mom and Dad carried all of us to the dug out part of the new house as they thought the Quilt House would blow away. We didn't know anything about it until the next morning. Three-day rains were a problem too, in the Quilt House, and that summer we had three of them, everything getting soaked but one big bed. For firewood we had only small brush and green wood, so it had to be kept dry somehow.
Winter 1906-07 was sure a hard winter. Six feet of snow on the level. Bitter cold. Snow came October 16 and snow was still around the bush until June 12. Mr Kelly, a neighbour, had gone to get us a load of wood as we had no coal. By the time he had the wood loaded, twas dark, the snow was deep, his team tired, it was snowing and blowing, but he stayed all night in the bush. He cut branches to keep a little fire going to keep from freezing. Next morning, he came to our place nearly blinded with smoke. He wouldn't come in the evening as he knew Dad was away to Stettler for freight. Mother gave him a good breakfast.
Next spring when the French Creek was flooding, the oldest Doering girls had a horse and buggy and were on their way to see their sister Bertha, who was working for Mr. Gorrell. The current was so high and strong that the girls were thrown into the stream and drowned. The horse broke loose and was found grazing in the coulee. Mr. Chabrier lived in a little log house near the coulee, and he showed the folks where the girls were in the creek. They were buried on a high hill on the Doering homestead. Later on in the summer, the mailman called Shortie, lost his team and mail sacks in the same creek when the water was high. He managed to swim to safety.
For the first few years, we got our mail at O'Delville, 18 miles W of our place. There was a grocery store there, where we could get our supplies. In 1909, we got our mail at Lindsville, where there was also a small store and post office. There was, also later, a post office at Lorraine, on the old Seamans place, and we have several postcards with that address.
In the summer of 1908, Knob HIll school was built, just a mile west of our place. Miss Lord was the first teacher and she boarded with the Ellis Warrens. Other teachers were Miss Pearl Howe, Mr. Purdy, and Jack Haynes.
The families that started that year to attend Knob Hill wre those of:
T.C. Gorrell (farmer): Roy Lawsen, Charlie Grover, Laura Gladys, Bert and Alice. They lived 3 miles NW of the school.
Charlie Coyne (carpenter) Cyril, Ila, Lillian, Thecia, Bernice. They lived 2 miles W. of us.
White: Eldon, Thorton, Floyd. Lived 1/2 mile East of us.
Tom Gordon: Louis, Gregory, Fay. Lived 1 mile SE.
Chabrier: Emile, Edmond, Marcel. Lived 3/4 m SE
Martin Ice: Ruth, Amry, Marjorie. Lived 1/2 m West.
Mrs Hall, Albert and Hilda.
Mrs Fred Logan: Laura, Lucy Rosie, Mabel.
Ira Weeks: Clara, Pearl, Ross, Elsie, and Hazel.
We had a good time with the neighbours. In 1909, Ross, Clara and I became janitors at the school. Ross built the fires, Clara and I did the cleaning, and generally had to split wood besides. For pay we received 5 cents a day in the summer, and 10 cents a day in the winter. When we quit, the pay went up to 25 cents a day and has kept spiralling to what it is today. Quite a difference.
We walked to school summer and winter, and didn't have many warm clothes for the cold weather. We had to spread lard on our bread instead of butter, and the Chabrier kids and Ross used to go North of our place about 2 miles on Sunday and shoot bush rabbits for food.
For entertainment, we had Box socials once in a while, or square dances. Sometimes a group would get up a big debate and try to outdo each other with logic. There were not many sports days, but on July 1st, we were given about 15 cents to spend and we had a good time on that. Maybe an orange, an ice cream cone, and 5 cents worth of all-day suckers.
T.C. Gorrell and his three boys all had homesteads in the Knob Hill district. Tom had a saw-mill and sawed the lumber for T. J. Coppock's big house, where Doug now lives and for the houe that the Gorrells lived in, in which M. K. Christiansen lived in until spring 1973. I well remember when George Sullivan worked at the saw mill and had one arm cut off. They hitched the driving team to the buggy and took off for Stettler and the doctor.
In 1908, Mother took a milk pail, several small pails and five kids, and walked 3 1/2 miles to the beaver Dam Crek to pick Saskatoons. She made three such trips and canned 40 quarts. In the summer Dad had Mr. Gorrell break thirty acres of land with the big steam engine and 14-bottom plough. The crop in 1911 was good, but frost wiped out the hopes of nearly all the neighbours. Dad's crop was not frozen and he sold it next spring for seed wheat.
In 1911, Mom's mother (Charity Sophronia) took very ill, so Mom and the four smaller children went back East (Ontario) for a visit. On the trip home, Mom became ill, lived for a month, passed away, leaving Dad with seven children. Clara was 13, I was 11, and the youngest Omar was just two. But we baked bread, and scrubbed clothes on the washboard and helped to cook and look after the family. Dad bought a windmill and a grinder and we used to grind grain for the neighbourhood at 10 cents cwt. Many were the sacks we ground. Ross was especially good at the mill.
In the fall of 1911, Ross had an accident. He jumped off the slant-roof shed on the back of the school barn, caught his foot on the top wire of the fence, and broke his elbow. He had to be taken to Calgary to have it set and as Dad didn't have that much money on hand, Dr. JJ McPherson loaned him $50.00. Ross was away three weeks at the Holy Cross Hospital, Dr. McPherson wa a very kind man.
Somebody must have complained about us to the authorities, because that fall, the police and one man came to see us. Dad was away so they looked the house over. We had just baked 14 big loaves of bread, and had a quarter of beef on the table. Someone wanted to split the family up, but Dad wouldn't hear of it.
When Dad sold his frozen grain the next year, he got only 35 cents a bushel. but he repaid Dr. McPherson. However, Dad had a loan on his homestead and because he couldn't meet his payment in 1913, he lost it and we had to move into a tent for the summer. ( The loan was taken at the time Roxy went East to see her family, also to Gorrell to clear more of the homestead, as required by the Homestead Act, then later when Roxy died, more financial troubles, poor crop) A most difficult time.
That year the CPR and CNR were both putting railways into French Coulee. Grade was built and track was laid from Coronation to Bulwark, and this was used for some years. However the track from Bulwark to Lorraine Bridge was abandoned and the bridge was removed a few years later. Crews that were working on the projects were those of Sharkey and Homes, who were camped down in the valley; Foley and Coughlin, who were up on the level, and Sandeens, who had a big steam shovel working in French Coulee.
Ross adds the following information:
Clara, who married Charlie Quaife in 1915, lived in Bulwark for quite a few years, where Charlie did blacksmithing. They moved down to Taber.
Pearl maried Milton Strome in 1917, and moved to the Castor district.
Ross married Zillah Irene Troyer.
Elsie worked for the Kishes who lived up near the river. She took an attack of appendicitis and died when she was about 17.
Hazel married Andy Wilkie, and lives in Castor. She was Matron of the Paintearth Lodge from 1968-1973.
Two brothers were born in Alberta, George and Omar.
George died when he was about 12.
Omar lives in Vancouver. He married Dorothy Dettlaff, whose family lives South of Throne.
That was our start in Sunny Alberta.
PS: Many early settlers describe the mosquitoes as being so bad in the 'early days'. The mosquitoes could be so bad, that a team of oxen would not plough, but if a farmer tried, the oxen, plough and all would just head for the sloughs. Source: The Ice Family Story
Also the bad winter of 1906-07 was the worst ever. Snow was so deep that the buildings were all buried. One could walk right over the top of the house, barn and henhouse.
Farming schedules or routines; The day would start at 3 am, and lasted until 9 am when the oxen were rested for the next shift that started at 3 pm and lasted until 9 pm. Usually 20 half mile rounds were made each day.
Markham Cemetery is located approx. 8 miles NE of Castor, AB
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My Scottish "Wilkie" Family
1870 - 1951 (81 years)
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