The Resilient Mr. Wales
(part 2, continued from 25-2)

Heather Darch, Missisquoi Museum

On leaving Dunham c.1803, Mr. Wales took with him what provisions he thought would sustain his family for one year. Like many settlers beginning life in the Townships, John Wales realized too quickly that he was not prepared for the realities of life in the bush. Within a few short months his provisions were quickly failing and winter was approaching. His only choices at the time were to head to either Frelighsburg or Missisquoi Bay to restock his supplies. John chose the route to the community of Frelighsburg, 74 kilometres distant and no roads to link his location to the village. He went with a sled that would help him slide over the terrain and a yoke of oxen. John had to break his own road through the woods the entire distance, which meant chopping thick underbrush, climbing up steep grades and manoeuvring down slopes, finding shelter and food for himself each night, providing for his oxen, unsnarling his sled from the forest floor, and enduring clouds of flies and mosquitoes.

The village of Frelighsburg was sparsely populated at the time John Wales headed for its centre. In 1800, Abram Freligh was operating a gristmill and sawmill. George Wallace established the first store and around the same time “trade was commenced by Griffen Reynolds and John Jones”. The term “store” referred to the place in a village that was the link between the local community and the wider world. The store provided Canadian and imported goods and took farm produce and local wares in exchange. Merchandise would have included perishables such as corn, barley, and oats; food stuffs including tea coffee, sugar and salt; household essentials such as tallow, shot and muskets; clothing; farm and work tools; and the all important supplements of life – tobacco, also known as “ladies twist”, and rum! In his account of the village in 1815, Joseph Bouchette wrote, “the village of Frelighsburg is on the south side of Pike River…consisting of only seventeen houses, a free school, forge, mills, and some out-buildings…” For John Wales, this was the centre of the universe.

His absence from home meant that his family quite naturally feared for his well-being. For some time previous to his journey they had been required to subsist on bread made of coarse corn meal and their provisions were running desperately low. After more than three weeks away, John Wales returned in the middle of the night with supplies and a “good-sized wheaten short cake” which the family ate immediately as they were nearly starved.

As his subsistence lifestyle improved slightly, John managed to prepare a small field for crops and created a fold for sheep that he raised to sell in Frelighsburg. One of his greatest concerns focused on the wildlife that encroached upon his homestead on a regular basis. As if regarding this pioneer as an intruder, bears and wolves waged an incessant warfare against him on a nightly basis. His crops and cattle were destroyed by wolves and bears so

frequently that John and his eldest son never slept in pyjamas as they had to get out of bed throughout the night to drive away the intruders from their home and clearing. On one occasion a bear attacked the pigpen of his nearest neighbour who lived six kilometres away. The bear killed many of the pigs and made off into the woods. John Wales and his neighbour tracked the bear into the forest in the hopes of shooting it. They followed it closely but the bear managed to elude them. While John was away his home was attacked by another bear. Although a fence around the sheepfold was eight feet high and near the house, the bear chased the family back to the house, scaled the fence and killed all of the sheep. Making good its escape with a sheep in its jaws, the bear climbed out of the pen inches away from one of the children, but as it was satisfied with its quarry, it left him alone.

Tragedy unfortunately struck John’s family during the War of 1812. In the evening of October 11, 1813, a fleet of American vessels under the command of Colonel Isaac Clark entered Missisquoi Bay. One of the 91 privates of the Fourth Battalion captured that evening was John Wales’ son. The prisoners were immediately marched to Swanton and then to Burlington and finally taken to Greenbush, New York. On being released several months later, Private Wales returned as far as Burlington, Vermont where, weakened from his imprisonment, he fell sick and died.

For several years, John and his family experienced all the hardships incident to the lives of early settlers. They suffered at times from both want of food and clothing, severe winters, meagre crops, isolation, bouts of sickness, depression, and the constant presence of the wolves and bears. In the famine of 1815-16, which affected the Townships as a whole, the Wales family were reduced to “great extremities and a pitiful state of destitution”. Finally convinced that life back in Dunham might be better for his family, John left the backwoods and purchased a new lot in East Dunham. At the age of 58, John started again. Although he had help from grown sons, John had to build a new home, clear land, cut a new trail through thick woods to Dunham village, and start a field for crops at a time when most men in Union, Connecticut, born in the same year as John would have been resting on their laurels or would have passed away.

The experience of John Wales was similar to other pioneers. All shared in the annoyances and hardships arising from the absence of roads, mills and markets; and few escaped losses from raids made on their crops and cattle by wild animals. What makes John Wales unique is that he faced the trials of settlement not once but three times before settling in Dunham. Notwithstanding his difficulties in his new country, John Wales laboured perseveringly, and “Providence so smiled upon his efforts” that in the progress of time he saw better days. Mr. Wales was remembered as a loyal, industrious and temperate man. His story reminds us that his resilient nature, like that of so many of the early pioneers, helped to open and settle this part of the wilderness of Missisquoi County.

Sources: Cyrus Thomas, Contributions to the History of the Eastern Townships; Joseph Bouchette, A Topographical Description of the Province of Lower Canada; Mrs. C. M. Day, History of the Eastern Townships

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