James Thomas Bready’s wife Annie Dougan was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada on October 18, 1867 to Thomas Dougan and his wife Isabella Wellwood.  Annie was the ninth of ten children, and the first born in Canada.  It was Annie’s journal “I Remember Father” that ignited my curiosity about my ancestry, and so I include the entire text here, just as I received it from my mother:

““I REMEMBER FATHER”

By Annie Dougan Brady

as told to her daughter Ruth”

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“My father, Thomas Dougan, was born in 1825 on Sohoe Street in Glasgow, Scotland.  His mother and father died in 1832 in a plague where people were dying by the hundreds.  Funeral directors were unable to meet the demands for caskets, the deaths being so numerous, and trenches had to be dug for burials.  His grandmother and grandfather Gibson took him into their home, and he had to go to work at the age of seven as apprentice at harness making.  He attended school in the morning and worked in the afternoon, Thomas did not receive any spending money while he worked, but had to give his small earnings to the Gibsons.  When the lads were playing on Glasgow Green, they all had money (halfpenny) for pea soup or taffy, but Thomas had none.   He had to go to a farm every day for milk, and one day he thought he would help himself to a few halfpennies, as he wished to have pocket money as the other boys had.  His grandparents thought this was a terrible crime and he was severely punished.  He learned to read and write at school and he spent a great deal of his later years in reading.  He had a retentive mind and could talk well on articles he had read.

“Thomas married Isabella Wellwood of Glasgow, Scotland in 1844, both being nineteen years of age at the time,  The following children were born in Glasgow, Scotland, with a two or three year interval: Margaret, Mary, Belle, Annie, who died at the age of one year, Jeanette, Elizabeth, Agnes, who was five weeks old when her parents sailed for Canada.  (The voyage by sailboat took between four and five weeks.)  Born in Merritton, Ontario, Canada, were Annie, who should not have been named for the baby that died, and Thomas, the only boy.

“While living in Glasgow, Scotland, mother and father were employed at a hand loom which was kept in the house, and when the cloth was woven, they took it to the warehouse to be sold.  Father worked as a twister in a cotton factory in Merritton, while the older girls went out to service, doing housework for wealthy families.

“Our home in Merritton was very simple, bare floors in the kitchen and hand loomed rugs in other rooms.  The house was heated by a large stove, wood for which was bought by the cord and father sawed it to the right length for the stove.  We never used coal.  Our home was lighted by coal-oil lamps as there was no gas or electricity, at least none at the Dougan domicile.

“Mother sewed most of our clothes by hand, (no sewing machine) and a neighbor, Mrs. Kennedy, made some of our dresses.  My first “store bought” clothes were bought for me at the age of eleven when we were preparing to take the journey to Fall River, Mass.  I was quite proud of my new dress and jacket, but felt sad at leaving my playmates, some of whom came to the train to bid me goodbye.

“While living in Merritton father kept hens and geese, as did all our neighbors.  No such thing as refrigeration and father would buy sides of beef, which would be hung in the woodshed, frozen, until used.  Potatoes and other vegetables were bought by the bushel.  Yellow corn meal, ground at the grist-mill nearby, was used for cereal in the morning, with plenty of molasses.  Father refused to eat cereal as he had so much porridge while living at Grandmother Gibson’s that I guess he felt that he couldn’t take any more of it.  Mother made delicious Scotch scones, her own bread, and apple pie.  I don’t remember having cake; perhaps mother was not a cake baker, but her vegetable soup, cooked in a large iron pot, was something to remember through the years.

“The winters were severe in Ontario and many times father came home from work with icicles hanging from his beard.  Merritton was a village with a population of three or four hundred inhabitants, mostly Scotch and Irish.  Hiking was quite the fashion; many people walking three or four miles to work or school.  How well I remember the little red brick schoolhouse, with the pot-bellied stove in the center of the room.  My first teacher, Miss Smith became ill, and died of tuberculosis, and was replaced by Miss Halstead.

“Every fine Sunday in summer father would take Tommie and me for a picnic to the woods, and would teach us bird and treelore.  He knew the names of all the birds, and different kinds of trees.  We loved to watch the squirrels.  Father liked to go fishing in his spare time, and one time, while coming over a bridge, he was run over by a horse and buggy, breaking his leg, but he managed to crawl home without aid.

“Father subscribed to a magazine that was published in Scotland and called “Tales of the Border” and he would read aloud evenings while mother braided rugs or sewed our clothes.  We would sit wide-eyed, sometimes giggling at the wrong time, and would be scolded by father who threatened to stop reading unless the nonsense was stopped immediately.  All would be quiet for awhile, father continuing with the story, but when the hilarity started again we would all be rushed off to bed.”

(to be continued…)

© Deborah Ray and archivecookie.com, 2010.