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Title: From Thomas W. Magrath, Esq., Upper Canada,
ID4546
CollectionAuthentic Letters from Upper Canada [Rev. Thomas Radcliff]
Fileradcliff/4
Year1832
SenderMagrath, Thomas Wm
Sender Gendermale
Sender Occupationsuperintendent for settlers
Sender Religionunknown
OriginErindale, Toronto, Upper Canada
DestinationDublin, Ireland
RecipientRev. Thomas Radcliff
Recipient Gendermale
Relationshipfriends
Source
Archive
Doc. No.
Date
Partial Date
Doc. Type
Logunknown
Word Count1668
Genresettling, farming
Note
Transcriptto the Rev. Thomas Radcliff, Dublin.

Erindale, Toronto, Jan. 1832.

My dear Sir,
It may be interesting to you, and useful to your friends,
to have some information relative to our first agricultural
attempts, and subsequent operations on our new land. My
last letter, being confined to one object, omitted some details
on these subjects, which I now hasten to furnish.
After having purchased our lot of seven hundred acres*
from Government, for fifteen hundred and seventy dollars,
(about £325 British,) my father, during the period of his
residence in York, sent my brothers and myself to erect
a log-house on our farm, of which we all took possession
immediately after its completion; and when fairly lodged
in that, we undertook the building of our present residence,
which is a frame-house.
This dwelling is 44 feet by 33, containing three stories;
that under ground is 12 feet high, and built with stone
and lime.
The mode of forming such a house is as follows:—
A framer, on receiving the dimensions and plan, cuts
out the mortices and prepares the frame. A Bee, which
means an assemblage of the neighbours, is then called; and
a person well skilled in the business, and termed a Boss,
takes the leadership of the active party, who, with the
mere mechanical aid of a fallowing, or raising, pole,
gradually elevates the mighty bents, until the tenants
(connected with each other by tie beams,) drop into
their mortices in the sill, to which, as well as to each other,
they are immediately afterwards secured by pins, and in a
few hours the skeleton of the house, with its rafters, &c.
is ready for shingles and clap boards.
It will appear strange to you that a house could be
covered in before the sides are finished; and still more
so, that the cellar, or basement story, should not be excavated,
nor the foundation-walls built up to the sill until
the upper works were completed; but such was our course
of proceeding.
At the raising of my father's house, seventy kind neighbours
assisted, and worked extremely hard for an entire day, without any recompense whatever, except a plentiful dinner al fresco.
In a few months my brothers and I, who are tolerably
handy, with the aid of two carpenters, had the inside
finished; and we have now been nearly three years inhabiting
a truly comfortable house, quite in the home
fashion, except that it has the advantage of a verandah,
(not very common in Ireland,) on three sides, (supported
by pillars and secured by railing,) into which we can
walk from our bed-rooms, and enjoy the delightful air of
the summer and autumn mornings.
This verandah is 12 feet in breadth. We pass our leisure
hours in it during the fine weather, choosing the shady,
and sheltered side, according to the sun, or wind; and
frequently sitting there with candles until bed time; with
the occasional annoyance, however, of the troublesome
moskitoes;—but where can we expect to find perfect enjoyment?
When we had completed the house, we raised a barn,
sixty feet by thirty-six, and eighteen feet in height, with
an ice-house, root house, and summer dairy beneath it,
which cost us, in cash for hired labour, only twelve dollars
to a framer, and the price of some nails, worth about 2s. 10d.
We had a second Bee for the raising of this, which was
effected in five hours, and on this occasion were able to
supply our obliging neighbours, who again volunteered
their valuable services, with an abundant dinner and supper
in the dwelling house; and to gratify them with a little
music. The floor of this barn would surprize you, it is supported
by twenty-three beams of wood, eighteen inches square—
with two courses of three-inch plank over them. There is
in fact as much timber in the floor alone, as would cost you
more than a hundred pounds.
With us it is a cheap commodity, and it is less expensive
to draw and use it in great bulk, than to send it to the
saw mill to be reduced to smaller scantlings. The cause of
the double flooring of thick plank is that (the timber being
fresh) the grain, which would be lost through the opening
joints of a single floor, may be saved, by having those
joints covered by a second tier of boards.
My two brothers, James and Charles, unassisted, cut
eighteen thousand shingles for the roof and laid them on,
besides siding and flooring the barn—no idle hours here!
Before the house was ready for our reception, we had
cleared twenty acres of the land for wheat, and during
the successive operations of brushing, chopping, logging,
burning and fencing—my father was obliged to hire workmen.
The land has a miserable appearance when first cleared,
the surface and stumps being as black as fire can render
them, and these latter standing three feet high, to facilitate
their being drawn out by two yoke of oxen when their
roots decay, which does not take effect for seven or eight
years, (according to the kind of timber) and is more
tedious if the land be laid down for grass.
Our first agricultural proceedings are as rude and
simple as can well be imagined. A triangular harrow, the
teeth of which weigh 7 lbs. each, is dragged over the newly
prepared ground; its irregular and jumping passage over
the roots and loose vegetable earth, scatters the ashes of
the burned timber over the entire surface; the wheat is
then sown, about one bushel to the acre, and another
scrape of the harrow completes the process.
On some portion of his land thus cleared, the new settler
plants potatoes, turnips, pumpkins and Indian com, merely
laying the seed upon the ground, and, with a hoe, scratching
a sufficient portion of earth and ashes to cover it—
a luxuriant crop generally succeeds; in this district from
twenty to thirty bushels of wheat per acre—the land is
sown with Timothy grass and clover in the following
spring, while the snow is on the ground, that it may be
easily ascertained whether the seed is sown correctly.
After wheat, no other crop is taken (generally speaking)
except hay, until after the removal of the roots, when the
ploughs can work.
The weight of hay seldom exceeds two tons per acre,
because mowing on such land is a work of difficulty; with
all our care we leave much of it uncut, and frequently
break our scythes.
To reduce the expense in harvest time, we use cradle
scythes to cut all the grain, although they do not make
quite as clean work as the sickles.
A good cradler will take down from two to three acres
of wheat in a day. Gleaning is not worth the attention of
even a child; the scattered grains go to the sustenance
of the wild pigeons of which the flocks are sometimes miles
in length. By the way, I must ask you to account for a curious circumstance
which results from sowing wheat on a swamp, or wherever wet lodges.
The purest seed wheat that can be procured, in such soil,
becomes a kind of grain called chesse. Some dry land
of ours produces fine wheat; but where there is a tendency
to swamp the chesse grows, and in one spot, with us there
was last year half an acre of it with very little wheat
among it. Some farmers maintain that it does not proceed
from wheat, but from a dormant seed; others, of whom
my father is one, are of opinion that the wheat degenerates
from the constant moisture and becomes what we term
chesse, and, what tends to confirm this very natural hypothesis
Is that chesse did not grow in any part of the field
where wheat is not sown, and the adjoining patches which
were purposely left unsown produced only rank grass and
This chesse looks exactly like wheat, whilst growing,
but when beginning to shoot or spindle—the head opens.
I will send you a specimen of it cut in harvest time.
It is an advantageous circumstance for the clearing of
this country, that the settler finds it his advantage to bring
in fresh land every year. Some emigrants, who are without
capital or assistance, exhaust their first clearance; and
others prepare their land by girdling the trees, which
though it kills them, and allows vegetation under and
around them, is an injudicious mode, as they frequently
fall either on the fences or on the crops, or, what is worse, on the cattle, and occasion annual and often very inconvenient
labour to remove them.
We had a very spirited manager for the Canada company
in this neighbourhood—Mr. Galt—whose various
publications bear strong evidence of his literary powers,
and whose foresight and perseverance, acting upon a great
scale, would eventually have produced a wonderful improvement
in advancing the most important interests of
this country.
The London merchants, however, composing the Canada
company, did not approve of the expenditure of too
much of their cash on general improvements, without an
immediate return, and recalled him, placing in his room
the Hon. William Allen and Messrs. Thomas Mercer Jones,
ånd Dunlop, better known by the name of Tiger Dunlop
—the last, though not least, of whom, is Warden of the
woods and forests—all excellent and honourable men, who
will conscientiously do their duty, and may, perhaps,
eventually reap the advantage of Mr. Galt's wisdom and
exertions.
An individual emigrant must expend capital and toil
before he can have an overplus for market; why then
should immediate profit be expected by the company from
a number of colonists, within a shorter period?
I believe you will not be sorry that I close my letter here.
My next shall treat of various unconnected matters that
may be interesting and useful to settlers.

Your's, my dear Sir,
Faithfully,
T. W. MAGRATH.