I had no time to write in my Journal this past year, but now I have completed my teacher training and I have obtained a teaching position in Calderwood. I am doing fine on my own and I know all will be well. Calderwood is in Grey County. It is a little distance from Mount Forest so I must board out again and cannot go home every night.
I have returned to Mt Forest after spending a year in Toronto to get my teaching certificate. I am glad it is over, for I felt very far from home. I made some new friends but they all came from different places. There was no one else from Mt.Forest. Pa came to visit but he did not like the big city.
I had no time to write in my Journal this past year, but now I have completed my teacher training and I have obtained a teaching position in Calderwood. I am doing fine on my own and I know all will be well. Calderwood is in Grey County. It is a little distance from Mount Forest so I must board out again and cannot go home every night.
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1890
Nell is to be married. She went to Sudbury to open a medical practice there and met a man named Thomas John Ryan and they are to be married. I think he is a distant cousin of mine so now she will have the same name as me. I shall be in the wedding party. Nell is very happy she says she will not stop being a doctor but will have babies and continue to practice medicine. She says her new husband is proud of her, she calls him T. J. I am going to learn to be a teacher and I will keep teaching after I marry if I ever get married but I don’t think I will. March 1890
I have been very busy since Nell returned and got over the pneumonia. I spend a lot of time after school helping her in her and cousin Ab’s medical practice. I like it fine. I like it when I have time to read some of Nell’s medical volumes. I think I might be a doctor, too. [image..medical book] My job is keeping track of appointments and doing the books for them and I also help out at the farm on the weekend. Nell says I am such a good writer and so good with numbers that I should look for a teaching position next year as soon as I am sixteen. I do not know if I would care to be a teacher but there is not much other good employment for a woman. Ma never stops saying I should come back to the farm. Now, she is saying I must think about marriage and settling down in a few years. I don’t want to settle down and I surely don’t want to get married. I want to be like Nell and have a career. I know Ma thinks it is odd that I want to be on my own for some time yet. Pa says he is proud of me and I should continue my schooling. I need to earn enough money as I am determined to be independent so I will ask Nell about becoming a teacher. It is December 1889 and I am tired now but I must make the tea for Uncle John and then do my homework. I miss Nell but I am glad she is happy with her work in Toronto even if it so difficult to be a lady doctor. My Pa says she is brave. It is easier for Cousin Ab since he is a man.
I have not written in my Journal for a long time. School and church and farm chores and visiting take up all my time but some terrible news came today, good for selfish me but bad for Nell. The terrible news is Nell has pneumonia, the good news for me is that she must come home from Toronto to get better. Cousin Albert is coming with her and he will start a medical practice here in Mount Forest. Cousin Will is coming home, too, he will be their assistant, I think. They will both be doctors here when Nell gets better. I am worried about her, but I am glad she is coming home. I will have to sleep on a pallet bed in her room with her. I will look after her till she is well. I am frightened that she will not get better but I am happy that she will be here. Dear Nell and Will and Ab,
Well, I have just got home from school now and am getting my own tea since nobody else is home this evening (a queer way to get it, thank you) but as I had not written to you since my last little note I thought you might think I didn’t care so I thought I would sit down and write you a few lines about what is happening here. Mr. Howey’s mother died a little while ago and they are all in strict black. The new woods boss is in the habit of going to Wilfer’s. Mrs. Wilfer and Audrey Ciro were at Council meeting the other night and Mrs Wilfer went to sue Audrey for $1.50 in damages. I do not know what for but Uncle John said she didn’t get it. Do you get homesick, Will? I think you are very well off there with the two doctors. Three years would be a long time but if you study hard you might get to be doctor in two years. All will be well if you study very hard. We are having terrible weather up here. Just now cold and damp, heavy rain the night before last. The cold makes my bones ache but Pa says someone who is my age can’t have sore bones. Have they nice churches in Toronto? Did you get a letter from Polly, Will? At least Uncle John thought the letter was from Polly and he sent it to you. Uncle John wrote too, he seems so lonesome for you all. Please read this letter then let the rest read it or read it out loud. It is filled with nonsense but it is from Home. Lovingly, Jennie I am back in school again and it has been very busy at school and at home this Fall. We had a Harvest House in our Church last night and had a great dinner. My, the place looked nice. Uncle John has to go to Council every night almost and sometimes twice a day or else he is going to Church. This leaves me alone. I think that after a while he will live in the Council chambers if they keep a good cork screw. Uncle George was at the Harvest House and Liz Holmes asked him to see her home but he would not venture to do so saying he was not in the habit of seeing girls home. I guess he was not in the habit of being asked. I will write to Nell and Ab and Will after school tomorrow and give them all our news It is now the winter of 1886. I am sitting in the kitchen and I am going to write a letter to Nell. The lamps are lit as Ma came for a visit with baby Eva and built up the fire in the stove before I got home, so it is warm. Ma is better but not strong yet. She brought soup and fresh bread so I will not have to cook tonight. They have gone now to visit with the neighbours before Pa picks them up in the sleigh to go back to the farm. Sometimes I wish I could just go with them, but that is not going to happen. I have made my choice and I am determined to succeed. I will pour myself a cup of strong tea and take my pen and ink pot to the table to write to Nell and Ab and Will in Toronto before I begin my homework It is quiet except for the hiss of the gas lamps that Uncle John had put in over the summer past. I think I like gas lamps. They are easier than the old coal oil lamps, and certainly give more light than the candle that I take up the stairs to my bedroom I shall tell Nell all my news of home… Dear Nell, I am using the pen that you gave me to write this letter. It it a pleasure to have such a fine instrument. I am getting along pretty well at school. Latin is still hard especially that Euclid. I am not embracing it as I should, but I have the same professor as you had and he tells me I am progressing. I saw my brother Tom today and he was just after having a pitch out of the old sleigh. He got his cheek pretty well bashed around the eye. He had Gramma with him and she is at Dr Jones and is pretty bad. I hear she will need surgery. The horse took a fright at a sleigh with two little boys in it shaking a horse blanket. I hope Gramma will be well soon. Ma told me that Mr..Laurent’s cow broke into the Addison’s barn and took a great gorge of their potatoes. It bloated up and died a few minutes after. A great loss for the poor man and sad for the cow, too. The men are busy at the pumps today and all this week as there is flooding on the farm. I hope that you are not studying too hard, Nell. I will write again soon. Lovingly, Jennie Another year has passed and Ma is still not her old self. I hope all will be well with Ma. I wish Nell was here. She would know what to do but she is still in Kingston leaning how to be a doctor for ladies and babies. Uncle John and cousin Will seem to eat a great deal, but I am getting better at fixing meals and no one has complained. I should tell them off if they did so, for I do my best. Nell says to pay them no mind, as they complained when she cooked, too, and she said she just told them she was doing her best. It is splendid when I get a letter from Nell. She is doing fine and is almost finished learning to be a doctor. The worst of it is that I am left alone here every night and I don’t like that too well. Uncle John has his church and now his Council Meetings. He is a Councilman for the West Ward. We are all troubled very much by this ‘flu and also how to get money in these hard times. Work is very slack in the blacksmith’s shop and what work Pa does get, he is seldom paid for. It is said that having a farm means you go without and I find that to be very true. I hear from Uncle John that Nell is going to practice medicine in a big hospital in Toronto and she will have her own doctor’s office with cousin Ab, who is also a doctor. Uncle John is pleased that Nell will have Ab with her. Cousin Will wants to go to Toronto to be their assistant. It is strange to think that I will miss him. It is now 1884 and when I went home last weekend the new baby was born. She is called Eva and my sister Ellen is sick but Ma says she will get better soon. Nell sent me a new apron and some gloves for Ellen. That made Ellen feel better and she ran to the box asking where are the mitts that woman sent. Ellen is too young to remember Nell. Ma is still not well and she wanted me to say home with her to look after the new baby but Pa says Bertha can come to the farm to help and I should stay in school. The ladies at Church think I should stay home, too. Mrs. Wilfers, our neighbour, came to see Ma and the new baby and she told me school was silly for girls. Pa says I should not mind them when they talk so. He is the one who decides and Uncle John, too. I wish Nell was here so that I could talk to her about what I should do. Last week my brother George got a pitchfork right through his hand and he tried to pull it off and put it right down to the handle. Also the dog bit my brother John on the hand and it swelled up but it is better now. I am going to get my teeth filled with gold. There are two of them decayed. Cousin Will gave me three dollars to get them fixed. I thought that was very kind of him. We are getting along splendid now. It is getting very cold and snowing a lot. While Bertha is home, we are going to make a quilt together on the weekends. I already spun the wool and knit myself and Ma each a pair of stockings. I also spun enough wool to sell to Mrs. Wilfers, and earned fifteen cents to get my rings fixed. My Aunt Eva gave me a present of them because I was doing so well in school. Nell’s brother, Albert has got a school up in Newstaad among the Dutch. The Master of our school is going to stay with us until the first of March in spite of the trustees. I don’t know why they don’t like him. I like him fine but I hear that he is going to leave and go to a school in London. I hope not Images of what would have been typical tools for the time.
Today was a full day at school. I still do not do so well at mental math. I will have to practice. I really like the stories specially the ones that tell us how to behave. Mr. Reid says they are stories with a moral. I like them fine. When I go home on this weekend, I will help Ma can plums . She says they will be ready for picking by Saturday and so will the crab apples. The boys will help pick them if they are not too busy. I need to find Nell’s receipt for how to put down the crabs. My sister Bertha is going to the Central School in town. It is for older students. She does not stay with me and Uncle John, it is too far from her school. She boards with Mrs. O’Malley and says she likes it fine. She is taught by a Mr. Sherman. She says they can do as they like in class and he doesn’t say a word. I don’t know if I like that. Bertha does not come home every weekend. She tells me that she has too much to do with her studies. I hope all is well. Ma worries when Bertha does not come home.
It is getting colder now. Pa will have to use the sleigh to fetch me home when the snow comes. |
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