The View from Castle Rock

horses and Aunt and Cousin there and came on, to get us three to pilot them the rest of the way. We got through with only one upsetting, but the horses were very tired, for the snow was so deep that they would stop every few rods of the way. At last we got to the shanty and got the horses into shelter, and as father had brought provisions with him we were fairly comfortable.
    Father wanted to take a load of fish home with him, so we went to Goderich the next day and got the fish. The following day he started for his home.
    I got back to Morris, where Aunt and Cousin had things fixed up in fine style. Thomas got his discharge from baking and cooking and we all felt the change to be for the better.
    We worked on, getting some of the huge trees down, but we were not much accustomed to the work and snow being very deep again, the going was very slow. About the beginning of April, 1852, there was a very hard crust on the snow, so that a person could run on it, anywhere.
    As I was to take up a lot for an old neighbour, we started on April 5th, to look at some vacant lots that were for sale. We were five or six miles from our shanty, when a heavy fall of snow came on, and the east wind caused the snow to cover up the blaze marks on the trees, and we had great difficulty finding our way home. Aunt and Cousin were very pleased
to
see us, when we arrived, for they thought we would surely become lost.
    I did nothing on my place that winter, neither did Thomas. He and John worked together for some years. I went back to Halton in the spring and came back to Morris in the fall of 1852 and got my own shanty up, and a piece chopped down that winter. My cousins and I worked together with one another, wherever our work was most needed.
    They helped me to log some, in the fall of 1853, and I was not in Morris again until the spring of 1857, when I got a wife to share my hardships, joys and sorrows.
    I have been here (1907) for sixty years and have had some hardships and have seen many changes both in the inhabitants and the country. For the first few months we carried our provisions seven miles-now there is a railroad less than a quarter of a mile from us.
    On the 5th of November, 1852, I cut down the first tree on my lot, and if I had the trees on it now, which were on it then, I would be the richest man in Morris Township.
    James Laidlaw, oldest brother of John and Thomas, moved to Morris in the fall of 1852. John took on the job of building a shanty for James Waldie, who later became his father-in-law. James and I went to help John with the building, and as we were falling a tree, one of its branches was broken in the falling, and thrown backwards, hitting James on the head and killing him instantly.
    We had to carry his body a mile and a quarter to the nearest house, and I had to convey the sad news to his wife, mother, brother and sister. It was the saddest errand of my life. I had to get help to carry the body home, as there was only a footpath through the bush, and the snow was very deep and soft. This was on April 5th, 1853.
    I have seen many ups and downs since I came to Morris. There are only three on this Concession, who were first settlers on the land here, and the descendants of five others, who were first settlers. In other words, there are only eight families living on the lots that their fathers took up between Walton and Blyth, a distance of 7 and a half miles.
    Cousin John, one of the three who came here in 1851, departed this life on April nth, 1907. The old Laidlaws are nearly all gone. Cousin Thomas and I are the only ones now (1907) living of those who first came in to Morris.
    And the place that now knows us, will soon know us no more, for we are all old frail creatures.

    James, once Jamie, Laidlaw died like his father in a place where no reliable burial records yet existed. It is believed that he was put into a corner of the land that he and his brothers and cousin had cleared, then sometime around 1900 his body was moved to the Blyth Cemetery.
    Big Rob, who wrote this account of the settlement in Morris, was the father of many sons and daughters. Simon, John, Duncan, Forrest, Sandy, Susan, Maggie, Annie, Lizzie. Duncan left home early. (That name is correct, but I am not absolutely certain of all of the others.) He went to Guelph, and they seldom saw him. The others stayed at home. The house was big enough for them. At first their mother and father were with them, then for several years just their father, and