Just a note on something i found while doing research...it reminded me why we have social programs and safety nets: Copy of a Letter from Murdoch Johnston, addressed to his brother William Johnston, Overseer, Ossoor by Bengalan, Madrad, East India Translated from Gaelic-translation updated-probably March or April 1851 ***************************************************************** Mara Township by Orillia, Lake Simcoe Canada West, Upper Canada, America My very beloved William, It is with pen of grief and ink of tears that I fabricate this letter of sympathetic feelings and renewing my melancholy wounds which are marked so deep in my heart that it will not be healed or made up on this side of Jordan, as I was chastised severely. But thanks to the Most High, He gives me many comforts and mixed my gall with honey from the rock and with finest of the wheat of his promise. I think you have heard of all my trials I encountered during my adventure to these foreign parts. Blessed be the Lord who declared in his word, “When thee passeth through the rivers they shall not overflow thee.” I left Coll in the year 1847. You knew that the Lord blessed me with children. He gave me seven boys and two girls so that I could not stay any longer in Coll with my poor family when the Lord cut the staff of bread from our mouths and I was constrained to make my escape as the Lord ordered it. I left Liverpool on the 7th of July, 1847, with a number of Irishmen, who had the fever among them. There was also the pox, even the small pox and you may know how I was myself and my wife was in the same state with the children without taking the smallpox. After ten days at sea, the disease broke out with mortal power to all of us. My wife and myself and all the children were seized with the small pox and after four days, my most lovely Alexander was interred in the watery grave of the Atlantic Ocean along with many others. Thanks to the Lord, we came after a dangerous voyage of seven weeks and five days, to a place called “Quarantine Island” where hospitals and doctors were engaged to inspect the immigrants, and when we landed after getting over the smallpox, but severely struck with the fever, we were taken away, the men to one hospital, the women to another and the children to yet another. I was kept in the hospital with the Black Fever for two months and when I recovered a little, I searched for the children and my dear wife. I found my wife and one of the children in one of the hospitals. -2- They did not know what became of the other children, but they expected they had all died, but demanded of me to search in Quebec and in Montreal for them, as maybe some of them were sent away with the survivors by steamboat. I was sent away from “Quarantine Island” and left my dear wife behind with the fever as they would not allow me to await her, which proved to be the last sight of a dear espoused wife. So there Brother, if you could think of my situation of being alone, deprived of all my dear family like unto David when he sayeth, “I am like a Pelican in the Wilderness or like an Owl in the Desert, pouring his blood out of his wound and like the Owl weeping and howling when all were asleep”. I came to Quebec, but found none there. They sent us from Quebec, even the immigrants, to Montreal and when I came to Montreal, I searched there in a surgery office and found their names. I was told that Donald died the same day he came to Montreal. I went through the hospitals to find any of the rest. I went into the ward there and when I stepped in, the nurses were lifting a corpse out of a bed. I fixed my eyes on the corpse and found it to be my Isabella. I looked around through the ward again and saw little William and scarcely could I make him out until I spoke to him in Gaelic and he cried “ Oh Father, Isabella is dead, she was in one bed with me and died.” Oh, William, you cannot learn the state of my feelings when William cried “Oh Father, I shall never part from you.” I went out after some time again and found James and Lachlan in another ward nearly dead. I could not get any information on Joseph(?)and Sarah. I stopped a fortnight in Montreal to what the Lord might do with me and blessed be His Holy Name, he looked to my distress and heard the cry of my need and bestowed upon me and on the children a little strength, so I went away without clothes, even a stitch and without money except 1/8d. I came away to Finglan and from there to Toronto where we were all struck again with the fever. The hospitals were all filled up so we were divided again one in every hospital and after five or six days Neil died. Then we, the rest of us, were six months in Toronto sick, and came afterwards to Mara where some of our countrymen were and found John and Sarah there alive after recovering from the fever but without anything in the world. But Neil MacKinnon, you can recollect who was in ( - - - - - -?) the Wherry of the Laird of Coll and took care of them.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Jul 2013 06:29:42 +0000