(submitted by Greg Stott)
In about 1871 Elijah Dunham (1810 - 1893) and Anna Maria Briggs (1813 - 1899) and the two youngest of their eight children, J. Wilmot Dunham (1848 -1943) and Martha Wilson Dunham (1856 - 1926), left Lobo Twp. for Watford. The couple had begun their lives in northern York County, Elijah the son of United Empire Loyalists and Anna Maria the daughter of Quaker migrants from the Hudson Valley.
Elijah was a pillar of the local Wesleyan Methodist community. He was also a strong supporter of the Salvation Army when they were in Watford in 1889. As Martha explained in a letter, "Pa has gone to the Army [Salvation Army] ..." Both the Captain and the Cadet were staying with the Dunhams, and Martha further explained that "Ma likes Cadet well. The Capt told up town that he liked to come over to our place. You see he & Pa are both Nova Scotia men." (Elijah's parents had initially settled in New Brunswick after the Revolution.)
The Dunhams lived frugally. After Elijah's death Martha wrote to one of her brothers
We miss Pa so much fixing up things. But he is happier. Ma says she would leave all today is she could go to Pa. Sometimes she thinks she will go crazy. The neighbors were very good all through...And our friends up town come to see us. Milton Taylor came Monday morning as we were at breakfast & split wood for us. We sold our calf for wood. Rained & thundered a little last night. Quite cool today. Mrs. Wm Hume brought us a loaf of bread & some meat Wedny evg & we had neither in the house. We have a bag of flour Rob't [Dunham, Martha's older brother] brought when he came to see me but I could not go up town & we had no cents to send a boy, so last night we borrowed a yeast cake & Ma bakes today. Mrs. Hume often brings a loaf of bread....She brought a loaf of bread and a pie.
Anna Maria continued to live in Watford until her passing in May, 1899. Then Martha moved to East Gwilimbury Twp. where her parents had begun their lives. She left most of the furnishings with her brother Robert (1838 - 1917) who lived north of Arkona.
In 1903, Robert and Louisa (Green) Dunham's fourth child, Mabel Olga Dunham (1872 - 1950) married Philip Stanley Castle Austin (1876 - 1955), who owned and operated greenhouses and orchards in the southeastern corner of Arkona. (After 1889 he has been raised by Warwick Township farmers Alvinza and Margaret Backhouse.) Mabel (Dunham) and Philip Austin had three children: Florence, Lawrence, and Robert.
Dunham family, July 1928: Lorena J. (McChesney) Dunham, Colonel C. Dunham, Ethel L. (Dunham) Fisher, T. M. Rusell Dunham, and Cecil H. (Dunham) Harrison. Courtesy G Stott.
Later in 1903 Robert and Louisa's fifth child, Colonel Cecil Dunham (1875 -1962) married Lorena Jane McChesney (1879 - 1951). In 1904 they purchased the north half of Lot 24, Con. 5 NER for $2700, to which they moved with their infant daughter Ethel L. (1904 - 1994). Lorena despaired the farm consisted of only "burdock and apple trees" which surrounded the one half storey frame house built in about 1857. Here their two youngest children, Cecile H. (1907 - 2007) and T.M. Russell (1912 - 2005) were born.
A near catastrophe struck on Good Friday, 1913 when a sever windstorm tore the roof off the summer kitchen and crashed it onto the main house. The family has to rebuild. As Lorena explained in a 1914 letter,
we have been so busy that we hardely had time to turn around. We are sick of building we got the house block in. Kitchen, Dining Room Parlor & Pantry plastered and stairway plastered. Four bedrooms and four close clos [clothes closets] up stair to do yet and one bed room and closet down. We been sleeping in the parlor this winter. We are doing the painting ourselves ... February was cold and a few days in January but the rest of the winter was mild not very much snow. We are getting 12 eggs a day. Old goose started to lay. We had two geese last year but we killed one in mistake and the one we kept is a gander and we kept a small white goose to eat and kept putting it of[f] so now will kept it too. The gander is too thin to kill so we have two pair. Milking one Fresh cow and striping three have another fresh one at the end of March. Will have six this summer....This house has pinched us close. Wind storms on good Friday last cause us a lot expence.
In the end they built a second storey, added a verandah, and covered it over in cement block for the extravagant price of $600!
Colonel and Lorena Dunham preserved and continued to farm. Ethel married Plympton farmer Marshall Fisher in 1927 in the parlour of the family home and Cecile married Thedford farmer Ernal Harrison in 1932 in the same room.
T.M. Russell Dunham kept careful track of farm and family events in his diary between 1927 and 1936. In 1940 the house gained hydro and indoor plumbing. Russell gradually took an increasing role in the building up of the farm's poultry, concentrating upon chickens and egg production. In 1945 he married Jean Houghton (1920 - 2000), a teacher from London. They left the farm in 1946.
After Lorena's death in 1951, Colonel continued to live at home, though he gave up most of his livestock. He spent the last seven winters with Russell and Jean near Komoka, but returned home in the summers. After Colonel's death Russell could not bring himself to part with the farm and rented in until it was taken over by his daughter Lynne and her husband, Glenn Stott, in 1970.
Chapter 24 of 25 - Dunham Family
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