Chapter Five
The Third and fourth Generations
Farm animals have always been an important part of the Ross Farm story.
(Matthew Gates)
George Ross, who lived out the 1800s as the family head of Ross Farm, died there in 1903 at age eighty-seven. He was buried in the Old Anglican Cemetery in New Ross.
His fifth son, Albert, who was unmarried, took over the farm in 1903 and lived at Rosebank Cottage with his spinster sister, Lizzie. The son of one of their sisters, Ethel, would inherit Ross Farm after Albert and Lizzie died.
Albert, known as “the second Captain Ross,” joined the militia as captain in 1889 and retired in 1913 as lieutenant colonel. The military tradition had carried on through another generation.
The road from Sherbrooke to Hammonds Plains had still not been built but there was a passible road to Chester Basin and to Kentville. A road had been pushed through along the South Shore from Chester to Halifax, making the slow journey by water a thing of the past.
In Albert’s time, the pioneering phase of Ross Farm was over, small mixed farming had begun, and life was comfortable though money was scarce.
Gradually, manufactured implements and farm machinery became available and—as farmers were able pay for it—marvellous new labour-saving devices began to appear in the community and in Eaton’s catalogue.
In 1834, the horse-drawn reaper, invented by Cyrus McCormick, made grain harvesting easier, with back-and-forth cutting blades and flailing arms that swept clumps of cut grain onto the field—to be gathered up and bound into sheaves.
Inventions like the kerosene engine changed life on the farm.
(Author)
It was succeeded by the binder in 1872, which cut and bound the grain into sheaves, which women and older children stood up in the field to dry in “stooks” of eight.
The dried sheaves of grain were cut open and beaten against the barn floor with a flail, knocking the grain off the straw. Then came the thrashing machine powered by a horse treadmill or a gasoline engine, which was moved from farm to farm where neighbours gathered to do the thrashing in one day—always with a big meal served by the ladies to the dusty, hungry men at midday. That evening they would have a barn dance, if there was a fiddler in the thrashing crew.
But the most revolutionary change was yet to come—the internal combustion engine.
The first farm engines didn’t propel vehicles or haul tillage equipment. They were simple “one-lunger” stationary engines that pumped water, turned circular saws, and performed a host of other tasks. The same engines, made in Lunenburg and mounted on schooner decks, hoisted sails and ran bilge pumps. Then in the 1930s came the real game-changer—the tractor—which brought with it bigger, heavier, cultivation and harvesting equipment. But ox and horsepower prevailed, and there was never a tractor on Ross Farm.
Captain Albert Ross died at home in 1950, his sister, Lizzie, three years later, and Ross Farm was passed to the fourth generation, Ross White, the son of their sister, Ethel. With that act, the White name appeared on the Ross Farm deed and continues to today.
EDWARD AGAIN
Edward’s diary-keeping continued until his death. Twenty years after his marriage in 1844, he and his wife moved to Port Medway.
April 14, 1868: It is a hard time for me to be detained here in Port Medway in debt, which I never contracted.
June 3, 1868: 55 today, in debt, and my home has slipped away from my grasp.
February 11, 1889: My ready cash is reduced to the magnificent sum of 10 cents.
June 5: Alas, I have no permanent home. My mind is tossed on a fearful sea of doubts and perplexities. I cannot make up whether to go to Halifax or Boston. To one place or other I must go, and that soon.
October 16, 1869: Oh, why can I not get some profitable employment? My clothes are getting shabby, my shoes are wearing out, and I see, as yet, no means of replacing them.
Two years later, back in New Ross on New Year’s Day, he wrote:
I am here out of employment, the guest of my brother George. My poor wife is in Boston.
Debts adding up, Edward decided to go to Boston to look for work.
He travelled to Kentville where he stayed overnight with his brother William before proceeding to Margaretsville and boarding the schooner Talisman to Boston.
Five weeks later, he had landed a job selling subscriptions for a monthly publication called Merry’s Museum—probably on commission.
His first real job was as a bookkeeper at two dollars a day. Three years later, he was hired as warehouse-factory night watchman and given a small office space from which to begin an import/export business—shipping onions and other goods to Halifax.
September 23: Received a letter from J. W. Horseman saying “sending a barrel of potatoes with 5 bottles of brandy inside…dangerous experiment … Would not wish to be detected smuggling. I hope the shipment is not seized in transit.
Then there came health troubles.
November 16, 1874: Maria’s liver is afflicted and I feel very uneasy about her.
On July 31, 1876, his mother, Mary, died “of general disability,” and four months later his oldest brother, William, died.
April 30, 1881: I was taken with deafness this morning.
September 25, 1882: Messenger rushed up with the shocking news that my wife was violently ill. “If you want to see your wife alive you had better hurry down.” When I reached the house she was too far gone to speak, and fell asleep, calm as a baby with her dear hand in mine. Words fail to describe my grief.
September 27: With my beloved wife in her coffin.
September 28: The funeral took place at 1 p.m. The church was crowded and a large crowd followed my beloved’s remains to the last resting place in Oak’s Cemetery, Kentville. No home for me now, my effects will all be scattered. I must seek an alternate abode somewhere else.
He moved home and is listed in the 1891 census as living at Rosebank Cottage where he died on April 8, 1894, at eighty-one. Of all his siblings, only his brother George outlived him, dying in 1903.
THE FOURTH GENERATION
When Lizzie Ross died childless in 1953, her obituary in the Windsor Tribune mentions that her only sister, Mrs. Ethel White of Windsor, had been caring for her during the last several weeks. Ethel was the wife of Rev. Charles White. Their son, Mark, who was married to Nina Keddy and had served overseas in the Second World War, inherited Ross Farm.
The White family moved in to Rosebank Cottage and raised a family of eight children. The farm had begun to decline in the preceding generation as Albert grew older and couldn’t keep up with the changes in farming that were sweeping the country. Mark White struggled to bring it back to its former productive state. Then in 1963 he died early, leaving his widow, Nina, the burden of raising a young family and running the farm. Nina, like many farm women of the time, was forced to seek off-farm work.
In the late 1960s, it became clear to Nina that she could no longer maintain Ross Farm as a viable operation. Then she had an idea—donate Rosebank Cottage and a sizable portion of the land to the people of Nova Scotia as a living farm museum to honour its founders, William and Mary Ross, and help preserve the tradition and values of the pioneers. The timing of her decision couldn’t have been better, as the community was looking for a way to celebrate Canada’s centennial. Things started to happen in 1969.