DEATH in the WILDERNESS
Joe Stringer was hewing square timber for the Conroy Lumber Company on the south side of the York River about one half mile above Foster’s Rapids. He had partially hewed a stick of white pine. It was Saturday, he had a bad cold, and feeling sick he went home to his log house (Lot 20,Con.8, Carlow.) “ That bad cold settled in his lungs and he was smothering from the fluid buildup there. My uncle John Stringer, his oldest son, took a two inch auger and bored a hole in the log wall to try and get some air for him. I saw that auger hole with a wooden plug in it.”
To give the man some peace and quiet “ grandmother put all the children outside to play. There was a heavy crust on the snow and they were sliding down a hill on a hand sleigh. Uncle Andrew Stringer was standing at the bottom of the hill when his little foot broke through the crust. Down came the heavily loaded sleigh of boys and hit the little lad’s leg and broke it. So Grandma Stringer had to do both first aid and doctor. She got the little lad up on the table. She had a bottle of brandy in the cupboard and she set the lad plastered drunk, then pulled the little leg out straight and put splints on it so that he grew up with two good legs.”
Well the two-inch auger hole in the log wall wasn’t enough for grandfather Joe Stringer for he breathed his last breath on the 23rd day of January, 1884. “ I got this date off his tombstone in the United Church Cemetery. He never did finish that stick of white pine. My Uncle John Stringer went and got the broad axe from under it.”
I was told that Robert Wilson, an ancestor of the Carlow Wilsons, got a doctor book which he studied and that he saved a man’s life by tapping his lung with the little blade of his jackknife and drawing off the fluid from his lungs with a goose quill.
Each one of those old settlers prepared for their death by laying up some wide boards to build their coffin. Michael Prentice, ancestor to all Carlow Prentice’s, lived on lot 27, Con. 7, Carlow. His wife one day hired me and my uncle Andrew Stringer, a carpenter, to build her some cupboards. Uncle Andy ran out of wide boards to complete them so he went looking for more lumber and found Michael’s coffin lumber. When Michael found out the swearing was pretty rough, that a man couldn’t keep a few boards around the place without them being built into a damn old cupboard.
Well Michael got some more lumber and six metal handles for his coffin costing $1.50. Normally there were no metal handles on those coffins for the pallbearers, just three halter ropes off the horse’s bridles to put under the coffin. Michael also left strict orders concerning his funeral. He had a real beautiful team of black Percheron horses with brass mounted harness to draw him to his last resting place. When he died Uncle Andrew Stringer built his coffin with the metal handles and that funeral was the most magnificent funeral that settlement had ever seen, costing $1.50.
In 1917 Henry’s older brother, Andrew, suffered a ruptured appendix. He was transported by canoe to Combermere to catch the steamboat which carried him to J.R.Booth’s train which was bound for Ottawa. But, alas, the journey was too long and Henry’s 19 year old brother Andrew proved to be the only Taylor to die young.