Autobiography of George A. Bremner I.
George “Archie” Bremner I, son of James Bremner, wrote his autobiography for a book of early Whatcom County history. This is what follows (Squeemus p. 91).
I was born February 4, 1869, in Prairie Township, Keokuk County, Iowa. When I was eleven years old, my parents sold their farm, in the spring of 1880, and we went to visit relatives in Maine and in Massachusetts.
Besides my parents and myself, there were my brother, John William, two years my senior, and my sister, Caroline Winifred, who was two years younger than I.
We traveled via Grand Trunk Railroad around through Canada, crossing the Niagara River below the falls, and having a good view of the falls, then came- down through Maine and, after visiting there, went on to Boston and thence to Brewster, Mass. My mother's mother, sister and three brothers lived in Brewster at that time.
After a few weeks stay, my father bought tickets in Boston for San Francisco, via Union Pacific from Omaha. We stopped in Iowa to pick up what effects we had planned to take with us. At that time, the Union Pacific was running what it called “emigrant trains” consisting of passenger coaches hooked on the rear of a freight train.
These coaches were fitted with upper berths, and the lower births were produced by turning two seats together, laying boards across between them and placing a mattress on top. The boards and mattress were stored in the upper berth, when not in use. There was a large, flat-topped, heating stove in one corner, suitable for brewing tea and coffee, and heating food. We were eleven days from Omaha to San Francisco-- the most enjoyable train ride I have ever
taken.
We saw thousands of prairie dogs luck into their holes, as we passed, and hundreds of antelopes racing away from the train. Some of the passengers frequently fired at the antelope with their revolvers, the bullets invariably kicking up a little puff of dust some distance behind the animals. When we reached the mountainous country, the train would stop occasionally at places of special interest, such as “The, Devil's Slide,” and allow the passengers a few minutes to get off and view the scenery.
We traveled from San Francisco to Victoria, British Columbia on the side wheeler, “Dakota,” and enjoyed a siege of seasickness. We landed at Esquimault, as there was not sufficient depth of water to enter Victoria harbor. Next morning, we proceeded to Port Townsend, where my father bought a cook stove and some tools that we would need in hewing out a home and a farm in the forest.
We journeyed to Whatcom (now Bellingham) on the small steamer “Dispatch,” and landed on the coal bankers that were located between what later became Whatcom and Fairhaven (now North and South Bellingham), climbed a long flight of stairs--- from water level to the top of the bank—and walked the trail from there, passing the first school house built on Bellingham Bay, and crossing the original Pickett Bridge at Whatcom Creek.
We spent a few days with the W. H. Fouts family, who provided the only stopping place for travelers in Whatcom County at that time. Sunday, Mr. Fouts took us for a walk out to Johnnie Bennet’s place. He was a Scot with a hobby for collecting shrubs, trees, and flowers from as many countries and of as many varieties as possible. It was very interesting to look over his collection.
Our stay at Fouts' was necessitated by our having to telegraph to Nooksack Crossing, five miles above Lynden, and by the message's having, to be delivered by horseback over the trail from the Crossing to Lynden. On receipt of our telegram, Mr. Enoch Hawley arranged for two Indians to come down the river in a canoe, bringing his son, R. S. (Emmet) and his daughter, Lida, to escort us to Lynden.
Loading a salt water canoe with a few necessary household goods and wearing apparel, and starting about 5 a. m., we crossed the Bay to the mouth of the Nooksack river. There we were transferred to a river canoe and proceeded up the river bank and the women folks occupying the canoe, arriving at Lynden at 9 a.m., June 4, 1880. This was the final destination aimed at when we started eastward, as my parents had for some time lived as neighbors to the Hawleys in Iowa, although they had preceded us to Lynden by eight years. It was through correspondence with them, that my parents were led to make Lynden, or vicinity, their home.
Lynden, at that time, consisted of the postoffice, which was maintained in a desk situated in the front of the house of Holden Judson, and a meagerly stocked store in the front room of the home of Enoch Hawley, half a mile east of the postoffice.
There was a case of measles in the hotel in San Francisco where we had stopped while awaiting the departure of the boat, so a few days after arriving at Lynden, my brother, sister and I came down with the measles, and a few days later the Hawley young folks, Emmet, Lida, and Leo followed suit.
While we lived with the Hawleys, Leo Hawley and I, being about the same age, trained together at work and at play. One evening we paddled across the river in a canoe to visit Indian Jim, Chief of the Nooksacks, and his squaw, Sallie. She had potatoes roasted in the ashes and sturgeon from the Fraser River, smoked and dried, so we ate supper with them. Their house was a typical Indian structure, built of wide cedar slabs split from large trees and lashed to upright stakes with withes from cedar boughs. The roof was made of the same kind of slabs except that they had been dug out across the center leaving a strip along the edge about an inch and a half high, thus forming a wide shallow trough to carry off the rainfall.
These slabs were laid close together to form the roof, and had been made with stone chisels and mallets. Around the walls, there were bunks covered with Indian mats on which the occupants lounged and slept. There was no floor and fires were built on the ground, the smoke passing out through a good sized hole in the roof directly over the fire.
In the meantime, my father circulated a petition for the establishment of a school district, and Delta No. 12 was formed. The man of the district volunteered to build a log schoolhouse during the winter, and the following summer my mother taught the first term. She contracted to teach three months for what funds were to the credit of the district, which amounted to about $12 a month. Some of the pupils walked four miles each way to attend this school.
In March, 1881, having completed a log cabin suitable for mild weather occupancy, we moved to our homestead one mile west of Bertrand Prairie. The second night on the homestead, we were visited by a cougar which killed a calf teathered a short distance in front of the house.
During the first winter on the homestead, the Nooksack River froze over, preventing canoe travel and the supply of flour in Lynden became exhausted, so we processed our own flour by grinding wheat through a large coffee mill attached to the wall. From choice, we also produced corn meal in this way for several years, as faulty shipping methods of the meal from the central states caused it always to have a slight flavor of mold or must. Our provisions were hauled from Lynden on a sled drawn by oxen, over a road that was little more than a trail-- a mile or more of which crossed in swamp where water stood the year around. In winter, the water was too high to negotiate in many places so that any necessities that were not brought in before the fall rains started, had to be packed in on our backs while we walked on footlogs along the side of the road.
During the first spring on the homestead, my sister Winifred was very severely burned on her back and arms, her clothing having been ignited by a spark from fires he used in clearing land. In order to have her in a more favorable place for help, she was taken to the Enoch Hawley home where Mrs. Hawley rendered valuable assistance. Full credit for saving her life was given Mrs. William Slade who lay awake nights trying, to recall a formula for a salve used in a hospital in Ontario where, she had been a nurse in her youth, and which was very successful in healing burns.
She finally succeeded, and started the burns slowly healing from the outside edges, and one year, almost to a day from the date of the, accident, the last tiny spot was healed.
In the spring of 1883, I found it necessary to have my tooth pulled, so I hied myself to the farm of Emmet Hawley and found him clearing land with the help of a yoke of oxen. He told me to go to the front of the house and bring out the forceps, and he would see what he could do. Returning, I was seated on the tongue of the two-wheeled oxcart, and the tooth was promptly yanked out. In those days those days there was no dentist, and only one doctor in Whatcom County.
In the summer of 1894, my father again circulated petitions, this time for the establishment of a post office and a mail route from Lynden, naming the postoffice Delta, recommending himself for postmaster, and that the office be located in his residence. These petitions were promptly granted, and my brother John became the first mail carrier, covering the six miles and return on foot once a week (staying about six months, until a contract was let to the lowest bidder). This was the origin of the name, Delta, applied variously in the neighborhood since I was postmaster at Delta for a number of years beginnings in 1890.
During that same summer my sister, accompanied by her medium-sized dog, in walking the mile to Bertrand Prairie, was followed by three half-grown bear. At a short distance, a trail 1ed to the left from the road and a large log rested on the ground where it crossed the trail-- a few rods from the road—and angled upwards to the road where it was perhaps ten feet above the ground. She ran to this log and out to the end of' it above the road, just as the three bear came to it in the road. They stayed for some minutes looking and sniffing at her and the dog, which stayed close to her and kept up a continual growling. Then they ambled off into the woods while she continued her walk down the trail.
Marriage photo of George Bremner II and Rose Wilson The settlers, having no land cleared or fenced for pasture, would turn their hogs out to run at large all summer. It was frequent occurrence to hear a hog far out in the woods, as he was being eaten alive by a bear. During the year 1885, the Canadian Pacific Railroad was completed across British Columbia to Vancouver. My brother John worked with the construction crew building the telegraph line and in returning home in the fall, was drowned in the Fraser River, September 22, 1885. My father died eighteen months later of pneumonia, resulting from the kick of a horse. My mother died in 1915 and my sister in 1934. After securing what education I could from the short terms in the country school district and persistent study by myself in my mother's kitchen, I attended, in 1892 and 1893, the Northwest Normal School which had been established in Lynden by the late John R. Bradley. Later I attended Wilson’s Business College in Lynden and in Bellingham, after it had been moved to that city. I taught a few terms of school in Whatcom County before entering the government service as a teacher in Indian schools in February, 1898, at Hupa Valley Indian Boarding School, California, where I remained seven months before securing a transfer to Lummi Indian Reservation in Whatcom County, Washington. I did this in order that I might get married [On Oct. 1, 1898] and my wife be employed with me (Rose Wilson). I remained there for about seven years, following which I operated a shingle mill at Ferndale, Washington, for a year, then returned to the Indian service, accepting a position on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, my wife joining me there also. We had with us our two boys, George aged four, and Raymond, aged one. Not liking the climate, and there being no opening for a transfer back to the coast, we resigned after one year, and returned to Bellingham where, for about four years, I was bookkeeper for George and Charles Nolte and the corporation which they had formed, including the Mogul Logging Co., and the Clearbrook Lumber Co. Next, I was employed for a year in the City Comptroller’s office in Bellingham, then, by leasing two hundred forty acres of land on the Lummi Indian Reservation in 1915. I followed farming for nineteen years, buying one hundred twenty acres between Ferndale and Lynden in 1919 and disposing of it in 1934.
I leased the farm in 1925 and returned to Bellingham, where in 1926 I was employed by Victor Roeder to go to Forks, Wash., to look after a government road contract in which he was interested, and which extended into Clallam and Jefferson Counties. After several months, my wife came over to be with me and, on May 20, 1927, she was burned so severely [from cooking on a wood stove] that she died the next morning. After completing the road contract, I returned to Bellingham and retired from active employment, in which status I am at this date, February 14, 1945.
GEORGE ARCHIBALD BREMNER I
George A. Bremner I died the 3rd of August, 1958, in Bellingham, Washington.
The occasion of George Bremner's buying land on the Lummi Reservation was a blood clot which he developed in his leg. His doctor advised him to abandon his sedentary ways as a bookkeeper for a more active one. George decided to take up farming, and spent many difficult and heartbreaking years attempting to convert swampland to farmland. Though he was eventually successful, George Bremner II (my grandfather) took me to the old farm when I was a boy, and showed me how the swamp has since reclaimed the land.
The following are some recollections about George by his son, George Bremner II:
“My father told me a great deal about life in the early days, as he called it. Although there was tragedy in those experiences, he always impressed me with the beauty of this wonderful virgin wilderness, the towering forests, great mountains, beautiful seacoast and rivers. The mild, moist climate was such a welcome change from the bitter cold and summer heat of Iowa, that he, frequently said he would not go back to Iowa to live even if they gave him the whole state. Most of all, he loved the people and the pioneer life, where everybody helped everybody else. They were like one large family. I often think of how the pioneer days are pictured in movies and on television and how untrue it is. Almost all of the pioneers who built the West were good, hard-working, friendly, honest people not the blustering, lawless, bloodthirsty, brawling characters that are pictured in the shows.”
Rose Wilson, wife of George A. Bremner I, was born the l7th of March, 1864, in Shelbyville, Indiana. The earliest known Wilson was Augustus Wilson of Virginia born in 1754 somewhere in Virginia and died in 1845 in Shelbyville County, Indiana. He married Sarah Eleanor Lee (1785-Nov. 27, 1876) also born in Virginia. After their marriage they moved to Louis County, Kentucky, where most of their fourteen children were born: Polly, Millie, Amos, Mary, Joshua, Jonathan, Moses, Sallie, Melinda, Amelia, Thomas, Ruth, Asa, and Caleb Taylor. And in l838 they moved again, this time to Shelby County, Indiana, near or in Shelbyville. After her husband’s death Sarah lived with her daughter Sarah McFall. She died 11/27/1876 and was buried in Canaan graveyard, Shelby County, Indiana, as were most of her children. “Aunt Olive” Wilson, who live to be 102 before dying in Bellingham, Washington, and whom I remember from my childhood, claimed that Sarah Eleanor Lee was granddaughter of Richard Henry Lee, and recorded this information in her family bible that had been passed on down through the Wilson family. Richard Henry Lee was a member of the Continental Congress from Virginia and first moved that the states should declare independence from England. I referred to several comprehensive genealogies of the Lee family and was unable, however, to find reference to Sarah Eleanor Lee. These genealogies gave a complete description of all of the grandchildren of Richard Henry Lee. Validating the parentage of Sarah has been one of my greatest wishes, since if this connection were true it be a load mine into the extensively documented genealogy of the Lee family, as well as (due to their own illustrious family tree) showing relationships with revolutionary historical figure Arthur Lee, the one-time president Zachary Taylor, Confederate president Jefferson Davis, and Confederate General Robert E. Lee. In spite of my hopes that this would be true, I’m sorry to say that my scientific orientation forces me to conclude that there simply isn’t enough data at the current time to support (or refute) the conclusion that Sarah was the granddaughter of Richard Henry Lee. Nevertheless the history of this important family should be learned by everyone in this country. And so I provide a thumbnail sketch of this historic family, which if not a source of genealogical history, will be illuminating in the understanding of our country’s history. The earliest member of the Lee family in America was Colonel Richard Lee (1600-1664) who came to America from England in 1640. He traced his ancestry to 1201, when Reyner (Reginald) Lega, the Sheriff of Shropshire under the Normans, was the first of the family to use the fess and billets of the Lee arms. Col. Richard Lee married Anne Constable and had eight children, one of whom, Hancock Lee, was the direct ancestor of Zachary Taylor, U. S. President. Col. Lee was also the ancestor of Thomas Jefferson. Richard Lee II (1646-1714), son of Col. Richard Lee, married Laetitia Corbin and had six children; Henry, ancestor of Gen. Robert E. Lee of the Confederate Army and Gen. “Light Horse Harry” Lee of the Revolutionary War; Ann, ancestress of Mrs. Robert E. Lee; and Phillip, ancestor of Revolutionary Governor of Maryland Thomas Sims Lee (6), amongst them. Thomas Lee (1690-1750), son of Richard Lee II, married Hannah Ludwell and had eight children, one of whom, Thomas Ludwell Lee, was ancestor of Edward D. White, Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court. Three of their sons were famous in their own right. Francis Lightfoot Lee ( 1734-1787) was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Arthur Lee (1740-1792) an American diplomat. Richard Henry Lee ( 1732 -1794), their brother, son of Thomas Lee and possible grandfather of Sarah E1eanor Lee, was a famous patriot of the Revolutionary War. He was born five miles from George Washington’s birthplace in Virginia, and married on two occasions, to Ann Aylett and Ann Pinckard. Richard Henry Lee was something of a renegade in the Commonwealth of Virginia. His only extant speech is an attack on slavery, which must have been quite unusual in the South or anywhere at that time: “...forever deprived of all the comforts of life, and to be made the most wretched of mankind. I have seen it observed by a great writer, that Christianity, by introducing into Europe the truest principles of humanity, universal benevolence, and brotherly love, had happily abolished civil slavery.” Examples of Richard Henry Lee's contrariness came from other quarters, as John Adams related in his memoirs: “Mr. Wythe told me that Thomas Ludwell Lee, the elder brother of Richard Henry, was the delight of the eyes of Virginia, and by far the most popular man they had, but that Richard Henry was not. I asked the reason, for Mr. Lee appeared a scholar, a gentleman, a man of uncommon eloquence, and an agreeable man. Mr. Wythe said all this was true, but Mr. Lee had, when he was very young, and when he first came into the House of Burgesses, moved, and urged on, an inquiry into the state of the Treasury, which was found deficient in large sums which had been lent by the Treasurer to many of the more influential families of the country, who found themselves exposed, and never had forgiven Mr. Lee.” Richard Henry Lee wrote the first two documents that were drawn up by the Virginia House of Burgesses in opposition to the Stamp Act on Nov. 14, 1764. They were addressed to “The King’s Most Excellent Majesty” and “To the Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, in Parliament Assembled.” On the 7th of June , 1776, he arose in congress and moved, “That these colonies are, and of a right ought to be, free and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved (8).” At the first Continental Congress John Adams quoted a young lawyer named Jonathan Sargent: “The Virginians speak in rapture about Richard Henry Lee, and Patrick Henry, one the Cicero, the other the Demosthenes of the age (The Lee Chronicles)”. It seems that Richard Henry had regained his popularity in his native Virginia. Sarah Eleanor Lee, possible granddaughter of Richard Henry Lee and wife of Augustus Wilson, was born in Virginia in 1785. “Aunt Olive” Wilson wrote in a page of family history shortly before her death in 1972 that Sarah Eleanor Lee was “an aristocrat with snow white hair, a dainty lace cap, and a cape of white lace which she wore over her shoulders. Dignified yet pleasing, she raised a large family of 14 children, seven boys and seven girls. She was a good executive, teaching the older ones to train the younger, and at times donning her gloves, etc., and taking a walk for recreation. All 14 children were steadfast Christians, holding their own services at home as churches were scarce in Kentucky at that time. Some of the boys were fine singers (Caleb being one), and all were taught the bible.” When she died in 1874, she was buried with her bible, which supposedly contained the family record, as she had requested, in Canaan Cemetery, Shelbyville County, Indiana [as of this writing I have not confirmed this fact].
About 1867 Caleb Taylor Wilson, Isadore Van Treese Wilson, and their family moved to Pettis County, Missouri, near Smithton. On Jan. 8, 1868, Isadore wrote a letter to her mother-in-law, Sarah Eleanor Lee, who was living with her daughter Mrs. Sarah McFall in Shelbyville, urging her to come to the new Missouri country: “Dear mother, brother, and sister, I will enclose a few lines in Taylor’s letter to let you know how we come on. We are all well this morning, it is snowing this morning and quite cold. I am very well satisfied with the country so far as I have seen we tried to get a chance to come to see you before we left but could not. Gustus and Rosie want to see grandma and Aunt Sarah, they are quite handsome they left their little dog at Fairland. My little babe can crawl all over the floor she is well and fat as a pig we have not named her yet. Grandmother send her a name and we will call her that tell Linda that I wish her and Enock was out here if they would sell their land there and come out here they could get them a good home and they would not be bothered with them hills, there is a great migration to this country which is raising land very fast. Taylor has bought us a home we will move on it in the spring I expect. Augustus and Rosie will have fine times when we get out there a gathering hickory and hazel nuts. There is any amount of great big sweet grapes and strawberries on our place. Taylor is going to buy calves next spring and sell them in the fall he has got such a good stock farm, plenty of water. He is better satisfied here than I have ever seen him any place that we have lived he has had his health better I have had better health since we come here than I ever had for several years. Tell the rest of our friends that we will write to them by and by we would like to see you all again if we do not in this life I Trust we may meet above. I want you to write away for we are anxious to hear from you. I remain as ever your true daughter and sister until death Isadore Wilson to McFall and family direct to Sedalia, Pettis County, Missouri. Write soon.” Isadore later said that her happiest days were when she could work hard and care for her nine children on the hard scrabble farm in Missouri.
Rose Wilson, daughter of Caleb Taylor Wilson, was born the 17th of March, 1864, in Shelbyville, Indiana. In 1890 her older brother, August, moved to Lynden and established Wilson’s Business College, at the corner of 9th and Edson Streets in Lynden (this building, the “Gingerbread House”, was torn down in 1990). Between 1890 and 1900 his brothers and sisters, one by one, and later his parents, came to Whatcom County. Rose Wilson taught school for two years in Missouri and after coming west she taught at Lynden in 1892, Delta in 1893 and 1894, Sunrise (near Lynden) in 1895, Blue Mountain (Acme) in 1896, Clipper in 1897 and 1898. Her sisters were also teachers in the area: Olive at Bell Creek and Wiser Lake, Ella at Van Zandt, and Mary at Acme. On Oct. 1, 1898, she married George A. Bremner I in Bellingham, whom she probably met at Wilson’s Business College. George Bremner taught school at Acme in 1897 and Greenwood in 1898: they could also have met as teachers, or when Rose taught at Delta. She later told stories of riding a horse to school through the giant cedar trees of the South Fork Valley of the Nooksack River. Rose's sister, Emma, died in Sedalia, Missouri, where all of the children grew up, of pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of 28. Her brother Frank became Whatcom County Treasurer, and later operated a truck line to the Acme and Deming area. The two younger brothers, Franklin and were streetcar operators. Franklin later farmed in Oregon and finished his career as a hardwood floor contractor.
Olive Wilson, who died in 1976 only nine months short of her 100th birthday, always remained close to the Bremner family. After her parents came out West in 1900, she lived with them in a small home at 1439 Iron St. in Bellingham and took care of them when they became invalids, never taking the time to marry herself. She worked as a school teacher, then in the office of her brother Frank, and later in the office of the City Treasurer. Olive had a large vegetable garden and a yard filled with flowers. She had a wood-burning cookstove and a wood-burning stove in the living room; hot water came from a tank heated by the cookstove.
Front row L to R: Claire & Florabelle Wilson, Paul Liston, Raymond & George Bremner II 2nd row sitting: Mr & Mrs Whittaker, Caleb & Isadore Wilson, Abigail Clark Freeman Bremner 3rd row: George Bremner I, Rose Wilson Bremner, Mr & Mrs Liston, Belle & Augustus Wilson Francis, Edward & Olive Wilson. Back row: Edith Flowers,Pontia & Ralph Wilson B’ham 1910