Chapter 1
I was born in what was then called Upper Canada, now Ontario, in the year 1859, on the 19th day of January. My father William Somerville Boulton was a civil engineer, which profession in those days was united with surveying and railway engineering, and so it came to pass that at the time of my birth he was engaged in building a portion of the Grand Trunk Railway and for this cause had left his comfortable home in Toronto, and with my mother and an older sister and brother, was living in a house built in the woods of Ontario. I have been told that the trees were cut down to make the boards of which that house was built. The town of Ailsa Craig now stands where at that time all was wilderness. I have heard my mother say that it was a beautiful spot, sloping down to a river, and she spent a happy year there, but as we left it when I was only a few months old I cannot speak of it from personal experience.
My father left Canada for England shortly after, and my mother spent a few weeks on a farm, but it was not a suitable place for her to remain and early in the year 1860 she went to Port Hope, a small town on Lake Ontario, where she had a married sister. While staying with this sister the terrible news came to her that the “Hungarian”, the vessel on which my father was returning to Canada, had gone down off Cape Sable, with every living soul. Five hundred people were lost that stormy night, not one escaping to tell the awful tale. Some years later the lighthouse keeper confessed on his deathbed that he had neglected to light the light. My father was only twenty-nine and I have been told he was doing well in his profession. If he had lived our lives would no doubt have been very different, but of that we can only say, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
It was a hard task my mother had to face, a widow at twenty-seven with three young children and very small means. But she was not one who ever gave way or was baffled by any difficulty. After spending a year in the little town of Exeter, with my father’s mother, until her affairs could be arranged, she moved to Port Hope and settled down in a little five roomed cottage.
All my earliest memories are bound up with Port Hope and even now I can recall the appearance of the cottage and the lovely pine woods where we three children spent so many happy hours. Opposite to the cottage were the large grounds belonging to Mrs. Williams’ house, a name well known in Port Hope, her son being the Colonel Williams who in 1885 distinguished himself during the Riel Rebellion. We often played in this park and gathered baskets of apples from under the trees. The winter too brought its pleasures. Warmly wrapped up in coats and fur caps, we delighted in the snow, which it seems to me was more abundant in those days.
On a stormy Saturday morning my mother would set off to market, old woolen socks drawn over her boots, her skirts well pinned up and a hood on her head. Food was cheap in those days. Many a pair of chickens she purchased for 25 cents, butter was a “york shilling” a pound, the york shilling being 121/2 cents of our present money. Our great joy in her absence was to dress up our pillows in our own clothes and play “house” under the table. My sister Dora always figured as “Lady Somerville” in those games and I bore the less pretentious name of “Mrs. Morton”.
Our education was not neglected and for about two years our teacher was one whose name has come before the attention of the public in late years, Joseph Scriven, author of the well known hymn “What a Friend we have in Jesus”. He taught us in our own home, two or three other children coming in to share his instruction. A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, he was nevertheless a humble Christian man, his one desire to spread the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and few then living in Port Hope and its vicinity did not have the question of their soul’s salvation put to them by him. His home while he was teaching us was with an old woman, Mrs. Gibson by name, who lived nearby and eked out her scanty living by keeping cows. He often delivered the milk for her when she was crippled with rheumatism. One of my earliest memories is trotting over to her cottage with a big broom to sweep up her kitchen because she was not able to do it. Two lessons I learned from my mother, perhaps more by her example than precept. The first was to trust God, Who was the Father of the fatherless. The second was to care for the poor and sick around us. I never remember these truths being taught us, but they seemed to grow up with us. Not that my mother did not teach us; evening and morning she read the Bible and prayed with us, and Sunday afternoons were always spent looking at the pictures in the old family Bible and hearing over and over again the wonderful Bible stories. In the evening she sang hymns with us. Two of those hymns have always been favorites of mine: “I have a Father in the promised land” and “There is a land of pure delight, where saints immortal reign, Eternal day excludes the night, and pleasures banish pain”. While we were leading such a placid life in Port Hope, the awful Civil War was raging in the U.S.A. ‘63 to ‘65, but I barely remember it beyond the fact of war being constantly spoken of.
My aunt, who was also a Mrs. Boulton, having married a cousin of my father, was a great comfort to my mother. They always spent an evening together every week, and being the two eldest of a large family and always companions, had naturally a great deal in common, especially as they were the only ones in Canada. But sad to say, about two years after we moved to Port Hope, my aunt took typhoid fever and died after a short illness, her little girl of three years passing away the next day. My mother brought the baby boy home to her house and cared for him for many months, until his father placed him with his own sisters.
It must have been after my aunt’s death, I think, that my mother became exercised as to leaving the Church of England, in which she had been brought up. She had been an earnest Christian for a long time, but she now began to feel that she could not go on with many things taught in the Church of England. For a time she went to the Presbyterian Church, but was no more satisfied with it. Her old friends Sir James and Lady Robinson had begun to meet with those now known as “Brethren” some time before, and while visiting in Toronto she attended the meetings and felt she had found the truth she was seeking. On her return she was visited by Mr. Frederick Grant and later by Mr. Darby, who was then in Canada, and eventually she began to meet with a few others to remember the Lord. I can never forget Mr. Darby’s visit and how I, being the youngest, sat on his knee and he told me stories of his little niece.
The following Christmas (1864) there was a conference in Toronto, and Mr. Darby was anxious for my mother to attend it. “But,” she asked, “what shall I do with my children?” “Oh bring them with you,” he replied, “Graham can travel in my overcoat pocket.” Eventually we did all go to this meeting and stayed with the Robinsons in the dear old home on Sherbourne Street. It was the first of many happy Christmas days spent in that house, and looked back upon as some of the happiest days in my life. During this visit was begun the lifelong friendship between the children of the two families. Lady Robinson’s family consisted of a son Harry, then in his teens, and three younger children, Fred, Marian and Julia, of about our own age. That the conference was profitable I doubt not, but my memory only goes back to games in the nursery, a wonderful “toffee pull”, and Christmas Day with its presents and other joys.
But our happy life in Port Hope was drawing to a close. My brother Graham was now in his ninth year and my mother felt that his education must now begin in earnest. She did not care to send him to the Port Hope school and no doubt had a yearning after England and her own relations. Still, there seemed many difficulties in the way. The necessary funds were not lacking, as my mother had saved every penny she could ever since my father’s death, with my brother’s education in view, but she felt she must have some place where she could go on her arrival in England, until she could look about her and decide on a suitable house and a school. Her mother had died some years before and my grandfather, Colonel Graham, had married again, and she did not relish the idea of imposing herself and three young children on a stepmother. While debating matters with herself and doubtless making them a matter of earnest prayer, the thought came to her to go to Toronto and consult with her ever kind friend Mr. Darby, who happened to be there at that time. Leaving us children with a friend, she went up to the city for the day. Mr. Darby counselled her to go and he said, “Do not trouble as to where you will stay on your arrival. I will arrange that for you, and if you go to the Post Office on getting into Liverpool, you will find a letter telling you where to go.” She took him at his word and at once decided to start without delay. How well I remember her return and the news she brought us: “We are all to start for England in a month”.