Wayback Wednesday, sponsored by Jamie Lockwood, broker/owner of Sutton Group Muskoka Realty, with family roots of more than 100 years in Huntsville
Photo from the Huntsville and Area Historical Society.
In 1910, Dr. Jacob W. Hart, Huntsville’s first mayor and prominent physician, introduced the community to the first car. Up until then, bicycles, sleighs, and ox and horse-drawn transportation were the norm, and it’s how people and freight were transported on land.
While we’re not sure what the make and model of the first vehicle brought to Huntsville was, the odds are pretty high that it was either a Ford Model T, a McLaughlin-Buick, or a Russell Touring car, considered the most accessible and serviceable for a rural Ontario physician at the time.
According to the Ford‑Model‑T encyclopedia, a Model T cost about $850 U.S. in 1910. In today’s dollars (plus the exchange rate), the vehicle would cost about $27,500 U.S.
Do you have interesting photos to share of days gone by? We’d love to see them! Email: [email protected]
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Thanks for the memory, Al!
Good read by Mr Markle
In response to Allen Markle’s letter, I now know what a path-master was. My way back Grandfather Erastus Hanes was a path-master in the south part of Huntsville. Likely coincidentally a relative of Mr. Markle’s by marriage.
The history of Muskoka is rich in detail. One more term path-master brought back to life for me.
Allen – thank you for sharing your vivid memory from years gone by. Hope to hear more!
Going down for the mail this morning I could smell the cut weeds and see the debris on the roadside. The cutters had been through. It took me back.
I can remember standing at the edge of the roadway and watching the men assemble. Gramps was leader of todays cutting crew. My Grampa never drove anything but horses, preferably Percheron or Belgians. He would decline a job handling Clydes unless someone else was paying for their keep. But for a couple of weeks now he had been ‘path-master’ in Brunel. Working on the roads and in charge of getting the verges cut.
This would have been about 1949 or 1950 and he would have been about 61 or so. But he had been Brunel road commissioner from time to time over the years. The step down to path master still had money in it. The Forester records he got a $500.00 road grant for the job. That was in Aug 1930. Any money in the ‘dirty 30’s’ was good money. There was likely a bit better pay in the 50’s and the times were certainly not so hard.
He still wore his pressed white shirt and arm garters. Long pants and braces and I’m sure if I’d checked, still had his ‘stanfields’ on. Never did see him with his shirt off, ‘although I’ve watched him pouring with sweat. I would have been in short pants, likely a shirt handy, but not necessarily on. Those folk did have their ways.
He’d also have his haversack with his lunch and jar of tea. It would start off hot in the morning, but be to daytime warm before long. But the men knew where every thirst cutting spring was, the attendant cup or jar to drink from. And they’d be gone. A horse and buggy or pick-up out there somewhere to leapfrog them through the day.
And I loved the sound of the stones on the scythes. The line from the Charlie Daniels song “The Devil went Down to Georgia” reminds me of my Gramps on the scythe. The line where he says “he pulled his bow across the strings and it made a evil hiss.” And I can hear him hiss the stone across the scythe steel. The first stroke slow and heavy and then faster. The steel would sing under the stone strokes. And the day was begun. The verge of the road trimmed back.
Later, I would be waiting at the end of the driveway. The whistle would have announced the end of the day so everyone would be returning home. But the last thing Gramps would do before he chased me off home would be to hiss that stone over the scythe steel. I think just ’cause he knew I liked that sound.