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/C-| LJ <^C*-v t j">ccf fax, f? ^L* ^ ^i^c_^^ —L. NOTE THESE papers are privately printed for the members of the family. The Journals are in possession of the Hon. Featherston Osier of Toronto. The letters of Featherstone and Ellen Osier, with other family papers, have been collected and bound in fr^yjDliimes, an index to which has been printed and distributed to their children and grandchildren, January 1915. ELLEN FREE PICKTON OSLER FEATHERSTONE LAKE OSLER RECORDS OF THE LIVES OF ELLEN FREE PICKTON AND FEATHERSTONE LAKE OSLER PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION 1915 PRINTED IN ENGLAND AT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS CONTENTS 1'AGE A SKETCH OF THE EARLY LIFE OF MRS. FEATHERSTONE OSLER, 1806-38, JOTTED DOWN IN ODD MOMENTS BY HER NIECE MISS JENNETTE OSLER, AS SHE SAT BY HER AUNT'S SIDE, DURING THE LAST YEAR OF HER LIFE . 1 SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF FEATHERSTONE OSLER, WRITTEN BY HIMSELF . , .21 FIRST JOURNAL OF FEATHERSTONE OSLER, 1828-30 . 45 SECOND JOURNAL, 1837-9 . .112 LETTER OF FEATHERSTONE OSLER TO HIS FRIEND FRANCIS PROCTER, DESCRIBING THE VOYAGE TO QUEBEC . 240 LETTERS OF FEATHERSTONE AND ELLEN OSLER TO THEIR SISTER ELIZABETH OSLER . .251 DESCENDANTS IN CANADA OF EDWARD OSLER AND MARY PADDY ....... After page 258 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ELLEN FREE PICKTON OSLER .... Frontispiece FEATHERSTONE LAKE OSLER .... ,, LETTER OF F. L. OSLER TO FRANCIS PROCTER . To face page 240 LETTERS OF F. L. AND ELLEN OSLER . „ 252 JOAN DREW, WIFE OF EDWARD OSLER AND GRAND­ MOTHER OF FEATHERSTONE LAKE OSLER . at end POLLY PADDY, WIFE OF EDWARD OSLER AND MOTHER OF FEATHERSTONE LAKE OSLER . " EDWARD OSLER, FATHER OF EDWARD, FEATHERSTONE LAKE, AND HENRY BATH OSLER . „ ORDINATION LICENCE BY ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, 1837 ARTICLES OF AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE REV. F. OSLER AND THE UPPER CANADA CLERGY SOCIETY . „ ORDINATION LICENCE BY BISHOP OF MONTREAL, 1837 . „ LICENCE FROM JOHN STRACHAN, ARCHDEACON OF YORK, 1837 ........... THE PARSONAGE, TECUMSETH . ,, THE CHURCH AT TECUMSETH . „ A SKETCH OF THE EARLY LIFE OF MRS. FEATHERSTONE OSLER 1806-1838 JOTTED DOWN IN ODD MOMENTS BY HER NIECE MISS JENNETTE OSLER, AS SHE SAT BY HER AUNT'S SIDE, DURING THE LAST YEAR OF HER LIFE ELLEN FREE PICKTON was born December 14, 1806, in Hellingdon, Co. Kent, a few miles out of London. Her parents were Thomas Pickton, one of a company of wholesale merchants, and Mary Wigmore, a relative of Abraham Newland, Cashier of the Bank of England, of whom the old song said: ' I have heard people say, sham Abraham you may, But you must not sham Abraham Newland.' Her relation, Miss Newland, often came to see them. Mrs. Osier remembers going to the Bank of England with a relative, when Mr. Newland put a bank-note for a very large amount into her hand, saying, ' There, little girl, you are holding more in your hand than you ever will again.' Mrs. Pickton, her mother, was small, slender, very fair, and not in good health. Mrs. Osier was put out to nurse with an old servant, when very young, and she remembers Mr. Newland coming to see her and putting a sixpence in her hand, as she lay in her cot. She remembers that the woman who cared for her, and her husband and two grown-up sons, all masons, were very kind to her. She used to watch to see them come in and go to wash their hands and faces in the back kitchen; then they would come to table, take her on their knees, and give her fingers of buttered toast, and a saucer of weak tea with extra sugar and cream 2 EARLY LIFE OF ELLEN OSLER in it, and she thought it the nicest thing she ever got. She remembers being put to sit on a settle, while the woman went into another room, and slipping down off the seat to crawl up the stairs which had been newly scrubbed, and finding what she thought was a nice piece of cheese, but when she put it in her mouth it was yellow soap—c and I remember the horrid taste of that soap to this day'. Her mother was sent to the country for her health, and was ordered to sit in the farm-yard while the cows were being milked—' to breathe their breath, which is so whole­ some for sick people'. She had a brother named Thomas, who was older, and was a weekly boarder at school when Mrs. Osier was at home, so she saw very little of him. Another brother, named Edmund, died young. Thomas was for some years in Jamaica, and afterwards went to Acton, Ohio, where his children and their descendants are still living. Mrs. Osier remembered him singing a popular song when he was a lad in his early teens, ' Tell her I lived upon cabbage and bacon, For beef and mutton they were too dear.' The two little girls would join in, and the elders would cry, c Stop that song, children.' He was a very kind brother to his little sisters. There was a great old yew-tree in a shady walk in the garden, which spread its broad branches out far and flat like a cedar of Lebanon. Thomas used to give his sisters, Emma and Ellen, a ' boust', and they would all three climb up high in the tree, He on their backs, each on a large flat rocking branch, and sing their songs. Mrs. Osier had two sisters: Mary Anne, who lived in Birmingham many years after the death of her parents, and who was a girl and woman of saintly character. She came out to Canada to her sister in her old age, and there died EARLY LIFE OF ELLEN OSLER 3 some years afterwards of pneumonia on the 27th of March, 1887. The other sister, Emma, next in age to Ellen, was a very beautiful girl. She married a Mr. Price, and died in London in her first confinement. Mrs. Osier remembers danc­ ing with delight at being a young aunt when the news came that her sister Emma had a little daughter, but the next day another letter came to say that mother and child were dead. Mrs. Osier was%then living in Falmouth, Cornwall, with Captain Britton, who married her mother's sister, Anne, and having no children, adopted Ellen Pickton. Anne Newland was very tall and very stout, with blue eyes and dark brown hair, worn in numerous little flat curls on her forehead. Captain Britton was a burly, hearty ship­ owner. They were devoted to the little Ellen, and indulged her greatly. Mrs. Osier's mother had a sister, Charlotte, who married a Mr. Free. Their daughter, Charlotte Susanna, on the death of her parents, was also adopted by Captain and Mrs. Britton as a companion for Ellen, who was about the same age. Mr. Free at one time left his home without notice to any one, and nothing was heard of him for seven years. At the end of that time he came in one morning, and sat down at the breakfast-table with his family as if he had never been away. He gave no explanation beyond the fact that he had been in Germany. A relative and friend of Mrs. Pickton's was crushed to death in a crowd coming out of Covent Garden or Drury Lane Theatre. ' People did not speak as freely of those things before children as they do now, and I never heard the particulars ; it was in George Ill's reign.' At the age of five Mrs. Osier was adopted by her Uncle and Aunt Britton, and went down to Cornwall with them. They travelled down in a carriage, and in another carriage 4 EARLY LIFE OF ELLEN OSLER were Captain Britton's brother and his wife's niece. They travelled independently by day, but arranged to meet at the same inn or hostel for the night. A great amusement to the little Ellen was the sight of the boys in the fields with their clappers, long flexible pieces of wood sharply struck together to frighten the crows from the newly-sown fields. The boys had a cry, which she could not understand but liked to hear,—4 You all away, you all away, You must fly, and I must run, For the master is coming with his long gun, So you all away, you all away.' The other little girl's name was Pierce; christian name forgotten. The family belonged to Mevagissey, Cornwall. On one occasion Captain Britton gave the little girls a shilling apiece, and they went to a confectioner's to spend it. Cheese­ cakes took their fancy ; they were twopence each ; so each child bought six. Then they went down a nice long pathway, down the garden of the inn, till they came to a green bank overlooking the river, where they sat and ate all they could, and threw the rest bit by bit into the river and watched it float away. c Such waste, my dear ; it was very foolish to give so much money to little children, who did not know how to spend it!' Somewhere on the high road to Exeter or Plymouth they met a poor woman, carrying a heavy baby boy; she was going down for news of her husband, who had been impressed on one of the King's ships, and she was worn out with her long tramp and the weight of the child. 4 That is a fine child you have there,' said Captain Britton, ' what will you take for him ? ' ' Oh, sir, I'm worn out with carrying him ; you shall have him for a guinea.' ' Here 's your guinea, give me the boy.' So the baby was handed up and the woman went on her way.

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