Up the Gatineau! Article
This article was first published in Up the Gatineau! Volume 8.
Caleb Brooks, Pioneer of Low
Reginald B. Hale
There was not a sound in the frozen Valley that February day in 1837. Frozen in ice was the roar of the Paugan Falls on the Gatineau River. Nothing moved in all the white muffled forest, except far to the south where a few dark figures made their laborious way through the deep snow. In the lead was a hefty, tawny-haired man on snowshoes breaking trail with his axe. Behind plodded a yoke of oxen, patient and powerful, their nostrils snorting steam as they dragged a sleigh piled high with household goods. Perched on top sat a young woman wrapped in many blankets and bundling two small children close to her.
The shadows of evening had grown long by the time the sleigh came to a halt in front of a lone log shanty. It had been built that winter by a logging crew of Hamilton, Lowe & Company. But the lumberjacks had moved north — so recently that the coals in the camboose still glowed red.
Thus the first settler family came to the valley at Low on the Gatineau River. The pioneers were Caleb Brooks and his wife, Anna Maria Brooks, both Yankees from New England. What could have induced them to come and live so deep in the wilderness that their nearest neighbours were a long day's journey south of them?
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Caleb Brooks was the fifth generation in his family to bear that name. The Brooks were Puritans from Suffolk, England, who emigrated to Massachusetts in 1630. They were a well-known family in the Boston area. Caleb's great- uncle, General John Brooks, a Revolutionary War hero, was Governor of the State. Caleb's grandfather, Major Caleb Brooks Ill, was the first Minuteman awakened by Paul Revere on his famous mid-night ride in 1775, and he fought at Lexington and Bunker Hill. His father, Caleb Brooks IV, "followed the Law" at Medford just north of Boston. His mother was Lydia Wyman — from another old Puritan family whose home at Burlington, Mass. was built in 1666 and is today still in the Wymans' possession.
This fifth Caleb Was born at Medford in 1800 but tragically his mother Lydia died in childbirth. One of her sisters, Abigail Wyman, took a caring interest in her motherless nephew.
Abigail had married an energetic, pioneer businessman called Philemon Wright of Woburn, who in the winter of 1800 led a party of five American families in five sleighs with 14 horses up the frozen Ottawa River 120 miles from Montreal. There, where the city of Hull now stands, he established the first settlement in the Ottawa Valley west of Montreal. "Squire" Wright dared and prospered. He felled the great pines, built rafts and learnt to sail them through furious rapids and get them to market at Quebec City.
When Caleb Brooks was eighteen his Aunt Abigail and Uncle Philemon invited him to join them in Canada and gave him a job as a millwright in the lumber mill at the Chaudière Falls. He saved money and in a few years had enough to buy land for himself and to marry an American girl, Elizabeth Starr.
On the 24th day of September 1827 a ponderous document was enrolled at Quebec City confirming that "Our Governor-in-Chief of the Province of Lower Canada with consent of Our Council shall grant to the said Petitioners in free and common soccage certain Lots of Our Waste Land". There followed the names of 56 Petitioners: many of those names have left a mark in the Gatineau... Meech, Pink, Reid, Moffit, Evans, Wyman, Church, Harrington, Wright — and Caleb Brooks.
He was now a landowner and for the fee of £2..15/ — he obtained a copy of this verbose document to prove it. His Lot lay west of the main Chelsea Road and south of the place it intersects the Old Chelsea Road. Many of his neighbours came from Chelsea in Vermont and chose that name for the new Township.
The year 1827 was a busy year on the Ottawa River. In June Colonel John By arrived with the 7th and 15th Companies of Royal Engineers, 162 men, to begin digging the Rideau Canal across the river opposite Hull. And in August the great Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin laid the first stone of the locks.
However, many of Colonel By’s soldiers had served in India and were infected by malaria. In the hot summer of 1828 the Ottawa mosquitoes bit the soldiers and transferred the infection to the Irish labourers and everyone else. All work on the Canal stopped.
Hundreds of people died of malaria and one victim was Elizabeth Starr Brooks. The shadow of death passed over Caleb's new clearing at Chelsea.
A few years later he married again, to another New Englander, Anna Maria Dexter. But far away in Persia, in 1832, a plague of cholera broke out that spread so fast that within a year it was killing people in Europe. Immigrant ships began to dock in Quebec City with half their passengers and crew dead or dying. And the contagion came up the rivers with the frightened new settlers.
Caleb Brooks made a decision. "l lost my first wife to a plague that came up the river", he thought. "I'm not going to lose my second one! " He sold his Chelsea farm, bought a thousand acres of wilderness and moved his family as far up the Gatineau River as he possibly could.
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A British engineer described “the Vale of the Gatineau as a proper place for the transportation of convicts". Perhaps during their first hard, lonely years Caleb and Anna Maria might have agreed with him. But they had each other safe from the pestilence, and as time went by seven sons and two daughters came to cure their loneliness and later to share the work; Marshall, Matthew, John, William Oscar, Sereno, George, Ann and Lavina.
Each year brought a new excitement. New settlers were building cabins within sight of the Brooks home. Some spoke with the lilting tongue of Ireland. They told of the great Potato Famine. The first Kealey worked for Caleb till he had saved enough to buy land further up the Valley at Venosta.
In the log homes the fire was always kept burning if possible. But if it went out, the settler looked across the valley to see if smoke was coming from any neighbour's chimney. If there was, off went one of the children with a shovel to borrow some spunk — burning coals. Spunk was always "borrowed" since it was understood that it would be paid back to anyone else in need.
All this changed when the first matches arrived in the Valley in the late 1840's. To begin with they were just a square block of pinewood with one end smeared with a mixture of sulphur and phosphorus, like icing on a cake. To get a match, a sliver of wood was cut off having a dab of the mix on its end. But pretty soon a smart Yankee called E. B. Eddy began making boxes of matches in his factory at Hull.
The lumber trade was booming and each year saw more men pass through the Valley going to or from the shanties. The Indians’ forest trail was tramped and rutted into a road. With so much passing traffic, Caleb decided about 1850 to open an inn — ”Brooks Stopping Place". All up the Gatineau such Stopping Places were springing up at 12 mile intervals — a day's haul for a wagon train: Chelsea — Wakefield — Low — Kazabazua — Gracefield — Bouchette. They provided meals and a bunkhouse for the drivers, feed and stabling for their teams.
From the first, Caleb was determined not to serve liquor. Folks warned "It'll never pay" but he stuck to his principles, kept a good table and a clean inn which was always full and popular, with no brawling.
The inn's Account Books, kept in his neat copperplate hand, give a glimpse into that frontier world. In April 1854 he records carriage of "3 large dishes and a dipper. A tea canister and teapot. 2 oz. of castor oil. 86 lbs. of pork. 2yards gingham. 6 lbs. cut nails."
During the first years, accounts were kept in Pounds, Shillings and Pence. In1872 they changed to Dollars and Cents.
"Item: Feb. 1858 — Passage of 10 men from Pritchard’s to Low 2 meals each, £2..1O/— 1 span oxen baited. 18 head of cattle baited 2/6.
("baited" is an old term for food and rest for horses or cattle.)
"Item: Feb. 1858- 3 shoes removed, 2 new shoes fitted 4/10. ring on tongue 4/6.
“Item: Sep. 1859 — J. Bradley, hire for horse & saddle to ride to Aylwin 7/6.
This indicated that Brooks was expanding and had opened a smithy and a livery stable at his Stopping Place.
"Item: Oct. 1859 — Sandy Cruikshanks, carriage of bag of flour to Brennan's, 1/6.
"Item: Nov. 1859 - Cartage of one keg of powder. I paid an Indian for carrying them in haste to Victoria Farm, 6/3 2 meals for said Indian 5/—
The great names of the timber trade appear in the ledgers; Gilmour, Hamilton, Andrew Leamy, James McLaren. In them also one notes the arrival of the Irish names which have played such a part in opening up the Valley; the Farrells at Farrellton, the Brennans at Brennan's Hill, Dalys, O'Sullivans, McGoeys, Egans, O'Connors, Drapers, Fitzpatricks.
Caleb first recorded a place called "Thzazabasua". Then it became "Cazuabasua” and finally Kazabazua.
In the early days the biggest name in the lumber trade was Ruggles Wright, son of "Squire" Philemon, and Caleb's cousin. They did much business together and their correspondence is on file in the National Archives. One series of letters concerned a log-driver on the river. Caleb called him "Durway" but his name almost certainly was Derouin. He had drowned when a log-jam gave way. He left a widow with several small children and not much else. Caleb learnt that Ruggles owed some money to Derouin — not a large sum to Ruggles but an important amount to a widow trying to feed her children. Caleb kept reminding Buggies, nudging his cousin nicely but persistently until the debt was paid.
Another long series of letters concerned the Militia. Caleb was a Captain and Ruggles was his Colonel. But the Captain was a reluctant soldier and tried every excuse to get discharged. Finally he obtained the Mail Contract from Wakefield to Maniwaki. By law no one could hold two Government appointments at the same time. As Postmaster, Caleb, to his delight, was no longer eligible to be a Militia Officer!
His eldest son, Marshall, was now a lad in his late teens and he took over the Mail route. This meant carrying the Mail bags on horseback sixty miles through the forest to the Hudson Bay Company Post at Maniwaki. But each year the main road lengthened, linking up the Stopping Places and the villages which were springing up around them. After a few years the Brooks family started a stagecoach line, leaving from Wakefield and going to the end of the road. Marshall became the stagecoach driver.
In that pioneer world a stage-driver was a glamorous figure. He made the speed records and was the first to hear all the gossip. When he rattled into a stage to change horses, he climbed from the box, tossed the reins in lordly fashion to the stable boy and walked with dignity into the dining room. Marshall thoroughly enjoyed his status and his family teased, "He never quite got over driving stage. Afterwards he was no durned good to work a farm."
Little wonder that the big red haired stage-driver caught the eye of pretty Hannah Bloss Chamberlin of Chelsea. She had just returned to the Gatineau after a dozen years in Boston. Her father, John Chamberlin, had owned the next farm to the Brooks in Chelsea and as small children Marshall and Hannah had gone to the school of the Rev. Asa Meech. But the same year that the Brooks family moved to Low, John Chamberlin was drowned in Farmer's Rapids on the Gatineau. So Marshall and Hannah were not total strangers.
Very soon they were not strangers at all and, in 1859, they were married in the little Methodist church in Chelsea. As a wedding present for his eldest son, Caleb built a house and a barn. lt was a neat white frame house typical of New England. Later as each of his seven sons married, Caleb built each one a house and a barn. Three of these houses survive: Marshall's, now called "Brooks Hill" and the oldest house in Low; Oscar's, the white frame house to the left of the Paugan Inn, which is now the home of Mr. & Mrs. Elmer Smith; and Matthew's, a little red farmhouse on the left of the main road as it goes north out of Low.
Low was fast becoming a village. A saddlebag Methodist preacher, the Rev. J. L. Gourlay, recorded a Mission to this area in September 1856. "Made on horseback with John Corbett. Occupants were thinly spread between the Farrells and old Mr. Brooks, father of the multitude of that name settled roundabout."
"Low was just a forest with few patches cleared, in rainy weather wet, deep and dirty in places. One gully was nearly impassable (probably Stag Creek). One of us held the horses while the other crossed on logs and roots. Then one horse was sent over and caught by the first man across. The second horse half waded, half swam, throwing the mud high and far, followed not too closely by the second man. The saddles had to be wiped with leaves to allow us to remount."
Finally they arrived at Brooks Stopping Place. "The old gentleman and his good old lady entertained us very kindly and utterly refused any remuneration because We were on a Mission." (“The old gentleman" was only 56 and "his old lady" was 44!)
The village had first been known as "Brooks" but in 1859 a Township was established under the name of “Lowe”. (Later the "e” dropped off.) By then there were enough folk in the village to finance a Church. Marshall donated half an acre near his home for the Church and another half acre for a cemetery. A white frame church, thirty feet by twenty, was built by William Evans and D. Morehouse, two of Marshall's brothers-in-law. This was consecrated in 1869.
As Caleb and Anna Maria Brooks, in the fiftieth year of their marriage, looked out across the Valley, they must have marvelled at the way their wilderness had blossomed. The busy inn, smithy, livery stable, village store, the bustle of the stagecoach and Mail Depot, a happy and prosperous legacy to leave to their children and grandchildren. Caleb, the Pioneer of Low, died in his 80th year in 1879. He was buried in the new cemetery beneath a tall pillar which proclaimed that here lay "CALEB BROOKS OF BOSTON" — lest the wilderness forget that "he was a citizen of no mean City"!
Four years later Anna Maria joined him. Her world was already changing. ln her Will she instructs that "the Horses, Stages, Harness, etc. for carrying Passengers and Mail" be sold. Within ten years a railway line was built up the Valley.
Greater changes were coming. The West was opening up and John Brooks sold his interest in the Brooks store to his brother George and moved away to Chater, Manitoba, the first of many of the Family to go West. The age-old pioneering pattern of the Brooks was repeating.
Post Script
For a century "Brooks Hill", Marshall's home, stood on its hill. The feet of five generations of the family Wore thin its white pine floors and stair-treads. By 1966 it was showing its age.
And that year the house was bought by Cecil Morrison, an Ottawa businessman, a great-grandson of Caleb Brooks. He had been born in the house and loved it and wanted to restore it for Canada's Centennial. The rebuilding was done skilfully by Rudolphe Alie of Point Comfort, Que. and by the Fall it had regained its neat, well-painted charm in time for the family gathered at Thanksgiving Dinner.
Cecil's daughter Grete and her husband Reg. Hale had begun to trace the story of the Brooks. Beyond the fact that they came from Boston, not much was remembered. So letters went off to U. S. Libraries and Societies till at last they were put in touch with the Brooks Family Association of New England. The Secretary, Miss Lorraine Brooks, replied to their letter at once. Yes, much was known of the Family's ancestry but she was very excited to learn of a whole branch of Brooks, unknown to her, stretching all across Canada.
It is not surprising that Caleb Brooks lost contact with his U. S. kinsmen. ln his day to post a letter to the States cost two Shillings and Sixpence or fifty cents just to the American border! From there the recipient had to pay its freight to his own home.
But the Family Association did not like mislaying any Brooks for six generations. ln the summer of 1967 the Secretary and ten U. S. Brooks drove up from Massachusetts to Low. Forty of the Canadian cousins gathered to welcome them and all joined in a Service of Thanksgiving around Caleb Brooks’ grave. Then everyone crossed the road to the old home. The youngest cousin blew out the candles and the oldest cousin cut the cake. After a gap of a century and a half bonds of kinship again linked the American and Canadian Brooks’.
This article by Reginald B. Hale of Ottawa, Ontario and Low, Quebec was awarded Second Prize in the ninth annual Essay Contest sponsored by The Historical Society of the Gatineau — 1980.