Up the Gatineau! Article
This article was first published in Up the Gatineau! Volume 23.
My Family in the Early Days of Kirk’s Ferry
Rita Hogan Hendrick
I was born in Kirk’s Ferry and have researched some of my paternal family history at the National Archives of Canada. In 1830 two of my Irish ancestors, John (my great-grandfather) and Patrick Hogan, along with their brother-in-law John Coplis, received deeds to parts of lots 14, 15, 16, and 15 and 16 in the Thirteenth and Twelfth Ranges, respectively, of the Township of Hull, now Chelsea. This land was in Kirk’s Ferry, and totalled 333 acres, deeded “pursuant to the instructions of Philemon Wright, Esq.”
My grandfather, also a John Hogan, was born at Kirk’s Ferry, one of five
children born to John Hogan and Bridget Bailey. He made a living by
farming at Kirk’s Ferry. His farm house was just above the first railway
tracks, while the barns were below the track. He married Margaret Walsh,
who died a few years later, and then he married Ellen Doyle. Born in 1862,
she lived at the foot of Larriault Hill on the Mountain Road. (The hill is very
steep and has now been blocked off by the NCC.) When John died in March 1910, he left my grandmother Ellen and two sons, Alfred and
Harold Hogan to carry on with the care of the homestead. Another son,
Wilfrid, died young, and there were two daughters, Catherine and Bertha.
It was necessary for the two brothers to take on extra jobs. Alfred Hogan
worked as Express Messenger on the Canadian Pacific Railway, looking
after the mail for eleven years on the daily Ottawa to Maniwaki run. He
married Marie O’Boyle on April 28, 1915. Younger brother Harold worked
as a Stationary Engineer for Carbide Willson at Meech Lake until the mill
closed down in 1915. Harold then moved to Ottawa and worked for the
CPR on the Ottawa to North Bay run until his retirement in the 1940s. His
mother lived with Harold and his wife until her death in 1930. John
Hogan, his wife, and other Hogan relatives are buried in St. Stephen’s
graveyard in Old Chelsea.
While we do not know just how the Kirk’s Ferry landscape looked in 1830,
two photographs from before the flooding of the Gatineau River for
hydroelectric purposes in the early 1920s reveal a much different river. The
first view, The Falls at Kirk’s Ferry, is really of the Eaton Chute, a rough
piece of water extending from the present site of the Gatineau River Yacht
Club island. It caught stray logs against its rocks and was the terror of
people crossing the river on the ferry. The chute was submerged when the
Gatineau River was dammed in the 1920s. Another photograph, View from
the Ferry, Kirk’s Ferry, Que., shows several row boats as well as the ferry
itself pulled up to the shore. The cable appears to come up out of the water
and run over two pulleys in mid-ship. The ferry ran across the river about
a half mile north of Eaton Chute.1
People from the Cantley side used the ferry to cross the river to Kirk’s Ferry where there were businesses and the train. Alfred Hogan was a regular ferry user as he bought farm property at Cantley, and moved there when the family property at Kirk’s Ferry was threatened with expropriation in 1920. He travelled from his farm in Cantley to check on the properties he still owned in Kirk’s Ferry.
Alfred Hogan was my father. He was born in the house at Kirk’s Ferry, and so was I. But when the hydroelectric project was built on the Gatineau River, the house was demolished, as the waters reached up to its foundation. The front door of this house with its stained glass panel was saved and is now part of the house of my brother Mervyn and sister Cora in Cantley. I have another door which came from the house, made of oak inset with pebbled glass. It reminds me of Kirk’s Ferry and my family.
Footnote
- For further information on the various ferry scows on the Gatineau River, see Joanne MacDonald, “Summer Bridges: Early Ferries on the Gatineau,” Up the Gatineau! Volume 6, 1980.