Salt Spring Island Archives

Donate Now Through CanadaHelps.org!

Audio

Chris Arnett, Tom Wright, Gordon Wright

Jonathan Begg

Jonathan Begg letter
Accession Number Interviewer Historical Society
Date January 11, 2006 Location Central Hall, Salt Spring Island
Media digital recording Audio CD mp3
ID Duration

begg.mp3

manual

?

yes

?

Today we have a very special program. We are going to look at the life and times of Jonathan Begg who was a man of Scottish ancestry. He came to Salt Spring on July 7th 1859 and this is going to be a sort of casual exploration. The gentlemen to my right here are Tom and Gordon Wright. There is no relation although who knows, way back we’re all related. The last few years they’ve done a lot of archival research on this gentleman. We don’t really know too much about him but we are going to know a little more by the time this is over.

Tom has done extensive work on his letters. We are very fortunate that a number of years ago some descendants of Jonathan Begg, his great, great, great niece sent over some letters to our archives. Some valuable letters that were written by Jonathan Begg from Salt Spring Island and they give us a lot of valuable information about Salt Spring at that time. It augments a period of our history that is not too well known. So the three of us are going to give and take as we go through this and explore the life of Jonathan Begg right from his birth at Aboine on the river Dee in Scotland up to his disappearance in the mid 1860’s. We’ll find out and speculate as to what happened to Mr. Begg. First I’d like to call on Tom who will give us some background and information on these remarkable letters.

Tom: The first thing you might wonder is how these letters which Jonathan wrote which left Salt Spring of course because he mailed them away. So I wanted to just give a brief background on that. The story begins with Jonathan being born in Scotland as Chris mentioned in 1825 and then teen aged Jonathan and his teen aged sister, I’m not quite sure which was older or younger that the other. They came over to Canada, Pickering, which was Canada West as it was then. They came in the early 40’s in their teens but I’m not quite sure when Jonathan’s sister Margaret married a farmer named Chisholm in Pickering. He was another Scot who came to Canada at the age of 10. When Jonathan was nearly 30 years old and still in Pickering the Chisholm’s moved to Cedar County Iowa where William became a dealer in imported Clydesdale horses. And it was William and Margaret who Jonathan wrote to first from California and later from Salt Spring. They are wonderful letters that describe about the early days of Salt Spring. The reason they came back was because Williams great granddaughter, Lois Beckman who lived in Gig Harbour Washington brought the letters to Salt Spring Island back in 1992 and brought them along to Fernwood Elementary having at one time been Beggsville, so there’s a connection there. The principal of the school at that time Bob Bransword came to me and said we’ve got some old letters about Salt Spring. Would you be interested so I was certainly interested and said, “sure I’ll have a look at them”. One of the reasons I wear glasses is because I deciphered a whole pile of these letters and as you can see because of the postal expenditures in those days they would write this way then turn it over and write the other way then turn it again the third way and occasionally even four times. Anyway I went through all these letters and they are remarkably interesting and I’ve got far more stuff than we can talk about today so I’m going to try and pick out some highlights about those early days on Salt Spring and in California. Jonathan originally wrote from Alameda County, California where he had originally arrived after a 36-day journey from New York via the Panama Isthmus and he expresses delight about the climate of California the settled natures of the villages and the price of clothing, which seemed very reasonable to him. He was determined then to go in to fruit growing where he says he can manage a nursery at $40 a month. He describes the giant vegetables that grew there and farm horses at $50 each and fine large matched teams of horses at 4 to 500 dollars and good American oxen at $200 a yoke and except for too many gophers and too few women he thought California was the country par excellence. He even talks of setting his cap at the fine girls of an old Spaniard neighbour who owns 7000 acres of the best land and becoming a grandee so he sounded as though he was pretty much up on California. Something must have happened to dampen his enthusiasm because he moved north up into British territory about 8 months later. Nearly a year later on March 10, 1860 he wrote from Aboine Place named after his old home in Scotland on Salt Spring Island to his relatives in Iowa. An earlier letter he wrote obviously didn’t survive so we only have his second letter. And it turned out that Jonathon had arrived in Victoria in June of 1858 in the midst of a reverse in business caused by bad news from the mines. He says he’d seen quite enough of California’s climate and society. He now says the only thing he liked in California was her fruits society, though improving is not any the best and the government is rascally bad. No man except a clever rogue or Irishman can attain any position there, he says. And then he talks of leaving without a penny in his pocket to seek his fortune. He waxes enthusiastic about the weather in Victoria, the people and the prices in spite of arriving as he said during a depression. Finding I could get no work of any kind, as there were hundreds more out of employment, I immediately went to work and rented a vacant house with 2/5 of an acre of land where I put in about 1500 cabbages. As the land was of poor description, I did not realize much from it. In the fall I advertised as a gardener in the local paper when I got a job with Mr. Wood the banker, which set me a little on my feet again. When I resided in Victoria I had other work on hand of greater moment then my everyday employment. I found the land system in such a deplorable condition that no one out of employment of the Hudson’s Bay Company could procure an acre of the public domain. I found that justice and reform was necessary so I commenced a movement, which has since changed the whole land system of the colony. Tom: “He’s not afraid to blow his own horn a little bit is he?” but he was evidently a really interesting guy.

Chris: I thought I’d give a little of the political context of what was going on Vancouver Island at that time. The actual colony is right here. You can see the 10 – 11 districts here. The Sooke district, Metchosin, Esquimalt, Victoria and these were all treated from the native people. These were all pieces of land that were featured in the Douglas treaties, which were negotiated in between 1850 and 1854 and constituted the colony of Vancouver Island. With the discovery of gold in 1858 the British Colonial office decided to end the Hudson’s Bay Company’s tenure of Vancouver Island because they were supposed to develop this colony but with the discovery of gold the British Imperial government decided that maybe it’s a good idea to take this colony out of the hands of the Hudson’s Bay Company and transform it to something else. Douglas was given word that on May 31st 1859 the Hudson’s Bay Company jurisdiction would end and it would be taken over by a new system. Douglas however he wanted to expand the colony into these areas. Here we have the Cowichan Valley. Trouble is, he ran into opposition from the native people. The last Douglas Treaty was negotiated in 1854 in Nanaimo and then following that in the following years native people began to resist negotiations. They didn’t like what was happening but Douglas went ahead anyway and surveyed these areas without any recognition or guidance from the Imperial government so it was basically illegal survey. Actually it’s interesting about these districts. The land was actually sold before it was even surveyed to various Hudson’s Bay employees, Royal Navy officers and wealthy merchants in Victoria. So they owned 100’s to 1000’s of acres but none of them were able to occupy their land because of resistance from the native people. Following the gold rush, 1000’s of people flooded into Victoria, went to the gold rush and within a few months the Fraser River gold rush was a bit of a bust. Most of these came back to Victoria and went back to their places of origin, except about 1500 described as the wastes and strays of the world and this would have included Jonathan Begg. They began to agitate to have access to this land in the Cowichan Valley. There were a lot of editorial in the papers saying you know, we have to settle the question of Indian title and get farmers on the land and these unemployed miners in Victoria wanted access to this area but Douglas couldn’t do it because number one he did not have the permission of the native people and number two most of the land in here was already spoken for by various purchasers, so he developed a preemption system. This is what Tom was alluding to. Begg was involved in this. They had a lot of meetings in various hotels in Victoria. In order to placate them Douglas allowed them to go to Chemainus Valley and to the north end of Salt Spring Island. He gave them permission to preempt this area. This was done without any official recognition by the colonial office. In fact, Douglas wrote a letter to the colonial office saying he was going to have this preemption system but in the letter he explicitly said that it was only restricted to these territories and he didn’t even mention any of the Cowichan area or Salt Spring Island. This is sort of the context. My theory about this is and I speculate in my book about it, because there was a lot of opposition to settlement by the native people especially on Kuper Island that he directed the settlers to the north end of Salt Spring and the Chemainus Valley to provoke native people in to some kind of resistance that would allow the Royal Navy to go in and occupy the land and destroy the native resistance. Which actually happened in increments over the following years. This is where they landed on July 27th 1859. The first group. There were 17 men, they landed at Walker’s Hook beach here and took up 200-acre preemptions from Walker’s Hook to the north end of Salt Spring Island. Now, this area just to give you an idea of who was running the show around here, this is the native village of Penelekut here. The head chief was this gentleman //////////The expected confrontation did not happen because there was some sort of negotiations between /////////////and/////////////////and within a year most of the settlers in this area were married to native women from the village of Kuper Island. Here is a picture of the James Seed Farm taken in the 1920’s, I guess. This was Jonathan Beggs preemption and according to his letters when they landed they drew lots and he got second choice and this was the land he chose which is roughly bounded by Fernwood, the eastern end of the boundary ran along Fernwood Rd. and we are going to look at some more details in a bit. But it was open land and I think Tom will take it from here. Jonathan Begg built his cabin up here and we have pictures showing these buildings and he felt very satisfied with his choice.

Tom Wright – I will go on to read this letter.
After the above move was concluded to the satisfaction of all parties I was one of 18 adventurers who went out to view the land when we lighted on the island mentioned in this letter. Which was Salt Spring Island. It’s about 20 miles long and varying from about 2 to 7 miles wide, it lies at the bend of the Canal de Haro and the Georgian Channel and lies immediately at the mouth of Fraser’s River about 40 miles north west of Victoria and within ½ a mile of Vancouver’s island. I can see the mouth of the Fraser distant about 20 miles and the Cascade mountains distant about 75 miles as on any clear day I’m going about ¼ mile back on the hill behind me. The Broadwell mountain or what we call Channel Ridge now a days.

I hope you can stand listening to this, he waxes eloquently about the island and I want to mention some of the things he had to say.

This is one of the most dramatic regions I was ever in. Scotland is nowhere in that respect but to my narrative the band of adventurers including myself, finding the island beautifully situated amidst an archipelago more beautiful than the thousand islands of St Lawrence. This being the most convenient to Victoria and the San Juan we determined to form the settlement. As Chris pointed out he had the second choice of lots, which were essentially ¼ mile strips from the shore to St Mary Lake. “My lots fronts a quarter of a mile in a nice little bay. Opposed to me lies a long island shielding me from the northwest summer wind. And that’s Galiano. Behind my lot on it’s rear borders a beautiful fresh water lake of some two miles in length teaming with fish. I have about 80 acres of prairies suitable to farm. It is not exactly a prairie, as it resembles an English park, as here and there is a beautiful clump of balsam growing. I erected a cabin on my lot. 14 by 17 feet, I assume. It is a log one covered with shakes on poles being altogether more open than a house that would freeze to death a cow in Canada with nothing but a small fireplace and mud floor. Yet so beautiful is the climate that I have passed the winter in it quite comfortably. Tom. Now to point out that when he refers to Canada that is what we would now think of as eastern Canada as it was a separate place then. He mentions the various vegetables he has on his 3 acres and the 2 young men he has taken on as helpers and he talks of the schooners which passed three times a week and that he is the postmaster. My livestock at present consists of a tomcat and young dog and may mention I have a valuable salt spring on my land impregnated with one fifth salt. This at present is Harkema’s farm. It is very cheap living here as the Indians who are very useful and very good to white men and bring us large quantities of the best the waters and forest can produce. For a mere song I buy a buck weighing a hundred and fifty pounds in trade. That trade originally costing me about half that amount. Salmon weighing 10 lbs can be bought for 12 cents; a duck costs about 12 ½ cents, grouse 25 cents. Talking about 12 ½ cents sounds kind of ridiculous until you realize they are just switching one monetary system to another. From pounds to dollars.

English noblemen live no better in this respect than we do. We have the best the sea and land can provide for a trifle. That is where I’ll stop that first letter but you can see that Jonathan Begg at this point is a go getter and he toots his own horn a little bit and I think we’ll learn a bit more about this as we go.

Chris: These are some remarkable sketches done by Arthur Mallendine who was another one of these first settlers in the Salt Spring settlement, as this place was known at the time. This is a sketch he did of Begg’s house. This is Begg’s store. Eventually he set himself up as a trader and actually advertised in the various newspapers. You can see it’s a different set of buildings than the house. These buildings probably stood on the site where the Harkema buildings stand today. This is an early preemption map. You can see up here it’s called Begg’s settlement. This was done in May 1861. It’s a schematic map. This is Southey Point here and down to Walker’s Hook here and Jonathan Begg’s lot is in here. And it’s interesting here is his neighbour Henry Sampson. Edward Mallandine was down here and actually our home is located on the Mallandine preemption. This map produced, I’m not sure who did it. I found it in the archives and this shows the relationship of that schematic map we showed earlier superimposed on the lot system we have today. We can see Begg’s here and we can see when things got in to trouble with another survey of central Salt Spring add the lots started to overlap here. It was a very imprecise system. This is Tate’s map here overlapping with the other map. Here we can see Mallandine’s preemption here, George and Begg.

Tom: It might be interested to mention that I used to live on this piece of land here. This funny little corner still exists. Franks done some interesting things relating to these maps, as they exist today. Beggs preemption here, this is Fernwood, here’s the North End Road and Fernwood and in those days Fernwood took a little jog down here. This building here, which may have been Beggs house and this one here, which may have been Begg’s store. This is something cool Frank has done. He’s superimposed the old map on a recent satellite image of the north end of the island. You can see that the rangelands follow a lot of features on the ground today. There’s the old road. Next time you go down Fernwood and you see Harkema’s driveway. That’s the old road. It took a jog off Fernwood to the west then down to the shore. This is probably where the original dock was. You can still see vestiges of all these old lot lines. This is where you used to live down here Tom? Yes, I was actually on Jonathan’s property but it had been greatly subdivided by then so I just had 4 acres out of Jonathan’s how ever many acres it was and it may have been 200 or it may have been as little as 50.

Gordon: My only comment relates to the records of the land management bureau in Victoria. When Jonathan sold his property to Richard Bryn who was buying it for his sister who was married to Thomas Griffiths. This difference is that the record shows that he sold 51 acres and he sold it for $800 and this is in contrast to the belief and he always said that he had 200 acres Tom W. We had a nice argument about this before the program began because if you measure one of those triangles on the map it comes pretty close to 200 acres so he may have just owned part of one.

Chris: So you can see from this old map that one of these 100 acres sections is divided into half. So this is probably the 51 acres that Gordon is referring to.Tom: Could he have sold just part of it perhaps in that sale of 1863?

Audience, Usha?: I read something in 1874 about that Begg initially was attempting at least to preempt 200 acres, that’s 2 lots side by side. He didn’t improve all of that. He sold 50 to Bryn who is the brother of Mrs Griffiths and sold 100 to Griffiths. Different moneys coming from different people. Mr. Griffiths was not very well and so she actually farmed the whole lot. Now, all of that, I can’t remember where I get that from, I think it’s mostly a conglomerate of Margaret Shaw’s accounts who know Mrs. Griffiths well at the time when she was older. The old 1874 map which shows where Bryn was and where Griffiths was on the actual piece of property.

Gordon: It shows Griffiths land is all preempted. Tom: I want to say something about Jonathan Begg, his person. He was obviously an impatient kind of a guy and certainly was full of energy. Here’s a little bit out of his next letter. This is a letter that was written on June the 3rd of 1860. He says, farming is not conducted here on grand principles. Any little that has been done or done heretofore has been conducted by old servants of the Hudson’s Bay Company who are more awkward than the animals they drive. One can see here the old carts, farm implements and equipment used 50 years ago in Britain. A good farmer of little means would not fail to make it rich in a few years. This is very typical of his letters. They are kind of sales pitches in a way and in this particular letter he goes on to describe the commodity prices and tells proudly of being appointed post master and returning officer and of organizing the first agricultural society in the colony. Early in 1860 something interesting happened. I’ll spend a minute or two talking about what was called the battle of Admiralty Bay. Early in 1860 the beginning of July there were a couple of white settlers fishing off the north tip of Salt Spring and they watched a couple of Cowichan fishing a few hundred yards away when suddenly without warning, two northern war canoes, Fort Rupert war canoes probably, appeared and the frantic Cowichans, who were terrified, leapt on board the ship the white men were on but it didn’t do them any good because the Fort Rupert warriors followed them on board and cut their heads off. This is very likely the same group of Indians who were described in the Starke family history when they talk about landing at Vesuvius. There was a white trader called McCauley who was carrying some furs down south and he was using these Fort Rupert or Bella Bella Indians to carry some furs on their canoe. He was going down towards Admiralty Bay which is now Ganges and the first place he came in to was Beggsville. He pulled in to Beggsville but had to withdraw hurriedly because there were some Cowichan Indians who were quite hostile. He went back on to the water, went around to Ganges. Probably the following day. I imagine they camped along the shore. But anyway there were nine of these northern Indians, 3 boys and 2 women, I think it was. And when they arrived at Ganges there was rather a hostile group of Cowichan Indians again to meet them there. This white trader McCauley went up to visit Lineker who lived up at the head of the harbour then. He was worried about his crew but the Indians who were there assured his that they were peaceful and that they would look after his crew. But when he was up at Linekers house, there were sounds of a scuffle and shots rang out and there were signs of a scuffle. The Cowichans surrounded these northern Indians. Chased them up the Chain Islands that run up the middle of Ganges Harbour They tried to escape, they threw the bales of furs into the water and paddled like mad up along the chain islands but it didn’t do any good because the Cowichans followed them there. They captured the 2 women and the boys and they killed 8 of the 9 men. One of them escaped and eventually made it over to Victoria. Anyway that was referred to at times as the battle of Ganges and oddly enough Jonathan Begg wrote another letter on July 16 which was only about 2 weeks later makes no mention at all of that happening. I suspect that Jonathan was trying to write letters, which were making the most of what Salt Spring was like. He didn’t mention that there had been some people killed and some heads cut off. He would have made a great real estate salesman I think, when you read the things that he says. Instead of talking about this war that had gone on he mentions a friend MacIntyre, who had gone 200 miles up the Fraser to sluice for gold and says he was earning 8 dollars a day sluicing. There is no fear for a man that likes to work can do very well anywhere he likes to go throughout this country but the place is cursed with a lot of fellows who come out after government situating too genteel to handle a spade and pick. Useful for no purpose in a new colony. I think he was probably a Presbyterian Scot from the things he says. This long letter went on like a travel brochure, full of phrases such as all the miners are doing well on the Fraser River trails are being cut steam boats are being built on the Fraser River. Vast improvements have been carried out in the Interior. In this letter he now calls this place instead of Alboin he now calls it Balmoral and he hopes to make it a fashionable watering place some day he says.And he talks about visiting Queenborough which was only a year old then which is now New Westminster.

I’ll read some more of his letters after I’ll just step aside and let Chris have a go here.

In 1861 Jonathan Begg was made a road commissioner on Salt Spring. November 1862 and he’s now been there 3 years. And he talks of a trip he’s made to the Caribou Gold fields and he’s optimistic about his farming successes and he describes the large stone and brick warehouses going up in Victoria. He was very impressed by the hardships of the miners. He figured all they had to eat was beans at every meal. Beans. He also describes some men up there were digging up what you would consider a good years worth at every shovel. That’s a bit of an exaggeration isn’t it? Anyway he mentions a railway company formed to join Victoria and Esquimalt harbour and another to Nanaimo so he’s carrying on with this kind of sales pitch. And he tells William he should bring his family out west and he jokes that William should find him a wife, box her up and send he by express. So I think maybe he’s getting a bit lonely.

He ran an add in 1862 in the British Colonist describing his depot which I guess was a retail outlet on Fort Street in Victoria adjoining D. Lindsays store and he lists many fruit varieties, fruits and grains. By December 27 1862 Jonathan is seriously suggesting a match with William’s widowed sister Mrs. William Gibbs. Were your sister willing to accept my hand, I have loved Mrs. Gibbs as a girl and admired and respected her as a dutiful wife. So he really was getting lonely and I think wanting some company there.

Chris: I’ll just talk a bit about bringing it up to 1863. Besides the correspondence he left to the Chisholms we have a lot of letters he wrote to the British Colonist. In 1863 there was a conflict taking place between the British Colonial government of Vancouver Island and the Lamalcha Indians of Kuper Island and there was a battle fought on Kuper Island on April 20 1863 where the gunboat Ford was defeated in a 3-hour gunfight with the Lamalcha Indians. It’s the only documented incident of a defeat of a Royal Navy fighting vessel by a tribal fighting force. Some of the natives left Lamalcha and visited Begg’s store and boasted of their prowess in defeating the gunboat This gunboat bombarded the village with hundreds of rounds of shrapnel and shell and small-armed fire. They said that all these efforts knocked down a lot of trees but failed to kill one native.

He wrote this letter when he was in Victoria, which leads me to believe there was a lot of fear by settlers at that time that they would fall victim to native conflict.

We talked about the sale and one thing we noticed that came out in the Colonist. In December of 1863 Jonathan Begg’s property is up for sale by a Mrs. Begg and that is interesting to me because in his letters he talks about having to have a wife but it leads me to believe he had a native wife and his neighbour Henry Sampson was married to the daughter of Ho’holestun the chief that I showed you later and it could very well be that Begg had a native wife. And of course before the colonial government established it’s defector rule in the area the settlers had to deal with native jurisdiction in the area and one of the easiest ways to remain on the land was to marry a woman whose family owned the rights to the land so they were able to stay there unmolested.

Tom W. It might just be worth mentioning Jonathan Begg didn’t always stay on Salt Spring because in early1863 he wrote a letter from England and Scotland where he’d gone to do some business, I guess. He describes dreadful snowstorms in England at that time and he describes going to the Begg distillery in Aberdeen and it appears to be a distillery that was in the family, maybe an uncle or something like that. I think it might be the distillery that eventually became the Grants distillery but I’m not sure about that. 38.43. In early 1863 Jonathan wrote several letters to the British Colonist on various topics such as the mail service and the difficulties of nonVictorians serving on the legislature and mildew on raspberries and stuff. I think Gordon has put together a huge collection on stuff he put together a some years ago. He spent a lot of time in Victoria followed through the Colonists and found all these letters from Jonathan Begg. Do you want to add anything to what I’ve mentioned about the mildewed raspberries.

Gordon: I’m sort of interested in the sequence of some of these letters. For example in 1863, I think you were just talking about. There were letters about the mail service and letters about gooseberries of all things. Apparently he was in Victoria at the time and they made an error in copying one of his letters and wrote the second letter almost the next day. There’s also a note in the Colonist about Begg as a candidate for Nanaimo for the coming election but he apparently wasn’t very active and they considered him a no show finally. At the end of that year Dec 26 he sold his land at an auction in Victoria to Richard Brim. I was interested that it says a Mrs. Begg. In the land management records there’s no reference to a Mrs Begg ever having a title to the land. Just Begg himself. I believe that’s something we can perhaps look in to. One thing I’d like to draw to your attention is that the United States which was sitting overlooking the British Columbia endeavors. The Confederate States were established in 1861 and Lees May 8 1865. Much of Beggs travel took place during the US Civil War. The thing that intrigues me is how the devil did he get to Scotland without going through the United States, which was not a very good place to go through. Also Douglas stepped down in 1864. At the time Begg was in Scotland.

Tom W.: January 1863 was the time of that letter. I could add a little something about the election in Nanaimo that Gordon referred to. According to an article in the British Colonist, Mr. Begg of Salt Spring Island did not make an appearance. The people here regarded his address as a piece of burlesque and many of them believed it was published on the advise of some adventurers. Not sure what all that meant but it did seem that Jonathan’s bombasts were getting under some sensitive skins.

Gordon: And one other little effort that he undertook which may have got him in more trouble than benefit. He wrote a letter to the Colonist in some detail after a trip to San Juan Island in which he criticized the whole management of the Empire Properties. Now Douglas was no longer on the scene, I think. But subsequent to this Begg seems to have had a certain amount of trouble with the government about his patents that he wanted to have issued.

Tom W. He invented a wood splitting device of sorts with springs, knives and levers which with one man on the machine and two handling logs could split 50 cords of wood per day. And he actually wrote to the Attorney General of the day to try to get a patent for this machine. But I think the truth was that they didn’t feel they could issue patents at all for anything by anybody. And he ran into the same thing when he tried to get a patent for raising the La Boucher after it sank in San Francisco Harbour. Tom W. Yes and do you know about the La Boucher. It was a ship that travelled up and down the coast between Victoria and San Francisco. On April 1, 1866, at any rate the paddle ship ran up on a reef and the captain did what you’re not supposed to and backed up and of course the ship sank in deep water. So Jonathan Begg figured that he could raise it. He came up with a device that would raise the ship and he wanted a patent on that as well. And the government wasn’t about to give him any patents and he got a little bit cross about things up here. ‘Another Legislative Blunder” that was the headline in the British Colonist.

He was critical of the current patent laws he described himself as a loyal British subject but that he cannot get a US patent unless he first patents his invention in his own country or that he swears allegiance to the United States. But there is a disconnect in there. He was a loyal Brit. Gordon. “He wasn’t a loyal Brit, he was a Scot.” Tom. “Well that’s a Brit.” He feels his material interests direct him to become a citizen of the United States.

Another quote “Aug 27th 1866 another article in the colonist stated that Mr. Begg the inventor of a machine for raising sunken vessels will go below meaning to the States for the purpose making arrangements for the raising of the La Boucher. That’s it. That’s the end of the trail.

Gordon. All that I could find after that time it’s a publication in April of 1868 in what was called the First Victoria Directory 2nd issue. It’s a publication of all the residents in the Victoria area. It lists a Jon Begg at George Dutnells and Albert Head and that might have been short for Jonathan.

The next year they put the directory out again it shows a Jonathon Begg as a labourer in the Esquimalt area. Now it’s hard to imagine Jonathan Begg ever advertising himself as a labourer at any time. Tom. That doesn’t sound our Jonathan at all, does it? I don’t think that’s the same one. I think Jonathon was down in the States by that time stirring things up and I’m kind of surprised that we can’t find more about him down there. I have to tell you I wrote about 25 letters to all the Beggs in the Victoria phone book trying to find a descendant but got no response.

Maybe the times come for Chris to wrap things up because he’s probably got lots to add to this.

Chris I think it’s hard to wrap up anything about Jonathon Begg at this point but thanks to all the archival work of these gentlemen we had a lot of material to go on and to consolidate and to pursue. Tom It would make a great book. Chris. We are actually thinking of doing a book on this gentleman and all the early settlers of the Salt Spring settlement. And really time doesn’t permit to get in to all the details. We didn’t really get into all his nursery as he imported grafts from trees in Oregon and California and he advertised in the New West papers and the Victoria papers and he was probably the first major agriculturalist on Salt Spring in his operation of the Balmoral Nursery.

Tom. Here’s one connection I can add. It turns out that when Griffiths and Bryne bought the property there’s an interesting connection here that some of you might be interested in. Thomas Griffiths married Elizabeth Bryne and it was Elizabeth Bryne Griffiths who later became the wife of John Patton Booth who was one of the leading lights of SSI.

Chris. You just reminded me of one other connection When the Griffiths owned that property they were very friendly with a native man from Kuper Island who was the brother of ? who was know as Captain Very Good. He had a particular attachment to that Begg property and when he died the Griffiths gave the family permission to bury him on the Begg property. There are all kinds of other threads we can explore, connections between Jonathan Begg and the native people. Not to mention San Francisco and who knows where he ended up. Maybe at Begg distillery.

195_Panel_Life-of-Jonathan-Begg.mp3

otter.ai

11.03.2023

no

Unknown Speaker 0:00
Today, we have a very special program, we're going to look at the life and times of Jonathan beg, who is a man of Scottish Scottish ancestry who came to Salzburg on July 27 1859. And this is going to be sort of a casual exploration. The gentleman to my to my left here, Tom, and Gordon writes, no relation, Although who knows, if you go way back, we're all related a, they have, over the last few years done a lot of archival research on this gentleman now, we don't really know too much about him. So, but we're going to know a little more about him by the by the time this is over. Tom has done extensive work on his letters. We were very fortunate a number of years ago, some descendants of Jonathan big, great, great, great, nice, turned over some letters to our archives, and valuable letters that were written by Jonathan bag from Salt Spring Island, and they give us a lot of really interesting information about Salt Spring at that time, you know, really, it augments a very a period of our history that is not too well known. So we'll probably the three of us is going to kind of give and take as we go through this and explore the life of Jonathan Begg from his birth at Abilene on the river D in Scotland, up to his disappearance in 1860. In the mid 60s, we'll find out we'll find out and speculate as to what happened to Mr. Big. So first, I'd like to call on Tom to give us sort of a bit of background and some information on these remarkable letters. So

Unknown Speaker 2:07
first thing you might wonder is how these letters which Jonathan wrote, which left Saltspring of course, because he mailed away how they got back. So I wanted to give you just a brief background on that. The story begins with Jonathan being born, as Chris mentioned in Scotland in 1825. And then, teenage Jonathan and his teenage Sister, I'm not quite sure which one was older or younger than the other. But they came over to Canada to Pickering in in Upper Canada or Canada West, I guess it was then. But they came in the early 40s in their teens. But in 1847, Jonathan's Sister Margaret married a farmer named William Chisholm from Pickering. And he was another Scot who had come to Canada at the age of 10. And when Jonathan was nearly 30 years old, and still in Pickering, that isms moved to Cedar County, Iowa, where William became a dealer and imported Clydesdale horses. And it was William and Margaret that Jonathan wrote to from First California and then later on on Saltspring. And they're wonderful letters that describe an awful lot about the early days of soft spring. And the reason they came back was because because William's granddaughter, no great granddaughter, Lois Beckman who lived in Gig Harbor, Washington, brought the letters to Saltspring Island back in 1992. And brought them along to Fern Ridge Elementary, Fernwood having at one time being Brecksville. So there's a connection there. And the principal of the school at that time by brown side came to me and said, we've got some old letters about Saltspring, would you be interested? So I certainly was interested. And I said, Sure, I'll have a look at them. One of the reasons I wear glasses is because I deciphered a whole pile of these letters. And as you can see, because of the postal expenditures, in the old days, they wrote several ways they would write this way, and then turn the letter over and write the other way, and then turn it again and write the third way, occasionally, even four times. But anyway, I went through all these letters. And they're remarkably interesting. And they've got far more stuff than we can possibly talk about today. So I'm going to try and pick out some highlights about those early days in Saltspring. And in California, Jonathan originally wrote from Alameda County, California, where he had recently arrived after a 36 day journey from New York via the Panama isthmus. And he expressed his delight in the climate of California and the settled nature's of the villages and price of clothing, which seemed very reasonable to him. He was determined and to go into fruit growing, and says he can manage the nursery at $40 a month and he did describes the giant vegetables that grew there. And farm horses at $50. Eat and find large match teams of horses from four to $500 and good American oxen at $200 A yoke. And except for too many golfers and too few women, he thought California was the country par excellence. He even talks of setting his cap at the fine girls have an old Spaniard neighbor who owns 7000 acres of the best land and becoming a grandi. So he sounded as though he was pretty much up on California. But something must have happened to dampen his enthusiasm, because he moved north up into British territory about eight months later. And nearly a year later, on March the 10th 1860, he wrote from a boy in place named after his old home in Scotland, on Saltspring Island, who his relatives in Iowa an earlier letter that he had written obviously didn't survive, so we only have his second letter from Salt Spring. And it turned out that Jonathan had arrived in Victoria in early June 1858. In the midst of a reverse in business caused by bad news from the minds. He says he'd seen quite enough of California's climate and society. He now says that the only thing he liked in California was her fruits, and that the society though improving is not any the best, and the government is rascally bad. No man except a clever rover Irishman can attain any position there, he says. And then he talks of leaving without a penny in his pocket to seek his fortune in the North. He waxes enthusiastic about victorious climate, the people and the prices, in spite of arriving as he said, during a depression, finding I could get no more work of could get no work of any kind. So hundreds more out of employment, I immediately went to work and rented a vacant house with two fifths of an acre of land where I put in about 1500, cabbages etc. As the land was of poor description, I did not realize much from it. In the fall, I advertised as a gardener, etc. in the local paper, when I got a job to work for Mr. Woods, the banker, which set me a little on my seat again. When I resided in Victoria, I had other work on hand have greater moments than my everyday employment. I found the land system in such a deplorable condition that no one out of employment of the Hudson's Bay Company could procure an acre of the public domain. I saw that justice and reform as necessary. So I commenced the movement, which has since changed the whole land system of the colony. It's not afraid to blow his own horn a little bit. But he was evidently a really interesting guy.

Unknown Speaker 7:44
Before Tom goes on, I thought I'd just give a bit of the context, the political context of what was going on in the colony of Vancouver Island. At that time. The actual colony is right here you can see these little there's 1011 districts here a Sikh district machos and Esquimalt, Victoria, and these were all treated from the native people. These are the different pieces of land that featured in the Douglass treaties, which were negotiated between 1850 and 1854, and constituted the colony of Vancouver Island. Now, the British with the discovery of gold in 1858, the British colonial office decided to end the the Hudson's Bay, Hudson Bay companies tenure of Vancouver Island because they were, you know, supposed to develop this colony. And with the discovery of gold, the British imperial government decided, well, maybe it's a good idea to take this colony out of the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company and transform it into something else. So Douglas was given word that on May 31 1859, the Hudson's Bay Company jurisdiction would end and it would be taken over by a new system. Douglas, however, you know, sort of prompted he wanted to expand the colony into these areas. Here we have the couch and Valley. And but the trouble is he ran into opposition from the native people. The last Douglas treaty was negotiated in 1854 it Nanaimo. And then following that, in the following years, native people began to resist negotiations. They didn't like what was happening. And Douglas went ahead anyway, and survey these areas without any official recognition or guidance from the Imperial government. So it's basically an illegal surveys. And in fact, it's interesting about these districts they were actually the land was actually sold before it was even surveyed to various Hudson's Bay A company, employees, Royal Navy officers and wealthy merchants in Victoria. And so they owned anywhere from hundreds to 1000s of acres in this area. But none of them were able to occupy the land because of resistance from the native people. Following the gold rush. You know, 1000s of people flooded into Victoria went to the Gold Rush within a few months, the Fraser River Gold Rush was a bit of a bust. So many of these, well, most of them came back to Victoria and then went back to the places of origin except for about 1500 described as the waifs and strays of the world, and this would have included Jonathan bag, and they began to agitate to have access to this land in the Cowichan Valley. And there were a lot of editorials in the papers saying, you know, we have to settle the question of Indian title and get farmers on the land and, and these unemployed miners in Victoria here, wanted access into this area. But Douglas couldn't do it, because, number one, he did not have the permissions of native people. And number two, most of the land in here was already spoken for by various purchasers. So he developed a preemption system. And this is what Tom was alluding to beg was involved in this, they had a lot of meetings in various hotels in Victoria. And in order to placate them, Douglas allowed them to go to chumminess Valley, and to the north end of Saltspring. Island. And he said he gave them permission to preempt this area. This was done without any official recognition by the the colonial office. In fact, Douglas wrote a letter to the colonial office saying that he was going to have this preemption system but in the letter he explicitly says that it was only restricted to these territories, and he didn't even mention any of the Cowichan area or Saltspring island. So this is sort of the context in my theory about this. I mean, there's no proof I speculate in my book about it, that he because there was a lot of opposition to settlement by Native people, especially on keeper Island, that he directed the settlers to the north end of Salt Spring and the humaneness valley to provoke native people into a some kind of resistance that would, you know, allow the, the Royal Navy to go in and basically, you know, occupy the land de facto and, and destroy the native resistance, which actually happened in increments over the following years. But this is where they landed, and July 27 1859, this first group of leaders 70 men, they landed a walker slick beach here, and took up 200 acre preemptions from Walker's hook to the north end of Salt Spring Island. Now this area, just to give you an idea of who was running the show around here, this is the native village of Panella kit here. The Head Chief was this gentleman. Halston. And he these but but the the the, the expected confrontation did not happen, because there was some sort of negotiations between chiefs like Halston, and other head men. And within a year, most of the settlers in this area were married to Native women from the village of keeper Island. And here is a picture of the Jane's farm Seed Farm taken. Well, in the 1920s, I guess this was Jonathan bakes preemption, apparently, when these men landed, and according to one of his letters, they drew lots for a choice of lots and Jonathan bag. Clay said that he got second choice. And this was the land he chose, which is roughly bounded by Fernwood. Well, the eastern end of the boundary runs along Fernwood road and we're gonna look at some more details in a bit. But it was open land and I believe Tom will take it from here and this is Jonathan big built his cabin up here and we have pictures coming up showing these buildings, and he felt very satisfied with his choice.

Unknown Speaker 14:28
Okay, I'll go on with his letter. After the above movement was concluded to the satisfaction of all parties, I was one of 18 adventurers who went out to view the land when we lighted on the island mentioned on the heading of this letter, which was Saltspring Island. It's about 20 miles long and varying from two to seven miles wide. It lies at the bend of the canal de Haro and the Georgia channel and lies immediately opposite the most of Fraser's river being distant about 40 miles northwest of Victoria, and within half a mile of Vancouver's Island. I can see the mouth of Fraser just about 20 miles for the Cascade Mountains distance 75 miles and a clear day on going back about a quarter mile to the top of the mountain behind me, that would be rod wells mountain or what we call channel Ridge nowadays. I hope you can stand listening to he waxes eloquent about the island and I want to mention some of the things he had to say. This is one of the most romantic reasons I was ever in Scotland is nowhere in that respect. But to my narrative, the band of adventure is referred to including myself finding the island beautifully situated in the midst of an archipelago more beautiful than the 1000 Islands on St. Lawrence. This being the most convenient to Victoria and to San Juan, we determined to form the settlement now and as Chris pointed out, he had the second choice of lights were essentially quarter mile strips from the shore over to St. Mary's lake. And he mentioned so I'll skip a bit of this because it's quite long, but he says my lap fronts a quarter of a mile in a nice little bay were about two miles opposed to me lies a Long Island ceiling me, shielding me from the northwest summer winds and that's Galliano evidently, behind my lot on its rear borders a beautiful freshwater lake of some two miles in length teeming with fish. I have about 80 acres of prairie is on the farm. It is not exactly a prairie as it more resembles an English park is here and there there is a clump of beautiful Balsam growing. Last fall, I erected a cabin on my lot 14 by 17 feet, I assume it is a log one and covered with shapes on polls being altogether more open than a house that would freeze to death a car in winter and Canada with nothing but a small fireplace and mud floor. Yet so beautiful is the climate that I have passed the winter in it very comfortably. Now to point out that when he refers to Canada, that's what we would now think of as Eastern Canada because it was a separate place. Then he mentioned the various vegetables he has on his enclosed three acres and two young men. He's taken on his helpers and he talks about the schooners which passed three times a week and that he is the postmaster my livestock at present consists of a tomcat and young dog. I may mention that I have a valuable Salt Spring on my lap very strongly impregnated with pure salt, being 1/5 salt. This is Harkness farm, many of you will recognize it is very cheap living here as the Indians who are very useful and very good to white men bring us large quantities are the best the waters, woods and forests can produce for a mere song, I buy a good buck weighing 100 pounds for $1.50. And trade, that trade costing me originally about half that amount. A salmon weighing 10 pounds can be bought for 12 and a half cents, a duck costs about 12 and a half cents, gross 25 cents in trade. And you can determine there because they talked about 12 and a half cents. That sounds kind of ridiculous until you realize that they're just switching over from one monetary system to another and they're going from pounds to dollars. English noblemen live no better in this respect than we do for we have the best the sea and land can provide for a trifle. So that is where our stop that fresh letter. But you can see you get to feel a little bit about Jonathan bag at this point. He's a go getter. He's got full of ideas and, and he touched his own horn a little bit. I think we'll learn more about this as we go. I'm not quite sure who's following me up here.

Unknown Speaker 18:30
But these are some remarkable sketches done by Edward Malin Dine, who was another one of these first settlers in the Saltspring settlement as this place was known at the time. And this is a sketch he did have a big house. This is a big store. Eventually he set himself up as a trader and actually advertise in the various newspapers. And you can see it's a different set of buildings in the house. And these these buildings probably stood on the site of the where the Harkin buildings are today. This is a an early preemption map. You can see up here it's called Big settlements. This is done in the eighth of May 1861. And it's a schematic map. This is basically suddenly points up here and down to Walker's hook here. And Jonathan Biggs lot is in here. And what's interesting here is his neighbor, Henry Samson, and various other early settlers Edward Malin dine was down here and actually our home is located on the the Malin dine preemption. Any of you gentlemen want to add something about this?

Unknown Speaker 19:50
I just would add something about the melon died preemption seems to have been a rather peculiar bureaucratic process that no name Got the clerk in charge of records working in his office when they simply can. Oh, yes, I did that. That's my that's where it

Unknown Speaker 20:13
started. Yeah. But it's interesting. I know from some research that he did build a cabin on his fraction and it was actually broken into by a group of climates and natives. You know, it was mountain. Well, it was

Unknown Speaker 20:31
big with the forward to attack.

Unknown Speaker 20:39
Yeah, no, I Yeah, that's a different, no different thing. Let's see, we'll go to this map produced, I'm not sure who did it. But I found it in the archives. And this shows you the relationship of those. That schematic map to this shows the schematic map that we saw earlier, superimposed on the lot system we have today. And we can see bags here. And here where things got into trouble. They were there was another survey done of central Saltspring. And the lot started to overlap here was a very imprecise system. Up there, yeah, this is Tate's map down here. And overlapping with the other map. But here we can see Melodyne is transferred here to origin and big

Unknown Speaker 21:38
might be interesting dimension that I used to live on this piece of land here. This funny little corner still exists, it's done by the firm with some house. Let's have a look at my land because of that.

Unknown Speaker 21:50
Now, this is Frankston some interesting stuff here relating these property or these lots to the land as it exists today. This is bigs preemption here and here. This is Fernwood. Here's the north and road and Fernwood. And in those days, Fernwood took a little jog down here. There's a building here, which may have been big house and then another one down here, which may have been big store. We're not too sure. But do you move it to the this is something cool Frankston. He's superimposed the old map on to a recent satellite image of the north end of the island. You can see the range lines follow a lot of features on the ground today. There's Fernwood. There's the old road. Next time you get on Fernwood, and you see the heart come a driveway that see the original road and it took a jog off Fernwood to the west and then down to the shore. This is probably where the original doc was. But you can still see vestiges of all these old lot lines. And this is where it used to live down here thought,

Unknown Speaker 23:02
yeah, I was actually on Jonathan's property. But it had been greatly subdivided by then. So I just had four acres out of Jonathan's however many acres it was and there's some I got about how many acres it was. So it may have been 200. It may have been as little as 50 Something we were going to talk about that

Unknown Speaker 23:22
Gordon has some thoughts on that. Maybe you'd like to talk about this document you have here. Did you talk in this store and just so you can get it on?

Unknown Speaker 23:36
My only my only comment relates to the records of the Land Management Bureau over in Victoria. When Jonathan Biggs sold his his property he sold. I sold it to the name his last name was Brynn. What was the first name?

Unknown Speaker 24:06
Brandon Griffiths. Richard brand,

Unknown Speaker 24:10
he sold it, he sold it to rich Richard Richard Brown, who was buying it for his sister who was married to Thomas Griffith. Anyway, the the the difference is that the record shows that he sold 51 acres, the property amounted to 51 acres. And he sold it for $800. This is now this is in contrast to the belief that he owned the land. And he always said that he had 200 acres.

Unknown Speaker 24:48
We had a nice argument about this before the program began. And if you actually measure one of those rectangles on the map, it comes out to pretty close to 200 acres so he may have just one part of one But we

Unknown Speaker 24:59
can see In this picture here and from the old map that one of these 100 acre sections is divided into half, which would be the approximately 50 acres and this was probably the 51 acres that that Gordon's

Unknown Speaker 25:11
referring to could have sold as part of it perhaps at that sale in 1863.

Unknown Speaker 25:23
Initially attempting to

Unknown Speaker 25:32
improve

Unknown Speaker 25:40
100 these different money's coming from different people

Unknown Speaker 25:52
well and so she actually called the whole now where I get that

Unknown Speaker 26:06
as well

Unknown Speaker 26:15
which shows where Brent was and where goodness right thanks. That's not no.

Unknown Speaker 26:30
Shows Griffis slammed as all preempted my notes A 47 A 58 FTA 50 A the West half FTA, the I don't really know.

Unknown Speaker 26:51
I wanted to say something about Jonathan bag and just his person. He was obviously a kind of an impatient kind of a guy and certainly was full of energy. And here's a little bit out of his next letter. This is a letter that was written in December of 1859. Now pardon me June the third of 1860. He says farming is not conducted here on Grand principles any little it is done or has been done here to four has been by old servants of the Hudson's Bay Company, who are more awkward than the animals they drive. One can see here the old carts, farm implements and mode of cultivation invoked 50 years ago and Britain. A good practical farmer here with a little means would not fail to make it rich and a few years, and it's very typical of his letters. They're kind of sales pitches in a way. And in this particular letter, he goes on to describe commodity prices and tells proudly of being appointed postmaster and returning officer and of organizing the first agricultural society in the colony. Early in 1860, something interesting happens. I'll spend a minute or two just talk about what was called the Battle of admiralty bay or the Battle of Ganges if I may. Early in 1860, the beginning of July, there were a couple of white settlers fishing off the north tip of Salt Spring. And they watched a couple of college students fishing a few 100 yards away. And suddenly without warning to Northern War canoes. Flight Rupert worker news probably appeared and the frantic couch and Sue are terrified, leapt onboard the ship that the white men were on. But it didn't do them any good because they the fort Rupert warriors, follow them on board and cut their heads off. And this is very likely the same group of Indians that are described in the early part of the stock family's history when they talked about landing at Vesuvius. And there was a white trader called Macaulay, who was carrying some furs down south. And he was using this fight group at our Bella Bella Indians to to carry his fares on their canoe. And he was going down towards Admiralty Bay, which is now ganseys. And first place he came into was paxville. He pulled in at Beggs Ville but had the withdraw hurriedly because there were some carrots and Indians there who were quite hostile. And so he went back onto the water pulled around to Ganges probably the following day. I imagine they camped on the shore. But anyway, there were nine of these northern Indians and three boys and, and two women, I believe it was and when they arrived at what is now Ganges, there was rather a hostile group of college and Indians again to meet them there. And this white trader, Macaulay went up to visit Thomas Linacre who lived at the head of the harbor then, and he was worried about his son his crew, but the Indians were there assured them that they were going to be friendly, they would respect his crew. But when he was up at Linares house, there were a sudden sounds of a scuffle. And there were shots rang out and so forth. It turned out that the coach and surrounded his northern Indians chased them up the chain islands that run up the middle of Ganges Harbour. And they tried to escape, they threw the bales of fur into the water and paddled like mad applying the chain islands. But it didn't do any good. Because the characters followed them there. They captured two women and the boy as slaves, and they killed eight of the nine men. One of them escaped, and eventually made it over to Victoria. It's quite a long story to that, but I won't go through the whole thing. But any rate that was referred to sometimes as the Battle of Ganges. And oddly enough, Jonathan wrote another letter on July the 16th, which is only about two weeks later. makes no mention at all of that happening. And I suspect that Jonathan was trying to write letters which were making the most of what Saltspring was like. So he didn't mention the fact that there'd been some people killed and some heads cut off. So that again, I think, says something about Jonathan, and he would have made a great real estate salesman. I think when you read the stuff that he says, instead of talking about this, this war that had gone on, he mentions a friend, McIntyre, who had gone 200 miles up the Frazer to sluice for gold, and said he was earning $8 A day sluicing. There's no fear of a man that likes to work can do very well, anywhere. He likes to go throughout this region of country. But the place is cursed with a lot of fellows who come out after government situating who are too genteel to handle a spade and pick and useful for no purpose in a new colony. I think he was probably a Presbyterian Scott from the things he says. And this long letter went on like a Travel Brochure full of phrases such as all the miners are doing well this year on the Fraser River, trails are being cut steamboats are being built on the inner lakes and everywhere, vast improvements are being carried on throughout the interior. And in this letter, he now calls his place instead of calling a Boyne, he calls it Balmoral. And he helps to make it a fashionable watering place Sunday, he says. And he talks about visiting Queenborough, which was only a year old then and which is now New Westminster. But I'll read some more bits out of his letters. Later on. I better step aside and let Chris I

Unknown Speaker 32:35
just wanted to point out, this picture was taken in the London illustrated times showing the minor on his way to the caribou and on his return.

Unknown Speaker 32:50
Can I go into another? Okay, in 1861 Jonathan bag was made a road commissioner on Salt Spring. And then he wrote another letter on November the 28th 1862. So he's now been here three years, I guess in a bit. And he talks about a trip he has made to the caribou goldfields and he talks about his optimistic about his farming successes. He describes the large stone and brick warehouses springing up in Victoria. And he was very impressed by the hardships of the miners. He figured all they had to eat was beans all the time, every meal is beans. And he also described some men up there who were digging out what you would consider a good years work at every shovel. I don't know that's a bit strong, isn't it? But at any rate, he mentioned a railroad company formed to join Victoria and Esquimalt harbour and another projected to Nanaimo. So he's carrying on this kind of sales pitch, and he tells William, that he should bring his family out west, and he jokes that William should find him a wife fucks her up and sent her by Express. So I think maybe it's getting a bit lonely at that point. Did you want to make the ad on your? Yeah, he ran an ad in 1862. And the British colonists describing his depot, which I guess was a retail outlet, on Fourth Street in Victoria, adjoining the Lindsay's crockery store, and he lists many fruit varieties of seeds and grains. I think Frank might have a picture of that there. Is that one in there? On there? Well, that was a Victorian man he was talking about. But anyway by December the 27th 1862. John Oh, that's that's that's right. That's Balmoral see the similarity? By December the 26th. The 27th 1862. Jonathan is seriously suggesting a match with Williams will widowed sister, Mrs. Robin Gibbs. Well, your sister willing to act kept my hand I have loved Mrs. Gibbs as a girl and admired and respected her as a dutiful wife. So he really was getting lonely and I think what is some company there? And perhaps, perhaps I'll step aside and let either Gordon or Chris have a go for a while because I've talked too much already.

Unknown Speaker 35:28
I could just talk a bit about bring it up to 1863. You know, he, besides the correspondence that he left us or left correspondence with the tourism's, we have a lot of letters that he wrote to the British colonists. And in 1863, there was a, a conflict that took place between the colonial government of Vancouver Island and the lammeter Indians of Cooper Island, and it was a there was a battle actually fought on April 2018 63, on keeper Island, where the gunboat Ford was actually defeated in a three hour gunfight with the lammeter natives. It's the only documented incident of of defeat of a Royal Navy fighter fighting vessel by a tribal fighting force. And the some of the warriors left Lam Ultrabay after that, and visited big at his place on at his store, and boasted about their prowess in defeating the gunboat. And how that after the three hour gun, I mean, this gunboat bombarded the village with hundreds of rounds of shrapnel, grapeshot and shell and small arms fire and he said all these efforts knock down a lot of trees but failed to kill one coachman. And that's what he and he wrote this letter when he was in Victoria, which leads me to believe you know, there was a bit of an there was some there was a lot of fear on the part of Saltspring settlers at that time that they would fall victim in this to to native fighters in this conflict. And so just when you guys want to pick up after 1863, maybe we talked about the sale. And one thing that came out when I was we were looking over the notes is that there was a notice was it in the colonist. In December of 1863, Jonathan Beggs property on Saltspring Island is up for sale by a Mrs. Bag. And this is interesting to me because, you know, in these letters, he's talking about, Oh, I gotta have a wife. I gotta wait, you know, but it leads me to believe that he had a native wife and his neighbor, Henry Sampson was married to the daughter of Halston, the chief that I showed you later, and it could very well be that big, had a native wife. And of course, in those days before, the colonial government established its de facto rule in the area. new settlers had to deal with the native jurisdiction of the area because, and one of the easiest ways to remain on the land was to marry a woman whose family owned the rights to the land. And so they would, we were able to stay there unmolested,

Unknown Speaker 38:11
might just be worth mentioning also, that Jonathan didn't always stay on Saltspring because in early 1863, he wrote a letter from England and Scotland, where he'd gone to do some business, I guess. And he describes dreadful snowstorms across Scotland at that time. And he also mentioned is going to the big distillery in Aberdeen, and it appears to have been a distillery that was in a family, maybe an uncle or something like that. They think it might be the same distillery that eventually became grant Scotch whiskey distillery, but I'm not sure about that. But in early 1863, Jonathan wrote several letters to the British columnist on various topics, such as the male service and the difficulties of non Victorian serving in the legislature to mildew on raspberries and all kinds of stuff. And I think Gordon has a huge collection of stuff that he put together some years ago, he spent a lot of time over in Victoria, and followed through the British colonists and found all his letters from Jonathan bag. And they want to add anything to what I've mentioned about the mildewed resprays and everything. Good. And

Unknown Speaker 39:23
I'm sort of interested in the sequence of some of his letters. For example, in 1863, which I think you were just talking about, there were letters about the mail service, this Easter colonist, and letters about gooseberries of all things. Apparently, he was in Victoria at the time and they made an error in writing, copying his letter and so he wrote a second letter and almost the next day there's also a note in the colonist about big As a candidate for Nanaimo in the coming BC election but he apparently didn't, wasn't very active and they considered him a no show finally. But at the end of that year, December 26, as you say, he sold his land by auction in Victoria to Richard Brynn. I was interested that it says a missus bag because it in, in the land in the land management records there's no reference to a Mrs. Mrs. Big ever having a title to the land just make himself think that's something you could perhaps look into one thing I'd like to draw to your attention and that is that the United States was which was sitting, you know, overlooking the British Columbia endeavours the Confederate States were established in February 4 1961. And the Lee surrendered to the US in the US Civil War in May 8 1865. So then much of what begs activity and I think even his trip to to Scotland that took place during the Civil War. The thing I that kind of intrigued me about that is how the devil did the man get to Scotland without going through the United States, which was not a very good place to go through. And also big brother, I'm sorry, Douglas stepped down in 1864. And this was at the time that I believe big was in Scotland. I'm not sure about your date, so that I couldn't read. I couldn't read in the letter. It looked like 1864. But I wasn't sure.

Unknown Speaker 42:13
January 63. was the time of that letter winning London, Scotland.

Unknown Speaker 42:17
How did you get your better eyesight?

Unknown Speaker 42:20
It's not one of the letters. Well, I

Unknown Speaker 42:22
know. A little I couldn't

Unknown Speaker 42:23
read it. I could add a little something about the election up in Nanaimo that garden referred to. According to an article in the British colonists, Mr. Bag of Salt Spring Island did not make an appearance. The people here regarded his address as a piece of Burlesque and many of them believe it was published on the advice of some adventurers. Not quite sure what all that meant. But it did seem that Jonathan's bombast was getting under some sensitive skins maybe.

Unknown Speaker 42:55
One other little effort that he undertook, and they have gotten himself more trouble than benefit was. He wrote a letter to the colonists in some detail after a trip to San Juan Island, in which he criticized the whole management of the Empire properties. Now, Douglas was no longer on the See, I think. But subsequently, this big seems to have had a certain amount of trouble with the government about his patents that he wanted to have issued and various other things. I don't think I can add much more to that. I can say

Unknown Speaker 43:38
something about the machine that he was trying to patent. Oh, yes, he invented a wood splitting device, apparently with springs, with springs, knives and levers, which with one man on the machine and two handling logs could split 50 cords of wood a day. And he actually wrote to the attorney general at that time trying to get a patent for his machine.

Unknown Speaker 43:59
But I think I think the truth was that the they didn't feel like it issued patents at all, to anybody about anything. And he ran into the same thing when he tried to get a patent for raising the level of share after it sank. In San Francisco harbor. Yes. You

Unknown Speaker 44:15
know about the love of Cher. There was a ship that traveled up and down the coast between Victoria and San Francisco. And I finally got the date down here. April 1 1866.

Unknown Speaker 44:30
April 15. What's the difference at anyway,

Unknown Speaker 44:33
the battleship ran up on a reef and the captain did what you're not supposed to do, and that is he backed off the reef. And of course, the ship sank in deep water. And so Jonathan beg, figured that he could raise it. He came up with a device that would raise the ship, and he wanted a patent on that as well. And the government wasn't about to give him any patents. So he got a little bit crass about things up here. I've Got a little quote about it if I could read it another legislative blunder, another legislative blunder. That's right. That was a headline in the British colonists. And he was critical of the current patent laws. He described himself as a loyal British subject, but that he cannot get a US patent unless he first patents his invention in his own country or swears allegiance to the United States. But there's that disconnect in there. He, as a loyal breath, he did not want to. Well, it's a Brit.

Unknown Speaker 45:36
He's not a loyal Brits.

Unknown Speaker 45:41
On August 27 1866, another article in The Economist who stated that Mr. Bag, the inventor of a machine for raising sunken vessels will go below meaning to the states. For the purpose of making arrangements for the raising of the level share, he feels his material interests direct him to become a citizen of the United States. So there's a switch. There, he disappears. That's it. That's the end of the trail. He disappears at that point, and

Unknown Speaker 46:12
almost, almost almost.

Unknown Speaker 46:15
You've gotten well, because I stopped there.

Unknown Speaker 46:18
Well, really, it does stop there. But all that I could find after that time was in April of 1868, in what is called the first Victoria directory, second issue. It's a publication of all the residents in the Victoria area. It lists John J. O N. Baig at George Dutton wills and Albert head. And that might have been short for John or something other but actually, J. O. N is what I said it, I believe it was Jonathan A. Now the next year, they put the directory out again. And it shows the Jonathan bag as a laborer in the Esquimalt area. Now, it's hard to imagine Jonathan big ever advertising himself as a laborer, anytime

Unknown Speaker 47:10
doesn't sound like Jonathan at all, does it? I don't think that's the same one. I think Jonathan, by that time was down in the states stirring things up. And I'm kind of surprised that we can't find more about them down there. Well,

Unknown Speaker 47:22
there's, there's no I really don't know. How did another Jonathan, I wondered at first, frankly, whether this might be a son of his but insofar as he'd only been at the country, 10 years, I

Unknown Speaker 47:38
have to tell you, I also wrote about 25 letters to everybody called begging the phonebook over in Victoria, to see if I could find a descendent and no response from that. But I think maybe the time has come for Chris to wrap things up, because he's probably got lots of things to say that yeah, we've been getting in the way.

Unknown Speaker 47:58
Yeah, thanks. I think it's hard to wrap up anything about Jonathan beg at this point. But thanks to all the archival work in these gentlemen, we had a lot of material to go on and to consolidate and and to pursue a great book. It would make a great book. Yeah, I guess I'll have to write down. Yeah, no, we were actually thinking of it, of doing a book on this gentleman and all the early settlers of the Salt Springs settlement and, you know, really time doesn't permit to go in all the details. We didn't really get into all his nursery operations. He imported you know, he graphs from trees in Oregon and California and, you know, advertised in the New Westminster papers in the Victoria papers, and was really the first major agriculturalist on Saltspring in his operation of the Balmoral nursery.

Unknown Speaker 48:52
Here's one connection that I can add. Turns out that when Griffiths and Brynn bought the property, there's an interesting connection here that some of you might be interested in. Anyway, Thomas Griffis married Elizabeth Brin, and it was Elizabeth Brin Griffiths, who later became the wife of John Paton booth, who was one of the leading lights on Saltspring. That's a connection that not everyone knows.

Unknown Speaker 49:20
Just to, you know, just could you just remind me one other connection when the Griffiths owned that property. They were very friendly with a native man from Cooper Island, who was the brother of the Halston that we saw his name was swell Hilton. And he was known as Captain very good. And he had a particular attachment to that big property. And when he died, he the Griffis gave him gave the family permission to bury him on that property. So there's all kinds of other threads that we can explore, you know, connections between Johnson Begg and the native people. Not to mention San Francisco and who knows where he ended up. Maybe it's the big distillery