306_Aust_Word-on-the-Rock_Stonecutters.mp3

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24.04.2023

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Speaker 1 0:00
Good morning. Welcome to the Saltspring Island Historical Society archives presentation, we want to tell you a little bit about our organization. And then play one an example of one of our audio tapes. My name is Barb Aust, and I'm currently the volunteer archives manager, and enjoying spending time learning more about our island. In 1982, the Saltspring Historical Society was formed when a group of people got together that wanted to preserve the history of our island. And since that time, there's been a lot of dedicated local residents have worked each year, to advance the work of our society and to create programs to reflect and show the varied history and development of Saltspring Island. Our purpose is to encourage historical research and to stimulate public interest in the history of Saltspring. Island. We want to promote the preservation and identification of historical sites of relics, and natural features and other objects in places of historical interest. The Archives is the place where we want to save not just not the relics, because those are more for museum. But we want to save the historical data, the old letters, the account books, the minutes for meetings, anything that pertains to the history of our island, the Saltspring archives was a labor of love that came about about 20 years ago in 1989, when Mary Davidson and her cousin Agnes Cunningham and their friend Peggy Tolson got together and started to gather some artifacts of data that bits and pieces that they had lying around. They were descendants of the McLennan family who settled down in Beaver point Valley. And they had a great interest in preserving the history of early Saltspring. Island. They looked about for a place to house all of this, and they found the windfall room at the Mary Hopkins library. They got a grant, and were able to furnish it. And then the Saltspring archives was truly formed and began underneath the Salzburg Historical Society. So what do we have in the archives? Well, that's on any day that you went in there, you would find that we are now overgrown and overstuffed. In our tiny little space. We have boxes and boxes and boxes of old driftwood from the very early days of the driftwood newspaper, we have the Sydney review, we have old family photographs that had been donated to us. We have family files, files on the farmers Institute files on just about every organization that has ever occurred on Saltspring. Island. We have boxes of phones that people have given us family collections that they haven't necessarily known what to do with. And so they rather than throw them out, they very kindly pass them on to the archives. And we're delighted to get them. Just in the last few days, we've been inundated with summer visitors who have been interested in finding out different things about their families. And through time and a little bit of effort, we put the all call out. And it's amazing how many people contact us with information that we can pass on to families so that they can begin to connect with one another. A number of years ago, the mirror Academy family loaned us their photographs so that we could take pictures of them to scan the pictures so that we would have a record of them for our website. And then the Japanese farmers that had come to Salt Spring Island. Unfortunately, the mirror counties had a horrible devastating house fire and they lost all of their possessions. But because all of those photographs had been scanned, they were able to get copies of them and not lose their memories. That's the kind of thing that an archives can do to help in a community. We have a lot of audio tapes. These have been collected over the last 20 or 25 years. And we have recorded many of our old pioneers, pioneer families that have been able to give us the stories of tall tales that existed through time. I had a personal experience not long ago when my son in law was feeling a bit sad about his grin granddad having passed on. And I suggested that he go to the Archives website and find his granddad and he listened to it and very was complete with his little cough that he always had. And my son in law felt really enriched by the experience. And that's what we're hoping we can give to many other people. We thought today we would use one of the audio tapes. That tells a story. That shouldn't be event Tristan any salt spring people because it is one of Salt Springs cold cases that are. So conjecture tall tales and a few facts are thrown into this. But we're not really sure, because there's no mention of it in the history books, but amongst all papers, and passed on legends of the old timers, a story maybe true, maybe a good fairy tale can be pieced together about the stone cutters College. Back in the 1850s and 60s When my ancestors first came to BC, sandstone for buildings was in great demand in Victoria and San Francisco. Large amounts of dark grey easily work stones discovered along the west coast of salt spring from Vesuvius Bay up to Houston passage. The stone was quarried and shipped to be used in buildings such as the ampersand hotel and the legislative buildings. The stone cutters of the CVS were provided with an act of industry during the time of the gold rush. Nick kept many many people busy shipping all of this off to various places up and down the West Coast. Life was prosperous and the cities of Victoria and Vancouver are burgeoning

Speaker 2 6:18
public safety building in San Francisco to build entire buildings and consulting buildings in Olympia Victoria Have you ever wondered why the sound tanks or the Saltspring Island nostril man Island or Pangeran and rather adultos and I do happen to know the reason why such thing is for you so extensively over sector wide area not because they stone

Speaker 2 7:04
easy to land and the original shipment with a stone being taken from the hill and the reason was that was flown stone bottom of high tide the restaurants could come in with apologies, diabetes, they try to come up with a budget with a restaurant. And they follow the wagons could come down and carrying the stone and go right along the fire when a tiger dries up immediately from the wagons to the barges high tide float away natural little to places that's convenient. And also satisfying. And this is why the good company

Speaker 3 8:12
partly but I also think just to extend that there is also the reason is that the sandstone hit the north end of the island is sort of like cutting through an onion spread the layers have been pushed up and it's done. And the last time on the trip manner channel, one sloping on the surface of the ladder because of the weather and frost back off and they're almost have these lovely sloping blocks are ready to just slip into the ocean we got to do is pop them into the right side and headed downhill because gravity is with you. You know so you have that kind of facility. There's also that huge part in the same time. Newcastle is that we're producing a lot of buildings. Now.

Speaker 1 9:03
Further up the island, there was a smaller group of stone cutters whose work was much more refined. So much so that local history best Simon Hansen, who chose to learn more about them, call them stone masons. Evidence of their fine work can be traced to a San Francisco Opera House. were inscribed on the stone wall is the date and the origin of the stone. It surmised that the stone cutters came only in the summer months. Their stone cottage was unchanged, indicating it was not heated. As the story goes, it appears that the inhabitants were to bachelors. They would live on salt spring for the summer and work the stone preparing it for shipping. Our story today is told by Simon Hanson and in 1987 Historical Society presentation his references in it to archives art It's a provincial archives, because the local one had still not been formed at that time. Your Simon,

Unknown Speaker 10:08
to me it was fascinating. The same year that stops me being stuck with them and you have got

Speaker 3 10:17
a one to three day trip by clue was supplied depending on the weather conditions, some of the darkness to get stuff over to socks, you have very sort of troubled Indian people coming onto the island that really are not too happy with you've been. In those days, you've got some predators to deal with. If you had livestock the worst and wolves and Cougar on Saltspring that were predating some of the cat. There was rustling some of the early black people had trouble with rustling. It wasn't always Indian rustling black people rustling black. All this was going on. And there is this very business like very commercial. And business happening at the same time. I thought this was really strange. And it was even stranger when I started to go through the dig and find material. And what became clear to me it was that the stone that I actually excavated, and the quarry of the Soviets were not related in terms of types of stone produce, at the same time in history. But they were not associated in an activity. And when they talked about the five men during the softening stone company, we refer to the quarry in the studio, and apparently that quarry was work. And it was a very crude lifestyle. A lot of the people that weren't masons, they were just heavy duty laborers really. And they the process was splitting rock was the same as the other guys use, but there was no finish. They just cut the blocks of stone out of the quarry, scattered them down onto the walls that they'd built out into the channel onto students and volunteers and ship them away. And some reports say some of that stone went to San Francisco, the Opera House, the building were built the Saltspring stones actually living in San Francisco. And yet, what about the lifestyle of these guys? 40 workers aren't really there for a long time. It's hard work. conditions as I've just explained it very hard. And I gather that the habitat that they lived in with a lot of habits and going for it, that's fine. And there is one plot along for dry weather is the corner of the cabin, that you can still see the last overlapping interests to getting into and what people have often referred to here as the ovens. On last one, we're actually fireplaces at the end of the cast weren't up. I mean, there's one that was used like they were basically the fire in the heart at the head of these cabinets, and the roof is merely just a rough pole frame of canvas. Now that's temporary transit kind of labor on the back that I found that the same my guys put in this ad and we're running the software company a year later in 1961 had filed of gold in the caribou to do some mining. So they just stayed on stock. Coincidentally they decreed that they were mining is called Saltzman Creek. But they had gone they had had it they saw cutting stone out of Texas a little bit too much like hard work. And then I thought well, when I'm looking at the walls of that cottage, there was actually cut stone blocks and it was two feet thick. It was built substantially for a lengthy period of time there was a forge I found slag and coal from this route on Colin property is called right on the beach and some of that coal was in a pile by the cottage for the poor was actually a stone a large block of sandstone with a hole in it. The slag stuck to the back of it which would be used bellows for the fall. So they obviously did a lot of poaching as well. There was a lot of products I mean these bottles and these are all broken by the way there is no broken and they are iridescent is that there was the heat from the fire. There isn't a solid bottle there. But a typical kind of bottles from that period. But a lot of them and the the tools that they work, say pipes are bits of broken pottery, lots of bones and things are eating because lots of stuff. And these guys weren't there for just a year and then click Get off gold. Seriously work. I also found that the stone that they were producing was really beautifully done. And you think you've all seen on stone buildings or silver go above the door or nice rectangular slabs of stone, but they were producing that kind of material. And each stone, and there was a couple there on the site had actually been chiseled the whole surface on these chisel marks where they can cut a lot of work and it takes to cut the hole in the middle of a block of sandstone. So the bellows, you've got to know what you're doing, you know, you can hit the straw to the wrong way and just bring this intrigued me I thought, well, the one hand we've got the quarry, and all the information is talking about the quarry in the archives. So who are these guys, I mean, here we have a stone house on salts that making these beautiful pieces of crafted masonry stone. So I started to then trace my steps and do some work in the the period I was working with sort of went from first hearing about the quarry and the use of it. But what was kind of exciting is I did find two points in the excavation, and I did a little rubbing, I couldn't bring the time to guide these artifacts for the way I just assumed that belongs no matter. Publix and I pleaded with him, I said you have asked me to do this talk. And it would be really nice if you had something to look at or just my voice and please post some things for me to digest, but not my coins. But I have got rubbings off and there was a dime and a quarter. They did 1816 1859 accordingly. And what was kind of neat was that they were mitad to San Francisco, which is the very building of the stone fountains. And understanding the maybe this exchange of material. Now that could have been coincidence, because there were people coming up from the states from all over the place. I'm not sure how close other coins would be minted, probably quite natural for American coinage to be in that area. We were on a trade route. But it was kind of neat to find that. And then I I started to figure out well, somewhere there has to be a name. Like two people can't work in the first years. Without a name, there has to be a land claim filed somewhere. They have to be a census and there was a census in the early days that mentioned some of the early settlers and I went down and they listed a lot of the early inhabitants with occupations. But at that time, I was gonna give more mystifying. And it was then and just as a bit of a coincidence that I started to read in some of the old newspapers in around 1969 or 1866. These murder cases and something suddenly tweak because I remember reading somewhere that I think it was Willie star for Samsung, one of those early people here, has reportedly gone to visit to stay stonemason, found them dead in the cabin and partly buried in the floor and had suspected it was the Indians that were coming to Brian that used to come over and Russell terrorize. And he apparently went over to coop right in front of it and found out who it was killed. Back the engineering question reported back to Sir James Douglas, or at least it's always to Victoria, there's no need to send any officer with a piece of taking care of it. Now this is a rumor that came to me via calling Mark flyer Collins brothers where that information originates. So I thought well, what I had not considered was that the people that were in college might have been killed. I thought they just slipped there and moved on to another business. And so I thought, well, if they were murdered, then I still need to know. And I started to investigate about 11 murders within two or three year period, for the carnage was built and established. And then it gets wild. I mean, it just gets really crazy. What happened apparently was the one of the schooners that used to fall in like a soccer Saltzman head up there back around the other side and drop in a furniture factory Victoria would occasionally drop in to see these Masons or that one of the settlers and on one occasion, apparently the captain sort of dark and he walked up the slope to the college and he was met by it and then Just got chatting and, and he said we've had black fellow partners that we've had some trouble with ruffling. But I've taken care of.

Speaker 3 20:09
And, you know, the chatted and it was obvious that the Masons weren't there. And they used to go down to San Francisco, sometimes with their loads of stone. So the school captain sickness, Senator Mitch, went on his way. And for some reason, he decided to go back the next day or, later on, and this fellow that the medic originally had disappeared, and he was reported to her pushed open the door of the cabin and tripped over some sticking out of the floor with these pair of legs. But he quite distressed about and realized something was wrong here. So he thought he better go Victoria, get the authorities now getting from Victorian back by boat in those days to three days situation, the time he got back, no bodies, no legs on the floor. And the student captain was heavily remanded for tipping on the job. But it was another intrigues me. It was even more intriguing, because when I actually dug out the floor, down the pit, about six feet long, three feet wide, and about three feet, right in the middle, the cabin floor. And I likewise, thought, Well, okay, let's be logical. Let's not get excited here. I know, it ties into the story. But why would you build a kit in the middle of your cabin floor, it's a little cabin with a fireplace at one night, it was a root cellar. But I thought, kind of hard to have a root cellar just beside the doorway. It's not a good faith. Sometimes. It's not the place to get. And what was also needed when I dug down into the pit on the level of the floor, and found some stuff that was buttons. It was both those actual appliance I mean, but they were there and there was actually a chisel down there. So I got quite intrigued. Now I thought well, how do I ever answer these questions? We do know some basic facts that the two people that occupy the cabin work with you know, and there are some chisels that I brought along, just to show you very simply the kind of tools they use and made they definitely were working on the site. They weren't tied in with the sewers, because if you look at the the sort of shoreline just near the cabin, you can see rocks that had the marks and how they cut. They do that pinch them very quickly. They just drilled holes along the rock, and Sansome the drill hole. They put in these these little wedge shaped pieces into the hole, then this in there and imagine a line along and you just went along with the hammer when you tap tap, tap tap.

Unknown Speaker 23:00
And you can go into the chlorine now and you'll see holes drilled through the weather, we're going to cover these the same method. So I knew they weren't stones.

Speaker 3 23:12
But I also was talking to some of the stonemasons that currently work on the I can dickery. And they said that, you know, certain cheeses like this is for actual carved in stone, it isn't just snapping. And finishing, you know, so some of the chisels and there are many types of chisels that I did find, were obviously procrastinate. And then I read an article that said that, uh, John Lee, who, incidentally, was one of the five guys that was working in the car in the caribou gold digging, was supposed to have built an old stone house, further up the coast. And he and two other fellows had worked, finished. And apparently he was quite a respected Mason, in fact, some of the stonework along the old post office building in Victoria, and some of Johnny's work. And I suddenly felt like this is it. This is the guy I mean, you know, I mean, this is a document here that says that John and I built a house the two guys were, I mean, did he end up gold digger, murdered a lot. And it was a bit of a disappointment. I also read that he was supposed to have been with a shipment of slurry, and he flops down to San Francisco. And he got in the way when they were unloading apply to the John Lee was made a sandwich between the stone it's a very sort of obvious, recorded death. But it still left the other two mice in question. I guess my intrigue at this point is and frustration is to have worked through

Unknown Speaker 24:59
early record also a history of design and looked at a very small part of the history in terms of lifestyle. But that nothing was written. We have a whole industry here within the first two years of suffering of the eye.

Speaker 3 25:20
Probably about two pages, written word and nothing else. Incidentally, the duration of the carving is a little uncertainty. For many years apparently, this was wrong report. There was a reactivating of the stone quarry in Vesuvius about 10 years later. And this goes and as far as what used to the grading documents. But they do say that 10 years since the car was the gain, that's the court and I still don't know whether that ties in with the situation as it is now is, no one has caught it. And we escalated it out quite thoroughly. We have a lot of material that gives us some dates, play pints. If you look at this one clip lipid actually has written on the side of the pipestem stuffed inside and on the other side, Glasgow and then a T D on the ball. And if you get a catalogue of factual doodles, the TV series of clay pots with between 1880 and then I just continued that line. So it puts us in the same kind of period. This type of bottling and the coinage gives us those things. Guys, and I still don't know whether they will murder or whether they just left the place. Why there was a pit in the floor.

Speaker 1 27:02
And there remains our mystery, the unsolved murders on Saltspring Island. We wonder what happened. You must to come back again next time we're on the air with yet another audio recording from the Saltspring Archives website. Thank you