Week 13: Home Sweet Home

 Home Sweet Home

My parents were from the same small hamlet, Brentwood, in Simcoe County, Ontario.  In the mid-1950s, my father was transferred to Kingston Ontario by his employer.  I was born and raised in Kingston but spent my childhood travelling back to Brentwood every holiday weekend to visit both sets of grandparents.  By my teenage years, I was growing to resent this, but in adulthood and interest in genealogy I can now see the benefits.  I grew up not just spending time with my 30 plus first cousins and their parents, but my grandparents and extended family.  Apparently, that is not normal for most families.

We would stay at my mother's parents and go over to my father's parents for dinner and his 9 siblings and their families would visit in the evening, if they had not made it for dinner.  By my childhood, my paternal grandparents were living in a bungalow on the family homestead while their youngest son (who was operating the farm) and his family lived in the farm house.  But my maternal grandparents remained living in their farm house, although they had sold off the farm and most of the land.  When my widowed grandmother had to move out of the two storey house, my uncle got possession of the house.  After sitting empty for a short time, my cousin and husband moved in and raised their family in the house.  They are now empty nesters, but still live in the house.  Unfortunately, they are resigning themselves that they will likely eventually sell the property as none of their daughters are interested in taking it over.  

The land has been in the Schell family since 1916 when my great-grandfather John Schell bought the farm from Thomas Bates - who happens to also be one of my great-grandfathers.  John's son George married Thomas' daughter Irene in 1927.  So the land has been in our family longer than 1916.

The present farmhouse is not the original one of the property.  John Schell died a short time after purchasing the property, leaving a widow with 10 children.  My grandfather, George, was the oldest and was 21 years old at the time, so he took on the responsibility of operating the farm and keeping a roof over the head of his mother and younger siblings.  

At some point he built the house that I know and is the house that my mother grew up in with her sister and brother.  During their childhood, their widowed grandmother also lived with them as well as the younger brothers of their father.  Even the aunts and uncles that moved out frequently "came home" to visit their ailing mother.