Taken from the personal notes of James Edward O'Rouark around 1925
2-3-2014
D Vautier
The first incident of life which I remember was the passage over a swollen stream perched on my father’s shoulders while he walked “foot log”. I was badly frightened. At the time I could not have been out of my third year.
The earliest home I remember was at Penis Clarey's pace where I was taken after the death of my mother. Those were the days of great woods arid small clearings log houses and ox teams. My first conception of geography was a world bounded by woods remote and unexplored and the sky beyond.
My father was a man of about medium height and weight well molded in features and physique, athletic and a boxer. His standing long dump was 12 feet. Standing high jump the height of his shoulder. He drank whisky but never went on a “tear”.
Born in County Limrick Ireland in the better times before the great famine he had the advantage of a comfortable home and a little schooling. His parents and their intimates talked Gaelic among themselves. So the English he learned came from books and the schoolmaster. He talked Elizabethan English grammatically. His swear words were “dang your buttons” and by ginger.
My father was prosperous as a drover and stock feeder when the famine came on with all its train of ills. First there was a crop failure duete a wet season. Then a cattle disease spread. His cattle all died and he was forced to work for wages being one of the lucky few who could obtain employment. He worked in a whisky distillery in Limerick for 5 years.
His first family consisted of Marcy Catherine Tom and Lizzie. One other John was injured by falling into the open peat fire when a small child and died. After the famine came the great epidemic of Asiatic cholera. The family lived in a tenement house and all the other occupants above, below, and around them died. At least as far as they knew, for the house was deserted.
As soon as my father could get away from that sorrow ridden land he took Tommie with him and sailed for America in the stowage of a six week ocean greyhound propelled by sails. For several years he worked on highways in Ontario mostly piece work which Tommie helped him with. When they had enough money saved to pay a passage they sent it home and one sister came alone, until all three were over. The mother never came; she sickened and died in Ireland.
Father and Tom moved on to Michigan in the early 60’s and took up homesteads. They were preceded by John Diegan, Mary’s husband who was a typical pioneer.
My mother’s maiden name was Mary McInnis born in County Antrim, Ireland of Scotch Irish extraction. She married James Flannigan in New York City. Flanigan enlisted for the Mexican war and cane back full of malaria. In search of health for him they moved to Michigan where he died within a year, leaving her on a small slump farm with 4 children to provide for.
While doing housework for a prosperous family in our neighborhood my father met here, and they were married in 1864.
Of the Flanigan children only Rosa and Matt ever lived for any length of time under my fathers roof. Maggie was a well grown girl and went to work at Service. Jack was the typical bad boy and ran away after getting whipped. My mother fretted continually and cried for hours. The old neighbors used to tell me she fretted herself to death. Anyhow, following the advent of my only full sister who was still-born, she died. I was then in my second year.
Margaret Flanigan married a civil was veteran named Denis Clary and after my mothers death she kindly undertook care of me which was a hard task as I was afflicted with bronchitis and so subject to throat trouble continually. I was at Clary’s three years and at the age of 5 my real life began when father brought me home and turned me over to my new mother, his third wife. I always called her Mary. No mother could ever be kinder to a child of her own than she was to me.
We had a log house of one large room with open fireplace in one end and cook stove in the other. At night Father used to read aloud while old Marey sewed or knitted and I listened with the abnormal interest of a lone child. I remember the events of the Franco-Prussian war as they were published in the weekly newspaper almost as well as I remember the recent great war.
We had a clearing of about 20 acres surrounded by tall forest. The dry summer of 1871 cane on. A creeping fire spread through the woods and hemmed us in. Father took all the precaution an able bodied and forehanded pioneer could take in burning off all inflammable stumps and debris on the place. When the big dry wind that fanned the Chicago fire on the night of October 9, 1881, swept over the burning Michigan forests the red dragon was let loose. A crown fire swept over and around the little clearing and left us unharmed. My father was almost blind from smoke and physically exhausted. Old Mary led him by the hand to pull down a fence that had caught fire.
A rush of lumbering followed the great fire and our barn full of loose hay sold for $25 a ton at the barn which came to a lot of money in those days.
Our place was on a hardwood ridge or hog back. The country around it was fiat and bore coniferous timber: Pine, Cedar, Hemlock, etc. On one end of the ridge was the bush where we got out firewood and maple syrup.
The fire came after deciduous foliage had mostly fallen and the trees were not injured. For several succeeding years we tapped the maples and sugar making time was always enjoyed by me.
By degrees the big maples were blown down arid finally the bush disappeared. I cleared and broke the land where it had stood in my l7th and 18th years.
The scourge of fire came again in 1881. Then the country was thickly settled and a great many lives were lost. Again the old hone escaped miraculously.
I began school in my 9th year. School terms were from 3 to 5 month and teachers were young girls with about 8th grade qualifications. My stepmother had taught me to read in second reader so I made good headway. I quit school at 14 having gone through all the readers and the practical arithmetic.
I worked in the woods winters of 1881-82-83 and for a short time in 84. Got hurt and came home.
The public school at home was then presided over by a live wire young man who was working up toward the law. John Dwan was one of the boys but little older than I. We became friends and he persuaded me to go to school. I studied 10 weeks under him and took the county teachers examination which I barely passed, getting a rating of 60 in grammar which I had never studied.
Then followed two short terms teaching and with help from Father I took a course in Fenton Normal school. Fenton was a hurry up institution and I went fast as they let me, taking only the studies I fancied principally Mathematics. After graduating I drifted around aimlessly for a time and finally Located in upper Michigan.
My father was killed by a train in 1889 at the age of 77. My stepmother Mary lived only about two months after that. They say she refused to eat and wanted to die.
My half brother Tom was a unique character small of statue wiry, with bristling red hair and the kind of temperament that usually goes with red hair; he was a human dynamo if one ever lived. He never went to school, yet was considered a well educated man. A man who worked from sunrise until dark on a farm who found time to keep posted in current events arid politics. He could speak impromptu by the hour, using convincing argument and almost faultless English. His every movement was as sure as if directed by machinery.
I never admired him or his ways much and I cannot say that his home was a pleasant place. In some ways I am much like him harsh and arbitrary, and it is the poorer side.