Mamie's Letter - Page 4

(From last letter: "I think it was mean of you to take that cigarette I had Saturday night because I haven’t had a smoke since...")

because you can’t buy any smokes out here except tobacco which is strong enough to kill a horse, so I might as well tell you that I've quit smoking.

Say, do you like bees, well if you do there is loads of them up here. It was just today that my uncle was cutting weeds when he disturbed a nest of bumble bees and one stung him on the forehead.

Gee but this a great life if you don’t weaken I don’t think I've done anything yet but go fishing.

It’s going to eleven o'clock now and I intend to get up at five in the morning to go fishing so I think...

Some people may recall an older family member quipping "It's a great life if you don't weaken", or you may be familiar with the phrase from the Tragically Hip song "It's a Good Life if You Don't Weaken". The phrase was initially coined by John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir, 15th Governor General of Canada who was a politician and novelist of Scottish origin.

Mamie's Letter - Page 3

(From last letter: "Say, the next time I ask you to go to the show with me I expect you to go and not say you can’t...)

Like you did that night at the carnival.

I think Joe is waiting for Amy to come back to take her. Is she back yet? Have I spelt Amy right? It’s the first time I ever heard of such a name.

Gosh, but it’s lonesome up here at night to sit and hear the crickets sing and that’s when I wish I was  back home having some fun on the commons with you.

I bet your chickens are all dead by now because you fed them so well.

Have you read that Buffalo Bill story I gave you? It’s a lot of bull isn't it.

I think it was mean of you to take that cigarette I had Saturday night because I haven’t had a smoke since...

In case you missed them, here are pages 1 and 2.

Mamie kept chickens on Sheridan Street apparently. When did it become a by-law that people couldn't keep chickens within the city? If it's not a by-law, I want to start keeping chickens!

We also found it interesting that Joe had never heard the name "Amy" before.

Stay tuned for page 4 on Thursday!

Mamie's Letter - Page 2

Like Whiteman’s Creek, only the creek is practically a river.

I’d like you to see some of the big black bass I caught up here.

The threshers were up at the neighbour’s farm to-day and I had to pitch hay and managed to get my eyes full so I don’t think I’d make a very good farmer.

So Charlie said he was going to fix up a bogus letter and send it to you and sign my name so as to get you mad at me so if you get an extra letter you’ll know that one is a fake.

I suppose you go over on the commons every night with Ron Fraser or Barney.

Are you still mad at Joe or is it he that is mad at you

Say, the next time I ask you to go to the show with me I expect you to go and not say you can’t.

Last week we posted the first page of a charming letter written to a young Miss Mamie Woodard from a lad named Joe Ion. This is the second page of the letter, which details Joe's futile attempts at farming, his concern with what Mamie thinks of him, and possibly a bit of jealousy at Mamie's being able to go to the commons with other little friends. 

What do you think of this line: "Say, the next time I ask you to go to the show with me, I expect you to go and not say you can't". Way to be bossy, Joe!

Watch out for pages 3 and 4 next week, which will be posted on Monday and Thursday!

Paris, Ont. Aug. 1921

Paris, Ontario,  Aug  1921

Dear Mamie,

In the first place, I’d like to know if I made a mistake or not in saying “Dear Mamie” and then if I spelt “Mamie” right.

I suppose you still think I went to the Allen on purpose Saturday night to meet you, but I didn’t. I went with Charlie to see Harold Pearcy.

Say, your cousin Dunham told me something about you that makes me think a lot better about you.

This is a great place up here and I am having a great time. Last night we had a picnic about 20 of us, old ladies and all and a friend of mine invited me. We played baseball and football and after lunch went up the river on a bicycle boat which can be hired out. We had smores too, and I certainly had a good time. This place up here is much (over)...

Dear Mamie...


This letter was written in the summer of 1921 by a young man called Joe to a girl named Mamie. Research shows that Mamie would have been about 15 years old at the time, and was living on Sheridan Street in Brantford. Joe was visiting Paris, Ontario over the summer, possibly to visit family and to go camping with his friends; the lad appears to be the same age as Miss Mamie.

Check back next week when we'll be posting Page 2!

Dear Mamie...

Envelope, in poor condition, dated 1921

Imagine if an email or text message of yours could end up in a museum 90 years from now. What would researchers find? What sort of little things do you mention to friends on a daily basis? If my text messages from this past week were to be uncovered, people would see quick messages from my mum before she caught a flight home, giving directions to a colleague, and texting a friend back and forth about getting together to make peach jam (it's canning season, after all).

But digital communication is so ephemeral. What will future generations know about us and how we communicated? We (most of us anyways) don't print off our text messages. What clues will future people have when they are conducting their own research? We're fortunate to have letters, a form of communication which has mostly fallen by the wayside excepting for business and sometimes legal reasons. Letters are lovely. They are solid, physical pieces that can be examined for the kinds of clues and hints that researchers love.

This letter, addressed to Miss Mamie Woodard and dated summer 1921, was one of the very first things I catalogued when I started working at the Brant Museum & Archives as a summer student a few years back. I was so charmed by the little note (which is in fact several pages long) I spent some extra time researching the details and carefully scanning the pieces for our digital database.

Check into the BHS blog every week: we'll be releasing new pages of this letter in a 6-part series along with transcriptions and research notes.

In the meantime, do the future a favour: send a couple letters, and maybe keep a few of the letters and cards you receive for later generations. And for goodness sakes, put a date on them!

- Carlie

Status of Wealth in 19th Century Homes

Myrtleville House is not the typical 19th Century home. The Good’s built a Georgian Style Home, complete with 10 rooms and 7 fireplaces. The cost to build Myrtleville was four hundred and sixty seven pounds, five shillings and nine pence half penny, which is equal to about sixteen thousand dollars today. When pioneers traveled to the new world they would build a log cabin, due to their budget and time restraints, so to find a home of this size and grandeur, it's evident that the Good family was quite well off.

While touring an 1800s home, there are several signs of wealth you can keep an eye out for, such as:

Books- very expensive, and also more likely to be used by families with leisure time.

Painted floor boards-a luxury that added beautification to a home.

A multitude of windows, doors , and rooms in the home- People were taxed on the number of rooms, doors, and windows in the home. As a result, many 19th century homes did not have closets. Closets were considered a room, so to cut back on the cost they would use wardrobes.

More than one story- usually homes in this time period were built as a half story. From the outside, Myrtleville House appears as if a single story; however, it is really two.

Tall white sugar cone. The larger the sugar cone the wealthier you were. A sugar cone cost $100 in 1811. They would place their white sugar cone on the window sill to show neighbours how wealthy they were.

Tea Chest – Tea was very expensive, and therefore enjoyed only by the wealthy.

Come visit Myrtleville House, and see how many of these signs of wealth you can discover!

Chair of the Valkyries

Working in a museum isn't all lace doilies and petticoats. Some artifacts found in the storage areas of the museum can be described as unsettling, disturbing, or just plain scary. Generally speaking, I've gotten used to some of the less quaint artifacts that the museum houses, but every now and again I’ll find an artifact that makes me nervous.

For example, this chair. This chair makes me nervous. It’s found a home in a storage room and has been there for quite some time, but it still surprises me every time I open the door. Staff members have taken to giving the object pet names such as “Satan’s Chair”, “Demon Chair”, “Loki’s Chair” and “Seat of the Damned”.

Part of our collective discomfort may stem from the fact that we know so little about the chair. It was donated in 1962, and was described as being “many years old”, which though true is peevishly vague. The piece is crafted out of black-lined brown leather which is button-tucked in places, and pairs of animal horns styled around the edges. Even the feet of the chair are embellished with horns, though supported with cylindrical brace bars. The estimate is that this chair is probably from the early to mid-1800s, and it’s my personal guess that it belonged in a gentleman’s office, billiard room, or hunting cottage, simply because no Victorian lady of taste would possibly have let this object into their parlor or salon.

The research for this piece suggests that the horns are from buffalo, but pieces of horned furniture, which were popular throughout Europe and North America in the 19^th century, could be crafted with the horns of any animal, including elk, moose, and even cattle. Its provenance is likely similar to a mounted moose head or bear skin rug, as generally, items like horns and animal skins were used as trophies as signifiers of a successful hunting trip.

The chair lives in an upstairs storage room. I've taken to calling it the Chair of the Valkyries, because it reminds me of the typical depiction of an opera singer with a horned helmet, especially typical of Wagner’s opera Die Walküre, specifically the third act’s “Ride of the Valkyries”. Also, Elmer Fudd in the Looney Tunes cartoon “What’s Opera, Doc?” who sings “kill de wabbit!” to the tune of Wagner’s most recognizable piece.

So the chair doesn't belong to a villainous demon, plotting anti-hero, or a mythic Norse soprano, and instead likely originated from the private quarters of a wealthy Victorian gentleman with a penchant for hunting. It still creeps me out.

Carlie M.

Program Coordinator, Brant Museum and Archives