parretts

My father, George Parrett, saw an advertisment with a photo of a farmer and a wheelbarrow, a giant pumpkin filling it, saying "this is what YOU can grow in Canada!" so came to Canada from Wiltshire in 1908 "to learn farming," worked on farms in Manitoba, and bought his own at Pilot Mound a few years later. He sent for mother, Mable Purchase, of Moreton, Dorset, in 1912, mother arriving in an April blizzard, met by dad's neighbor, in a box sleigh. (She had expected, at least,a coach-in-four from a "land owner!) They headed trough the snow- no roads then- mother expecting "the Manor House," but finding a prairie shack.

My mother Mable, left, and Aunt Elsie the farm

Mother said, "at home we had a girl to do the wash>"

George Parrett Jr. at Pilot Mound farm 1914.

A bountiful crop that year

George Parrett Jr. born 1914 on a Pilot Mound farm

George was born on a neighbor's farm (with telephone)

Mother, unused to housework in the family home in England, had to make soap from ashes and lye on the Pilot Mound, Manitoba farm. And the rain barrel in the photo "blew away for miles and miles," and was dented beyond further use. When her first child was due, she went to neighbors, the Mannings, three miles away, "as the telephone poles didn't reach to our house." It was a boy! Doctor Speechly came from Pilot Mound by cutter in a blizzard, was thrown out three times on the way. He arrived after brother George was born.