Looking Back

By

James T.O. Hepburn (1875-1967)

It is the privilege of a grandfather to write something for his descendants to let them know how they happened to become residents of Canada and how they are what they are.

The writer, James Thomas Orr Hepburn, now in the sere and yellow leaf stage of his life, with much time on his hands, still can look back on past times with composure and thankfulness. He can see that on the whole, life has been good to him and he has been fortunate in many ways. No great wealth or position has ever come his way but he has never been in want. He has had many friends and has enough to live on in his old age. What more can a man need.? He has a loving wife who has been at his side for forty-five years and who is still active for his well-being. He has two sons who have made their way in life successfully. He has two daughters who have made homes for themselves with the men of their choice and twelve active grandchildren who will someday make their mark in the world (we hope).

Of course, he has made many mistakes in his long life. He might have been in a better position if he had been able to look ahead sometimes but where is the man in our modern world who is so perfect that he can read the future? It is better in old age to look at the successes and not the failures of our plans. In the early days of automobile design he can still look back with pleasure on the ideas he was able to embody and work out in the early Daimler and Arrol Johnston cars, when motor car building was in its infancy, in England and Scotland. Even Henry Ford had not begun his work on his Model T in America. Then, as a Civil Engineer in charge of the construction work at the coal mines of Nanaimo, BC with the work of over two hundred men under his supervision he can remember the machinery, the buildings, the railways and the bridges that he helped to plan and which grew up and operated successfully. In later years as Chief Draughtsman and Designing Engineer in the Public Works Department of the Provincial Government many of the bridges of the province were built from his designs and plans. They are still being used and fortunately none have fallen down. Any successes he had were due partly to a good technical education. His father had insisted on his getting this education which gave him these opportunities despite stringent saving this required at home. But there was another cause that he always looked upon as the source and the real fountain of his success in life. It was this – and he would earnestly draw the attention of his children to it – his father and mother dedicated their lives to God. In all they did they tried to follow His leading. They were Christians in practice and followed an inner light that came direct from the Divine One and they listened to His voice in their hearts directing them what to do. They were children of God in the true sense of the phrase. To them he owes everything.

We have therefore that divine promise as given in the Bible: “To those who follow me and obey me I will bless them and they shall not want all the days of their life even unto the third and fourth generations.” That may not be the exact wording but in his difficulties the writer often looked back on that prophecy and looked forward to the future with thankfulness. He might have followed his parents example a lot more and done better than he did on many occasions but we all have weaknesses and sometimes selfish desires that are not easy to resist. He might have insisted on his family reading their Bibles and attending a church. He was lax in that regard arguing with himself that young people should follow what course they desire with only good advice from their parents.

He might have settled in Scotland beside his people. His mother and sister missed him badly when he emigrated to Canada in 1909. He never went back to visit them as he should have done. They did not need any help financially but we were brought up as one family and were dependent upon each other. He can’t look back on his neglect without a sore heart for all the joint companionship he and they missed. It is to my mother that I owe the best things of this life. She whose memory is the bright part of this record of an individual soul. Her sincere love never left us and she is ever in my mind as the guide and the unselfish one whose advice never failed me. She is the one who knew me better than any other. I would have been someone worth knowing if I had followed her in her fine example of a life dedicated to a high Christian aim and unselfish devotion to the will of God.

Now when the troubles of old age are upon him, his family are scattered and away in homes of their own and old friends are passing away and becoming scarce he can only look now on the future of his children and grandchildren hoping that they can find for themselves the true secret of success in life and that they can carry on the best that they can in whatever sphere they occupy. It is his hope that they may become true citizens of the country of our adoption and that they will listen to the inner voice of the Divine Father who will guide them in all the troubles and trials of their lives. In that way they will make the proper decisions and be guided to the correct and honest way of living.

I was born in the village of Biggar in the southeast of Lanarkshire, Scotland, on the 19^th May, 1875. My father, James Hepburn (below), was a

grain merchant carrying on a business among the farmers of the district. This entailed buying and selling grain, fertilizers and farm implements. Also, acting as an agent for wholesale firms in these items mainly in Glasgow. He had an office in Grandpa Hepburn’s building opposite the Corn Exchange on Biggar’s main street. The Corn Exchange is now the Municipal Hall and had a clock tower with a bell in my time. The principal well and cast-iron pump on the street was opposite the Corn Exchange and many a pail of water I carried home from it when I got big enough.

Biggar’s main street averaged about three hundred feet wide and the houses were built back on wide gravel bulwarks to give room for the whole street to act as a farmer’s market on fair days. Cattle, sheep and pigs were then penned in fence lined compartments up and down the street.

Grandpa Hepburn (James Hepburn, Senior) was a baker to trade and had a business of his own. He made money I was told supplying bread under contract to the workers when the Caledonian Railway was being built. The main line from Glasgow to Carlisle passed near Biggar and a branch line to Peebles went through Biggar at the south end of town. He had sold the bakery business to a Mr. Johnstone shortly after I was born and took up contracting for the railway and farming on a moderate scale to grow feed for his horses and other stock. He had a steam thrashing mill, the usual farm implements and kept several cows, pigs and a collie dog. Grandpa was Chief Commissioner for the village council for several years. This is the position that goes by the name of Mayor in an English town. Grandpa Hepburn being an able but stubborn and bad-tempered old fellow had plenty of supporters and detractors. I think the latter were more numerous than the former as Grandpa was usually known throughout the village as “Old Heburon”. I can remember myself being among a few lively lads bent on some mischief or other when a broad figure with a bushy Garibaldi beard would appear in the distance. An instant cry would arise: “Run, run! There’s auld Heburon coming!” We would scatter as quickly as we could each one for a safe place. Grandpa, however, spent his energies on some good causes. In his work as Chief Commissioner he fought for several years for a permanent water supply for Biggar. The wells in the middle of the street and at each important house on the outskirts were the only water supply for the several centuries that the village took to grow up in the days when Boghall Castle at the south end of town was held by the notorious Fleming family. The little river called the Biggar Burn was another source of supply. It ran between the castle and the village. Grandpa lost two sons from typhoid fever, Robert and Thomas. They hadn’t quite reached their teens. The doctor attending them put the blame on the chance of infection from the wells. At last, after years of argument, a gravitation water supply, as it was called then, was piped into the town for several miles from a supply up in the hills. Pipes were then laid to every house. That was about the year 1880.

Grandpa had another good cause that he worked on with strenuous energy. This was the cause of temperance. In his younger days in his bakery business he suffered from thirst possibly because of the heat from the ovens. There was a public house only a few doors away and the drinking habit took control of him. My father used to say that when the whiskey had gone down Grandpa’s fiery self became uppermost and the house became pandemonium. He made up his mind at last to stop drinking once and for all. It must have taken a powerful will to keep his resolutions but he did it. He became the avowed enemy of booze in every form and of course let everyone know about it.

Grandpa Hepburn was born in the town of Lanark and was one of a large family. No records were kept that I know of nor their names. Some of them I was told had emigrated to New Zealand about the middle of the century. One sister lived in Greenock. I met her once. She was the owner of a tobacco shop on Greenock’s main street. I think her name was Mrs. Storey and she had a family, but that is all I know. My mother told me to keep clear of them and I did just that after one look at the family. My great-grandfather in Lanark was called John Hepburn. He was an old soldier and had been in the Scot’s Gray Calvary regiment at the Battle of Waterloo. He came through the day safely and had some position in Lanark given him. I don’t remember what it was but it had something to do with the Court House and that is where he lived and brought up his family. He may have been Sheriff.

We have no records of earlier generations but Grandpa Hepburn told me once that we were descended from James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, who made himself famous in the days of Queen Mary of Scotland. He married the queen after Darnley, her first husband, had been murdered. The Earl of Bothwell got the blame for that but the murder was done by another man who got there before the Earl. It was rumoured that he had planned to do it himself. When Queen Mary had to flee the country Hepburn made for Denmark but found he had jumped from frying pan to the fire. Here he was clapped into the dungeon of a castle and died after being chained to the wall for several years. Queen Elizabeth of England had something to do with that, so history says.

Before becoming Earls of Bothwell in the reign of James IV the Hepburns owned the old castle of Hailes in Haddingtonshire. The family is thought to have come there from Northumberland at the time of the conquest of England by William the Conqueror. So, it is quite possible that we have some tough Norman blood in us. Sir William Scott mentions a descendent of the Hepburn’s in his novel, Old Mortality, whom he calls Sergeant Bothwell. The real name of this Sergeant Bothwell was Hepburn as his great-grandfather was the Hepburn that married Queen Mary. This sergeant Bothwell or Hepburn is said to be our possible ancestor three generations before John Hepburn of the Scot’s Grays. The story of the last Earl of Bothwell, Francis Hepburn, (sometimes called Francis Stewart) is told by Jan Westcott in the Border Lord (Crown Publishers, New York, 1946).

Grandma Hepburn’s name before marriage was Pennie. She was brought up on a farm a few miles north of Biggar. Her time was taken up with cows, pigs and chickens, even till she was old and frail. She always had a servant maid to do her housework, for her hobby was looking after the stock. The servant maids were usually country girls without much experience. They sat at table at mealtime along with the rest of the household. I can remember my grandmother trying to teach one of them table manners. The kitchen was large and had a stone floor. A great bed was in a dark corner and the open fire had a crane or a swee as it was called, for holding pots and kettles, that could be raised or lowered by a lever. It had anchoring pins and was polished bright.

Grandpa had an easy chair between the bed and the fire. The wall there was crammed with pipe racks and tobacco jars. Above them were jars full of paper spills all ready for lighting at the fire to save matches. The rest of the kitchen was filled with tables, chairs and dish cupboards. There was a small pantry off the kitchen with a window looking into the neighbouring garden where the maid did most of the work. In one corner of the pantry was a churn for making butter. The sitting room on the right of the small front hall was seldom used as a sitting room. This was Grandpa’s office with a big desk at the far side with chairs and a wardrobe at the back. I think there was another large bed behind a screen but it was never visible in day time. A stair led to two bedrooms upstairs but I was seldom allowed up there. One of them may have been the maid's.

The two-story house was of brick. The bedroom windows jutted out from the slate roof above. At the corners of the window frames there were always nests of sparrows where the window frames met the slates. It was a bad place to rear young sparrows as they often fell out and rolled down the roof. They did not have enough feathers to fly. The old cat knew all about that and sat looking up at the roof waiting for another fledgling to topple out. When a young sparrow did fall the cat grabbed it and jumped over the front fence to get ahead of Yarrow the dog who was always too late for a feed of young sparrow. Not that he was much interested in sparrows. His gaze was usually on the front door wondering when his master would come forth. He wasn’t allowed in the house. He had fleas.

My father’s house was diagonally across the North Back Road from Grandpa’s. It was a two-story brick house too, but the brick was covered with a layer of stucco or cement painted grey. A gate at the left led to a back door. A straight and wide gravel walk or lane carried up past the back of Grandpa’s barn and stockyard to a large garden. There was a small strip of a rose garden and a gravel sidewalk in front of the house. We had four rooms like Grandpa but my mother kept them in fine order. A piano and nice furniture in the sitting room. A neat linoleum floor in the kitchen.  The two bedrooms above were always trim and neat with small rooms off each at the back. An old ash tree at the left side of the house sometimes gave us an anxious time in a storm. It was hollow up one side of the trunk. It swayed and groaned with every blast but was still standing when I saw it twenty years later. A beautiful rockery surrounded the tree. The gravel lane with a high hedge up the left side, the barn with its steam thrashing machine at one end and the stockyard were my playgrounds. There was a stable for three horses at the far end of the barn, a small room for Yarrow the dog. On the opposite side of the farm yard were the pig pens, the chicken houses and my father’s big shed for storing farm implements. They were shown at all the fairs and were used as samples for the taking of orders. I had a fine swing near the door of Yarrow’s pen or small shed but I was prohibited from entering the dog’s room. My mother always knew when I disobeyed this for the fleas I picked up betrayed me. Beyond the stockyard and our garden was a large field or croft sloping up to higher land. A mile distant was the hill called Bizzyberry with a rifle range near the foot and rocky crags at the summit.

My father had one brother, John Hepburn, the oldest in the family and one sister, Mrs. Jeanie Lockhart. Uncle John was in the drapery trade in Glasgow and latterly a partner in a drapery wholesale firm named Scobie and Co. He lived and reared a family of five at the top flat of a nice house at 18 Melville St., Pollokshields, a suburb of Glasgow. Of these five only one is now living, cousin James William Hepburn of Worthing in Sussex, England. He retired some ten years ago from his position as Architect to the London County Council. John Hepburn was married several years after my father and Aunt Lockhart was married at seventeen many years before her brothers. She had no family. Her husband, William Lockhart was a printer to trade and had also a well-paying stationer’s business in Biggar but he died shortly after I was born. I do not remember him. My aunt was left fairly comfortable and built a house for herself in a nice part of Biggar with a fine view of the Biggar Burn and the Coulter Hills. She could always afford to keep a maid. Many a nice summer holiday I spent with Aunt Lockhart when I was at Technical School in Glasgow and while serving an apprenticeship in a machine shop there. There came, however, shortly after the death of Grandpa Hepburn a little rift between my mother and Aunt Lockhart. My father had died the year before Grandpa and Uncle John’s firm got into financial difficulties after I came to Canada. Aunt Lockhart had lent a lot of her capital to him to carry on and so lost the most of it before her own death in 1913.

My Uncle John was taller than my father, had a reddish-brown beard (my father’s was black) and he always wore a frock coat and tile hat when travelling on business. He did a lot of that, over the most of Scotland, from one town to another. When at home he was usually busy doing his books and on Sundays officiated as an elder in Glasgow Cathedral. His wife, Aunt Jane, came from Drymen in Stirlingshire. Her father had been the owner of a hotel there. My mother and Aunt Jane were not very intimate although I liked to visit her myself when we moved to Glasgow and have a pleasant time playing games with the cousins. James and George were a bit younger than myself but we had usually had a contest of some kind in progress. Jean, the only girl in the family had a ready tongue and was not afraid to use it. The two younger boys usually played by themselves, they were William and Sandy.