February 2, 1870 was the birth date of Uncle Alf (great uncle to me) Goff in Dorset, U.K. Not much is known of his early days but at some point in the 1890s he spent some time in Queensland, Australia working on a sheep ranch. For a fellow named Quick according to my memory.
No information as to how long he was there but he returned to England briefly and then traveled with his brother Tom to North America. Not sure of the route but they worked some on the Canadian railway in the mountains. Alf spoke of being very sick at one point with cold or flu and he claimed the only thing that saved him was "Jamaica rum". In later years he was known to make some very fine wine of his own from rhubarb.
Alf and Tom also put in some time working on threshing crews eventually making their way back to England in 1902.
Attracted by the advertising campaign of free homestead land in the district of Assiniboia, (later Saskatchewan), Alf, Tom, and cousin Jack all headed to Canada in the spring of 1903 to claim their "free" land. Many years of hard work eventually turned the homesteads into productive farm land.
From that point on Alf mostly lived his life on his homestead in his log cabin. He died there on the homestead in 1942 at the age of 72.
Interesting! It would have been nice to have known more about those "lost years."
ReplyDeleteSure would, but a lot of our family history has gone missing.
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