arn-raising bees were riotous affairs in the early days of Prince Edward. Each settler was licensed to have two bees a year provided he furnished a good pot pie and plenty to drink. Wrestling matches, gymnastics and feats of strength were featured entertainments, and the day always ended with a dance. If a fiddler or bag-piper was not available, the young people would sing or provided music on combs. Usually a kissing bee was held at some point during the evening. Great quantities of liquor and food were consumed. Almost invariably, fights would erupt, either after meals or during the evening's entertainment. One farm wife who was preparing for a barn-raising ordered her 12 year old daughter to assist her in setting up a trestle table in front of the house. The daughter demurred. "But mother," she said," if you put the table in the dooryard, where will the men fight?"
One barn-raising in Hillier didn't go quite as expected. The farmer, a newcomer to the area, provided the usual quantities of rum for the workers, but was surprised when not a drop was touched. When he asked about it he was told by his Quaker workforce that no rum would be consumed that day "as this is a Christian street". To hammer the point home, they fastened a carved wooden sign to the side of the farmer's new barn that said "Christian St." and the road has been known by this name ever since.

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riffith Howell kept a store on the Broadway in Demorestville. He also engaged in lumbering, often loading rafts with the abundant timber of the area and taking them downriver to Montreal. On one trip, he met with misfortune; while shooting a rapid on the river, the raft broke up. Everyone on the raft drowned with the exception of Howell himself, who, strangely enough, was the only member of the crew who could not swim.

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ops were at one time an important industry in the County and it was customary for buyers to travel from farm to farm, paying the hop-growers in cash. One such buyer was Peter Laziet from Belleville, who arrived at the farm of a Mr. and Mrs. Jones towards the end of an autumn afternoon. County hospitality dictated that he be invited to stay the night and continue with his rounds the next day.
Lazier and Mr. Jones had retired, and Mrs. Jones was just finishing her household tasks when a knock was heard at the door. Two men, armed with shotguns and with handkerchieves tied over their faces, demanded that Mrs. Jones hand over the hop money. Mrs. Jones yelled for help and ran through the kitchen, slamming the door behind her. One of the men fired, the bullet hitting the door panel and glancing off into the wall. Mr. Jones, hearing the commotion, grabbed an old shotgun and ran out to confront the robbers. At the same time, Lazier emerged from his room, sized up the situation and rushed the two robbers. They were completely taken by surprise as they had expected to deal only with an elderly couple. In a panic, one of the men fired his gun, and Lazier was killed instantly.
Terrified, the men fled with a third man, who had driven a horse and cart. At some point, they left the main road and crossed the marsh to the Sandbanks road. A light snow had fallen that day, and authorities followed a set of distinctive boot tracks to a house on the Sandbanks Road.
Joseph Tompsett and George Louder were arrested for the murder of Peter Lazier and sentenced to be hanged. They both protested their innocence. The general public was of the opinion that George Louder probably had nothing to do with the murder, although sentiment was divided as to Tomsett. The County was wild with excitement on the day of the execution, and the sheriff was beseiged with requests to witness the hanging.
Both Tompsett and Louder had written letters claiming that they knew nothing of the murder and were in no way responsible for the death of Lazier. The two men were hung back to back on the gallows in Picton Court House. The trap dropped at 7.56 a.m. Louder took five minutes to die, but the rope had slipped between Tompsett's right ear and chin and he struggled for a full fourteen minutes, before finally strangling. Observers were sickened by the sight, and the hangman was severely criticized for his incompetence. Mr. and Mrs. Jones, in whose house the murder had taken place were appalled at the tragic outcome of the trial. Ironically, they were Quakers and opposed to capital punishment, but their testimony in court played an important part in the conviction of the two men.

Last Statement of George Louder To the Inhabitants of the County of Prince Edward:

"I thought I would write you a few lines before I die. I do not suppose anything I might say will cause you to change your minds regarding my guilt or innocence; and even if I could it would be too late to rectify mistakes and bring me back to earth again. God is my witness, that I am innocent of having had anything to do with the murder of Mr. Peter Lazier, and when I am hung for that crime the innocent is punished for the guilty. I die, bearing neither spite nor malice against any one; and my wishes are, that all my enemies may be forgiven as truly as I hope to be forgiven for all my sins.
Believe me, I do not die a murderer, nor with a murderer's heart. If I knew who were guilty of the crime for which I am to suffer death, I would make it known. I have not owned a revolver for two years past, and I have not fired one off for upwards of one year. I did not have a gun in my hands for six weeks prior to my arrest, and I was not in Mr. Gilbert Jones' house nor on his premises in my life, to my knowledge. These are my last and dying words."

Picton Gaol	Signed
June 9, I884	George Louder

There were wild rumours about the distinctive boot marks in the snow that led to the arrest of Tomsett and Louder. Many people claim the boots belonged to someone else and that everyone knew it, but remained silent and let the two men hang for a murder they did not commit. An individual in the West lake area was thought to have special knowledge of the erase. He denied this and swore before God that he hoped he would lose every hair on his head if he was lying. Not long after he went as bald as a billiard ball, not only losing the hair on his head, but his eyebrows, eyelashes and whiskers as well!

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tories of lake monsters are legion in Prince Edward County. Old Indian legends and tales told by early explorers and settlers of the area tell of strange creatures swimming in Lake Ontario, and reports of monsters have continued ever since. The Prince Edward Gazette reported in 1842 that a monster had been spotted off the shore of Athol Township :

"A few days ago, when two boys named McConnell were playing on the shore near Gull Pond, they discovered from behind a thicket, a huge monster which they described about the thickness of a man's body, a head proportionately large and very glossy; the eyes were about the size of a horse's and very bright. They ran home and told their father what they had seen. Having no gun, the man sent for John Church who had a rifle. The boys conducted them to the spot and there they saw the monster blinking in the sun, his head about four feet out of the water. They judged him to be from 30-40 feet long, dark brown in colour and a broad ring about his neck, varying in hue from the rest of the body. Mr Church alarmed him in endeavouring to get into a favourable position for a shot, and he put out into deep water and they followed him from Gull Pond to Point Petre lighthouse, about two miles, where he finally disappeared. We have the truth of this undoubted sources and we further learn that such a serpent has frequently been seen by people living along the lake shore."

In 1931 a fisherman sighted a sea serpent about three miles west of Main Duck Island. It was said to be forty feet long and 20 inches in diameter.
Another lake monster was reportedly spotted in a marshy area on the lake south of South Bay. The ten foot long frog-like creature had a mouth like an alligator, huge green eyes, green mottled body, webbed feet and there were flippers close to the head, resembling a seal. Large horns extended far past its head. One man shot at it from a half-mile away, "but the bullet bounced directly back and entered the barrel of the gun," according to the story-teller.

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he Rednersville Local 899 Orange Lodge used to meet on the second floor of what is now the Rednersville Country Store. On July 9, 1926 initiation ceremonies for entrance into the Lodge were being held in the hall when lightning struck the building and followed along the pipes which fed the gas lights. John Wellington Bowers and his son William were sitting on opposite sides of the hall, but both were struck and killed. All but two of the other members were knocked unconscious. These two rushed down the stairs and out of the parking lot where they attempted to start their cars to go and get help. The lightning had apparently played havoc with the vehicles -- none of them would start with the exception of the Bowers car, which was the only one left unaffected!

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ne of the strangest stories of shipwrecks in the vortex is the tale of the schooner "Picton", which, along with two other ships, the "Acadia" and the "Annie Minnes", was carrying coal back to Canada.
The three ships were lying in harbour in Charlotte, across the lake in New York. There had been a storm the night before, but the day dawned fair.
Captain Jack Sidley of the Picton was known as a skilled and daring skipper and the Picton had the reputation of running "like a scalded cat". Sidley had his young son, Vessey, on board with him and he was anxious to get home, so the Picton headed out of the harbour first with the Acadia about ten minutes behind her and the Annie Minnes a half an hour behind that. An hour out into the lake eye witnesses among the crew members of the Acadia and Annie Minnes reported being surprised when they saw the topsails of the Picton coming off. They thought that Sidley had decided to reef, but all of a sudden the Picton just went out of sight, "like she'd fallen into a bottomless pit."
The two following ships dropped their sails down, looking for survivors, but all that floated by them were a few loose gratings and a sailor cap, with not a sign of the crew. The Annie Minnes and the Acadia searched for some time, but no bodies were ever found.
Months later, near Sackett's Harbour, New York, a fisherman's son saw a bottle bobbing in the water for three days running. Curious, he finally rowed out to pick it out of the water. Inside was a note, written in pencil that said:

"Have lashed Vessey to me with heaving line so we will be found together. "

Captain J. Sidley The Picton

Nobody to this day has been able to explain how the Picton went down so fast, or what happened to the wreckage, or how Captain Sidley had time to write a note, or lash his son to him.

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uring the War of 1812, American soldiers often made forays into British territory to capture enemy officers, who could then be exchanged for American prisoners of war. With that end in mind, thirteen Americans landed at Conner's point, about two miles from Prinyer's Cove. Outposts carried the news of their presence to Captain John Prinyer who set off with a small squad to capture them. Taking with him only four men and an orderly, he posted his forces in the woods with orders to give an Indian war cry at the appointed time. Prinyer walked into the American camp alone and demanded surrender. The Americans were astounded at his audacity and, not surprisingly, refused. Prinyer then calmly informed them that he had come only to save them from a scalping, and that if they did not lay down their arms, the Indians would do their worst! As the words left his mouth, the woods echoed with war whoops. The Americans hastily surrendered to Prinyer and were marched to Kingston, where they spent the rest of the war as prisoners.

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ain Duck Island, twelve miles from the shore of Prince Edward, was a convenient staging point for rumrunners smuggling liquor into the United States during Prohibition. In the early years, possession of alcoholic beverages for personal use was still legal in Ontario, and although the island was occasionally raided, there was little federal agents could do to prevent stockpiling of whiskey, which was subsequently taken to the American shore at a convenient time.
However, a bizarre situation developed when the Ontario Government bowed to pressure from Temperance organizers and prohibited the sale and consumption of alcohol in the province. Manufacture of liquor for export purposes was still legal. Boatload after boatload of export whiskey left the Ontario distilleries, only to be smuggled back into the province and boot-legged to local consumers. This was far safer than slipping past American law enforcement officers, and fortunes were made in the County from the rum-running business. Many small operators sold a few cases of whiskey here and there to eke out the family income, and an unbelievable number of local residents were involved on an occasional basis. Unfortunately for the smugglers, Ontario eventually cracked down on rumrunning, and one by one the "amateurs" dropped out, leaving the hazardous profession in the hands of a daring few.

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n August 31, 1868, two brothers from Port Ontario, New York, a man named Howard from Bath, and Henry Selleck, a Point Traverse farmer set off in a sloop fish carrier across the lake to pick up, a threshing machine.
The machine was lashed to the deck and the men waited for fair weather to set off, but within sight of Main Duck Island, a thunderstorm struck and the top-heavy sloop filled with water and sank.
Howard's body eventually washed up on shore in front of his home in Bath. The two Port Ontario men were picked up by a passing ship and claimed they weren't too clear on what happened to the other men.
No one would ever have known what happened if one of the survivors hadn't got drunk one night and told the story in a local barroom. Howard had washed overboard, but Henry Selleck and the other two men had clung to the hatch cover in desperation. Realizing that the hatch would support only two of them, they had grabbed a passing oar handle and beat at Selleck's hands until he let go.
The men subsequently denied the story, but Henry Selleck's body did finally wash ashore with his fingers bruised and beaten. His remains now lie in the South Bay cemetery.
Selleck's wife, Eliza Jane Dulmage, also lost her brother Moses some years later when his small boat drifted across Lake Ontario. On October 31, 1879 ten schooners laden with coal and grain were anchored near Pt. Traverse waiting for fair weather. Moses Dulmage received permission to visit friends on another vessel and on his return, somehow failed to find his ship. His small boat was swept out into the open lake. Three days later, the lighthouse keeper at Stony Point, thirty miles across the lake, found a frozen body, face down in the thwarts, with his legs lashed to the seat. The keeper surmised that the boy had been alive when he reached the shore, but that his hands were too frozen to untie the ropes that held him and he subsequently perished behind a jumble of ice and rocks, out of sight of the lighthouse. Not knowing the identity of the young man, the keeper took the body to Henderson harbour and gave it a Christian burial.
Captain John Walters of Pt. Traverse was in Oswego when he heard that the body of an unidentified man had been found on Stony Point. He hurried to Henderson harbour, where the body was exhumed and identified as Moses Dulmage. He returned the body to South Bay where Moses now lies.
As if Eliza Jane Dulmage had not suffered enough from the lake, some twenty-five years later she also lost her son when the schooner Emerald disappeared without a trace on her last trip of the season in 1903.

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ohn A. Macdonald, first prime minister of Canada, lived for three years at Glenora, where his father operated a grist mill. Later the family moved to Kingston, but in 1833, Macdonald returned to the Picton area to take over a law practice for his ailing cousin, winning his first case at Picton Court House. During this case, tempers flared and to the scandal of the judge, the argument escalated until Macdonald and the opposing counsel went at each other with their fists. The court crier was called to break up the fight. He circled around the combatants calling loudly "Order in the Court, Order in the Court", but being a staunch friend of Macdonald's leaned over to him and whispered loudly "Hit him again, John, hit him again!" Macdonald once found himself in Picton Court in the role of defendant, after being charged with having put a dead horse in the pulpit at the Methodist Church. The horse was seated in the chair with its front hooves resting on the reading desk. The elderly sexton, returning from a meeting, was lighting candles in the church when he discovered the grisly apparition. He ran from the church screaming "The Devil is here, the Devil is here." When the case came to trial, another young man of the area, who had nothing to do with the prank, was convicted of the offence. This so impressed MacDonald that he vowed that he would never allow a man to be hanged on purely circumstantial evidence!
At the beginning of his political career Macdonald was scheduled to speak in Kingston on a Saturday night. Several of his Picton cronies hitched up their rigs and went with them. At that time there were no fewer than seventeen pubs and taverns between Picton and Kingston and MacDonald insisted on stopping at them all. When they reached Kingston, he was somewhat worse for wear, and the audience was treated to the sight of his friends hoisting him up to the speaking platform, where his opponents were already in full swing. The hot and stuffy air in the hall soon did its damage; he sat for as long as he could, but eventually had to rush off the platform and out the back door. Everyone in the hall knew precisely what was going on. MacDonald made it back to the platform just as the Liberal candidate was finishing and it was his turn to be introduced, whereupon he remarked, "Ladies and Gentlemen, every time I hear that man speak, it makes me sick!" He won the election.
Later, during a political meeting at Adolphustown Town Hall, an old neighbour reminded the audience of a time when he had been fishing, reeling in bass and throwing them up on the bank for safety. At one point he had looked up to realize that Sir John A., then a young lad, was legging it for home with one of his choicest black bass. In front of the whole meeting, the neighbour charged Macdonald with theft and said that, unless John A. asked for pardon immediately, he would use his influence against him in the election. The audience was aghast, but Sir John A. rose and replied:

" Mr. Chairman, and yeomen of Adolphustown : What my old neighbour has told you about my theft of this beautiful fish is absolutely true; and I can recall as though it were but yesterday how frightened I was at that unearthly yell of our good friend, which almost caused me to drop the fish so as to make better speed; but I managed to hold on to it when I saw he was not chasing me. I was clean out of breath as I told my father where I had found it, and that there were lots more where this came from. I humbly beg your pardon, and my only regret is that I can't steal another one like it here tonight, and have it for breakfast in the morning. Mother said it was the best black bass she ever cooked "

Sir John carried that meeting, and in the end won the election. Macdonald was so well liked in the area, that when he announced that he was opening a law practice in Kingston, the citizens of Picton offered him £100 if he would stay.

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t Glenora there is a cave some 50 feet from the top, which can only be reached by a narrow path along the face of the cliff. During the Seven Years War, a French admiral watched from the cave while the British and French fleets fought one of the last marine battles of the war. Fearing defeat, the admiral hid all his treasure in an adjoining room-sized cave and sealed the small entrance to it. No record can he found of the admiral ever returning to claim it and his treasure still waits somewhere high up on the cliff.

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hen the first settlers arrived in the County, it was heavily forested with white pine and oak. Big Island, in particular, was said to be heavily wooded with beautiful timber. Trees, however, were an enemy to the early settlers. They had to be cut and the stumps removed before fields could be made suitable for crops, and densely wooded areas posed a hazard for the traveller, as the paths to neighbours farms were poorly marked and the way indicated only by blazes. Many stories are told of children lost in these woods, never to be seen again.
Children were often sent on errands through the woods, or to take food to the men working in the forest. They were always admonished to stay on the path; the trees were so thick that any sense of direction was soon lost and children could wander in circles for days without finding the path again. Many stories are told of wild animals curling up with children, saving them from freezing at night and some children managed to survive on wild berries and roots until they were found or stumbled into a settled clearing, but many of the children were never found and their bodies never recovered.

Childhood was precarious enough without this added hazard; accidents and disease carried many away, and children were so prized that orphans were automatically taken into neighbouring families, where they were brought up with the same care and attention given to natural children. Childless couples would often "borrow" children to live with them for months at a time. In some cases, great persuasion had to be used to get the children back!

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This is not a "history" of Prince Edward County in the usual sense. Although many of the stories in this book are true, many others have obviously been embellished in the re-telling. They are, however, "real" stories - they have all been told, at one time or another, by people in the County. Stories have survived here where they have disappeared in other localities. Because of the County's geographic isolation and because so many of the "old families" still live here, tales have often been passed from generation to generation.

Although I have not fabricated any details, I often found different versions of the same events. Every attempt was made to verify historical detail, but in cases where I found varying accounts, I simply chose to use the interpretation I liked best.

Thank you to all the people who told me stories ...