Millwoods is built where pioneer farms once stood
Millwoods is a very young community. All of the houses and business buildings were built within the last 50 years. Millwoods is built on land that once was earmarked for the Papaschase Indian band. When the band was dispossessed of it, it was a blank slate for a wave of settlement and immigration.
Pioneer families of a variety of nationalities arrived and made homes for themselves - literally - on land that in many cases bore no obvious sign of previous human occupation. And not only homes, they built barns, schools, churches, whole farm communities, out of logs made from trees that they felled and hauled themselves. The hard-won farms were passed on to sons and daughters or sold to later arrivals.
Meanwhile the City of Edmonton several miles to the north grew and spread. Around 1970 it annexed the land that is now Millwoods. Land developers began knocking on the doors of the farmhouses. With the area being within the city boundaries, change would come. Roads would be built to carry commuters. Services - running water, sewage and more - would be provided. City planners formed up plans for a whole development - almost a city unto itself.
What we now know as Millwoods was built on the site of the old pioneer farms. The old farms and the families that lived there were removed just as the Papaschase Indians had been before, leaving almost no trace of what had been.
Today we'll take a brief look at the history of the Hillview neighbourhood in modern Millwoods. It is a story of two pioneer families in succession who worked the land and raised families there. Like most of us, they did not succeed famously nor fail miserably but did all they could and despite ups and downs, loved their lives and each other.
August and Sarah Schatz came to the site of Hillview in 1894. They had been immigrants even as children - August, born in Wisconsin, had been moved to Minnesota; Sarah, born in Illinois, had been moved to Minnesota.
In 1876 they married, and in 1894 they emigrated to the Edmonton area with their five children, all younger than ten. At a Papaschase Indian Reserve land auction August purchased about 300 acres of land (130 hectares) along what is today's 66th Street. He paid just $4 an acre. Back in the States, land was costing more than $100 an acre. (Nowadays an acre of land (14 houselots) with full services would cost something like $2M!)
The land he bought is now the site of the Hillview neighbourhood and the north part of the Minchau neighbourhood. More than 4000 people now live on the land where only one family lived back in 1900.
The Schatz farm grew to have 60 cattle, 10 horses and a large number of pigs. The pigs helped feed the family and found a ready market in city butcher shops.
The family sold their farm in 1907 for $11,000 and returned to the U.S. The purchaser, Thomas Housely, had plans to run a dairy farm there. But only a few years later he sold to John and Marie Fried.
John was born in 1865 in Sweden. At birth his last name was Frid but upon arrival in the U.S. in 1881, an immigration official changed the spelling of his name to Fried. Settling down in Nebraska, Fried helped establish a cement company. In 1892 John married Marie Hass, who had been born in Germany in 1871. Her story was one of hard knocks.
Her father was Catholic, and Marie attended the Catholic Church with him while her mother and the other siblings were Lutheran. In 1885, the Catholic bishop ordered the whole family to attend Catholic church or he would excommunicate Marie and her father. That is how Marie became confirmed in the Lutheran faith.
She trained on the piano and practiced two to four hours every day. But in 1892 the family fell on hard times due to a business failure. Marie emigrated to the U.S. and became a maid in a hotel in Nebraska. John and Marie met and married.
After their wedding, Marie became busy due to the quick arrival of seven children. John continued in the construction business but dreamed of owning land, pretty much an impossibility in Nebraska. In 1908, he and a few others scouted out the Edmonton area, and John jumped at the chance to buy the two quarter-sections that Housely had up for sale, the old Schatz farm.
Returning to Nebraska, he sold his share in the business and the family packed up their things to travel by train to their new home. The family filled several boxcars with horses, horse-drawn vehicles, furniture and personal goods.
They got off the train at the Strathcona railway station, and the family hired big horse-drawn freight wagons to carry their things to their new home. At the end of the day, their things were sitting in piles in front of their farmhouse. It began to snow. In a mad rush, family members and anyone who was around carried the things into the house. Many small articles fell in the snow and were lost until found again when the snow melted in the spring.
The farmhouse was very different to the proper, hooked-up home they had had in Nebraska. It did not have running water, indoor toilet, gas lights or furnace. Heating was by woodstove, light by lantern. Water was brought in by the bucket from the well in the yard, where also sat an outhouse.
But John and Marie eventually got accustomed to their new surroundings. They enjoyed many musical evenings in their home, with Marie on the piano that they had brought with them.
Edmonton enjoyed a boom in 1912, and the Fried’s sold their farm for $40,000, to be paid off in installments. The purchasers planned to resell the land as acreages. But then the economy crashed, and the project was abandoned. The Fried’s resumed their life on the farm.
A railway line was built across part of the farm. This was a Canadian Northern Railway line that went southeast to Camrose, and then to Calgary. Likely no evidence survives to show that a railway line went through what is now Millwoods but it did, crossing 34th Avenue at about 58th Street. The Fried family working in their fields waved to troop trains carrying soldiers to Calgary during WWI.
Like many others they were caught off guard by the Great Depression. Grain prices crashed in 1929, but John thought the price would bounce back and held on to his grain. But the price remained low and the grain had to be sold just to pay off the storage fees.
By the 1940s, the economy had bounced back from the Depression, and John and Marie sold the farm and retired. They died in 1962, just a couple months apart. They did not live to see part of Millwoods built on their old farm.
With today’s modern cars, electricity, computers, telephones, it may be difficult to imagine the rough living conditions that the early farm families put up with. But the experiences of these early farmers may resonate with families in Millwoods today.
Take care and hang in there. Happy Holidays
(first published in Millwoods Mosaic, Deember 2023)
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notes on historical geography of Millwoods
and notes for and early draft of the Drcember 2023 article
Millwoods 10 Avenue North (approx. Henday Drive) to Whitemud Drive
34 Street W west to 91 Street West
something like this
51 Avenue N N boundary of Papaschase Reserve
Whitemud Drive (45 Avenue) (44 Avenue east of Edm-Calgary RR) N boundary of Millwoods
34 Avenue (North of Township Road 521) South boundary of Papaschase Reserve
North boundary of Mill Creek School District
10th Avenue North (Anthony Henday) South boundary of Millwoods (approx Township Road 515)
(Henday built in
Ellerslie Road 9th Avenue South Township 514 South Boundary of Mill Creek School District
1982 to 2020 city's southern boundary was Township Road 510. south edge of Township 51
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looking at map of Mill Creek School District South Edmonton Saga, p. 132
I see an old railway line through north part of Millwoods.
also found names of earliest recorded settlers in Millwoods
from north to south, west to east
Township 52-24-W4
Section 10 Section 11 Section 12
George John Robert and Frederick David Ludwig
Alexander Cameron William Crawford Norton Henry Bretin
George Thomas H.F. August August William
Alexander Bennett* Sandeman* Schatz Schatz Schmidt
Section 3 Section 2 Section 1 Tipaskan Kameyosek Tawa Minchau
Fred Edward Clinton Herman Frederic Adolphe
Henkelman Roberts Sellers Graunke Furhop Drebert
Meyonohk Millwoods Millwoods Town Park* centre*, Weinlos Bisset
Nancy Julius George Joseph Gott. Frederic Andreas
Miquelon Sager Kolke Monjin Henkelman Furhop Stolz/
sold to J. Morgan Bruderfeld
Moravian Church
Township 51-24-W4
Section 34 Section 35 Section 36
George Arthur Gottfried Henry Andreas Julius
Alexander Rawlinson Schultz Litke Stolz Reimer
Ferdinand Herbert Ferdinand Henry Samuel Carl
Busenius**** Samson Busenius**** Oelhorn*** Tober *** Mauer
Millwoods Park overlaps a little into Section 3.
Rosedale Lutheran Cemetery is just across road from Mauer's farm.
the cemetery is on the east side of 50th Street just at the bottom of the Anthony Henday overpass. just south of 11 Avenue North
Mill Creek School district extended north of the Millwoods site just a half quarter, (to the south boundary of the Papaschase Reserve
(Reserve 51 Avenue N to 34 Avenue N, 17 St W to 119 St. W
included one section south of the Millwoods site. to today's Ellerslie Road
*some landholders in 1890s were also known as businessman in the hamlet of South Edmonton, later the town and city of Strathcona -- Sandeman was businessman on Whyte Avenue
Thomas Bennett was first mayor of Town of Strathcona
Daly Grove School in Millwoods also named after important man in Strathcona ( think)
** Samuel Tober
Karoline Kartz eventually moved to a house on Section 26, the present-day site of Charlesworth, the old Tober farm. SE Section 26 was said to have been Samuel Tober’s farm 1914-1919 pre-1920 (South Edmonton Saga , p. 682)
*** Oelhorn Heinrich (& Mary) Oelhorn see South Edmotnon Saga, p. 881
**** South Edmonton Saga, p. 392-5
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Ed Henkelmann bought 31-51-23-51-W4 (South Edmonton Saga, 569) (This is a mile northeast of Section 26.)
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from reserch done for Miriam
Until farms got going, newly-arrived families depended on hunting and gathering, day labour jobs and other expedients. Rabbits, gophers, squirrels, and other small animals helped feed the families. Berries and mushrooms were also collected.
Among those buying the former Papaschase reserve land were:
recent immigrants from Volhynia such as the Minchau and Werner families, and
Scottish immigrants from the U.S., such as the McLaggan brothers who founded the first businesses at the Ellerslie (Otoskwan) railway stop.
Germans were heavily represented among the first settlers in rural South Edmonton. Many were Moravians and Rev. Clement Hoyler came to minister to them. Seeking a name for the area, he chose Bruderfeld (English: Brethren’s Field) and that name was used at least by some residents into the 1970s, when part of Bruderfeld became known as Mill Woods.
Bruderfeld was named in 1895 by Rev. Clement Hoyler. (South Edmonton Saga, p. 291) Boundaries of Bruderfeld was xxx
(Mill Woods runs from Anthony Henday Drive (10th Avenue South) north to Whitemud Drive so it takes in just north part of old Bruderfeld.) (Wiki: Millwoods
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Mill Creek School district formed in 1895 at meeting at Morgan's farmhouse just east of today's 66 Street and north of 23 Avenue
Not smooth sailing. a vote on having a debenture of $400 was voted down, 10 to 8 (EB, June 27, 1895)
schoolhouse was built on Morgan's land, on the site today of Millwoods Town Mall northside of 23 Avenue east of 66 Street.
active in the organization of the school was A. Schatz, H. Graunke, and J. Morgan himself.
Schatz's farm was just a mile north of the school site.
Graunke's farm was just a half-mile north of the school site.
perhaps these two helped Morgan in his school project in part because there was a good road between the three farms. The road that followed the east boundary of the three farms is the base for today's 66th Street.
Herman Graunke born 1860, the youngest in a family of five children, born in Germany
but his parents John and Johanna saw no future in Germany so were compelled to take up the offer of free land made by the government of Barzail at the time. The family settled in a mountainous area of Brazil. Their farm was covered in huge mahogany and oak trees. When they were felled, the logs were too large to do anything with so the family planted coffee beans between the logs.the mid-days were too hot to work outdoors. Helmand learned Portuguese and worked on survey crews but in 1882 he decided to try North America so worked on a cattle boat to get to New York then travelled west to Minnesota where relatives lived. He corresponded with his family back in Brazil but around 1910 they complained of feeling like a persecuted minority. After 1914 no more was heard from them.
In Minnesota Herman married and had a son. His wife got ill and died and he left the child with his mother-in-law.
In 1893, with some other German settlers he travelled to the Edmonton area to look it over. He attended an auction of Papaschase Indian Reserve land and bought the northeast quarter of 2-52-24-W4 for $4 an acre. The old Hay Lakes Trail went through his farm between the house and the barn.
He built a house, a log barn and a log granary over the next few years. He also worked for J.J. Duggan, an implement dealer in Old Strathcona. (J.J.’s fine old brick residence still stands on Saskatchewan Drive, west of 105 Street.) While working to set up farm machinery at a farm, Herman met teen-aged Amelia Sommer. A couple years later she got a job in the kitchen of the Commercial Hotel, and there Herman renewed their friendship.
They married and moved out to Bruce for a couple years, then returned to the farm along 66th Street.
They had five children. One of them died in childhood.
In 1928 they bought more land -- the SW quarter of 12-52-24-W4. Mill Creek runs through it. In order to reach the field on the north side of the creek, a bridge was built. The beavers who lived in the creek resented the intrusion of the traffic on the bridge, and for years they would chew down trees and drop them across the road that led to the bridge. (South Edmonton Saga, p. 510)
The land on the north side of the creek is now part of Kiniski Gardens.
The well on the Graunke farm sometimes collected gas from under the soil, with methane or natural gas. One time Herman who smoked a pipe went to the well and the gas exploded, knocking him on his back.
Hermand died in 1940 at the age of 80.
Amelia lived on the farm with help from son Bill and then went to live with her daughter, a teacher at Hay Lakes. Amelia finally passed in 1957 at age 77.
Bill kept the farm until annexation in 1982.
As of 1984, the only remnant of the old farm was a bluff of poplar trees (but doubtless they have died by this date today.) (South Edmonton Saga, p. 511
August Schatz and wife Sarah (South Edmonton Saga, p. 965)
August was born in Wisconsin in 1852.
At age of three the family moved to Minnesota, part of the trip was made by riverboat.
1876 married Sarah Norton., (she was born on a farm near Chicago. Later the family moved to Minnesota.)
Five children born over the next few years.
1894 emigrated to Canada with their five children, all younger than ten.
In 1894, they came to the Edmonton area, emigrating from Minnesota.
At a Papaschase Indian Reserve land auction August purchased about 300 acres of land (130 hectares) along what is today's 66th Street. He paid just $4 an acre. Back in the States, land was more than $100 an acre. Nowadays an acre of land (14 houselots) would cost something like $2M!
The land he bought is now the site of the Hillview neighbourhood and the north part of the Minchau neighbourhood. On the land where only one family lived back in 1900, more than 4000 people now live.
After their arrival, a Moravian Church was established about a mile to the southwest (on today’s 20th Avenue). The local Moravian minister named the area Bruderfeld, and the Bruderfeld church still is in operation today, under the name Millwoods Community Church. But the Schatz family attended the Lutheran Church on today’s Ellerslie Road about two miles farther away. That church also is still in operation today.)
The Schatz farm had 60 cattle, 10 horses and a large number of pigs. The pigs helped feed the family and pay the rent so to speak. The meat of the fast-growing pigs found a ready market in city butcher shops.
August was active in the area organizations. With his neighbours, he helped found the Mill Creek School District No. 355. The schoolhouse was built just a mile (1.6 kms) south of the Schatz farm on the site of the Millwoods Town Centre today. Each family with school-age kids was asked to bring two logs to the building site, and local residents banded together to make the logs into a school house. (South Edmonton Saga, p. 132)
The school operated until 1955, and then pupils were bussed to a more sophisticated centralized school. (South Edmonton Saga, p. 137)
August also served as deputy returning officer for the “Indian Reserve” polling division for the 1898 Territorial election - the votes were collected at the Mill Creek School. (Edmonton Bulletin, 1898)
He also served on the executive of the South Edmonton Agricultural Society
The family was active in the St. Paul's Lutheran church at Ellerslie, today's 5104 Ellerslie Road.
But for an unknown reason the family sold their farm and returned to the U.S.
They sold the farm to a Mr. Housely who only a few years later sold the land to John and Marie Fried. (South Edmonton Saga, p. 965-966)
John and Marie Fried
Johan was born in 1865 in Sweden. At birth his last name was Frid ("peace" in Swedish) but upon arrival in the U.S. in 1881, an immigration official changed the spelling of his name to Fried. (His brothers and sisters who came to the U.S. later were allowed to keep the name Frid so he and his siblings have different last names.) Later he began to use John instead of Johan as a first name.
Settling down in Lincoln, Nebraska, Fried helped found the Reimers and Fried Artificial Stone and Side Walks Company. The company got the contract to lay the sidewalks around the Nebraska state capitol building, built in the 1880s. Although the building was replaced in 1915, according to the family story the sidewalk bearing the Reimers and Fried company stamp was still in use into the 1960s (and perhaps is still there today.)
In 1892 John married Marie Hass.
Marie Hass was born 1871 in Germany. Her father was Catholic, and Marie attended the Catholic Church with him while her mother and the other siblings attended a Lutheran church. In 1885, the Catholic bishop ordered the whole family to attend Catholic church or he would excommunicate Marie and her father. Within a few months, Marie was confirmed in the Lutheran faith.
She trained on the piano and practiced two to four hours every day. But in 1892 the family lost their money and property due to an unsuccessful business venture. She emigrated to the U.S. and became a maid in a hotel in Lincoln. There John and Marie met and married.
After their wedding, Marie became busy due to the quick arrival of seven children. John continued in the construction business but dreamed of owning land, pretty much an impossibility in Nebraska. In 1907, he and a few others scouted out the Edmonton area, and John jumped at the chance to buy the two quarter-sections that Mr. Housely had up for sale. This was the farm formerly owned by August Schatz.
Returning to Lincoln, he sold his share in the sidewalk business and the family packed up their things to ship by train to their new home. Their belongings filled several boxcars. The family shipped several horses and three types of horse-drawn vehicles - a buggy, a democrat and a race cart, plus their furniture and personal goods.
Upon arrival at the Strathcona station the family stayed at the Commercial Hotel. (Still in business today, the hotel hosts the Blues on Whyte music venue.) When their stuff arrived on a later train, they hired dray-wagons (big horse-drawn freight wagons) to carry their things to their new farm on the site of today's Millwoods. In those days it was a good day’s work to get a wagon from Whyte Avenue to Millwoods and back home before it got too dark.
At the end of the day, their things were still in large wooden boxes sitting in piles in the front yard of their farmhouse. Heavy snow began to fall, and in a mad rush, family members, new neighbours and anyone who was around opened the boxes and carried the contents into the house. Many small articles fell in the snow and were lost until found again when the snow melted in the spring.
The farmhouse was very different to the proper, hooked-up home that the family had had in Nebraska. Unlike their previous home, their new home did not have running water, indoor toilet, gas lights or furnace. Heating was by woodstove, light by lantern. Water was brought in by the bucket from the well in the yard, where also sat an outhouse.
But John and Marie eventually got accustomed to their new surroundings. With the help of neighbours, they enjoyed many musical evenings in their home, with Marie on her piano, which they had brought with them on the train. Neighbours joined in on the violin, a jew's harp and a mouth organ. The evening ended with coffee and some of Marie’s famous cinnamon buns.
In addition to farming, John also did a bit of cement work when barns, houses and churches were built locally..
Edmonton enjoyed a boom in the 1910s, and the Fried’s were happy to sell their farm for good money. They moved to California to scout out land there. Their old farm was subdivided and resold as acreages. But then the boom crashed and the purchase fell through, and the family had to return to Edmonton to take up the land again.
The Canadian Northern Railway line crossed his land. This was a Canadian Northern Railway line which went southeast to the Breton area, Camrose and Calgary. There is now likely no evidence that a railway line went through Millwoods but it did, crossing 34th Avenue at about 58th Street. The Canadian Northern brand went bankrupt during WWI and was rolled into the Canadian National system, today’s CN. The Fried family working in their fields waved to many troop trains carrying soldiers to Calgary during WWI.
Like many others they were caught off guard by the Great Depression. Grain prices crashed in 1929, but John thought they would bounce back and held on to this grain. But by the following spring prices had not risen and the grain had to be sold just to pay for the storage fees. But the family held on through those dreary years.
By the 1940s, the economy had bounced back from the Depression, and John and Marie sold the farm and retired. They died in 1962, just a couple months apart. (South Edmonton Saga, p. 469-472)
They did not live to see Millwoods built on their old farm in the early 1970s.
And that is just an overview of the changes that Millwoods saw from 1890s to the 1970s. Perhaps there are members of the Schatz and Fried families still living in Millwoods today. With today’s modern cars, electricity, computers, telephones, it may be difficult to imagine the rough living conditions that the early farm families put up with. But some of these early farmers experience may resonate with today’s immigrant families recently arrived in Millwoods that are going through some of the same adjustments to a new environment experienced by those early families.
sources:
1909 Land more than $100 an acre Saturday News, May 1, 1909
CNR Strathcona-Breton-Camrose-Calgary line built by 1910 EB, Dec. 1, 1910
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Moravian search Peel's PP search
measles cases found among Moravian families camping south of South Edmonton
July 30, 1894
Feb. 3 1806 Rev. C. Hoyler, of Moravian Church, to come to serve at Bruderfeld "on the Southside Indian reserve"
Feb. 6, 1896 Bruderfeld has about 150 residents but number expected to rise as more people arrive from Russia
May 4, 1903 German immigration to Edm. area
parks in Millwoods
Father Ivor Daniel Park
Satoo Park
Ekota Park
Meyokumin Park
Pollard Meadows Park
Crawford Plains Park
Kittzlittz Park in Wild Rose neighbourhood in Meadows
(subject of Feb 2024 article)
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