This life sketch is the fifth in a series of brief biographies previously published on the
Amesdale Cemetery Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/amesdalecemetery
Samuel George Ames was born October 26, 1871 to William Herbert Ames and Nancy Maria Bartja. As of yet, little is known of his father’s origin. His mother’s family emigrated from Luchow, Hannover, Germany in the spring of 1852. Oral history states that the Bartja family was Dutch, which is consistent with indications that their surname has similar origins.
Sam was the oldest of four siblings; himself, Maria Almina, William Edward, and Albert Edward Lyndall. Between the births of Maria Almina (1874) and William Edward (1877), the family moved from Lambton County to Elma Township, Perth County. Throughout his life Sam identified Monkton as his boyhood home.
At the birth of their fourth child, tragedy struck on an unusually cold spring day in 1879. The well-stoked stove set the house ablaze and Nancy was carried outside. She caught pneumonia and died just ten days later, on May 24, 1879. The baby was adopted by the Lyndall family. Only a year later, Sam was orphaned when his father fell from a threshing machine’s separator breaking his neck. The three oldest children were taken in by neighbours.
Sam was taken in by Jane Reid McDonald, the recently widowed wife of Hugh McDonald of Newton, Mornington Township, Perth County, and raised as a McDonald. Across the road from the McDonalds was a farm owned or previously owned by Joseph Abel Priest and his wife Annie Eliza McDonald Priest. It was there as a child that Sam first met their daughter Annie Eliza Priest.
At the age of nineteen Sam decided to go West to seek his fortune as so many were doing at the time. It was then that he decided to take his proper name, being thereafter known as Samuel George Ames. Desiring to marry, he corresponded with his childhood playmate Annie Eliza Priest, who was still living on a farm near Atwood in Elma Township. After corresponding for some time, Samuel wrote Annie a letter asking her if she would come West and marry him. Coincidentally, that was about that time that the Priest family was in the process of finalising arrangements themselves, for a move West. In reply, Annie said that if when she saw him again in person, she liked him as much as she did in his letters, she would marry him.
When the Priest family arrived in Manitoba, they were met at the station by Sam. Having always known Samuel to be a very quiet young man, Annie was surprised when Sam walked up and immediately greeted her with a kiss. Shortly after their reunion the couple was married in South Cypress Hills, Manitoba on May 30, 1894. They then drove to Killarney, Manitoba where Sam was working on a farm.
The story of the Sam and Annie Ames family is a happy one. They were to have a large and very close family. Ten children, five girls and five boys were born into the family, of which the first two were born while the family lived in Killarney, Manitoba. Edwin (Ed) Alfred was born in 1895 and William (Bert) Herbert in 1897.
When Bert was two years old, the family decided to move to Gilbert Plains, Manitoba on the other side of the Riding Mountains. With one horse, an ox, and a covered wagon which carried all their possessions, they set out on the long journey across the prairie and over the mountains to Gilbert Plains. Upon arrival in “The Plains” they settled a homestead close to that of the Priests. Sam farmed, but later bought a steam engine, a plow and a thrasher, and soon became known throughout the area for the large tracts of virgin prairie soil he broke and the grain he thrashed.
The last eight children, Myrtle Isabella, Olive Alexandra, Hazel May, Joseph Gordon, Katherine (Kate) Evangeline, Samuel James, Margaret Elinor, and Donald Grant, were born in Gilbert Plains.
During the early 1920s Sam became interested in an area of north-western Ontario, and in the summer of 1924 he made a scouting trip to the area. Before returning to Manitoba he acquired 240 acres of land at a place called Freda. Freda, later named Amesdale, was located on the mainline of the Canadian National Railway, and consisted of a station house for the section men, a siding where boxcars were loaded with cord-wood from the local bush camps, and two families. I.S. Thompson, a trapper, and J. Soumi, a homesteader and woodcutter were living there.
Sam returned to Gilbert Plains greatly enthused about the prospects of cutting and selling pulpwood and firewood, and farming. In the fall of 1924 Sam began preparations for moving the family to Freda, and by November 1925 the family was established there. Their first property was 240 acres of land with a log cabin of sorts located a mile and a half east of the station.
Sam would best be described as an entrepreneur. In Freda he immediately opened a store, and his son Gordon applied for a post office to be opened which resulted in renaming of the community to Amesdale as there was already a Freda Post Office in another Ontario community. He also established his wood contracting venture, and in 1927 he and others organised the Amesdale Lath and Supply Company. Later he became a buyer and seller of locally harvested blueberries and wild rice.
Sam also honoured his civic responsibilities, serving on the first Rowell School Board and the Rowell Roads Commission, and making special donations for the construction of the Rowell School.
Sam and Annie spent their later years in a nice frame house just above the spring on their homestead across the tracks from the station. It was there that Annie suffered a stroke on January 2, 1944. Thereafter, and until Annie’s passing in 1949 they lived with family. Sam was terribly lonely without Annie and later married May Tizzard, in a relationship that soon failed. On October 20, 1953 Sam died of a heart condition.
The passing of Sam and Annie left a great void in the lives of their family. They are deeply loved and dearly missed. To their family and community they left their examples of industriousness, creativity, and loving concern for family, friends, and acquaintances.
December 2105
This history was compiled by Brian Ames with the assistance of Beatrice Ames, Margaret Fradsham, and Katherine Carlson.
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