Cousin Agam Fhein

by Hughie Ferguson
(recorded in Dearborn, Michigan, February 2007)

Hughie, talking about his parents’ home in Inverness: The only job that I ever did, and it would be kind of a crazy job [today] — see, there were sixty-five windows in the house. And there was I forget how many storm windows.

Dave: Sixty-five storm windows!

Hughie: But imagine going up on a ladder. And I did all that.

Dave: This would be like a wood-framed window, as large as the house window.

Bruce: With one big sheet of glass.

Dave: Or it might have grids in it. Probably it did back then. There’d be the panes and you’d have to put them in with glazing compound. But the thing would be the size of the regular window, so it would weigh a ton.

You remember the Brothers’ place in Alfred? We had those kinds of windows, and at the hardware store you’d get a set of nails with a big wide head. And every two nails would have the same number on them, like “17″ or “18.” And you’d put one nail on the window, and one nail on the storm window, because sometimes it wouldn’t fit…. I remember that because this was a real old place.

(The window in the photo is an example of the old-fashioned storm window.)

Hughie: It was a hell of a job one time. We used to take the storm windows down and put them in the garage. My brother John, he went in and he had a target, he put it over there, and he broke twelve.

Bruce: What was he shooting?

Hughie: He was just trying to practice with a rifle. I had to get six panes [of glass] from Cheticamp, from L.D.’s.

Bruce: All the glass that they had! One summer, didn’t you fix windows at home? Like buy a gallon of glazing compound and replace all the glazing in the windows, especially on the side?

Hughie: Yeah, oh, yeah. It was easier on the front, because of the roof on the little verandah. The other ones there, you’d have to get the ladder, the double ladder.

Dave: And the window would be heavy!

Hughie: Ohhhh, yeah.

Bruce: I wouldn’t want to do that.

Hughie: After a while, we started letting a window or two stay up there. That was just as good, because the goddamned place was cold anyway. Even if we had windows and storm windows on every window, it was still cold.

There was Duncan MacNeil, right across the street from us, he came over. Duncan had kind of a queer limp, you know. Going up on the ladder, and my father came home and saw that. He gave me a going over, “Don’t let that man go up that ladder!”

Dave: When did they move into that house?

Hughie: Our house? Wait now… I was about 12 years old.

Dave: So, 1925 or so.

Hughie: Yeah, ‘24 was when they moved down there.

Dave: You said one time you didn’t think of that as your house, but wherever they lived before. Where were you before?

Hughie: Oh, where did we live? Do you know where my dad’s store was? Well, right down that row of houses. We lived in one of them. You wondered how in hell they could ever — with my grandmother, somebody else, and a maid, and all those goddamned kids…

Dave: That was MacIsaac Street, was it?

Hughie: No, no. On the other side, right across the street [across Central Avenue]. My grandmother, after my grandfather died, she came back down. She didn’t go to church, you know. She was Catholic, of course. My grandfather, Hughie, he was the Protestant, like my dad.

My grandmother was with us, and we had a maid, and at least seven kids. You’d wonder where in the hell they would all fit.

Just think in the wintertime when you had to go…they had a coal house, and a shithouse. And that’s where you’d go. And every time I think of — Pa would be taking the toilet paper from the store.

One woman wrote to Eaton’s wanting to get toilet paper. And they wrote her back and they said get the catalog and get the number and everything. So she wrote back and said “If I had the catalog, I wouldn’t need it.”

Dave: Was there central heat in the new house?

Hughie: According to what room you where in. Holy Christ, they had a little stove, and out in the kitchen the stove. They didn’t have a furnace, there wasn’t a furnace at that time.

Bruce: That big house wouldn’t have a furnace?

Hughie: We had to get a new one right away — you’d get more heat with a match. With all those windows and no insulation.

I often wondered, tried to figure out after my grandfather died — Grandma came down to live with us. I think it was either six or seven, six kids, and my grandmother, and a maid — in a two bedroom house.

Dave: The maid probably slept in the kitchen.

Hughie: God only knows. I’ll never forget when my grandfather died. My grandmother came out and she stood at the casket, you now, and said the rosary. I don’t think she said it from the time she got married because Grandpa was a real Protestant. And Grandma with no reading or writing. She could talk English and talk Gaelic but that was all.

I don’t know, before we went to sleep they must have given us something so we’d sleep and hung us up on hooks. I don’t know in the name of God — think there were three bedrooms, three small bedrooms.

Dave: So you and Dannie and Roddie and Johnnie…

Hughie: There was myself, and Johnnie, and Danny… and then the girls were Cassie, Mary, Sadie, they were home in the Red Rows.

They must have hung us up on a hook or something. There was nothing but I think it was three bedrooms and a hallway.

My father, he bought that house, the one with all the windows in it, four thousand dollars. Everybody in Inverness thought Pa was a millionaire to pay four thousand dollars for a home.

• Dave, Bruce: two of Hughie Ferguson’s sons
• Hughie Ferguson’s parents: Mattie Ferguson and Sadie MacDougall
• The Brothers’ place: a school in Alfred, Maine, run by the Brothers of Christian Instruction
• “My grandfather, Hughie”: Hugh Ferguson (1856 - 1926), father of Mattie Ferguson
• My grandmother: Catherine MacIsaac (died 1936, aged 90)
• The Red Rows were rows of small, duplex houses in Inverness, most of them originally owned by the coal mine, and most painted red. I was nearly an adult before I learned it was “Red Rows” and not “Red Rose” like the tea. — Dave

by Bruce Ferguson

One of the things I remember about Inverness was the times we spent on vacation there. Mom and Dad would farm out the five kids to various relatives so that we wouldn’t be such a burden to one family. John would stay with uncle Danny, Art would stay with uncle Roddie, Dave would stay with someone else(?) and Anne Marie would stay with aunt Billie. I spilt my time between aunt Billie’s with mom or with dad at Grandma and Grandpa’s.

As a young child, I was fascinated with the idea that the hot water heater was connected with the stove. Aunt Sadie would be up early to fire up the stove for breakfast. After breakfast, there would be enough hot water to do the dishes, do the laundry and begin to prepare for supper. She would roll out the wringer washer and do the laundry in the kitchen. She would utilize her time during loads to bake the world’s greatest sugar cookies! The laundry would then be hung out on the line. (It was summertime and it wouldn’t take long to dry. During the winter it would be hung in the attic.)

After supper, which would include vegetables, gravy, meat, rolls, and etc., the entire kitchen would be cleaned up and everything put away. Then the hot water would be turned off. Dinner would consist of biscuits, cookies, fruit, cheese and whatever happened to left over.

As a kid, not having to take a bath at the end of a long summer day was something I was not used to.

• Mom and Dad: Hughie Ferguson and Greet Macdonald
• John, Art, Dave, Anne Marie: Hughie and Greet’s kids
• Aunt Billie: Greet’s sister
• Aunt Sadie: Hughie’s sister
  
• Uncle Danny: Hughie’s brother
• Uncle Roddy: Hughie’s brother
• Grandma and Grandpa: Hughie’s parents, Mattie Ferguson and Sadie MacDougall

by David Ferguson

I think it was the summer of 1966. I was sixteen, and as usual I was visiting Inverness with my family.

“With my family” isn’t exactly right. Once we grew out of toddlerhood, when we went down home my parents would farm us out to different relatives. My brother John usually stayed with Danny and Olive. My brother Art usually stayed with Billie. I spent a lot of time at Roddie and Pat’s.

I’m sure we must have seen my parents from time to time — we always managed to be in the car on the way back to Detroit — but I don’t remember much of that.

What I do remember, along with other things from this visit, was being at Billie’s house on MacIsaac Street one day. I noticed an old man at the place next door. As I remember it, he was doing something on the roof of the porch, like repairing shingles.

It wasn’t a very steep roof, but he wasn’t particularly young, either. In my mind’s eye, he looks like he’s in good shape for age 70 or so.

I said something to BillIe about the old guy up on the porch next door. She laughed and told me that was Dan Kennedy.

It seems this was the house he’d grown up in. As the Kennedy children got older, they moved away, started families of their own, and I suppose their parents stayed in the house on MacIsaac Street.

Eventually Dan’s own family grew up, and I guess his wife died. However it happened, he ended up moving back into his childhood home, the place where I saw him repairing the porch roof.

Billie told me that the same thing had happened to a couple of Dan’s brothers and sisters, and that a few of them were now in the house together, just as they had when they were children. I think she called the place “the pensionage.”

And I was right, she told me. Dan Kennedy was in good shape for his age. I was just wrong about the age.

Dan had been born in 1864. The man fixing the porch was 102 years old–or, to put it another way, he was three years older than Canada.

David is the son of Greet Macdonald and Hughie Ferguson.
Billie: Billie Macdonald, Greet’s sister
Danny and Olive: Danny Ferguson (Hughie’s brother) and his wife, Olive Duffitt
Roddie and Pat: Roddie Ferguson (Hughie’s brother) and his wife, Patricia Dunn

by Julene Coady

While living in Nova Scotia, I got to know family I had only heard about. One time when I was out visiting Aunt Billie, we were talking about weddings and Anniversaries, and the way things were done and the way things were celebrated. Aunt Greet & Uncle Hughie were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. I could not go to Detroit [where they lived]; some of the other family was going.

I said to Billie, “You know, it would be great when Greet and Hughie come home this summer if we had a surprise for them. We could have a party and invite people they haven’t seen for years. We could have it at my place.” We knew we probably could not outdo the Detroit gang but it would be fun nonetheless.

With the support of Billie and her family, and of course my family, I pitched the idea to our cousin Kay Stubbert who lives in Timberlea. We put our heads together. Kay was a great one for parties, and she got contacts for people she knew in the area who knew Greet and Hughie. I enlisted the help of Danny’s daughter Jane Webber (that is a whole other story) and Janice Ferguson to give me the names and addresses of the Ferguson relatives in the area. I started calling people and sounding much like a telemarketer explained who I was and how I fit in the Ferguson crew, and invited all kinds of people I never met before to my house on an August afternoon to celebrate Greet and Hughie’s 50th anniversary.

Kay Stubbert enlisted the help of her sisters who were home visiting. Anna came from Vancouver, Evelyn Stubbert, myself, and Kay (MacKinnon - Stubbert married to Ambrose Stubbert). I don’t think Edna was home this time; I know she was home for the August party the year before. We made lobster sandwiches, egg sandwiches, tuna sandwiches, we had vegetables and dip, cheese — tons of food. We had a cake, tea, coffee, the works, and the people came, and it was a tribute to Hughie and Greet like no other.

Cyril Sampson got a piano and Kevin and Theresa [Macdonald]’s daughter Marie played a few tunes for us. We had music, but it was difficult to hear the music over the talking.

Alan MacKenzie (piper with the 78th Highlanders Citadel Halifax –- My son Coady was instructed by and played with Alan), stopped by late in the afternoon on his way home from teaching at the Gaelic College in C.B. to play a few tunes and the guests were entertained by Anne Marie (my oldest daughter) and Kevin and Theresa’s daughter Marie with a couple of dance numbers.

The funniest thing was when Aunt Greet came up the stairs and the place is blocked, she stops on the stairs and looks at the people.

She had that look that said, “I know all you people, but what are you doing in this house.� They had a marvelous time.

One of Uncle Hughie’s nieces still owes me Rocky Road Squares; I have to find the paper to remember her name.

Aunt Billie: Billie Macdonald, sister of Julene’s mother Edith Macdonald
Aunt Greeet: Greet Macdonald, Billie’s sister
Uncle Hughie: Hughie Ferguson, Greet’s husband
Kevin and Theresa: Kevin Macdonald and his wife; Kevin is the son of Charlie Macdonald, brother of Billie, Edith, and Greet
Marie: Marie Macdonald, daughter of Kevin and Theresa
Kay Stubbert: wife of Cyril Sampson; cousin of Greet, Billie, and Edith
Evelyn Stubbert: Kay’s sister, married to Greg Mullins
Kay MacKinnon: wife of Ambrose Stubbert, Kay’s brother
Anna: another sister of Kay and Evelyn
Edna: another sister of Kay and Evelyn

Danny: Danny Ferguson, Hughie’s brother
Jane Webber: married name of Jane Ferguson, Danny’s daughter
Janice Ferguson: daughter of Hughie’s brother Johnny

Coady: Coady Summerfield, son of Julene Coady and Everett Summerfield
Anne Marie: Anne Marie Summerfield, daughter of Julene Coady and Everett Summerfield