48 I^RANSACTIONS. 1897-8. 



OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Connected with the place-names tender sympathy some- 

 times crops out. For instance Fort Connolly was named after 

 James Connolly, whose daughter Nellie, a beautiful maiden of 

 sweet sixteen, young Douglas (afterwards Sir James Douglas 

 and Governor of Vancouver Island) along with his other duties, 

 found time to woo and win as he sojourned, in the employ of 

 the Hudson's Bay Co. in the region of Bear I^ake at the head of 

 head of the branches of the Skeena River on the far off Arctic 

 slope of our vast country. No doubt after honoring the father, 

 Douglas found his path to the lady's heart all the easier. 



Frequently a story of hardship conquered by love and 

 patience is embalmed in the place-name. The other day I read 

 of Joan Murray Ritchie who had recently died. She was 

 born in the little village of Knock in Dumfrieshire, Scotland, 

 in 1809. Her father dying when she was a child she became 

 a domestic servant with a family in Annan. When 24 years 

 of age she married William Ritchie of Greystones. In 1841, 

 with three children to care for, the couple came to Canada. 

 Ritchie hired himself to a Scotchman of Vaughan for $100 a 

 year with a house and pasture for a cow. After ten years he 

 saved enough to buy a farm in the township of Flos, (name 

 given from Gov. Colborne's wife's poodle dog), having him- 

 self during those years become an expert backwoodsman, 

 while his wife had learned all that was required of a farmer's 

 wife in those days. She knew how to make maple-sugar, to 

 spin yarn and make homespun. She understood the art of 

 the dyer and could take the wool from the sheep's back and 

 put it through all the processes needed to transform it into a 

 suit of clothes, to shield her moji's back and sides and front 

 from the blasts of a Canadian winter. In 1851 the family 

 moved to their new home in the forest of Flos and built them 

 a log cabin on the banks of the Wye, (a transplanted Welch 

 word signifying zvater^ and therefore often used for rivers). 

 In the first year the husband and father cleared a patch of 

 ground for wheat and potatoes and then went away to earn 

 enough money to carry the family over the winter, leaving 

 the wife to take care of the lonely forest home. Year after 

 year they worked and planned to surround themselves with 

 comforts, and extended a helping hand to other settlers, till a 

 village sprung up of which Ritchie was appointed Postmaster 

 and to which he gave the name Elnwale^ in honor of his 



