NH News - "The Homesteaders" "

JULY/AUGUST 2002

The Homesteaders

Article by John Dietz

Young Henry Brownlee got off the train in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in early 1883. He had come west from Ontario looking for land to homestead.

Traveling with other settlers to the new land, Henry soon found a place to stake his claim in the sea of grass and meadows near Crystal City, 120 miles southwest of Winnipeg and just three miles from the border of North Dakota.

He moved in with another family and worked for them his first year on the frontier. But within one year he was able to start breaking prairie sod on his own land, working long days through the growing season and only returning to his wife, Mary, in Ontario, when winter set in.

The prairie home that Henry Brownlee built. The original one-room house can be seen behind the larger additions. The family’s first son, Howard William, is standing by the carriage. His wife, Agnes, is on the porch.

His first equipment was a two-furrow plow and a team of horses. After many long spring days behind the plow, he would walk those same furrows for hours at a time, throwing wheat and oat seed by hand. On a good long day he might have seeded seven acres. His descendants believe he nearly froze to death the second winter on the land and had to be treated by other settlers for severe frostbite.

He soon built for himself a one-room house of poplar poles. By 1888, a school and church had opened in the district, so Henry added a bedroom and kitchen to the house and sent for Mary and the children to join him on the homestead. Nine children were eventually born into the family, but times were difficult, and only six of the children survived to become adults.

Breaking The Sod

The Brownlees homesteaded a half section, 320 acres of land that stretched a mile in one direction and a half mile in the other. They had chickens, a pig, and several milk cows. By 1900 about 100 acres of prairie land had been broken, and the rest fenced for pasture. Fields were still seeded by hand, but in addition to a plow, the family now owned two teams of draft horses and a set of harrows to break up the loamy soil.

Henry died unexpectedly in 1902. Mary managed the farm briefly until her eldest son, Howard, was able to work it on his own.

For about 15 years Howard and his wife, Agnes, farmed the land and raised four children. But in the interest of a good education for their children, they rented the farm and moved to Crystal City in 1918, not returning to the farm until the children were out of high school.

Their first son, William Henry, received a law degree in 1928, though he never practiced law. Instead, he returned to the old family homestead to farm with his father, where he worked until his death in 1998.

Passing It On

William survived the stresses of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl years and decades later was able to pass on his experiences personally to his children and grandchildren, the fourth and fifth generations on this land.

He would recall how the family was always praying for rain. Sometimes they would look out and see a cloud approaching from the south, and they could almost smell the rain. But a few minutes later that cloud, millions of grasshoppers, would descend, and they would have to shovel them off the sides of the house. It would also be the end of their crops.

William talked about shipping barley to the elevator in a wooden grain wagon, only to be presented with a bill for storage instead of a check. To save storage charges, they would scoop the barley directly into a rail car themselves and ship it. But all they got for the extra work was a bill of $11.28 for freight.

Steam To Combines

Howard Edmund, now farming the old homestead, was born to William and Gladys in 1944. As a boy he walked behind a team of horses raking hay, and he remembers watching giant steam engines as they powered the old stationary threshing machine.

Howard earned a diploma in agriculture from the University of Manitoba in 1964 and returned to the farm, which had doubled in size to 640 acres. Nine years later he married Barbara Cochrane. The couple has three children, Heather, Holly, and Hal, and are expecting their first grandchild this summer.

The fourth generation of Brownlees now farm on 1,600 acres of land that includes the original homestead. The land includes 35 acres of original native prairie. Small grains are still the major crop on this farm as they have been since 1883.

Howard is one of only a handful of prairie farmers to ever own a trading seat on the floor of the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange. He purchased it for $22,000 in the early 1980s and gave it up for the same amount in 1999 after regulation changes made it impractical to continue.

The fifth generation on this farm is 17-year-old William Henry Andrew Brownlee, known as Hal, who hasn’t decided yet if he will continue on the land. “I don’t know if he’ll stay,” said his mother, “and we really don’t know whether to encourage him to stay or not.”

Howard and Barbara Brownlee, the fourth generation on this farm, with son, William, 17, and maybe the fifth.

“Education has to come first,” his father said. “Then he’ll decide whether to farm or not. It’s always been that way in this family.”

Of course, it’s possible one of Hal’s sisters may want to take over the family farm. “I sure hope one of our children will want to take over,” Barbara said. “It would be hard to walk away from a farm that has been in the family for 125 years.”

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