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Her niece, Viola Mary Pelton, says, "Harvey Pelton's only daughter Myrt ie Viola married Darwin Fish January 7 1894. After hearing tales of the wo nderful farmland available in Canada they left the USA and moved to Canad a. It seems the government was offering 160 acres of land to see if th ey could live on it for three years without starving and then it was the ir homestead. Myrtie, Darwin and their two sons, Derwood and Lyle left Ro canville, Saskatchewan and headed for the Twill Plains area for a farmstea d. They arrived just after a prairie fire had swept the land. Every sto ne and buffalo bone showed up and made the land look bleak and uninvitin g. They came with teams of horses, oxen, pigs, chickens, two kittens, cat tle and a dog along with their household equipment.
It was the spring of 1906. Once the oxen got in a bad mud hole, telling t hem 'gee haw! they ran right into a thickbush. It took 6 hours to chop do wn trees to get them out. After they got their land and shack to live i n, trips were made back to Lipton for their binder, seeder and other fa rm equipment. Before winter set in Darwin made a trip to Twill Lake for s upplies. Myrtie was the first white woman in that area. Later they bui lt a better home but the first was a log house with a sod roof. Heavy rai ns that fell washed a lot of plaster off the house and it was one of the c oldest and stormiest winters on record. A quote from the book 'The Copela nd Story' says the temperature inside and outside of the house during th at winter 1906-07 wasn't much different.
The Fish home was a well known stopping place for travelers in that pa rt of the country. Mosquitoes were bad. Clouds of them made it difficu lt to work outdoors with skin exposed. That, along with flying ants, some times drove the horses or men crazy. The country seemed empty and moveme nt on the prairie could be seen for miles. But gradually the land beg an to be taken up. Neighbors began coming in and it became what it is tod ay: rich wheat, and grain country; good farmland. I admire the sturdy pio neers of a bye-gone era. They had courage to endure hardships to make a d ream come true. I remember getting packages from my aunt in Canada with c ustoms duty stamped on it. It was exciting to get a package from her. A nd off a train coming from a place that seemed like a foreign country to u s. My father stayed in Fredericksburg and lived on the home place. He so ld fish around town he got fresh from Lansing on the Mississippi River. T he fish were packed in ice which came in wooden boxes on the train. He al so made and sold brooms. He always raised a big garden."
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1874 - Yes, date unknown