and vegetables and cured their beef, pork and fish. Sheep were kept on every farm for wool and mutton.

Looking over an old country stores account book that kept every- thing from Balmoral skirts to wooden shoe pegs we see that the Canadian Pounds and Shillings changed to the decimal currency in 1871; a Pound was worth $3.20 and a Shilling 16 cents. Stirling pound 4.86 2/3.

Men’s wages changed little in thOSe days before the change in currency he got 4 Shillings and after he got 64 cents per day.

The three necessities in those days were molasses, .48 per gallon, tobacco, .40 per 1b., 8 cents for flats (smoking) and tea, .60 per 1b. and for Man’s ills salts. senna and pain killer. Senna can still be bought in

pill form.

Price of produce taken in by storekeepers were oats .32 to .38 per bus., potatoes .18 per bus, butter 14 to 16 cents per lb. and eggs 7

to 8 cents per doz.

The first barns were small and made of logs, as clearings were enlarged frame farns were put up, all hewed lumber, rafters and studs were hewed 6X6 and split in saw pits to make 3X6. Walls were boarded up and down with boards haved back an inch on edges and laped to make them tight, only the roofs were shingled, frame was mortised and pinned with wood pins. Wide hemlock boards were brought in by vessels from Miramichi and sold for 75 cents per hundred or less. Door hinges, bolts and hooks were blacksmith made. Lofts were made with round

poles.

The first fences were brush and stumps; later poles were out five axe handles long, the large ones split, stakes were driven into the ground and tied together at the top with beech withes; if cedar poles could be obtained they would last a life time; as wood got scarce cedar

posts and barb wire were used.

LONG RIVER

The history of the District of Long River would not be complete without due reference to the spiritual lives of the people, their places of worship, their spiritual leaders and their final resting places.

In all probability the earliest settlers in Long River, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, worshipped and were buried near New London Harbour; for that area was settled, first by the French and later by the

English, much earlier than Long River.

Undoubtedly the first place of worship was a small chapel at “Yankee Hill” during the French regime. The French and English set- tlers must have lived side by side in harmony at New London for some years, for Chappel, who will be referred to later, records in his diary, that he had French laborers working for him in the woods and refers to the considerable amount of land cleared by them around the harbour.

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