THE HAMM1LL FAMILY For the past sixty-seven years the Hammill Family has played an active fcole in the life of Lower Freetown School District. Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Hammill arrived in 1904 from Summerside and purchased a farm of 130 icres bordering on the Dunk River . They had eight children when they irrived, four boys and four girls, and later three more girls were added. When family was growing up, Mr. Hammill took an active interest in the school where he served for many years as Trustee. He died in 1940 at the age of eighty-six, and left three of his sons, Wilfred, Redverse and Austin established is farmers in the district, and one daughter, Katie, married to Russel MacCarville , also a farmer of the district. The other son entered the priesthood and became Father Thomas Hammill . All the sons have now either passed away or retired, but the family name is carried on by Austin's son Leslie, who still owns 200 acres of land in the district and in addition operates sufficient land elsewhere to grow 400 icres of potatoes and 300 acres of barley each year. Following in the steps of is Uncle, Father Thomas, a son of Redverse Hammill is now parish priest at Tracadie — the Reverend Father Preston Hammill . THE MABON STAVERT FAMILY In 1890 Mabon Stavert purchased a 140 acre farm in Lower Freetown from Isaac N. Schurman for $2699.00. Previously Henry Jardine had bought this same farm in 1878 from Jesse Baker , and he (Jardine) being a bachelor, sold it and subsequently farmed for many years for his widowed sister, Mrs. John Taylor and her daughter, Margaret Jane . According to Lake's Map of 1863 this Stavert farm was owned by Charles C. Maxfield . Charles Maxfield ras married to Sybella Cairns, a sister of John Cairns , and they sold out in 1876 and departed for . When Mabon Stavert came to this farm in 1890, his possessions ©nsisted of a team of horses, a single furrow plow and a set of spike harrows, but by 1904, when the California Gold Fever was at its height, ind he was lured to the sunny South, his farm was well stocked with horses, cattle, sheep and hogs, as well as all the necessary implements of husbandry required for the successful operation of a farm, at that time. Mr. Stavert rented his farm to Calvin Reeves , called an Auction Sale on September 30, 1904, with Artemas Farrow as Auctioneer, and disposed of all his moveables. Then he and his family departed for California with visions of riches on the horizon. As so often happens, the bubble burst and for a number of years, Mr. Stavert was foreman of a large cattle ranch in California . In 1914 he, accompanied by his son Jardine, now 21, returned to his farm in Lower Freetown . He brought with him his riding saddle, spurs and bridle. Walter P. Mabon 's grandson is now the proud possessor of these souvenirs. A story has it that Mabon feared that he had no room to bring his addle, but found that by putting his clothes inside the saddle and cinching up the girth, he had more room than without the saddle, so it came too. 33