26 A Bridge To The Past

The families involved were: John Ellison Maxfield and his wife Sarah Elizabeth Baker and their ten children; William Maxfield and his wife Sarah Ann Picketts and their five children; Richard Maxfield and his wife Eliza Parrot and their seven children.

The Maxfields had done well in Bedeque and Wilmot Valley but like many others were willing to sacrifice everything for their religion. They thought of building their own vessel to sail part way but changed their minds and chartered a boat which was to pick them up at Malpeque. So from their home in Wilmot Creek Valley on the south side of Prince Edward Island they travelled across to Malpeque on the north side, a distance of about ten miles.

No doubt their friends and relatives were part of that first caravan transporting them and their belongings to the North Shore Hotel (formerly Wellington Hotel, built in 1810) at Malpeque. Here they had to wait one whole week until their ship arrived but soon their belongings were safely stowed aboard. On the day of their departure they had one last prized possession to dispose of. It must have been with a heavy heart that John Maxfield said goodbye to his favorite horse, a thoroughbred that he had raised. This horse had carried him across country and away from his home in Wilmot Valley and now as he led it around to the front of the hotel and auctioned it off to the highest bidder, it must have seemed that he was bidding farewell to that part of his life spent in farming the kindly soil of Prince Edward Island.

Richard Maxfield, nephew of the emigrant John Maxfield and about fourteen years of age when he left Prince Edward Island, writes about his experience. At the time of writing (1917) he is eighty-one years of age and living in Salt Lake City, Utah. He writes: