John MacEwen was born in 1823, the year after his parents came to Canada from Perthshire, Scotland, in the Indian Lands, Glengarry County. He attended the log school in St. Elmo, a mile and a half distant, and was probably one of that bright and happy band of boys that Ralph Connor so vividly portrays in the pages of Glengarry School Days.
As a young man he used to burn logs and sell the ashes in Martintown. This was one of the ways that the pioneers secured money to buy groceries and other necessities. He married Jane Fisher in 1851, and took her to a humble log house on a farm that he had bought on the 5th concession of Roxborough, three miles west of Maxville. The floor of this house was made of slabs. He hewed his farm out of the forest and became one of the very successful farmers of that district. He asquired three hundred acres of land, and bought a farm for each of his four sons. He was deeply religious. He was a deacon in the Congregationlist Church at St. Elmo. The church still stood in 1938. It was his custom to conduct family worship morning and evening. At first he conducted this service in Gaelic, but when the children became older he conducted it in English. He died in the year 1900. She passed away in 1916 at 84 years of age.
The MacEwen brothers taken between 1935 and 1938 in Maxville.
Left to Right: Peter, John, Sandy and Duncan
The MacEwen children were:
- Jennie who married Duncan MacDougall. They lived in Maxville. Their son Frank was particularly clever. He won a travelling scholarship that gave him two years in Germany. In 1938 he was a professor in the University of Minneapolis.
- Peter married Jennie MacRae. They had two boys, one of whom drowned in the Ottawa River in 1910. When these boys began school, they could not speak a word of English. He was still living in Maxville in1938 at 83 years of age.
- John (later - Beths grandfather)
- Alexander (Sandy) married Isabella Kennedy. One of their sons, Wallace was in the (First) World War, and was wounded. Howard, their eldest son lived on the old homestead west of Maxville in 1938. (We used to go there around Easter when we lived in Ottawa and helped collect and make maple syrup as Howard had a 3sugar bush2 of maple trees.)
- Christie Jane died at fifteen years of age.
- Kate married Ewen MacArthur. She was married two years and became a cripple. For eighteen years, she bore her suffering waith Christian fortitude. She died in 1910.
- Maggie married Farquhar MacRae. He was a great singer. He was presenter in Ralph Connor1s Church at St. Elmo for twenty years. Their only daughter, Margaret, became a nurse, and was for a time, one of the Assistant Superintendents of the General Hospital, Regina. In 1938 she was Dean of girls in the Regina College. (Beth used to visit with her when attending Luther College in 1946-8)
- Elizabeth married Duncan MacRae.
- Annie married Michael O1Neill. She was a trained nurse. She was a cripple for ten years.
Duncan married Charlotte Kidd. They live on a farm near Maxville.
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