The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.1959, Qupperneq 27

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
25
Many chose flight. To their descend-
ants and to the folks who inherited
their valley, the stories of their flight
are truer than the iblack and white of
text books, because every so often the
past sticks its nose through the ground
to verify small details.
LAND COUGHS UP HISTORY
Take the Roman Catholic vestments
found on the Jaques farm in Kings
County.
Miss Annie Jaques, who at 86 man-
ages a mixed farm with its 70 head
of purebred beef cattle, took me into
her lovely white farm house, and show-
ed me the treasures. There were two
narrow-necked glass wine bottles and
a douible cruet of thick white china,
decorated in blue. These were placed
in a heavy iron pot and covered with
a bigger pot, then buried in the soil of
the old farm—three feet deep.
“The workmen thought they had
unearthed part of Captain Kidd’s treas-
ure when 'they came upon this,” Miss
Jaques recalled, blue eyes twinkling.
“It was in 1924 when they were excavat-
ing for the new barn.” While no one
questioned that these holy vestments
bad been buried by fleeing Acadians,
no one was able to identify the piece
of china for many years. Then a Roman
Catholic priest identified it as a double
cruet used for the holy host. He had
seen one like it in Rome.
“These belonged to the Acadians,
too,” Miss Jaques said, displaying a
handful of French coins, plowed out
of the soil of her land from time to
time.
SETTLERS IN 1779
Descended from French Huguenots,
the Jaques family came to the valley
from Yorkshire, England, in 1779 and
have farmed the old homestead since.
Miss Jaques isn’t sure just when the
sturdy farm house was built, but in
the big, sunny dining room, some feet
of window space and a built in china
cabinet now occupy the space once
taken up by a hearth used for cook-
ing. “My father made that change”,
she recalled.
The wide, well scrubbed boards of
her kitchen floor are innocent of paint
or finish of any kind and the ancient
wood stove queens it in the middle ol
a wall, flanked by a well filled wood
box. A shining new electric range oc-
supies an inconspicuous corner, where
it can function efficiently without
marring the nostalgic charm of the
old kitchen.
CHERISHED TIES
Here are people who cherish their
links with the past, like stout, honest-
ly built old homes, family albums and
grandmother’s hand-painted china. I'
is not in their blood to toss out any-
thing that has proven its worth by
surviving the vicissitudes of passing
time.
When I admired the beautiful farm
homes to a young woman, she said
most of them were 98 or 150 years old,
some older. “Remember,” she said,
that many of them cost no more than
$500 to build in the old days. There
was plenty of forest and a mill on every
stream. Our grandfathers built strong-
ly and well, and we have tried to keep
our homes in repair.”