A Sociable and Unpretending Gentleman
“Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.”
Grange Movement Promotional Poster, ca. 1873, Library of Congress
There are many books to read and tales told of great and terrible figures from our past. Learning about them can inspire us, help us to understand diverse perspectives, and illuminate the world that came before us. Here at The Brown Homestead, we are finding ourselves just as inspired by engaging with stories about ordinary people like ourselves. This is one such story.
This is the tale of a British born farm boy who grew up in St. Catharines, left for an adventure on the frontier, became a big shot and a community leader, got married and raised a family, and finally, when his fortunes changed, returned to our fair city, to farm the land he grew up on.
When we first came across Joseph he was just a name in the Canada West Census records and he barely appeared on our radar. Many of us have had this experience when investigating our own family history. We focus on one person, one parental line, or one story, and the rest become a blur of dates attached to faceless names.
At the time, we were focused on Joseph’s father, Joseph Chellew Sr., who had purchased the John Brown House (and more than 100 acres of attached land) in 1858, and who (we assumed) sold the property to the Powers family in 1902.
The Louth and Thorold Township Land Registry records soon showed us our error, and we discovered that it was actually Joseph Chellew Jr., and not Joseph Chellew Sr., who sold The Brown Homestead to Lafontaine Baldwin Powers in 1902. Ah, the difference one letter in an abbreviation can make!
After realizing our mistake, the search was on and a mystery began to unfold. Who exactly was Joseph Chellew Jr.?
He appears in only three Canada Census records. The first is in 1852 when he was eleven years old and living with his parents in a neighboring concession to The Brown Homestead. He appears a second time (as “Joseph Shaloo”) in the census record of 1861 at age twenty, still living with his parents, but now in the John Brown House at The Brown Homestead. The last mention of him is the census records of 1901 when Joseph was 59 years old. Once again, he is living at The Brown Homestead - but now with his American wife. Between age 20 and age 50 however, by all accounts Joseph had - disappeared.
It took some effort to track down Mr. Joseph Chellew Jr., and we have grown quite fond of him in the process. We hope that you enjoy his story.
Ludvgan Paris Church, Cornwall
Joseph was born on May 24, 1840 in the sleepy civil parish of Ludgvan, Cornwall, England, the son of Joseph Chellew and Eliza Hoskins. Most of the men in Cornwall were miners in those days, but in the 1841 English Census, Joseph’s dad, who was only age 20, is listed as a wheelwright.
Wheelwrights were important tradesmen back then, making wheels for wagons and carriages. It was certainly preferable to working as a miner. Nevertheless, in 1845 when Joseph was only four years old his family joined one of the first waves of more than 200,000 Cornish emigrants to leave the county for foreign lands between 1841 and 1901.
The Chellews chose Canada. They purchased 100 acres of land in Louth Township, just one concession over from The Brown Homestead. Once here, Joseph’s father is never again referred to as a wheelwright. He is listed as a farmer. It is likely he was always more interested in farming. Perhaps, he was merely an ambitious, handy young man who lived beside a blacksmith in Cornwall and learned the trade. Whatever his father’s truth may have been, Joseph Jr., grew up a farmer’s son - and a neighbor of Adam and Elizabeth Brown and their family.
It was very difficult to make a good living as a small farmer in Cornwall, but Joseph’s father was a very successful farmer in Canada. He was so successful, in fact, that in 1858, three years after Adam Brown’s death, he was able to purchase The Brown Homestead from Adam’s son, Jacob.
The family would have needed the extra space by then, for addition to their growing prosperity, the family itself had grown. Between 1847 when Joseph was only 7 years old, and 1858 when he was 18, his parents had six more children. After moving into The Brown Homestead, four more came along.
With a total of eleven children of disparate ages living in the John Brown House, perhaps it is not surprising that Joseph left the homestead in his twenties - sometime between 1861 and 1870. What is perhaps surprising is that he moved all the way to Timber Township, in Illinois. Perhaps, like his father before him, he longed for new horizons, for something different from his childhood, and for something others would not have expected of him.
Timber Township, as might be guessed, “derive[d] its name from the fact that it embraces within its limits the finest body of timber in the State.” Upon his arrival in this woodland paradise, however, Joseph did not work in the lumber industry as one might expect.
In 1868 a railroad was built running through Timber Township, causing us to speculate that perhaps Joseph arrived in the area by rail. A foresighted local farmer, Mr. Samuel A. Glasford, understood the potential of the railroad to bring industry to the area, and promptly laid out the village of Glasford beside it in what had once been his cornfield.
Glasford House near the train depot was a hotel and restaurant operated by Sam Glasford
Though only recently arrived, Joseph took an active part in the incorporation of the town and was elected clerk. At the same time, he became one of the area’s foremost school teachers, teaching many of the area’s future businessmen and farmers at several area schools.
A few years into this new adventure, at age thirty, Joseph married the daughter of a prominent local family, Florence Ladd. By 1873, he and Florence had one baby (Clarence 1872), and 40 acres of land, which Joseph farmed in addition to teaching. Their daughter Electa (or “Lettie”) followed in 1874, and their son Walter in 1877.
It appears that no matter what other positions he held for the remainder of his life, Joseph always continued to farm. He was known to be an active part of the Grange Movement, and even developed a patent for a new type of harrow to pull behind a plow.
Grange Movement lithograph by American Oleograph Co., Milwaukee, ca. 1875. Library of Congress
Joseph’s younger brother Isaac Newton Chellew had been in diapers when Joseph left The Brown Homestead. Now in his twenties himself, Isaac joined his older brother in Illinois where he found work as a miller. Ever ambitious and future-focused, Joseph took advantage of the burgeoning industrial revolution and in 1889 he and Isaac became principles of the Malmgren-Chellew Company, focused on general manufacturing.
You might think that teaching, farming, running a business, and raising a large family would be enough for one man, but nothing seems to have slowed Joseph down. In addition to these, he became the clerk of the local Masonic Lodge and the chairman of the county’s Republican committee. Then, in 1891, the same year his youngest son Arthur was born, President Benjamin Harrison ratified his appointment as Special Agent for Investigation of Timber Depredations, beginning in Illinois, and then in Arizona. Though he never formally moved to Arizona, he spent considerable time there over the next few years.
His new position required great knowledge and skill. As a Special Agent investigating Timber depredations, Joseph was one of a number of men who played an important role in the designation of the very first public forest reserves in the United States. President Harrison’s General Revision Act and his Forest Reserve Act, that same year, were largely based on their work, and are credited as the precursors to the formation of the current United States Forest Service, which administers the nation’s forests and grasslands.
Prescott Arizona Weekly Journal-Miner, Wed 24 Jun 1891, p3
An article in Prescott, Arizona’s Weekly Journal Miner from June of 1891 stated that, “We find Mr. Chellew a very sociable and unpretending gentleman, and one who from his conversation, does not propose to use the extraordinary power conferred on him by the United States government for the purpose of harassing and persecuting peaceable citizens and honest settlers.” Despite the perils of dealing with commercial land speculators, Joseph appears to have been well-liked and good at his job.
Nevertheless, in 1892, he was replaced by a Democratic appointee following the election of President Grover Cleveland. And it was then, at last, that Joseph decided to slow down. At fifty-two years old, perhaps he longed for the quiet beauty of Niagara, or to be nearer to his parents and the other siblings who had remained in the area, or to focus on farming, rather than the myriad of other interests and positions he had held over the years.
Whatever his reasons, Joseph returned to St. Catharines and purchased The Brown Homestead, including the John Brown House from his father for $1000.00.
1895 Engraving of a Berkshire pig
He, Florence and their children lived at The Brown Homestead for the next ten years, during which time we know only that he owned at least one Berkshire pig, named Ring Master, and that he became gravely ill. Though we do not know the details of his illness, by October, 1902, in poor health, Joseph sold The Brown Homestead to Lafontaine Baldwin Powers for $5250. Only a few months later, in March 1903, he passed away from complications during surgery in Buffalo. He is buried at Victoria Lawn Cemetery in St. Catharines.
Once the estate was settled Florence and the children returned to Illinois where her family lived. Florence lived the rest of her life in Peoria, Illinois with their daughter Lettie, who never married and worked as a teacher and bookkeeper. Their son Walter lived and worked as a salesman in Buffalo. Clarence became a grocer in New Mexico and their baby, Arthur, grew up to travel the world as a merchant seaman until retiring to Phoenix. Perhaps he too, like his father and grandfather before him, was a seeker of new horizons.
Arthur Chellew
Wherever we have lived or travelled in our lives, perhaps it is always the place where we grew up, that has the deepest influence on making us who we are. Joseph Chellew Jr. lived, laughed, and loved in Niagara and at The Brown Homestead, when he was young and at the end of his days. He and Florence cared for the John Brown House and raised and provided for their family there. His memory is embedded in the walls.
Learning more about Joseph and his life’s journey, does far more than provide us with another layer of The Brown Homestead’s history. As we uncover the deeper stories of the individuals and families who occupied the house over the last 224 years we gain a deeper understanding of our homestead, our community, and of ourselves.