Trails of the Pioneers – Miami, Manitoba, Canada

Date: 30 Sep 1873 to 23 Apr 1874
Location: Miami, Manitoba, Canada
Surname/tag: Manitoba

The era known as the “Fur Trader’s” days, found the Missouri Trail the most prominent road south of the Assiniboine River, running south-west from Headingley to the far Missouri River area. On this trail the Boyne Crossing was the most difficult, and if you were to see the banks of the little crossings in those days before the survey was made and the settlers began to flock in.

In 1870, the first men to take up their residence along the Boyne were Samuel Kennedy and Ryer Olson. In the fall of 1873, Robert Stevenson pushed farther south-west along the hills until he came to 17-5-6 and there, with his sons, he built the first settlers’ building in the Miami district, Manitoba, Canada.

About this same time came the Ticknor, Thompson and the William Kennedy (not related to Samuel Kennedy at the Boyne Crossing) families. These hardy pioneers did not like the open prairie, but thought this parkland and wooded area along the ridge of the Pembina Hills suited them.

The story of Robert Stevenson has become folklore now among the people of the Miami district. What a tale of heroic fortitude in the face of great hardships when there was scarcely a settler for many miles, and only the Indians and the occasional traveler on the Missouri Trail ever passed that way.

Robert Stevenson (1821-1874) had the stuff that pioneer heroes were made of. Born at Uxbridge, Ontario, Canada, a few miles north-east of Toronto, he came to the great North-West seeking land for himself and his family of boys, in the fall of 1873.

The Stevensons had a team of horses (although George Kennedy says he was told it was a pair of mules). In October the Kennedy family me Robert Stevenson and his three boys going west to their homestead. Their wagon was loaded with lumber and few necessary settlers’ effects, and the boys were George, William and Samuel. The idea was that each one should locate his homestead, build a shack on the father’s place and return to the rest of the family in Winnipeg to spend the winter.

As the winter closed in, the Stevenson’s returned to the site of old Fort Garry, or the beginning of Winnipeg, where they had bought a house.

The second week of March in the following spring, 1874, Robert Stevenson again came over the Missouri Trail and turned in at Samuel Kennedy’s. This time he had with him his two younger boys – James, about 21, and Arnold, who was about 16 years of age.

The reason this family came at this time of the year was that it was much easier to get over the streams while they were frozen, and the spring thaw had not softened the mud of the road. Indeed, crossing the Boyne when it was safely frozen was no trick at all compared to the very dangerous time when the spring floods swelled the river to overflow proportions.

Refreshed and heartened at the Kennedy stopping place, and finding that they had real friends there, the Stevensons pushed on along the old trail. They were glad to find their shack still alright, and the lean-to as a shelter for the horses, even as they had left it.

After they were properly settled they talked about getting ready for a grain crop in the spring. There was wood to be cut and soon a well must be dug. The boys were usually busy getting water and preparing food.

One night a stranger came along the Missouri Trail, and, as it was getting dark he stopped to chat with the father and sons, in their lonely little clap-board house. It was indented against a grove of oak and elm trees facing an open view of the prairie.

“I saw your light,” the stranger said. “Could you put me up for the night?”

Mr. Stevenson, in his kindly, hospitable way, said “Come right in, stranger. It’s a black, dark night to be going far. Were you going as far as Kennedy’s stopping place?”

“Yes,” answered the big, middle-aged man. “I am going as far as the Forks, or what they now call Winnipeg, but my horse is tired and it’s a long way.”

“Well,” said Robert Stevenson, “you are welcome to what we have. It isn’t much, but better than nothing. Have you come far?”

“Yes, I have,” the stranger said. “I am one of the fur-traders, and I have been all across the south country looking for furs, but somehow the fur days seem to be done in this district.”

“I have heard that there used to be lots of game around here.”

While the stranger talked quite volubly, the two Stevenson boys, Arnold and James, unhitched the horses and tied them in the small lean-to shelter that already held the two Stevenson horses.

Years later the stranger could tell of that settler’s little house, and of the friendly hospitality of the Stevensons who were willing to share with any stranger that which they had.

For, the next night, the tradegy occurred. In the little shack, the beginnings of a house, there was no stove, and as there was no floor yet laid down, the family built a fire on the ground, in the middle of the room. Maybe the fir was too near the bunks where the blankets may have been thrown out by the sleeping boys. No one will ever know.

On the night of March 27, while all three were asleep in Robert Stevenson’s house, the place caught fire and the two boys were not able to get out. Robert Stevenson did get out, and then tried to rescue his two sons, but could not save them. The father was very badly burned, his clothing, his face and his hands. When he couldn’t save the boys, and realized that he might die too, he frantically got the horses untied and somehow was able to hitch them to the sleigh. But the night was very cold and the buckles and reigns on the harness took the burned flesh off his fingers. How he ever got into the sleigh was a mystery, or how he had harnessed the team was beyond explanation. But as he was able to do nothing to save his sons, and the fire consumed all, he got the team started out onto the trail and then huddled in the cold night beneath the buffalo robe.

Robert Stevenson could not tell how he got to the Kennedy farm, but long afterward, George Kennedy, who was just a small boy at the time, used to tell how Samuel and William Kennedy found the team wandering along the road coming to their farm. They got Robert Stevenson to bed and did all they could for him.

Someone (presumably William Kennedy) rode that night all the way to Winnipeg for a doctor. The Boyne settlement often told of that trip when the medical man came with his own driving team and covered some sixty miles in five-and –a –half hours.

Samuel Stevenson then drove out to the Boyne Crossing, and took his father home to Winnipeg, over the old Missouri Trail, across the plain, and the Assiniboine near Headingly, but the older man died on April 23, 1874, some three weeks or so after the fire.

I sat in the home of Mrs. John Garnet in the town of Miami and she showed me the old paper bearing the notice of the death of Robert Stevenson. Then she said to me,

“That is the story as it was told to us. Samuel Stevenson was my father, and when I was a little girl, my mother often showed us the burned stumps where the first Stevenson house was destroyed. Maybe there are others who can tell more of it, but that is enough of the tragedy to give you the spirit of the pioneers who started our community. There is an old lady, Mrs. Issac Campbell, living in Carman, the mother of Mrs. Savage, who can tell you a lot about the early days. She remembers the Stevenson tragedy very well.”

“Was it one of the Stevenson’s whose son became the first member of the Manitoba Legislature from this district?” I enquired.

“Yes that was John A. Stevenson, the oldest son of Robert Stevenson, who was quite an outstanding young man. He came and I think he homesteaded too. Let me see, he was born in Ontario in 1848, and here is a death notice, which tells that he died in 1879. That means he was only 31 when he died.” Author and source unknown; in family papers of Kenneth Annand Stevenson