William Thomas was a tough and determined man. He learned masonry from his father and turned it into his own metier, becoming an expert not only in bricks and mortar, but in the new concrete technology. He travelled all over the Maritimes and the United States - especially California - constructing railroad bridges and embankments, brick buildings, industrial chimneys and other such highly technical structures that can still be admired in towns like Stellarton, New Glasgow and many others.William "bought" a 100 acre piece of land across the road from his father's farm in 1883. It was a lovely long strip of timber stand with a beaver dam and pond; he agreed to pay the Province "$40 plus one peppercorn yearly rent".

    He was not necessarily always a likeable man, I was told. Perhaps he was a little spoiled, being the only surviving son. He opened and managed a brick plant in Meadowville just after the turn of the century, with financial partners in a company they called Canada Consolidated Clay Company Limited. He located good clay along the river, supervised the building of an appropriate molding shed and two kilns, and provided employment to local residents. The bricks were supplied by railcar to construction projects in New Glasgow. Sadly, the partners fell out, business was neglected and production decreased until the company was in financial trouble; finally in 1910 they closed the business and moved it to Pictou where it survived for a while and then went bankrupt.

    William T., however, was already in Pictou, still building. He set up a kiln right on the waterfront, and made the first "hydrastone" house in Canada, as far as I know, in 1908. The earliest "official" hydrastone house in architectural history books is recorded as being built in 1910.
 

He formed the bricks in his own molds from clay dug right out of Pictou harbour, and built a large two story concrete block house on 24 Faulkland Street. His sons helped him make the bricks and carried them by hand up the hill. Wise Pictou residents took bets on how long it would be before the house fell down - they generally gave it three years. They called him "Crazy Willy", and referred to the home as "Willy's Castle". However, long after many frame homes of similar vintage have fallen apart, Willy's Castle still stands, as solid as the rock that it is - his daughter-in-law Burnice still lived in the house when we visited her in 1993 - 85 years later.

    "Crazy Willy" died in 1916, of pneumonia contracted while loading a troop supply ship with frozen veal in Pictou Harbour. There wasn't much you could do about pneumonia in those days. His father had been a decorated soldier, so perhaps he felt that WWI was his chance to achieve patriotic glory. He tried to enlist along with three of his sons, who went overseas, so he lied about his age; but it was clear to the recruiters that he was already in his '50's, and he was refused. He had to be content with volunteering to do grunt labour loading the ships as his form of service, and thereby became a war casualty without even leaving this side of the Atlantic.

    Abigail was quite a woman. She was a member of Pictou United Church and did lots of Sunday School teaching and community work. She spent a few years in Providence, Rhode Island and in California. She taught at the Poplar Hill School for many years, and William Thomas lived just up the River John Road on his father's farm; but Burnice claimed that they actually met in Providence, and that this was a common commute for people of the area - many people from Pictou worked in Providence. Abigail moved from Poplar Hill to Pictou with William in 1908.  She eventually had five children.

    According to Burnice, Abigail was a renowned psychic, and would often surprise people with her "knowing". She knew that her son Donald Robert had burnt his eyes: he burnt them on a Friday and they were bandaged all weekend, but Abigail had a dream on Friday night and mailed a letter to him the following morning, postmarked on Saturday, asking what was wrong with his eyes. Donald was an educator who served in and survived both wars, and finally died in 1962 at the age of 66.

    Alexander McRae came out of W.W.I with a metal plate in his head and spent the balance of his life in military hospitals; once when he escaped from his sanitorium and walked toward home along the train tracks, Abigail dreamed about that and wrote to him about it.

    Her son Thomas Gray - who my father was named after - went out west for a year to be a teacher in Regina before he signed up with the 13th Bn., Canadian Infantry (Quebec Regt.).  He hadn't liked teaching much, and was excited to be going into action. He was a young man, of course, and the nation was crazy about war as an adventure in those days.  A shell hit his trench, and he convalesced in Glasgow.  He returned to the front, only to be  wounded again, in the hip, and was lost in France; rescuers could not find him when they returned to where they'd seen him fall.  That was on the first day of May, in 1918.  He was 23 years old.  He is remembered at the Vimy Memorial (click to view). (Note: I've noticed that this link often won't connect, so here is different one, Thomas' entry in the Canadian Virtual War Memorial.  From there you can also link to his entry on page 414 of the First World War Book of Remembrance.)
    Abigail remained convinced for several years afterward that he was in a salt mine as a German slave or captive, and she used to dream that he visited her regularly and complained that he was always cold where they were keeping him; until one day he visited her and said that he wasn't cold any more, and she knew that he had died.

    Burnice had numerous examples of this gift of Abigail's, but I have forgotten most of them; perhaps her sons or someone else who knew her might remember a few more. Abigail's eldest child was Christina, who married Howard V. Powell and lives in Pictou. Abigail's youngest son William Sidney doesn't appear in the picture of his older brothers in uniform (above) because he was too young to serve in WW I, but he had a distinguished career of his own which included service in WW II.
 

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