People who Worked and Lived on the Bell Farm - 1882 - 2006
This Album includes people of all ages who lived, and sometimes worked, on the Bell Farm during the era that Major Bell lived here (1882-1896) and afterwards.
Stereoscope photo of harvesting, with men from a nearby First Nation helping make the stooks.
Photo by: Bingham and Thom, Winnipeg, Manitoba, ca. 1883. A stereoscopic view of plowing at the Bell Farm in the 1880s.
Close-up view of one of the horses at the Bell Farm, in front of the stone Bell Farmhouse, with Major Bell on the right, wearing a dark jacket.
This Album includes people of all ages who lived, and sometimes worked, on the Bell Farm during the era that Major Bell lived here (1882-1896) and afterwards.
This First Nation woman is photographed near one of the large wooden barns on the Bell Farm, probably in 1883. Source: Bell Family Collection - Shelagh Whitaker
Nine teams of three horses each pull a single sulky plow through the virgin prairie soil.
Photo: McCord Museum, Notman Collection: V1388 - taken 1884 - Source: McCord Museum Image V1388
Thomas Blenkin was born in Clinton, Ontario in 1869; Rose Anna Newstead was born in 1868, also in Ontario, likely near Haliburton.
PHOTO: Joseph Parnham Calcraft (back row, third from left, with moustache) and his parents [Joseph & Anne Elizabeth] and siblings in England, about 1899, several years before he sailed to Canada in 1903.
Harry Herbert Campkin (1869-1941) came to Indian Head in 1885 and started the first school in the community.
Henry Carre (1833-1918) was the Dominion Lands Surveyor who surveyed the original boundaries for the Bell Farm.
William Bromley Dickin (1858-1937) was born in England; while Elizabeth Marshall Blythe (1856-1945) wa born in Ireland.
James Dillon (1858-1939) was born in Greenville County, Ontario. He moved to Winnipeg in 1879, and later to Indian Head, where he worked as a Bell Farm employee from 1883 to 1885.
Jim and Jane both worked on the Bell Farm from 1884 to 1887, when they married and moved onto their own homestead farm near Sintaluta.
John H. Fleetwood (1859-19__), was born in Lincoln, England, and studied to become a bookbinder.
A group of about a dozen men, women and children enjoying lunch in the field during harvest on the Bell Farm. Date unknown at this time.
Alex Martin married Elizabeth Wilson in Scotland. In 1883 they emigrated to Canada, and hired on at the Bell Farm, where Alex looked after the cattle and some 700 pigs.
Chief Pasqua was photographed in 1883 by Hall and Lowe of Winnipeg, who took over 20 pictures of the Bell Farm that year for the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Tom Routledge (1857-1893) reportedly selected the land for the Bell Farm and was the superintendent for the first two years.
This Album includes people of all ages who lived, and sometimes worked, on the Bell Farm during the era that Major Bell was here (1882-1896) and afterwards.
The Bell Farm was a corporate venture, officially known as the Qu'Appelle Valley Farming Company, and included a number of investors, and employed many people, both for farm purposes and for construction and maintenance. Major Bell also employed a large number of Indigenous people to help operate his farm. The images in this Album focus on the people who worked and lived on the Farm. Images of and information on the Investors can be found in Album 300. The following Images are presented in alphabetical order, after the general farming photos and sketches.
RESEARCH PRIMARILY BY:
Michelle Cabana, Saskatoon, Sask. and Frank Korvemaker, Regina, Sask.
Lesia Design is