Holy Ghosters fail to cash in on real estate prize
Friday, 25 June 2010 00:00
One hundred years ago, clippings from the newspapers of June 25, 1910.
Halifax Herald: The ill-fated effort of the Holy Ghost and Us Society to cash in on valuable real estate at Maitland, Nova Scotia, is told by the Herald.
The story starts with the death of Captain Caleb Mackenzie, who “left a splendid farm and $5,000 in cash to his widow and six children” when he died. The family left Maitland for the United States, where they “fell under the spell of the Holy Ghosters,” to whom they apparently gave all their money. “Some time ago” the Maitland heirs signed a bill selling the farm to a Captain Masters for $500. “This was only a fraction of its value, the house alone costing $1,600 when built,” the Herald reports.
The sale appears to have been an arrangement to benefit the society, and Frank W. Sanford, head of the society, arrived in Maitland “to realize on the real estate.” But to do that, Maitland needed a clear title to the property, and that was a problem. Masters had failed to pay the $500, “had used the funds for other bus business purposes,” and had no money left. Thus “Sanford had to return to Halifax… a disappointed man.”
The Holy Ghost and Us Society, however, was not without funds. When their ship, the Kingdom, arrived in Halifax, they paid $2,000 “good American money”—a lot of money 100 years ago—for provisions purchased from Halifax merchants. “The Ghosters are like other mortals in that they eat and drink,” observed the Herald. “It has been contended that the bill of fare on the Kingdom would put an old time lime juicer to shame, but the quantity and quality of the provender sent on board yesterday would indicate that the crew live in swell style and not likely to grow thin or contract scurvy.”
ROADSIDE CATTLE BANNED
Lindsay Post (June 24). “The chief of police wishes us to draw the attention of parties owning horses and cattle to the practice of fastening their animals on the roadside, which prevails in some streets within the town. This is against the law, and it is pound keeper’s duty to see that call cattle and horses so found are impounded, and the pound feeds paid, otherwise prosecutions should follow.”
DON’T FOOL THE KIDS
Peterborough Review. Don’t try to fool kids about where they came from, A.W. Beall, the White Cross worker of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, tells the closing session of the Canadian Conference of Charities and Corrections in Guelph.
“Mr. Beal condemned the practice of deceiving children as to the facts of their origin. It was a sin, he declared, to tell a child that he was found under a cabbage leaf in the garden, or that he came down in a rain storm.”
“’Impress upon your children the sacredness and splendour of the human body, and you need not be afraid of them growing up impure men and women,’ he declared.”