Two Acres from a Third

Alberta

First a Big Thank You

This is my 100th blog post. Thank you to all of my readers and subscribers for the encouragement to continue. I definitely appreciate your likes and comments. I don’t know how many more I’ll write, but I’m not ready to stop yet.

Serendipity on Backroads

Serendipity is my guide as I travel through backroads of western Canada and this article is an example of serendipity in action.

My wife and I were driving down a backroad on the way back to a campsite when we spotted a sign for a church that might have historic status. We drove down the gravel road only to find that the church was fairly modern and therefore was not part of my genre. Then, as we were about to leave, we spotted an old school on the church property, that I hadn’t heard of before. The school was right next to the new looking Lutheran Church so we knocked on the office door to obtain permission to walk over and photograph it. The pastor’s wife said to go ahead and photograph it but, she didn’t have the key so we couldn’t see inside. It was at this point that she said something like, “are you interested in photographing old closed churches” to which we answered with an enthusiastic “yes”! She said there’s one that was just locked up for good recently. After she gave us directions to Immanuel Lutheran Church, we parted company and set off on a drive to that other church.

First the School

This is the school near the fairly modern and still active Lutheran Church. There was an old school building just a short walk from the church.

St. John’s Parochial School

Nearly every one-room schoolhouse in Alberta is listed in the book, Pioneering with a Piece of Chalk. This school is not in that book and that is very curious indeed. I’ve since learned that the reason the school was not in “Pioneering with a Piece of Chalk” book was because it was a parochial school, meaning that it was a private school run by the nearby Lutheran Church.

Both above images of St John’s Parachial School are from the local history book, Beaverlodge to the Rockies.

I often talk about the distant or even exotic sounding places that prairie settlers came from. This is not one of those times. The settlers who arrived in the general area of this school and church were part of a Lutheran congregation in Golden Spike, near Stony Plain, Alberta. There were various reasons why they left that community just west of Edmonton. The national Lutheran Church was encouraging settlers to homestead in the recently surveyed Peace River Country so that a church could be established up there. Many other churches were doing the same thing. Also, land prices were getting expensive around Golden Spike whereas homestead land was still available in the Peace River area for $10 a quarter section. In January of 1927 a number of bachelors and families set off for the new frontier of Goodfare, Alberta.

Soon after they arrived in Goodfare the families decided to construct a building which would serve both as school and a church. The most cost efficient method of construction was to build a log structure. Here’s a quote from the local history book.

John Mayer was asked to choose the logs. He went to the south side of the Wapiti River where he spotted beautiful trees, straight as candles, 70-80 feet tall. He asked ‘Wapiti Bill’ (Bill Hosker) and his son Art to help cut the logs. After the logs were cut the other church members helped to haul them. Making up a bee the whole setting was hauled in one day.

Beaverlodge to the Rockies. Page 302

The building was completed in 1928 and Pastor Wildgrube started to serve the community. The school and church shared the same building so in August of 1928 the St. John’s Parochial School opened with 33 students and became the first parochial school in the Peace River area. The school would occasionally have up to 45 students. The school building ceased to double as a church in 1953 when a new church building was constructed on the same quarter section of land.

Click on any of the four images shown below to enlarge. Click the > symbol to cycle through them and click the X to return to normal.

St. John’s Parochial School closed in 1961. It is now almost completely surrounded by trees.

Once we finished photographing this old historic school, we got back on the road on our way to visit Immanuel Lutheran Church. This is the one that the lady at the previous church had told us to have a look at.

Immanuel Lutheran Church

Immanuel Lutheran Church was the second unplanned place we visited on this day. It’s located very close to the BC/Alberta border.

Before we arrived at Immanuel Lutheran Church we noticed a lady standing outside her house at what appeared to be the village of Goodfare. We asked her, “is this the road to Immanuel Lutheran Church” and she confirmed it is. Right about then two large dogs came charging out of her house. She said that they weren’t her dogs but they came by last night when the lighning storm began. She said the dogs were frightened by the lightning so she let them stay with her last night. Perhaps a person had to be there in the moment, but the situation seemed oddly humorous to us.

Upon arriving at this old church, we discovered that we found a two for one special. Not only was the recently closed church right where we were told we would find it, but there was also an old house next to it. The house was nearly covered by trees so it had clearly been “abandoned” or unused for many more years than the church. In fact, it was so covered by the verdant forest that it was difficult to approach and photograph. I only managed to capture a few images of the interior by standing outside of one of the glassless windows and photographing what could be seen from there.

There’s a vertical line in the siding just below the chimney. That line marks where the church was expanded in 1954.

This is actually an Alberta Historic Site although I didn’t see the green disk that usually marks such buildings. According to the Alberta Historic Register:

In the 1920’s, a group of Evangelical Lutheran settlers arrived in the Peace River Country from western Poland, choosing to settle west of the community of Goodfare in a district called Steeprock. Community volunteers built the Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church in 1933 and the church was dedicated in August of the following year. in light of its rural location, it would have served as the hub for the popular social functions, including music, dances and debates. The church was well-used by the community until the 1980’s, when the congregation dissolved and worshipers began attending services in the nearby village of Hythe.

https://hermis.alberta.ca/ARHP/Details.aspx?DeptID=1&ObjectID=4664-0050

Although the congregation may have arrived from western Poland, they were not ethnically Polish. There are Polish communities in the Peace River area but I surmise that these people in the Goodfare area were similar to the Black Sea Germans. They were likely from German communities from that part of Europe that was later re-established as Poland, but these people spoke German and maintained their German identity, and Lutheran faith.

The Reason for the Blog Title

Two Acres from a Third

The congregation needed land for the church but they didn’t need a whole quarter section. They bought two acres of land from Allan Third for the church site, the cemetery, and a place to put a house which would be the parsonage or rectory (the place a pastor lives). A house was moved there and reassembled about a year after the church was built.

I’m not sure why the above quote says that the church congregation was dissolved in the 1980s when the pastor’s wife from the nearby St. John’s Lutheran Church that told us that it was just “locked up” the week prior to our visit. I considered perhaps that it had just recently received the designation as a municipal historic resource, but that happened in 2010. I tried to contact her again to obtain clarification but have been unable to reach her.

The Third Family

The Third family has nothing to do with this Lutheran Church other than that Allan Third sold two acres from his quarter section of land. However, they were an interesting family to read about and they made my catchy blog title work.

The Third family were the kind of people that everyone in the general Goodfare area would have known. They ran the Goodfare post office from their home. Allan Third, or more formally, Alexander N. Third, was the firstborn of the three children of John and Ellen Third, of Goodfare, Alberta. Allan’s Grandfather was from Scotland. Allan’s father, John Third was the first generation of the Third family to be born in Canada.

Allan’s brother, John (Jack) Third became a school teacher. He also married a school teacher and they taught at many rural schools throughout Alberta. The last place that Jack taught was in Linden, Alberta when he died quite suddenly in 1959. He’s buried near Linden, in Acme, Alberta.

Clayton Third, was Allan and Jack’s younger brother. Clayton Third wrote the family history for the local history book. Sadly, Clayton Third died in 1971, just before the book was published.

The Spanish Flu

The quote below was slightly modified for length. It describes how death and tragedy was a pioneer’s constant companion. One man’s tragedy is another man’s opportunity so after the first two owners of this quarter section of land had died, the third owner really was the Third; Clayton Third to be precise.

It was in the 1918 flu epidemic that George Ames died and was buried on his homestead. Clayton Third recalls that Carl Mellin dug the grave, which was shallow because Carl himself was ill with the flu. At one point he toppled into the grave as he was digging, an episode that gave him a fright! They made the coffin out of an old wagon box, the only wood handy. Clayton’s mother said a few prayers over the grave, as there was no preacher. They were all ill with the flue, but they did the best they could to help each other.
Jim Hunter fell heir to Geoge Ames’ place and that is how he acquired his land. He met his death by drowning when he fell overboard while crossing the Peace River. He was known to have been drinking at the time. Jim Hunter’s land was sold to Clayton Third.

Pioneer Round-Up. Page 61

The 1918 flu epidemic that is referred to in the above quote was the Spanish Flu. There are a lot of unmarked graves across the prairies because of that epidemic. In this case George Ames’ grave was not even in a cemetery.

Photos of Immanuel Lutheran Church

Click on any of the above five images to enlarge. Click the > symbol to cycle through them and click the X to return to normal.

In 1944 and 1945 the church building was renovated inside with Gyproc, and with siding on the exterior.

Pioneer Round-Up. Page 106

Photos of the Parsonage

The old house had been abandoned for many years and is now completely surrounded by trees. It was difficult to capture an image of the house except for the side facing the road. It looks like the house was used as an annex to the church at times because it is set up inside much like a church. The house was purchased from another farmer and then disassembled and moved to this site.

Overall, the house seems to be in quite good condition, especially considering it was moved in the early 1930s so it was used somewhere else for an unknown number of years. It’s quite likely that the house is around 100 years old. The chimney looks very good and that’s often the first thing to start to crumble on an abandoned property. The glass is gone from all of the windows; it’s not just broken but completely gone as if it was removed. I wished that I could have learned more about this house but the little I know about it has been included in this blog article.

A house was bought from Mr. Schmunck at Hythe for $60.00. It was dismantled and re-erected near the church. The entire cost was $100.

Pioneer Round-Up. Page 106

Click on any of the above five images to enlarge. Click the > symbol to cycle through them and click the X to return to normal.

The house was built of logs and that made it much easier to move than most buildings because it could be disassembled and reassembled.

Wrap Up

This brings my current blog post to a conclusion. It described how much can be discovered even when we just thought we would head back to the campground and call it a day. A school, a church and some colourful history about the Third family were all discovered when we thought our day was done. We did get to our campsite in plenty of time for a relaxing evening knowing that this had been a very productive day.

Citations

• Beaverlodge to the Rockies. 1974, The Beaverlodge and District Historical Association.
• Pioneer Round-Up. 1972, Pioneer History Society of Hythe and Area.
• Website: Alberta Register of Historic Places. HeRMIS – Heritage Resources Management Information System.

It’s important to respect and protect the places that I visit to photograph. For this reason I am reluctant to give out exact locations, although for proper context I do try to describe the general location. If you recognize a place featured in my blog posts please do not give out the location in the comments. If you visit a place featured here please respect the owner’s legal rights for private property and if it is on public property, such as a place on Crown land, always leave it in as good or better condition that it was when you arrived, including ensuring that the door is properly closed. Together we can help to ensure that these historic structures are available for the next generation to experience and explore. There’s no better way to learn history than to stand in the place where that history happened.