Clan Prints in the Sands

John Rodney Turnbull 1880
Memoirs Part-1

My father John Colclough Turnbull was born in 1852 down near Rice Lake, 20 miles South of Peterboro in Ontario, Canada.  They were a large family – William, John my father, Albert Leonard, Carrie, Myra, Annie and all were tall, hardworking Christians.  I visited the old home near Bewdley at South end of Rice Lake

John Colclough Turnbull, father of John Rodney

All the family went west to Manitoba except father.  Each man finally owned a square mile in Manitoba near Hartney and Brandon and each woman married a farmer in the same area.

Father stayed at home and gave to his parents every dollar he earned till he was twenty-one.  For that I believe he was unusually blessed of God.  Certainly he was more successful in business than any of them and outshone them spiritually, too.

And so our father went to nearby Port Hope with his parents’ blessing where he worked as a clerk in a grocery store.  Then he invaded the county seat Peterboro.  In a few years he owned the largest general store in Peterboro on the strategic corner of George, the main street, and Simere.  Later, his Turnbull General Store was bought and rebuilt by the Robert Simpson Company of Toronto renown.  All of us boys worked in father’s store.  I went on Saturdays for 10 cents a day and my pay increased to the magnificent sum of 50 cents.

The very large market was only a block away.  The folks from around father’s birthplace brought their dressed fowl, eggs, butter, etc. to market and after selling their products came to father’s store.  To induce trade he bought excellent tea in Toronto, blended it himself with other good tea and sold it for 25 cents a pound.  The clerks took their sales money to the cashier’s office in the center of the store to get their receipts and charge.  Later the metal containers shooting along overhead wires were installed.

Father knew how to get a crowd.  I laugh yet when I think of the Saturday he filled the big front windows with lovely calico cloth and sold it at 5 cents a yard (his cost).  The store filled jam-packed tight with charming ladies intent on getting that cloth.  The clerks couldn’t get through to the cashier.  I was the emergency squad.  I would take the money and sales slips from the clerk and then duck down right under the elbows of the surrounding ladies and finally emerge at the cashier’s desk!  In an hour all the bales of cloth were sold and then father reaped a harvest from those who lingered to buy other wares.

Father could not countenance religious intolerance and when the church where he was a deacon got too pugnacious he bought a lot on George St., paid for most of the lovely little church built on it called Bethany and had a lawyer protect it for all time as a place where all sincere Christians would be welcome.  My uncle Harrison was a stern, godly elder there.  He was a real Scotch “Sandy” with side burns and loved us children.  His dignity was for church!

From the little church 25 went as missionaries to various countries all over the world.  Three of them were Turnbulls – Louis, Walter, and myself John.

John Rodney Turnbull as an adult at his childhood home