Lambton Musings

www.discoveriesthatmatter.ca

Travelling Home Forest Museum Staff

In 2021, the Forest Museum received a donation of a spinning wheel with an interesting story. This beautiful wool wheel arrived in carefully padded boxes in a transport truck all the way from Vancouver.

Wool wheels are typified by a large flat rimmed drive wheel. The wheel may have a diameter of almost 50 inches. The whole apparatus stands about five feet tall. The wheel drives the spinning mechanism by means of a cord of tightly twisted cotton or linen. The wheel is mounted on a post rising from a narrow table or bench. The table is usually supported by three legs. The spindle is mounted on a post rising from the front end of the bench. These spinning wheels are also referred to as great wheels because of their size. In North America, particularly in Ontario, they are

The Transportation

often called walking wheels because the spinner has to walk in order to perform her task. She starts close to the spindle with her right hand on the wheel and carded wool in her left hand. As she turns the wheel, she steps back drawing the wool out and allowing the twist from the spindle to bind the fibres together. When she has walked back as far as she can draw, the wheel is reversed and the length of spun yarn wound on the spindle. The floorboards were often considerably worn where the walking wheel was used. It is said an accomplished spinner might walk five miles a day.

This walking wheel has accumulated many miles. It was owned by the same family for 163 years. It was donated to the Forest Museum by Anne Noonan. Her great grandparents James Bell and Mary Rutherford (Scott) Bell married and settled in Bosanquet in 1859.The spinning wheel arrived in Forest the same year on the first Grand Trunk Railway train. James and Mary had three children, Walter, Ellen and Andrew. Anne’s Grandmother Ellen was born in 1866 and married Archibald Walton in 1894.

Archie and Ellen had three children, Jamie, George (born in 1897, Anne’s father), and Roland. Ellen and Archie moved to Manitoba and settled near Gilbert Plains where they had a homestead. Archie was a carpenter and built houses in the area. Ellen was gifted in her needlework. In 1903 within two weeks, Archie’s sister died of scarlet fever, his mother experienced a stillbirth and his father died of blood poisoning. Ellen took all the children and moved back to Forest to live with her mother. Anne’s father George enlisted at age 18 and fought in WWI. He was injured in 1917 and sent back to Canada.

After George Walton recovered, he graduated from the University of Toronto as a doctor and subsequently practiced medicine for a few years. Then, he went back to the university and graduated from the School of Hygiene and did research on viruses at Connaught labs. He married and moved to Regina where George was medical health officer for 26 years.

Roland Walton (George’s brother and Anne’s uncle) lived his whole life in Forest. His son Rudd married Alice Spilchuk. Alice Walton was well known in Forest.

This was the family history as told by Anne Noonan. The beloved spinning wheel travelled across Canada to Vancouver and now it has come home again.