NOTES ON THE HETHERINGTON FARM
Mountain Road, Aylmer
The farm was the home of the Hetherington family from the time when land was cleared by Joseph Hetherington in 1823 until his great grandson George Hetherington left the place in 1970. Family tradition is that Joseph came from Carlisle, Cumberland in England, and that when he was seventeen years old, during the war of 1812, he was captured by the Americans. Sent with another lad to fetch water for the camp, they found a boat on the riverbank, and escaped, coming to Canada. The Lower Canada Land Grants show that Joseph was given a 200 acre grant, Lot 19 Range 6 of the Township if Hull in 1827. This was the result of a petition for land made by Philemon Wright on behalf of some fifty settlers. The petition stated that Joseph came to Canada in 1816 from the United States. Curiously, it gives his name as Harrington instead of Hetherington.
Joseph Hetherington married Charlotte Clements, and their first child Joseph was born about 1821. In all they had six sons and one daughter. As the family grew up, evidently the older sons struck out on their own. Joseph, the oldest son, married Lucy Benedict, granddaughter of Samuel Benedict who had come up from New York State in 1801 and taken up 600 acres of land on the Mountain Road. They were living at the northwest end of Meech Lake in 1851, as recorded in the census. The next son John also looked north, for he married Harriet, the daughter of the Reverend Asa Meech, whom lived at the East End of Meech Lake. John probably had a farm on Harrington Lake, and living members of the Hetherington family recall being taken to see the site, on the clearing at the south end of the lake, near the Prime Minister's house. The surveyor Driscoll in 1850 recorded the name Harrington Lake, repeating the error in the 1827 land grant. This could easily result from the local pronunciation of the name – Herndon. However, John did not stay at the lake, and in 1890 was living in Salem, Oregon. The next son Isaac Farmed in Eardley, while his brother Wesley moved to the northwest par of Hull Township. It was the youngest son, Alvy, who stayed at home and inherited the family farm when his father died in 1873.
It must have been very difficult to gain a living from the farm in the early years. It was entirely covered with forest, the north end on the hard rock of the Gatineau Hills, the south end a cedar swamp, and a narrow strip in the middle being the only part with good soil and drainage. Piles of stones around level spots on the mountain still mark the clearings make to grow the first crops of potatoes. In 1870 a great fire swept across the farm from the west. In two hours it burned a strip two miles wide, and four miles long, going clear across the mountain road beyond Ironsides. Charred stumps of the large trees burnt in this fire could still be found in the swampy bush 100 years later. The Hetheringtons lost all their buildings and much else besides. Nevertheless, they carried on and built a new house of square cut logs.
Joseph Hetherington died in 1873. His will (written in 1864) has survived. He left the farm and all his property to his youngest son Alvy, provided that he would furnish his mother "with befitting comfortable boarding, lodging and clothing". Joseph also bequeathed to each of his other children the sum of two dollars. There was an extra provision for his daughter Mary to have a home and place for her and her daughter Mary Clementine Kenny with her brother Alvy so long as she lived apart from her husband John Kenny. (Since Mary Hetherington and John Kenny had four more children, evidently their separation was only temporary). Joseph's wife, Charlotte Clements, died six years after him in 1879. Her will, also written in 1864, has survived. The terms were very similar to her husband's, except that Mary was also to receive a cow.
Alvy Hetherington died in 1890, unmarried, and withou
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