In this line story the absence of any reference to the religious question may be noted, simply because it was not particularly manifest. It accords with San Francisco.

This is a long story for a short family, but by no means an unimportant one.

HENRY TROUT.

This was grandfather's third son and fourth child. I have no recollection of ever seeing him. Father described him as the tallest of the family, being about six feet high, and in every respect fine looking. His marriage at twenty-two was the earliest of any of the boys. Though he was apportioned two hundred acres of land, the same as the other boys, he never farmed any. According to father, he was too decidedly mechanical to entertain it. He assisted father in some of his first building ventures in Erin village, as already mentioned. No doubt his married life began there, Margaret Kirkwood of Caledon being his life partner. But no backwoods village would hold him, he made a strike for more room. At the port of Oakville, which was then quite a town, a steam dredge was being built by a contractor named Lawton. Henry applied to him for work, and frankly told him of his inexperience. Lawton found that to be common, but he rightly judged that he had a man before him who would learn fast, and one to be depended on. So he quietly instructed him, gave him good work, and put him forward. Henry used his good opportunities so well, that before the dredge was completed he had mastered the details and was given full charge of the work. When finished, Mr. Lawton had to leave to look after other jobs. Uncle Henry was left to employ a tug or a steamer to tow the dredge to Hamilton, and set it at work. The machine was brought to its destination and started. Very properly he was cautious, and determined to avoid a breakdown. In the course of the first week the contractor for the harbor work came around to inspect and said to Uncle "everything seems to be working nicely, but I would like to see more work turned out." Uncle replied that the machine was new, and the men new on the job; but he would soon get to good

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regular working condition, which proved to be the case. Excepting greater brevity I am giving this story as father told it. He regarded Uncle's natural mechanical abilities as superior to his own.

Uncle Henry lived a year or two in Hamilton, and moved eastward to Crook's Rapids, now known as Hastings, on the river Trent, where a great dam was built. Here he purchased a site and built mills. After a good number of years' residence there, he disposed of his property and went back to Hamilton, built a dredge for himself, and worked it for some time. This venture seemed not to have been a business success; also about this time, 1850, Mrs. Trout died, not very long after the birth of their youngest son. After he had arranged for the proper care of his young family, and settled up Hamilton business, he engaged with the contractors of the Grand Trunk railway as superintendent of bridge construction. While in their service out in the pine woods near Georgetown, Ontario, he was sitting on a stick of newly hewn timber, stooping over, writing in a notebook, when a small pine bough, its weight scarcely two pounds, having on its tip one brush of pine needles, which had been broken by the falling trees, now became loosened, and falling arrow-like, struck Uncle on the back of the head, breaking in the skull. He became at once insensible and remained so for two days and died. Thus was a fine good man laid low, in an astonishingly simple, accidental manner, at the age of forty-eight years.

HENRY GEORGE TROUT

In sketching the career of Uncle Henry Trout, as is done above, I claim no more than general correctness. The one on whom I depended for more definite information, his son, H. G. Trout, the present subject, suddenly passed to his reward on July 22, 1911. An intended visit by me about that time was thus cut short. It forcibly reminded me of a conversation we had a few years previous. He asked me, "When are you going to finish your history?" I replied, "I will take it up again very soon." He said, "You better get busy, none of us have very much time." The hunch was for me, and

rightly so, as I considered he would outlive me; but he put himself in with it, and was the first to go, and I am cut off from the company of a cousin that was like a brother, and also from the large fund of family information that he alone had. However, I must not anticipate, but begin his story at the proper end.

Henry G. Trout was born in Erin, November 29, 1829. His boyhood education was evidently the best the new country afforded. This was mostly at Hastings. His father apprenticed him to be a mechanical engineer in, what might be adjudged at that time, as the best engineering works in America, Shepherd's of Buffalo, New York. Mr. Perry, the superintendent, was abreast, if not ahead, of his time in the improvements for using steam expansively. Buffalo was then a great ship building port, and Buffalo Creek, with its vessel building and boilermaking, was a noisy, busy part of the great waterfront. That was the kind of atmosphere and environment to raise great engineers. His apprenticeship must have begun not later than 1848, when about nineteen years of age. He would refer to his beginnings only when the conversation led that way. Generally his work and interests were in the foreground, and himself out of sight, so he told little about himself; but I learned that as an apprentice he had special consideration, and when it was completed he was placed as foreman over a gang of workers. I also know that early in his Buffalo life he attended and soon united with Dr. Lord's church (Presbyterian); in this church connection he continued throughout his whole life, entering as a Sunday school pupil, he went through all the grades of church promotion below that of the minister.

About the last thirty years of his life he was senior elder, minister's adviser, and general helper for the needy. The fine old church building met the fate of all down-town churches, in that it was deserted by the rich, who built it, and came to be occupied by the poor, to whom it was most accessible. Henry, being a "father to the poor," stuck with the old church, and for a long time was its main financial stay, and not till near the time of his death was the fine old property