Valentine and Maude

By Jeanne Bacigalupo, Margaret McPhee Stevenson and John Walker

Valentine's Parents

Val's mother, Theresia Reindl, was born in Bavaria, Germany and was the youngest of seven children. Their parents died due to a throat disease when Theresia was two years old. An administrator took care of the family finances until the children were of age. Theresia had four brothers, three were Catholic priests: John, Joseph and Barnabas. The fourth brother stayed on the farm in Bavaria. John and Joseph came to Wisconsin, U.S.A., John settled in Schleisingerville and later in South Oshkosh. He remained in the same parish for twenty-three years, until his death of heart attack in 1890 or 1891. Joseph first settled in Barton, north-east of Schleisingerville and later traveled to China as a missionary. He was there two years when he died from sunstroke. Barnabas remained in Bavaria until his death in 1890 or 91.

Theresia came to Schleisingerville, Wisconsin, U.S.A. and worked for people who kept a general store until she married John Redig Aug. 3, 1859. He was a widower whose wife died giving birth. The family lived in a little two story stone house in a town called Oshkosh. Theresa was eight years old and Philp was a baby when John and Theresia were married. John was drafted into the Civil War and a tintype picture had been taken of him then. There are no pictures of Theresia.

John and Theresa had 8 children. According to an 1870 census of Wisconsin, town of Schleisingerville, there was a John Redig age 48, a farmer born at Hesse, Darmstadt, and a Theresa (in her letter, Catherine spelled the name Theresia) age 36 years old, born in Bavaria. Living at their home was: Theresa, age 19, Philip age 11, Mary, age 9, Joseph, age 8, Frederick, age 6, Anna age 4, and Elizabeth age, one year. Valentine, Margret and Catherine were born after these. Valentine was born in 1871, Margret in 1875 and Catherine in 1878. Theresia died in 1878 when she was about forty-four years old. Valentine was then seven years old and Catherine was three months old. Margret died eighteen months before Catherine was born.

In later years, John let his beard grow long; Catherine said in her letter to Ethel Redig Northgraves: "He did not have time to shave. He worked pretty hard in his last years up to about six months before he passed away, Dec. 21, 1898". Granddad Redig and I were always alone over winter months from beginning of November to about the middle of April to take care of horses, cows, pigs, geese, and chickens

  Maude's Parents

Maude was born in 1868 and was two years old when her mother Eliza, brought her and baby sister, Jessie, six weeks old, to Canada where their father, Arthur W. Kent, was expecting them. It must have taken a great deal of courage for Eliza to leave their home in Croydon, England and undertake the six-week voyage with a small baby and young child. Two year old Maude continually cried for "grannies tatoos". About 1870, Arthur W. Kent, Eliza's husband, had come ahead to Ontario, Canada, where he had two brothers. Eliza, Arthur and the children, first settled in Grimsby, Ontario for a while, then moved to Michigan State, then to Lincoln Illinois and later moved to Lacombe, Alberta, where they built a small home about six miles out of the town (Ethel Kent Thomson's notes). Maude was the eldest of a family of fourteen (not all the babies survived). The Arthur and Eliza Kent family and their prosperous descendants and family's resided mainly in western Canada and the U.S.A.

Maude and Valentine

Valentine Redig left his home in Oshkosh Wisconsin when he was seventeen years old, to work in a creamery in Lyons Nebraska. He boarded with a family called the Darlings; this is where he met Maude Kent who later became his wife. Maude was a niece to Mrs. Darling (Granddad Kent’s sister, Maria). Growing up, Maude worked hard at home sewing, cooking and cleaning to help with the large family. It was probably a vacation for her to visit her ‘Aunt DarlingCreamery and could not get ’, as they called her busy in the away. He was twenty-six years old and she was an attractive lady of twenty-nine years. Valentine was a tall and handsome man who boarded at the Darling'sMaude were to be married . Valentine and Feb. 27, 1897 but evidently Valentine wasn’t allowed to take time of work to travel to Maude’s home for the wedding, so Aunt Darling volunteered to host itfond of . Val and Maude were very Aunt Darling, who always remained an important part of their lives.

Valentine and Maude were married at the residence of L. L. Darling in Lyons, Nebraska on March 4, 1897. Rev. John Watson, an Episcopal minister of Omaha, officiated.

More than 70 guests assembled at the residence of L. L. Darling last Saturday evening to witness the marriage ceremony. The bridal pair stood directly under a large arch from which was suspended with beautiful wedding bells. Miss Agnes Smith was the bridesmaid and Emory Clement groomsman. The audience was so large that it was impossible to seat them all at one table so the elegant supper was served on small tables and was one of the best and most sumptuous ever given at any wedding in Lyons Nebraska.

The groom is a young man of sterling qualities and good habits and at present is manager of the Lyons Creamery. The bride is a niece of L. L. Darling and is a very accomplished lady and highly spoken of by all her acquaintances. The Lyons Mirror joins with the many friends in wishing them many pleasant years of wedded life.

So happy were all present and so pleasantly did they enjoy themselves that they did not notice that the clock had been turned backwards, causing them to remain longer than was customary. They received a large number of elegant, valuable and useful presents. The young couple lived with the Darlings for awhile until they were able to move into their own home.

The couple's first child, Florence Ilene, was born March 4, 1898. Valentine's father, John Redig, passed away Dec. 21, 1898. When Florence was fourteen months old, Valentine and Maude moved to Lacombe, Alberta in May 1899. Maude and her baby traveled on the Settlers' train, which had a wood burning stove to help warm the passengers. The Darlings had moved to Lacombe a year or so earlier and the young couple once again resided with them, this time, for six months, until Val cleared a piece of his 160 acres a mile north of town and built a sod-roofed log cabin. Val, Maude, and their family were to call this cabin home for 10 years, during which time three more daughters were born, Jessie in 1901, Helen in 1903 and Ethel in 1906.

Maude, Val, and their daughters were fortunate to have family members (besides the Darlings) living nearby. They were strangers in this unsettled land, and neighbors were few and far between. Maude's parents, Eliza Anne West Kent and Arthur Wood Kent, emigrated to Lacombe from Illinois a few years after Maude and Val, bring with them the five children who were still living at home. Maude was the oldest of a large family, some of whom were already married or away working when their parents moved to Canada. The five who came to Canada with Eliza and Arthur were three sons, Art, Alf and Dim (Endimion) and two daughters, Gertie and Ethel, their youngest child, who was only nine at the time of the move. Arthur Kent and his three sons started a painting and paperhanging business in the town of Lacombe and had a store where they sold supplies.

"We lived with them until Father got some land, six miles South East of Lacombe. Since a house had to be built, all hands helped to get the logs." (From Ethel's notes.) Jessie and Nellie (older sisters) were married and stayed in Illinois.

Valentine and Maude paid five hundred dollars for their farm. He brought with him from Nebraska, some farm equipment, three or four cows and a few horses. Unfortunately, a horse and a cow died, which was a costly setback, as they had to be replaced. Valentine went to work on a road-building project to pay the taxes on the property. They lived in the small log house for nine years before they were able to have their larger home built about 1909. During this time, their family had grown. Jessie Mayo was born April 5, 1901, Helen Maude Valentine, Dec. 5, 1903 and Ethel Elgerta, March 7, 1906. Another baby girl was born at eight months but Maude hemorrhaged and the baby lost its blood and died. The doctor stayed all night and put brandy on Maude's pulse and had her sip some. It was a long time before she regained her strength. Their youngest daughter, Maudie Lucille, was born July 28, 1910, after the move into the new home.

Roll ends of wallpaper from Grandfather Kent’s store were used to cover the inside walls of Val and Maude’s log cabin. Layer after layer, pattern upon pattern, were applied over the years to keep out the weather and keep in the heat from the wood burning stove. At the end of 10 years, when they moved into the "big house", the wallpaper made such a thick layer that Florence’s sister, Helen, said that it would have stood up all by itself.

Florence’s memories of life in the log cabin included seeing friendly Indians gazing curiously through the windows at the white people whom were now their neighbors. While they were still living in the cabin, Florence started school in a room over her grandfather’s store, which was used as the classroom until a school could be built.

When Florence was the only one in the family going to school, she may have had the opportunity to spend more time with her grandparents, which she loved.

At over ninety-one years of age, Helen could remember distinctly some things that happened when she was about three years old. She remembered liking very much to help milk the cows. She stripped and stripped away into a little tin cup and did get some milk. She remembered Aunt Gertie her mother's sister helping with the milking and that the cows were not tied but stood still while being milked. She also remembered when they made the move into the new house that she and her younger sister, Ethel Redig (Northgraves), who was about twenty months old, wanted to help. They asked what could they carry. Ethel was given a stick to carry, but she often returned to the little house and banged away at the door for someone to open and let her in. Helen was given an oven scraper to carry into the new house.

Florence, Helen, Ethel, Maude and Jessie Redig - about 1912

It must have seemed like a palace for the six of them after living in the log cabin. There was a large kitchen and a pantry across one end of the main floor. Off the kitchen was the dining room, also large, where as many as 14 harvesters were fed each fall. There was a small parlor, a very formal room, which housed the piano, the family Bible, a small love seat with ornate wooden back and arms, and a chair or two. The girls went into the parlor to practice the piano, and important visitors, such as the minister, were entertained there. Val and Maude’s bedroom was also on the main floor. The new white house had three bedrooms upstairs, each with a large closet. Later, Valentine had the house lifted and a basement built underneath. There was a large carpet with huge pink roses on a cream coloured background. Helen remembered her Aunt Gertie spreading damp tea leaves on the carpets before she swept. Much later, the carpet was replaced with linoleum.

There were no inside bathrooms, no electricity or running water. Their well was about a block away from the house and Valentine carried the water in two buckets, one in each hand, and kept the house supplied. It was a good well, the water was hard at first but when they went deeper, they had soft water. Sometimes, the girls helped. Helen mentioned in a telephone call that She and Ethel carried buckets of snow one after the other to fill the boiler on the stove with water for their Saturday evening bath. The metal tub, probably round, with two handles, was placed in the kitchen near the open oven door; the smallest child had her bath first, continuing on to the oldest, using the same water.

A tall Poplar tree grew on each of two sides of the house and an evergreen tree was outside the bedroom window. Maude planted a row of Manitoba Maples nearby and Valentine built a bench to sit upon and hung a swing for their girls.

Valentine was a large boned, lean man, close to six feet tall. He was generous and kind with a great sense of humour. Valentine was also industrious, frugal and orderly. He kept the ashes cleaned out from the three wood burning stoves, basement, kitchen and front room. There was always a supply of chopped wood and kindling; the stoves were lit in the morning before the rest of the family was up. Before winter came, each year, he took his team and wagon east of the town and cut by hand the trees he needed for firewood. He got the wood for his labour taking out the stumps, which helped clear the land. After hauling the wood home, he borrowed a gasoline engine from a neighbour and cut the logs which he later had to stack and split. He had no sons to help him.

During the haying season, Valentine arose at five o'clock in the morning to milk the cows. Soon he was in the field stooking the hay, sometimes until one O'clock in the morning. Helen and Jessie helped with the stooking when they were old enough. Before he was married, Valentine was a butter maker and had obtained a steam engineer certificate. This enabled him to be a steam engineer for threshing crews and he did this into October. He traveled south quite a way with the threshing crew. When the threshers were at their place, Maude had twelve extra people to feed three meals. When Valentine was away, Maude's sister, Gertie stayed with her and helped milk the cows.

In the wintertime, when the girls were small, Valentine drove them to school with the horse and bobsled, picking up neighbour children along the way. When they were older and could drive the horse themselves, Valentine had the horse hitched to the buggy, ready to go every morning. In the wintertime, he tucked them in with heated, wrapped bricks, giving them a warn send off.

Maude was an excellent seamstress and made most all the clothing for the five girls. She also tended a large garden with the girls helping sometimes. They had a large potato garden and stored them and other root vegetables in the basement during the winter. They had potatoes for most meals and Helen said she has peeled potatoes almost everyday of her life as that was her job after school, to peel the potatoes for their evening meal. There was a section of land next to theirs that had nothing but wild berries growing on it which were free for the picking. Maude canned many dozens of jars of raspberries and blue berries for their winter fruit. She also canned rhubarb with pineapple or other fruit to help sweeten it.

Many sheep grazed the rolling pasture-land of their farm and often a lamb greeted the girls as they came home from school, loving to play with them and chase around and around outside the house. Valentine sheared the sheep and stored the wool until the price was right. He raised mink and sold their pelts. Also, he raised, plucked and cleaned chickens, which he sold, ready for the oven. The family always had a good supply of fresh eggs. From their cows' milk the family was able to get enough cream and butter for their own use and some to sell. With a wooden box-like form, he moulded into pounds the butter, which his girls had churned and took it off to market. To make the work easier for Maude, Valentine bought a hand operated bread mixer and often the girls turned it for her, as she was a very small and slight woman. Valentine was a very tidy man everything had to be in its place. The girls had to make sure that everything they used was put back where they had found it. Helen said that there was never a stick out of place. He was a kind loving father, but a strict disciplinarian, very insistent on good behaviour at the dinner table.

Florence loved riding their saddle horse, Bess, and continued to ride as an adult every time she was back on the farm.  Florence didn't leave home until she was nineteen years old. In time, Bess became Old Bess, and some of Florence’s children learned to ride her, as well.

Florence’s memories of her childhood focused on the closeness of the family ties. She loved to visit her grandparents and had a special bond with her aunts, Gertie and Ethel, who were more like older sisters. Florence had a close relationship with her grandmother, and stayed with her grandparents as often as she could. There is a fragment of a letter remaining, one written by Grandmother Kent to Florence after her first child was born, that speaks of the warm, loving, relationship.

Ethel and Helen were constant companions. When they were about eight and eleven years old, during the summer Helen said that they would sometimes have a little nap. Then they would go into the garden and dig up a carrot each, wash it in the horses' water-trough, pick a large rhubarb leaf each which they used as sun parasols and walk up the lane toward the road visiting with each other all along the way. In the wintertime, they loved to find an unmarked space of snow and make a fox and goose ring. They were always together and usually chattering and laughing (much as they did in later years)

Florence often spoke of Christmas in the big house on the farm. Preparations and baking would take weeks, and when the big day arrived, Val would go into town with the horses and a large sleigh and bring the Kent and Darling families back to the farm. What excitement! Of course they stayed the night. In the evening they held a family concert. All the children would have prepared a verse or a song to present to the family. There would be games and singing, and the children could stay up late. Decorations were homemade, as were the gifts. Life was not easy in those pioneer days, but there was great joy in being together and in celebrating their good fortune in having each other.

As all the girls grew older, they helped with the work. In the summer time, when their father worked in the fields, Jessie and Helen usually milked two or three cows and separated the cream from the milk each day before school. In addition, they took a few turns each, making one hundred pumps at the water pump so the animals could drink. They made their own lunches and did the breakfast dishes.

Of course, there were wonderful times of recreation. Florence took piano lessons and passed her knowledge on to Helen; Jessie took violin lessons; later, they all played together. When Florence had finished tenth grade at fifteen years of age, her family sent her off to a business school because there were three or so months of paid up time that Florence had not used for her training. Helen really had wanted to be a teacher but at this point didn't have much choice.

As far back as she can remember, she said that her mother let her stay with her grandmother and grandfather Kent for three or four days at a time. They lived in a little cottage; her grandfather had red hair and moustache red whiskers and a beard that came down three or four inches. Some evenings, friends came to visit and they were served refreshments. I got my first piece of cheese there and it tasted so good. I think it was made differently then. I don't know whether we couldn't afford it or if Mom didn't make it. Anyway, the next time I remember having cheese was when we were picking blueberries, way out East of Lacombe, and Mom put cheese and bread and butter in sandwiches, a big slab of cheese and we thought we were in heaven. While at Grandma Kent's home, I would go out doors and look for four-leaf clovers: there were all kinds of them. I amused myself looking for them and I took them into Grandma to show her. I remember my Aunt Mable (Aunt Gertie's husband's sister) having her first baby there. (There were two families, brother sister married sister brother; Mable married Uncle Dim) When I was about seven years old, Grandma Kent was still cooking in the kitchen and able to get around well. They came out to our place on the farm every Sunday. Dad would go in and get them with horses and buggy or sled and then take them back again, about one and a half miles each way. Dad got his first car when I was about seventeen years old. Grandpa Kent had a paint and paper store. He gave us a nickel for candy when we went there. One day I went in and he didn’t give us any. I decided to ask for it, but got a lecture on not asking for things.

Helen was eight years old in Oct. 1912 when Grandpa Kent died at the age of sixty three, in his home. She said that she remembered seeing him in his coffin in her family's home in Lacombe and that he had been a Mason. In one of the pictures of the whole family, he is wearing the Mason's emblem on a chain attached to his vest or waistcoat. He had owned the paint and paper store in Lacombe and it had the A.W. Kent name on the storefront. As a young child, Florence started school in the room above the store; there was no other school there for her to attend. That must have been 1904 or 1905 as she was born in 1898 (Helen’s letter 5/29/93). Ethel was about five years old at the time of her Grandpa Kent's death. When Eliza Ann West Kent died in the Redig home, at the age of seventy-one years, Ethel was in grade nine and Helen was seventeen years old. Both Eliza and Arthur are buried in Lacombe, Alberta, Canada. They had belonged to the Church of England.

Helen remembered Aunt Mary and Aunt Katie, Valentine's sisters from Wisconsin coming to visit them. Aunt Mary was about seventeen years older than Katie was and both were rather stout, large women. In addition, a brother, of Valentine's, Fred, who lived in California, and had never married, occasionally came to visit them. (See his picture sitting on the doorstep of the Redig house with the Redig girls with him.)

Family pictures depict Florence as a serious, solemn, child who was probably shy. She was very musical, with a clear soprano voice and a light touch on the piano. Florence loved her piano lessons; she did well, and was serious about her responsibility to teach the younger girls. Her passion for music continued all the years of her life. As the technology developed she was able to listen to musical programs on the radio, including the Saturday afternoon operas, then own a stereo and collect her own records. In later years she was able to attend symphony concerts, ballet and opera performances in Edmonton with her daughters, Lucille and Margaret, and remembered the story and music of every opera she attended. There is no doubt that her love of music was a great comfort to Florence on her life’s long journey.

At that time, most women learned how to sew, as it was necessary for them to make clothes for their families and for themselves. Florence and her sisters were taught at home on the treadle sewing machine. Florence was particularly skillful at sewing and, as a young lady, took dressmaking and tailoring courses that she was able to use all her life. She also took a business course and then was employed as a telephone operator in Lacombe when she was 19 or 20. Here she caught the eye of the District Manager for Alberta Government Telephones, Jack McPhee. Florence and Jack were married in All Saints’ Cathedral in Edmonton on June 5, 1919, when she was 21 and he was 33.

Years of Change

Nineteen thirty was an especially busy year for Maude and Valentine. Three weddings were held in their home. Ethel and Arthur Northgraves, March 2, Helen and Frank Richter, June 21 and Jessie and Ken Walker, July 15. A minister of the High English Church married all the couples. The next year three new grandchildren were born. Florence had been married for eleven years and contributed the first grandchildren.

The years went by; and there were more grandchildren. Once again children's voices were heard in the big house as they came with their parents to visit Valentine and Maude, now growing a little older. Helen spent a year with her parents after her first baby Sanda was born because her husband was building a larger home for them in the Kootenay area of B.C. She was able to make other visits occasionally.

Maude Redig, Florence McPhee, Ethel Northgraves, Valentine Redig, Jack McPhee, Jessie Walker and Norma Northgraves (In front) – about 1941.

Ethel traveled the hundred miles from Gadsby with husband Art and four children, usually in the summer when the roads were less muddy. They were mostly rough dirt roads then, and every bump could be felt in the Model A Ford. Heat was a problem in the summer time, but one time, Helen remembered, her nephew, Donald, being very glad for the snap down buttons holding the window coverings shut. Maybe that was one cool time. Then, it was quite a long trip, with no air conditioning and no heater, no disposable diapers or fast foods. Jessie must have made similar trips with her family from Raymond, Alberta and Florence as well from Grand Prairie, Alberta. Maudie was younger and married later in life; she brought her children to visit her parents when they had moved to another home.

In 1945 Valentine and Maude sold the farm and moved to Chilliwack, B.C. According to Ethel's journal, June 9, 1945, Art, Fred, Norma and Ethel drove to the Fraser River, crossed on the ferry, then on to Agassiz to pick up Redig's box of household things. On June 16,1945, the Redigs arrived from Lacombe in their old car. (It had little vases to hold flowers, attached to the sides of the windshield--Jeanne's memory) Valentine and Maude lived with the Northgraves that winter, until they were able to move to their own farm, March 1, 1946. They had purchased the Eric Anderson farm, just South of the Northgraves farm; the two were about a quarter of a mile apart. Jessie, and Maudie with Cheryl, her two-year-old daughter, came to help with the move. They stayed for two weeks.

Valentine had not understood that dairy farming was so different in comparison to the type of farming he had done for so many years. Sept. 6th, 1946 he bought a small home in the town of Chilliwack, about four miles from the farms. The address was 425 Yale Rd. East, Chilliwack. B.C. After selling the farm, the Redigs moved into their little home, Dec. 5^th 1946. Maude's health was failing and she began to need care. Valentine too had some health problems. In 1953, he was in the hospital for five weeks; he had a tumor blockage in his stomach. A large portion of his stomach was removed. The doctors gave him six months to live; he was not a quitter; he lived for seven more years. When Arthur brought him to the Northgraves home to recuperate, Valentine picked up a scythe and started slashing the tall grass around the farm that Arthur had not yet been able to cut down.

Helen remembered her father walking from the Safeway store to his home on Yale St., pushing a cart, full of groceries. The distance was about a mile and a half; he was over eighty years old. Another incident, remembered by Arthur, when he was building a utility shed on the back of the family home on McConnell Rd., and was busy framing the foundation; before he knew it, Granddad had moved by wheelbarrow, half a pile of gravel for the cement.

During 1952, Maude needed more care than Valentine could give; Ethel began going to her parents' home two or three times a week, giving them the care they needed. Valentine had stomach surgery in 1953, Ethel's journal states: April, 15, 1953. Mom was with us, while Dad was in the hospital. Dad was with us about two weeks before his operation and a week after. They and I moved back in town, May 20,1953. After Fred (Northgraves ) and Jean (Campbell) were married Sept. 24, 1954, I stayed in steadily, coming home Sundays. Health failing, and quit at Dad's Apr. 5, 1955. Mom and Dad have been alone since Ethel had a mastectomy in Aug. 1956.

Florence and Jessie moved their parents to Lacombe where they lived with Florence for a time and then to a nursing home in Calgary. Fall, 1959, Ethel was having a lot of pain in her back and not feeling well at all. Later she learned that the cancer had returned, this time, it was in her bones.

January 3, 1960, in Calgary, Maude had a stroke and passed away January 7th at the age of ninety-two. June 20,1960 Valentine passed away; he was eighty-nine years old; Ethel passed away June 23, 1960, not knowing that her father had predeceased her. She was fifty-four years old. Valentine and Maude are buried in Lacombe, Alberta and Ethel in Chilliwack, B.C.

The house where Valentine and Maude Redig lived in Lacombe is gone. There is a cemetery close to where the farm was. The farm was just across the North fence of the cemetery. There is a tree nursery on some of the old farm property and an airplane landing strip is on what was the lower pasture. There are mobile home lots where the house and barn were. Buried in the Lacombe cemetery are:

Arthur Wood Kent and Eliza Anne (West) Kent--------------Plot G8, grave sites A and B

Richard Kent (son) and his wife Marbel Kent and baby----Plot G8, grave sites C and D

Valentine Redig and Maude Mary Eliza Redig---------------Plot M64, grave sites A and B 

John A. McPhee and Florence E. McPhee-------------------Plot M69, grave sites C and D

The courageous homesteading and hard work of Val and Maude led to five prosperous families, which in turn have all developed and contributed to many more families. The number of their descendants is now (Nov. 2000) 134 people, including 18 grand children, 43 great grand children and 65 great great grand children.

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