From The Farmersville Reporter & County of
Leeds Advertiser, Wednesday, April 27, 1887, front page:
There is an extensive article entitled “A Century of Life†about a special celebration held by the Masonic fraternity for the man whom they believed was the oldest
Mason in Canada, “if not the worldâ€. (Note the date of the newspaper was his 100th birthday.) As a part of the tribute there is a biographical sketch which follows:
Richard
Holmes, the subject of this sketch, was born on the 27th of April, 1787, in the town of
Chatham,
Columbia county,
New York. His father,
Abram Holmes, came from the north of Ireland before the revolutionary war, settling in
Chatham and remaining there until after the birth of his five sons and four daughters, of whom Richard was the youngest. One son,
Abram, died on an ocean voyage and was buried in Cuba. The eldest daughter married, and passed her life in
New York State. Mrs. Holmes, Richard’s mother, died in 1792, and in 1799 Mr. Holmes, with four sons and two daughters, came to Canada and settled below Brockville. In 1800 the family moved into the Lake Eloida neighborhood, where
Abram Holmes died in October, 1822. The eldest son settled in the western part of what was then
Upper Canada, where he spent the remainder of his life. Hugh lived on the farm on which his father resided until the winter of 1842-3, when he died. Ninion became an itinerant Methodist preacher, and travelled a number of years in different parts of the
Province. He finally settled near the River
Thames, where he taught school for sixteen years, acting at the same time as local preacher. He left the school in his usual health one evening, and was taken ill and died during the night. The two sisters who came to Canada with the family, settled in this section. One married Stephen
Scovil, and lived and died on the farm where their son
Seabury now resides. She died in 1863. The other sister, the youngest daughter of the family, married a Mr. McCrae, of the township of
Montague, Lanark. She died in 1869.
Richard, whose natal anniversary is celebrated to-day, taught school for a number of years, and on the 27th of March, 1827, settled down on the home farm, on which he has resided ever since. In 1813 he was made a
Mason in a
Lodge which was organized by
Orange Risden, and which met in Thos. Howe’s barn. This barn is still standing a few rods from Lake Eloida. Mr. Holmes had a family of twelve children, ten of whom are still living. Hiram, the eldest of those living, resides in Farmersville. Three daughters live in the house with their father and one son lives near by. Another lives near Brockville, one in Clinton, one in Madoc and one in
Mich.
Editor’s added note:
(We are pleased to be able to announce that next week we shall publish a number of reminiscences of Mr. Holmes, extending back over a period of more than seventy years. We feel assured they will be perused with interest by our readers. These reminiscences will be verbatim reports of incidents as related by Mr. Holmes.)