Farewell, Taylor Clan ROSS MURRAY
MASSAWIPPI , QUEBEC | After more than 125 years on this one piece of land, the Taylor clan of Massawippi bade farewell to many of the family's possessions Saturday at a good old country auction.
Russell Taylor and daughters Nancy Hibbard and Trudy McLeod - fourth and fifth generations to live in the house - were on hand to watch the old picture frames, harnesses, trunks, scythes, tractors, and miscellaneous whatzits fall under the gavel of auctioneer Ross Bennett. "Every piece of furniture has a history," said Hibbard.
One of those pieces was Taylor's great-grandfather Mitchell Taylor's chair, which still had the grooves where he laid his needles. "He was a Taylor by name and a tailor by trade," said Hibbard. Mitchell Taylor came to Canada in the 1840s and settled in Massawippi in 1860. The brick house on the edge of Highway 143 is not exactly as it was, explained Russell Taylor, but the old beams of the original house still support the current one. Through the years, a series of Taylor men took over the farm.
Now living in Place Sanborn in Ayer's Cliff since September, Taylor said there were no surprises as he and his family sorted items for Saturday's auction. "I knew them all as soon as I saw them," he said. As for the daughters, they had been so busy preparing for the auction, they hadn't had time to think about what it all means for their family, said Hibbard. But they did have time to carve out a chunk of beam that lists the family history. Like Mitchell Taylor's needle-scarred chair, the history was not for sale Saturday.
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"I think they had big families to make sure they got a boy," laughed Taylor. "But in our line we didn't have any boys."