In the 1860s, childbirth remained the single most dangerous event in a pioneer woman’s life. When labor began on the Kalbfleisch farm, the arrival of this baby girl brought an immediate transition from anticipation to grief. She never had the chance to receive a given name, to be brought before the altar for baptism, or to see the spring crops breaking through the dark soil of her family's concession. Her entire earthly existence was bounded by a few short hours on the 9th of

Three stones gave up their names, one base reminded me that not every story is ready on command, and the second row proved again what Trinity always seems to prove: this ground is not quiet because nothing happened here, but because so much did. For now, I carry Georg, Barbara, and Elisabetha with me, and I leave their neighbours to rest under the moss a little longer. I will return, wearing my Eternal Care Stone Services shirt and ready for another day of discovery.

“He came from Turrerich, in Glen Quaich, in 1832, having left the Glen that year about the middle of June, and arrived at North Easthope on the 1st of September; eight families from the same place emigrated and travelled together and settled in the township and in the adjoining one, South Easthope.”

There are some men whose stories don’t arrive with fanfare or legend, but instead with the steady rhythm of an axe biting into maple and beech. Men who carved their place in the world one swing at a time, trusting that the land; though wild, though unyielding, would eventually soften under their persistence. Robert Fraser was one of them.

John had a good idea what it was going to take, when he first stepped onto Lot 15, it was not a farm. It was a wilderness so thick that daylight barely touched the ground. “I commenced to improve on my land (it being then a perfect wilderness, travelled only by the Indian) late fall of 1834. The snow was on the trees then I recollect well, for, on beginning to chop down some trees to build my small ‘shanty’ with the snow at the stroke of the axe would be falling down upon me.

Wiping the sweat from his brow, he looks off into the distance as if he sees the place he speaks of. “I came from Berwickshire, in Scotland, from near the town of Lauder. I settled in this township in the summer of 1832, when this and the adjoining township began to be settled.” Referring to North and South Easthope townships.