Settlement : New Communities : Obadiah Place

Legacy, Alberta's Cultural Heritage Magazine – Summer 2000

 Fixing Obadiah Place

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As the Society sees the house as part of the whole farm setting, they will also restore the chicken coop and smoke house and reconstruct the barn. Settlers had to wrest their homesteads from dense bush, mixed forest of spruce, poplar, willow, and horses or oxen when available. "It was discouraging for some of the black families, because they weren’t used to the climate or the changes in the weather. Some stayed as little as a year or two and went back because they couldn’t handle it," says Shirley Bowen. Despite the challenges, 75 of the original 95 black homesteaders in the Amber Valley area cleared enough land and stayed on it long enough to receive their homesteads. Hardship fostered cooperation. Neighbours used neighbours’ teams of oxen and horses; later, tractors and combines made the rounds.

Large gardens provided food for families, grain and hay fields for livestock. They kept chickens and cattle for food. With rifles and shotguns, they hunted "rabbits, bear, and moose, prairie chicken, Hungarian partridge," says Norma Jean Bowen. Norma Jean and Shirley, two of Obadiah’s four surveying children, and their cousin Ruby Bowen, recall berry-picking expeditions from their childhood.

"We would go out in teams for picking blueberries," Shirley begins. "There would be four or five families in a team. They would take a lunch, go in the morning and stay all day with their kids. That was a blast, for the kid. They’d take washtubs, and you had to pick your berries clean, because your mom wasn’t about to spend hours picking the weeds out of them. She dept pretty close tabs on how many pails of berries you put in there. But we ran around in the bushes and ate a lot—"

"—and the mosquitos!" Ruby adds.

"—and ran along with the team of horses. It was just like a picnic for us, but our quota for the blueberry season, for my home alone, was to have 100 quarts of canned blueberries." The system was worked out for various wild fruits to make certain the family had fruit for the winter.

The men took jobs away form home during the early years. Wills Bowen worked on the construction of the Banff Springs Hotel and on the road gangs that built the Lac La Biche and Athabasca Trails. Other job opportunities included building railroad lines, mining, helping other farmers, hauling freight for the Hudson’s Bay Company or Revillon Frères to outposts like Wabasca, Fort McMurrray, and Fort Chipewyan.

Obadiah Place will reflect its community. By moving buildings onto the site or rebuilding structures like the original ones, the Friends of Obadiah Place Society will suggest to visitors a sense of the community that once thrived there. By 1913, a school was begun, and a nondenominational church was started the following year. By 1931, a when Pine Creek became Amber Valley and a post office was established, the area boasted a small stare and a new, two-room school, serving more than 300 black residents.

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last updated 18-02-01