William LEONARD Jukes and Nancy Edna Mills

Leonard met Nancy Mills of Douglas , at an Anglican church picnic in Douglas in 1908 and married her on April 4, 1915 following the death of Nancy’s mother, Nancy Francina (Hanson) Mills. Shortly after their marriage they moved to Plaster Rock, NB where Leonard worked for the Fraser Mills on log drives, cutting trees and in the lumber mill. Three children, Mary, Clifford and Alfred were born in Plaster Rock. By 1927, when my mother Frances MARGARET Adeline Jukes was born the family was living in Edmondston, NB. Leonard was now working for the Fraser Farms, tending cows and delivering milk by horse and cart to families in the areas. Two other children were born in Edmonston, Leonard Jr and Horace before the family left Edmondston and moved to Fredericton Junction, Sunbury County where Leonard found work, running a farm by 1935. Later the family moved to Three Tree Creek where Leonard rented a house and land and made a living for the family by cutting and selling pulp. During the war years Leonard was able to purchase a small house and farm on the Tracy highway where he continued to cut pulp using horses to pull the logs out of the woods. The children including their daughter Margaret worked in the woods peeling pulp. At the end of the war none of Leonard’s sons were interested in working on the farm in Tracy so he sold the farm and purchased a lot of land Nashwaaksis and built a small house at 227 Sunset Drive in 1947.  This is where I grew up. Leonard continued as a night watchman in a nearby mill and later on the John Wilkins Farm. He also worked as a flagger during the construction of the first Oromocto by-pass in the mid-fifties

Leonard was a great fan of horse racing and spent many happy hours in the horse barns and watching the races at the Fredericton Raceway. As a child I remember the smell of his old red plaid jacket when he returned from the horse barn and knew that those pockets contained pink peppermints for the horses which he occasionally offered to us if we begged and pulled on his pocket. He looked forward the Fredericton Exhibition each year and annually donated a case of canned milk to the Anglican Church Canteen each year.

While Leonard was busy making a living for his family, Nancy worked hard at home. She was an avid reader of the Family Herald and a member of the Doubleday Book club. She was extremely resourceful, making her own dresses by creating paper patterns. She made quilts from old coats and other scraps of materials. I remember her crazy quilts which were quilted together using bright red knots of yarn scattered everywhere. She made wonderful seasonal preserves including crab apple, chokecherry, strawberry, blueberry jams and jelly. She crocheted beautiful doilies and knitted plenty of socks and mittens over the years for the family. She kept many scrapbooks of poems, obituaries and recipes over the years.  Before she died in 1960 she taught me how to knit.

Our family was still traveling to Three Tree Creek in the late 1950s to pick blueberries and high bush cranberries and I have many happy memories as a child of these trips as well as sugar cookies, Johnny cake, bread and baked beans made by both my mother and my grandmother.

My grandmother was one of those women who had no money of her own, save for whatever my grandfather chose to give her for groceries from time to time. He controlled the purse strings. Imagine her sense of freedom when she began receiving the old-age pension in 1956. She began taking the bus to Saint John to visit her daughter, Mary, and began visiting and spending time with her grandchildren in Fredericton and Saint John. I remember the red plaid scarf hats that she purchased for me and my sister Grace in the fall of 1957. Her life definitely changed during that time. Unfortunately she died of a massive coronary while visiting her daughter Mary, in 1960.

After my grandmothers death, my grandfather moved between his children’s homes until his death in 1973. It was as if he was never content in one place after Nancy died.

(Footnote) Brennan, Grace. Interview of Margaret Jukes Brennan for Gerontology 201, STU)