You younger descendants of mine will remember this person as, “Grandma Beeching”. You, for sure, must think she is important and certainly, her life is interesting. At first, it had not come to my mind at all, that she would be one of the ten picked. Then one day, my daughter, Susan, said that not long after Grandma Beeching died she had listened to a tape of Grandma telling stories of her life and it had brought tears to her eyes. I think I still have the tape somewhere and hope it will be kept, forever, for this and all generations to come. So, I decided she should be placed in this group.

Maria Josephine Tritsmans was born on September 17, 1891, at Zwijndercht, Belgium, to Franciscus Tritsmans and Maria Clementina Heyman. At age 18, she and her spouse, Jean Baptiste Van den Berg, came to Canada. They first went to a farm near Quinton in southern Saskatchewan to learn how to farm in this land – they had no experience or knowledge of farming or how to do it in this strange land. They had to learn so they could live and take a farm of their own.

At Quinton a son was born that they named Arthur. In a couple of years, they decided they were ready to try it on their own and took a homestead many miles north. Riding a train as far as the end of the railway, at a little store near what is now St. Walburg. There they found somebody who would take them the rest of the way to their land. They were driven by horse drawn wagon to their land and dropped in the bush with baby, “Art” and a trunk holding their few possessions.

On the tape, Maria, so very ably in her own voice, (she never, even in old age, had gotten a good command of English) tells of how frightening it was there, dumped off in the bush with no shelter, not knowing where to find a good place to build a cabin, nobody to talk to and even if there was,  it would be a complete stranger that talked in a language they could hardy understand. Then at dusk the “wolves” (probably coyotes) howled.

Maria tells, how her life went on; using a few hand tools to build and get settled in the log cabin, making improvements, getting a cow, adding more to their home and family when she had a baby girl that they called “Josie”. And then how she carried on when her “old husband” got sick. When he got so bad with no medical assistance, she sold everything to get enough money to take him to the United States. But by then it was too late, and she had to bring him back to die. She got back to her land and cabin with nothing. Neighbors helped and those that had bought her things returned most of them, so she was able to get along. By then Art had grown to be a willing helper.

But it was not all bad. Maria was still young and strong of will, with remarkable courage. She told of setting a net in the nearby river, something that was not legal and almost getting caught when a RCMP officer came by and of trapping skunks and leading them down to the river to drown them and “they never gave off their smell”. She and the children trapped gophers to sell at one cent a tail, to get money enough to pay taxes because she was determined to save her land. There in the open she could sing out at the top of her voice and there was nobody to complain about it. One story she kept secret until later in her life but then enjoyed talking about it. She needed to clear her land of the bush that covered so much of it and found an easy way to do so – the method, someone had told her, was to make a pile of dry grass and leaves, place a lighted candle on it and then place a can over all ensuring she had lots of time to get back home to be far away when the candle burned down to start the bigger fire. If anybody questioned how the fire started, play innocent. She never imagined that anything would go wrong. In this case, she gained her first objective of clearing the bush, but the fire went far beyond her own property and burned some of a neighbor’s outbuildings. As one can imagine, there were many questions asked about how that fire could have been started but nobody ever guessed how it did. For a long time, it was no joke at all, and she would not talk about it but in later years she could tell the story and laugh at herself and her neighbours.

Maria, then a young widow with her two children, continued alone for a short time. There were several young bachelor farmers close by who were willing to help her and to buy her appetizing bread when they found that Maria was a very good cook. “I washed their clothes too” she said. This bit of income helped very much. Eventually a schoolhouse was built, almost three miles away and she had trouble, not just because of the distance for little Josie, but they had no clock to make sure the children arrived on time . Resourceful as ever, a clock was ordered from Eaton’s catalogue. That clock now hangs on my kitchen wall (another item that should be in safe-keeping and treasured always).

One of those bachelor farmers nearby, was a prim, young man, recently returned from the war. His name was Bill Beeching. Bill was eager to help and became not just helpful but interested in Maria herself. On October 21, 1924, Maria and William Edward Beeching were married. “Bill” had about as little experience at farming as Maria had when starting out, and even with their combined farms, they did not prosper very well. But they struggled on and together, raised their combined family of seven children. Thankfully, one of those children was Dorothy, who became my wife and thus ancestor to all our descendants.

The Beechings moved into St. Walburg, the town that had grown up, nearby, where Bill got the job of town administer and policeman, much better suited to him and the family that remained with their parents. They sold the farm; built a house on a lot they bought and spent the remainder of their lives in St. Walburg. Bill died in 1969. When Maria widowed and on her own aged, she spent more of her time with one or the other of her daughters and finally moved into a seniors home near her daughter Helen in North Battleford where she died in 1978. Both Bill and Maria were buried in the cemetery at St. Walburg.