Jimmy Smith's House

This is the house that my grandfather, Arthur Munn was born in on December 25th, 1909, 101 years ago on Christmas. Jimmy Smith was the last person to live in the house and it has been empty since his death in July of 1978. Jimmy was a first cousin to Grampy. Their mothers were sisters. Jimmy's mother was Columbina and Grampy's mother was Sarah Kathryn MacDonald. Their father built the house probably in the 1870's. He was James MacDonald (1842-1928) and his wife was Elizabeth Smith (1840-1922). Grampy took me to the Little Sands Cemetery one time and we found their headstone, and told me, laughing, that his grandmother was the first person he ever saw dead. Not that it was funny, but it seemed to bring close a childhood memory for him.

I vaguely remember visiting the house when Jimmy was still living in it. I recall that he remodeled the kitchen and did a lot of work on the place in the last couple of years of his life. He left the house to the neighbours who have been farming the fields but let the house rot ever since.

I have been to the house many times over the years, starting in 1982, to take photographs of the place, and I now have almost 30 years of it's decay in photos. This photoshoot was October 31, 2010, when David and I were last on the Island. 

I think this tree is all that is holding the house up now, and the roof is bending around it.

I plan on occasionally posting more pictures of the house, in sequence back to 1983.

This split in the wall is at the back. The original house is at the left and the kitchen wing is at the right. They have almost totally separated. In the summer of 2009, Mike, James, Dad, Betty and I visited the house, and Mike and James discovered a newspaper as part of the insulation between the two sections of the house. It was dated 1906, and the paper had a subscription tag with Ira Munn's name on it. The paper had to have been put there at the time of the construction of the kitchen. Ira was Grampy's father, but was not yet married to Sarah Kathryn. Ira grew up next door, and would have been 19 at the time. I guess we can suppose he was helping his future father-in-law James with the project. Below is the discovery in progress.

Most of the outbuildings and barns have completely crumbled

The field behind the house. I have walked this and it goes back across the Confederation Trail all the way to Floating Bridge Road.

Grampy's sister Sadie told me many years ago that the house is the second one on the farm. The family lived in a smaller house that was later converted into a barn when the main house was completed. This pile above is what is left of the first house.

I took the photo below in 1990. Although the floors were already gone, I think now that it probably could have been saved at this point, compared to what I am doing to the house at the River. I will post more photoshoots of the place and add more family info as I go. Of  over 2 centuries all of the family homes in the area, this place and the house at the River are all that is left.