Sunday 14 August 2022

Leonid Solovyov —the eternal wanderer

 

8 Apr 2018

Leonid Solovyov —the eternal wanderer

from https://vk.com/wall-89997328_2318?lang=en

also: https://biography-life.ru/art/225-leonid-solovev-biografiya-vechnyy-strannik.html

9 April Day of Remembrance of the Writer L. V. Solovyov

 

Not everyone knows this writer, his name is rarely put on a par with the classics of Soviet literature. But when readers hear about Khoja Nasreddin, their eyes light up: we know—we know! So, he wrote about Nasreddin - Leonid Solovyov.

 

The rattling wagons, the merchants calling for buyers, the smell of spices, the scorching sun... He remembered everything as it is now, but it was almost a quarter of a century. He will never forget the warmth of the East, which promises peace and quiet. Leaning against the cold wall of the prison cell, Leonid recalled his biography: childhood, youth, youth. How much is left in the past and how much is still to come.

 

Leonid Solovyov – childhood

The biography of Leni Solovyov began with adventures. He was born in 1906 in Tripoli (Lebanon), although his father and mother were Russian. They were sent to the East on an educational mission. Both worked as teachers, taught Russian in schools.

 

When the boy was 3 years old, the family returned home. However, a calm measured life did not work: the Civil War and the famine that followed it knocked the ground from under his feet. They remembered Uzbekistan — in those years a haven for many Russian refugees. So Solovyov Lenya ended up in Kokand.

 

The boy came to this land and fell in love with it. Soon he freely communicated with traders at the bazaar, and played with local children. Although the family was not rich, Lenya grew up happy. The railway technical school where he studied, Solovyov did not like. At an opportunity, he immediately ran away from classes and rushed to friends. His father, having learned about this, decided that the son became independent and could take care of himself. A bundle with things, some money came to him and he was on his way.

 

Lena was happy with the unexpected freedom. Traveling around Turkestan, he gave children Russian lessons, helped local residents on the farm, painted signs for shops. He was paid for his work — not much, but enough for food. After all, the most important food is not the one in the plate, but the one in the head. How many things have accumulated there: wise conversations and fleeting conversations, funny cases and stories ... It was impossible to keep them in.

 

Leonid Solovyov - a biography of his personal life

 

It all started in the local newspapers. The editors willingly accepted lively funny sketches of Solovyov for publication. Already at the age of 17, he became a correspondent of the newspaper Pravda Vostochny, popular in Tashkent. And when one of the stories received the second prize of the magazine “World of Adventures”, Lena finally believed in his talent and went to conquer Moscow.

 

In the capital Soloviev entered the Institute of Cinematography at the literary and screenwriting faculty. The course was accelerated, and two years later, in 1932, the young man received a diploma. Time passed quickly, but the memories remained for a long time. It was at the institute that Lena met Tamara Sedykh, who would later call the main woman in her biography - life. The young people decided to get married. For Tamara it was the first marriage, and for Leonid - the second. In distant Canibadam (Kondibodom), he tried to start a family, but his personal life did not take place, the marriage quickly broke up.

 

Tamara, Tomochka, at first lived well: love helped smooth out the sharp corners in the relationship and gave an incentive to work. But then it was not enough: Solovyov as a creative person constantly needed nourishment - first alcohol, then women. The wife was patient, silent, and he hoped: maybe it will cost ...

 

Leonid Solovyov - payback for frankness

 

When Leonid picked up a printed copy of his first book - the story "Nomad", almost wept. It was followed by others, but soon Solovyov realized: he is best able to write about what he personally experienced and felt. Scenes of his life in Uzbekistan immediately surfaced in his head. This is what he can tell people.

 

Leonid, an admirer of oriental tales, had a favorite character of Khoja Nasreddin: smart, insightful and obtuse. It would be nice to have a conversation on his behalf. But only the writer decided to make his hero younger, more cunning and fun. So, in 1940, the book “Troublemaker” was published. Solovyov only had time to receive laudatory reviews: readers liked the oriental flavor, humor and moral background of the work. His friends also praised him. Lena often stayed up late with them, discussing plans for the future and swearing at what the light is the present – many did not like the Stalinist government then.

 

Solovyov did not like to be silent at all and was excessively frank. During the war he worked as a war correspondent - sent essays from the front under the whistle of bullets and explosions of shells. Then he himself joined the ranks, received a severe shell shock, and therefore believed that he had every right to say what brave soldiers in our country and what cowardly commanders.

 

Maybe because of these harsh words, or maybe because of the criticism of the leader in behind-the-scenes conversations in September 1946, Solovyov ended up in the Lubyanka. He was considered a dangerous man, opposing the authorities, and was accused of terrorism. The writer spent nine months in prison awaiting sentencing, without admitting his guilt. “You better agree with everything,” his cellmates advised him. “They’re going to jail you anyway, but maybe they’ll send you away.”

 

Soloviev confessed, but... They sent him far away to the Dubrovlag camp in Mordovia for 10 years. At first they wanted to send to Kolyma, but Solovyov caught up in time. "Leave it here - I will write the second part of the story about Khodja Nasreddin," he went all-in. The writer was left in Mordovia, allowing in his free time to engage in literary creativity.

 

Leonid Solovyov - to freedom!

 

Four years later, the writer had 735 manuscript pages of the story. He called it “The Enchanted Prince.” As if his main treasure, Solovyov took the sheets to the head of the camp for acquaintance. He did not comment, and did not give back the manuscript. For three years it lay in his desk, in the fourth year the manuscript was returned — Stalin died. Paperwork delayed Solovyov in the camp for another year.

 

On the threshold of the Moscow apartment of the former convict, he met his wife Tamara, but not as he expected.

 

- “Here are your things, my strength is no longer to endure!”

 

At the feet of Solovyov, a heavy bag fell. Tamara reminded him of everything — women, alcohol, and shame for his exile to the camps.

 

There was no place to live for Leonid Vasilyevich, the only refuge was in Leningrad, with his sister Zina. She accepted reluctantly, "The Closest!" Soon Solovyov met a woman who, as he admitted, understood his soul. It was the teacher of literature Maria Kudymovskaya. After the wedding, he moved in with her.

 

Leonid Solovyov - memories ...

 

Life was slowly improving: Soloviev began to work on writing and finalizing scripts on Lenfilm, he was restored in the Writers’ Union, both stories about Khoja Nasreddin were published together. Already a new generation of readers remained delighted with the dilogy. Many people wonder what is behind this work. And Solovyov sat down to write the Book of Youth, in which he wanted to tell about himself everything that he had kept in memory for so long. But the usual craving for fiction interfered with the narrative. People who personally knew Leonid Vasilyevich, after reading, unequivocally stated: “A lot of what was written was not reality...”

 

The author was forgiven for this slight deviation from reality. Even though he was only 55 years old, he felt the end was near. The stroke paralyzed part of the body, reminded of itself and a long-standing concussion ... The only thing that remained for Leonid Vasilyevich Solovyov was long wanderings through the back alleys of his memory. Who knows what will happen and what will be true...

 

Author of the biography: Sasha Tumanova

http://www.biography-life.ru/art/225-leonid-solovev-b..

#ЛеонидСоловьев #писатель #литература #творчество

See original

 

Leonid Solovyov 3rd Biography

 

Leonid Solovyov

From: https://www.vounb.ru/?option=view_post&id=1638

 

... The most curious fate was with Leonid Solovyov, the author of the famous dilogy about Khoja Nasreddin. Suffice it to say that he wrote the second book about Khoja Nasreddin in prison - and he spent 8 years out of the 10 assigned to him in the camp. - and absolutely legally, in the daytime. He served his camp duties as a night watchman.

This year, August 19, marks the 115th anniversary of the birth of Leonid Vasilyevich Solovyov, a writer and screenwriter.

Very prone to hoaxes, Leonid Solovyov, however, has a biography based on solid facts. Some of them will be discussed today.

Leonid Solovyov was born in the Lebanese city of Tripoli in the family of an assistant inspector of the North Syrian schools of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society - the history of this organization is interesting, but this is a completely separate issue. From two years and subsequent years, the future writer lived already in the Russian Empire and in the USSR - in 1909 the family returned to Russia and settled in the Samara province. When the Empire collapsed and famine gripped Soviet Russia, in 1921 the Solovyov family moved to the Uzbek city of Kokand. There, Solovyov graduated from school a year later, entered the Mechanical College, but after studying two courses, he left it. For some time he worked as a repairman on the railway, taught at the school of the oil industry.

Leonid Solovyov began to publish in 1923 in the newspaper Turkestanskaya Pravda (hereinafter Pravda Vostoka) and until 1930 worked as a special correspondent for this newspaper. He distinguished himself at the competition, which was announced by the Moscow magazine "World of Adventures". The story "On the Syr-Darya Shore" appeared in this magazine in 1927.

During trips around the Fergana region in 1924–1925, Solovyov collected and studied folklore. During these years, he recorded songs and stories about Lenin, which were included in the collection Lenin and the Works of the Peoples of the East (1930). According to the literary critic Yevgeny Kalmanovsky, “all the works included there were composed by Solovyov himself, thus creating a folklore and literary hoax.” Most likely, it was so, but nevertheless, the expedition of the Tashkent Institute of Language and Literature in 1933 confirmed the folklore source of the songs, the "original texts" of several songs in the Uzbek and Tajik languages ​​were presented.

In 1930, Solovyov arrived in Moscow and entered the literary and screenwriting department of the Institute of Cinematography, graduating in 1932. In the same 1932, his first book, the story "Nomad" was published - about the life of nomads during the years of the revolution, and two years later - a collection of stories and short stories "The Campaign of the "Winner"".

In 1939, the novel "Troublemaker" was published - the first book of Leonid Solovyov's most famous work - "The Tale of Khoja Nasreddin". In 1935, according to the scenario of Solovyov, the film "The End of the Station" (Mezhrabpomfilm) was shot.

 

It is curious that the author dedicated The Tale of Khoja Nasreddin to the memory of his friend Mumin Adilov. Immediately, in the preface, he briefly told his heroic fate. However, the folklorist, writer Dmitry Moldavsky, in his book Comrade Laughter, argued that this dedication is another hoax of the author. All searches on Uzbek soil for any information about Mumin Adilov, that he really existed, turned out to be in vain.

As for Khoja Nasreddin himself, this, of course, is a well-known folklore character, from which Nightingale made a 35-year-old man full of strength and energy, while the canonical Khoja Nasreddin is an old man.

In collaboration with the writer and screenwriter Viktor Vitkovich, Solovyov wrote the scripts for the films Nasreddin in Bukhara (1943) and The Adventures of Nasreddin (1946). The popularity of "Nasreddin" was very high, as evidenced even by the fact that the first film was shot during the difficult war years. The book was repeatedly reprinted, and one reprint occurred even after the arrest of the author on a political article. Published in translation into French, Dutch, Danish, Hebrew and other languages.

During the Great Patriotic War, Solovyov was a war correspondent for the Krasny Fleet newspaper. Front-line stories and essays of the writer were included in the collections "Big Exam" (1943) and "Sevastopol Stone" (1944). According to the story "Ivan Nikulin - Russian Sailor" (1943), he created a screenplay for the film of the same name (1944).

A year after the Great Victory, in September 1946, the front-line soldier and order bearer Solovyov was arrested on charges of preparing a terrorist act. The writer was kept in pre-trial detention for ten months. As a basis for the arrest, the investigation presented the testimony of the “anti-Soviet group of writers” previously arrested in 1944 - Sergei Bondarin, Semyon (Avraham) Gekht and Leonid Ulin, who admitted that L. V. Solovyov, whom they knew, had “terrorist sentiments” against Stalin. The file contains examples of the writer's anti-Soviet statements: collective farms have not justified themselves, literature is degrading, there has been a stagnation of creative thought. In prison, Solovyov pleaded guilty to the crime he was accused of, wanting to break out of the dungeon as soon as possible and get into the camp. The verdict of the Special Meeting of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of June 9, 1947 read:

“I only thought about how to quickly escape from the remand prison somewhere - even to the camp. It made no sense to resist in such conditions, especially since the investigator told me: "There will be no trial of you, do not hope. We will let your case go through a Special Conference." In addition, with my confessions, I often paid off the investigator, as it were, from his insistent demands to give accusatory evidence against my acquaintances - writers and poets, among whom I did not know the criminals. The investigator told me more than once: “Here you block everyone with your broad back, but they don’t really block you,” Solovyov later wrote in a petition for rehabilitation.

The writer was sent to the Mordovian Dubravlag, where the head of the camp, who probably read The Troublemaker with a smile, allowed him to engage in literary work as an exception. In May 1948, Solovyov wrote to his parents and sister Zinaida that he did not need to send anything but paper: “I must be a dervish - nothing more ... That's where, it turns out, I need to save myself in order to work well - to the camp! .. No temptations and a life conducive to wisdom. I sometimes smile at this myself.

The story "The Enchanted Prince", the second part of "The Tale of Khoja Nasreddin", was written on the basis of the script for the film "The Adventures of Nasreddin", and completed by the end of 1950. The Charmed Prince is very different from the first book, it is written in a different, restrainedly sad style.

After Stalin's death, relatives, through the chairman of the board of the Union of Writers of the USSR, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Alexander Fadeev, petitioned to mitigate Solovyov's fate. He was released under an amnesty in June 1954.

Since 1954 Solovyov lived in Leningrad. In "Lenizdat" in 1956 was published in two books "The Tale of Khoja Nasreddin" - the publication was a huge success. Continuing to work in the field of cinematography, Solovyov wrote, in particular, the script for the film The Overcoat (1959) based on the story of the same name by N. V. Gogol. In 1961, parts of L. Solovyov's new work "The Book of Youth" began to appear in print for the first time, this work was published as a separate edition in 1963 under the title "From the "Book of Youth"".

The writer died at the age of 55 on April 9, 1962 in Leningrad. He was buried at the Red Cemetery, Narvskaya path.

We add that Leonid Solovyov was married three times and had no children in any of the marriages. For the first time, Leonid Vasilievich married very early, back in Central Asia, in Kanibadam, Elizaveta Petrovna Belyaeva. But their paths soon parted.

The Moscow family was Tamara Alexandrovna Sedykh. According to cursory eyewitness accounts, their union was extremely uneven. The writer who returned from prison was not accepted by his wife or her relatives in the house.

In April 1955 Solovyov married Maria Markovna Kudymovskaya, a teacher of the Russian language.

Yuri Olesha recalled in his diary: “I met Leonid Solovyov, who had returned from exile. Tall, old, lost his teeth. Recognized me immediately, unconditionally. Nicely dressed. This, he says, was bought by a man who owes him. I took it to a department store and bought it. He says about life there that he did not feel bad - not because he was placed in any special conditions, but because inside, as he says, he was not in exile. "I took it as retribution for the crime I committed against one woman" - the first, as he put it, "real" wife. "Now I believe, I will get something."

“The crime against a woman,” which Solovyov spoke about, he himself touched upon in his testimony during the investigation of 1946: “I broke up with my wife because of my drunkenness and betrayal, and was left alone. I loved my wife very much, and breaking up with her was a disaster for me.

From the memoirs of Ekaterina Vasilievna’s brother: “By nature, Leonid was a visionary and a dreamer and remained so all his life”; “... he often saw people not as they were, but as they seemed to him. Therefore, I often made mistakes ... "

 

In preparing the publication, materials of the VOUNB named after V.I. M Gorky

 

https://avidreaders.ru/author/solovev-leonid-vasilevich/ looks interesting…

 

Solovyov Leonid

Life of Leonid Solovyov

Life of Leonid Solovyov

The childhood and youth of the writer were spent in sunny places, almost like resorts. Leonid Vasilyevich Solovyov was born on August 19, 1906 in the city of Tripoli in Palestine (now called Lebanon). His parents - Vasily Andreevich and Anna Alekseevna - were there, as they say, on a long-term business trip, they taught at a Russian-language school for Arabs. They met in Palestine and got married there. And that's how they got abroad. Vasily and Anna received their education with state money and worked in Palestine "by distribution". By the time of Leonid's birth, his father was a collegiate adviser, assistant inspector of the Northern Syrian Schools of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society. In 1909 the family returned to Russia. At home, Solovyov Sr. worked in different places. So until 1918 they lived in Buguruslan and at the Pokhvistnevo station of the Samara-Zlatoust railway, and since 1921 in Kokand. In Uzbekistan, Leonid graduated from high school and entered a mechanical college (but did not finish it). For some time he taught at the FZU of the oil industry. Solovyov's autobiographical "Book of Youth" written in 1960-61 is about those places ...

Leonid began writing and publishing in newspapers back in Kokand. He also wrote for the Tashkent Pravda Vostoka. In 1927, his story "On the Syrdarya Shore" was published in the Moscow magazine "World of Adventures". And in 1930, Leonid came to Moscow and entered the literary and screenwriting department of VGIK (Institute of Cinematography). In just two years, by June 1932, he graduated from the institute course, there is a corresponding entry about this in the archive of the institute.

Solovyov began to write short stories and stories about the present, about new buildings, about working people, about Central Asia. In 1935-1936, they started talking about the young writer, for example, articles were published about him in the magazines Krasnaya Nov, Literary Study. Here is a quote from Krasnaya Nov, A. Lezhnev, "About L. Solovyov": "Soloviev's stories are built around one uncomplicated idea, like the pulp of a cherry around a bone", "... his stories retain an intermediate form between everyday feuilleton and a story" .

At the age of 33, Leonid Vasilievich Solovyov wrote "The Tale of Khoja Nasreddin: Troublemaker" and became a famous writer. At the same time, official recognition took place. Solovyov was taken entirely. He talked about his last book, The Tale of Khoja Nasreddin.

During the Great Patriotic War, Solovyov was a war correspondent for the Krasny Fleet newspaper. Sevastopol stone". And Solovyov also worked "in his specialty" - films were staged according to his scripts.

After the war, in September 1946, Solovyov was repressed. He spent ten months in pre-trial detention and was forced to confess to the false charge of "planning a terrorist act against the head of state." The writer was sent to the Dubravlag camp: Mordovian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Potma station, Yavas post office, mailbox LK 241/1Z. According to the memoirs of the prisoner A.V.Usikov, Solovyov was selected as part of the Kolyma stage, but he wrote to the head of the camp, General Sergeenko, that if he was left here, he would take up the second book about Khoja Nasreddin. And the general ordered Solovyov to leave.

The Enchanted Prince was written in the camp. Parents (they lived then in Stavropol) and sisters sent the paper. Solovyov worked as a night watchman in a workshop where wood was dried, then as a night attendant. Such night positions gave Solovyov the opportunity to concentrate on the book. And at the end of 1950, "The Enchanted Prince" was completed and sent to the authorities. The fate of the manuscript was not heard for a long time, and the author, of course, was worried. In mid-1953 he was transferred to Omsk. Finally, in June 1954, he was found not guilty and released.

Here is how the writer Yu.K. Olesha (Central Archive of Literature and Art (TsGALI)) describes the first days of Solovyov in Moscow: “July 13, I met Leonid Solovyov, who had returned from exile. Tall, old, (...) Decently dressed. This, he says, was bought by a man who owes him. I went to the department store and bought it. He says about life "there" that he did not feel bad, not because he was placed in some special conditions, but because inside, as he says, he was not in exile. I took it as retribution for a crime I had committed against one woman, my first and, as he put it, real wife. But now I believe, I will get something..."".

Leonid's wife's name was Elizaveta Belyaeva. They got married in their youth, in Kanibadam, and soon divorced. Then he married Tamara Sedykh in Moscow. According to the testimonies of acquaintances, the marriage was not smooth, and after being released from the camp, Tamara did not want to see Leonid at all and even returned all his letters unopened. Leonid had no children from either his first or second wife.

From Moscow, Leonid Vasilyevich went to Leningrad, to his sister Zina (the older sister, Katya, lived until the end of her days in Central Asia, in Namangan). In Leningrad, in April 1955, Solovyov married Maria Kudymovskaya, a teacher of the Russian language. They lived on Kharkovskaya street, building 2, apartment 16.

At the beginning of his writing life in Leningrad, Solovyov was supported by the front-line poet Mikhail Dudin, and, of course, by other benevolent people. And from the Leningrad literary environment, Leonid Vasilyevich kept a little aloof.

Life got better. The Enchanted Prince was published (in the same book as The Troublemaker, Lenizdat). The book was a huge success. Solovyov again began to work for the cinema. Wrote "The Book of Youth".

He died April 9, 1962. He was buried at the Red Cemetery in Avtov.

Sister Katya Solovieva recalled: "By nature, Leonid was a visionary and a dreamer, and he remained so for the rest of his life. ... He often saw people not as they were, but as he wanted them to be." (words and facts from the article by E. Kalmanovsky are used)

 

From: https://avidreaders.ru/read-book/zhizn-leonida-soloveva.html

Saturday 22 January 2022

Jim Charles and the Gold Mine

 Jim Charles and the Gold Mine

By Thomas H. Raddall

 

Legends of Jim Charles and his “secret gold mine” still persist in Queens County, all garbled and some absolutely false. He is described as “a bad Indian” — “a bloody murderer” — and so on. People have sought for his “mine” all over the Caledonia district, and especially about the shores of Kejimkujik[1] Lake. The full truth about Jim Charles was known to two men only. One was a New Grafton woodsman farmer named David Lewis, the other was the Rev. Clayton Albert Munro, a native of Maitland Bridge. Both were friends of Jim Charles, and he confided in them. Lewis died without revealing the secret of the “mine”. Munro, after serving in various Methodist pastorates in Nova Scotia, retired in Bermuda, where he died in 1950 at the age of 86.

Traces of gold were first discovered in Queens County in the 1850’s. The Queens County Historical Society has an old share certificate, dated 1854, of a company that was formed to exploit it. The company went bankrupt soon afterwards. Nobody now knows where this mine was, if indeed the company dug a mine at all.

The next discovery came in 1884, when a farm hand named Maguire, digging a hole for a fence post on the farm of George Parker at South Brookfield, found a quartz seam with a pocket containing some nuggets, one of considerable size.

This started a gold rush. Men poured in from everywhere. Some were experienced miners and prospectors. Most were not. They came from places as far apart as Newfoundland and Colorado, and they included a number of American adventurers who swaggered about the streets of Caledonia wearing cartridge belts and revolvers in the fashion of the wild West. Slick promoters floated mining companies and raised great sums of money, chiefly in the United States. The first mine was dug on the Parker land. Others followed, in various places in the region of South Brookfield and Caledonia, and Molega and Whiteburn.

Caledonia, a little crossroads hamlet of farmers and lumbermen, became the bustling centre. Two hotels appeared, one of them called The Golden Home. There were half a dozen busy bars. Miners and prospectors put up shacks and tents.

A printer named Banks moved in from Annapolis, bringing his press on a wagon, and started a weekly newspaper called the Caledonia Gold Hunter. (Oddly enough, the newspaper survived long after the gold rush was only a memory; and the Banks family continued to print it, under the same title, until when their plant was destroyed by fire.)

All in all it was an amazing scene in a hitherto quiet Nova Scotia countryside, and it lasted about ten years. A mine called the Libby was the biggest and most successful, but even that went bankrupt at last. The gold-bearing seams were narrow and irregular. Most of them went deep and were expensive to work. The necessary steam engines were fired with hardwood, cut by gangs of loggers working at boom-time wages. The nearest railways was at Annapolis, whence all machinery and supplies had to be hauled by wagon over something like forty miles of narrow road through the forest, climbing over the South Mountain en route, and later New Germany. The gold did not pay the cost of mining, and that was the end of it.

These gold-bearing seams, wandering in their thin spidery fashion, had a peculiar characteristic. In some places one crossed or joined with another; and where this joint occurred there was usually a pocket containing free gold in the form of dust or nuggets. Such a pocket, the one found by Maguire near the surface, started the whole rush. The slick mine-promoters could take ore samples from one of these seam-joints, send them to the government assay office in Halifax, and get a fine rich report to show the gullible.

I give these details of the Caledonia gold rush for a reason. In considering the strange affair of Jim Charles it is important to remember the excitement of the times, the greedy fever of the gold-seekers, and the number of desperadoes who came with them. Jim Charles had good reason to fear. He had found gold himself, years before the Caledonia discovery, and for years he had been taking little bags of nuggets and dust to the bank in Annapolis and sometimes to a bank in Liverpool. He would never say where or how he got it.

In the summer of 1944 I had a visitor. He was the Rev. Clayton Albert Munro, born at Maitland Bridge, Annapolis County, in 1864. I had never met him before, indeed I had not known of his existance. He had started life on a small farm, and earned money for his education by working in the woods as a logger and river-driver. He entered the service of the Methodist Church as a probationer, and eventually held pastorates in Annapolis, Chester, Guysborough, Lockeport and elsewhere in Nova Scotia. In 1925 Pine Hill College awarded him an honorary D.D. to mark his long service to the Church. A few years later he retired with his wife and daughter to Bermuda; and now, at the age of 80, he had come back for one last look at the scenes of his youth. (He died and was buried in Bermuda in October 1950.)

I beheld a grey man of medium height, moving with unusual vigor for that age, and I found his mind and memory as keen as that of a youth. He had read some of my stories and came to chat about bygone days in the Queens County woods. After a time he asked, “Do you know the story of an Indian named Jim Charles and his secret gold mine?”

I said I’d heard a number of legends about him, but I supposed that no one would ever know the truth. Mr. Munro said, “I know the truth about him, and if you like you can take it down.” So I got pencil and paper. This is what he told me:-

Jim Charles was a Micmac who lived on the point in Kejimkujik Lake where the so-called “Kedgie” Club and cottages are now. He and his squaw Lizzie cultivated a little vegetable plot, and Jim earned money as a guide to sportsmen in the fishing and hunting seasons. My family knew him well; he often called at our house on his travels, and my father and I often saw him when we went to Kejimkujik.

Jim was not only an excellent guide, he was quiet and courteous, and sportsmen from Annapolis, like Judge Ritchie and others, made a point of engaging him on their fishing and hunting expeditions. Some time in the l860’s, when I was a baby, Jim Charles found gold somewhere in the wooded wilderness beyond Kejimkujik.

He showed some of it to Ritchie. It was alluvial gold in the form of small nuggets. Ritchie took a sample home with him and had it assayed quietly, probably somewhere in the States. He told Jim not to breathe a word of his discovery, but to work the deposit secretly, bringing out a little at a time. Jim used to send it into Annapolis concealed in little tubs of butter, shipping it by the mail coach.

Ritchie used to dispose of the gold, returning the cash to Jim. This part of my story is hearsay of course, told to me by my mother when I was a boy in the teens. I believe it to be correct.

After some years Jim grew bolder, bringing out larger quantities of gold. And he began to spend the money recklessly. He bought a good carriage and a trotting horse. Eventually he had one of his sportsman friends order for him a silver-mounted harness in the States. He bought fine clothes for himself and Lizzie. He had a love for fine watches and fancy chains, and often had three or four on his person at one time, when he and Lizzie drove into Caledonia in their carriage, with the horse in its expensive harness, and Lizzie sitting up proudly in her fine gown and beaded Indian cap, they were quite a sight. By the year I870 everyone knew that Jim Charles had found gold somewhere. He was watched, and men tried to follow him when he set off on his lone expeditions, but Jim always managed to elude them.

Not far from Jim’s place at Kejimkujik was a small farm kept by another Micmac, Peter Glode. Glode and his squaw were good enough people, but they had a daughter whose morals were a bit loose. A wandering white ne’er-do-well named Jim Hamilton, said to have deserted a ship in Liverpool, N. S., struck up an acquaintance with the Glode girl and eventually moved in to live with the Glode family. He soon learned of Jim Charles and his “gold mine”. He tried to follow him a number of times but had to give it up. One day in the 1870’s Hamilton, well primed with rum, went to Jim’s house and threatened him and Lizzie, demanding to know the secret. He followed this up with blows, and Jim Charles struck back. There was a fearful struggle in the little shack. Jim was then about 45, and Hamilton far younger and stronger. At last in desperation Jim caught up his gun and struck Hamilton on the head with the butt. Hamilton fell and died in a space of minutes.

Jim Charles and Lizzie now had something worse to frighten them — the white men’s law. One of Jim’s friends was a Caledonia merchant named Harlow, who was also a magistrate. Jim hurried away to Caledonia, dashed into the store, and cried “Mister Harlow! Mister Harlow! I just killed Jim Hamilton. Save me! Save me!”

Harlow, a kindly and sensible man, calmed Jim down. There were no police in the country districts in those days, of course. The administration of law was a free-and-easy matter. Harlow called a magistrate’s court, heard the evidence of Jim and Lizzie, and of the Glodes. At the end of it he set Jim free. Most people agreed with his verdict, feeling that Hamilton had got what was coming to him. But there were a few who thereafter pointed out Jim Charles as a murderer never brought to justice.

(The family of Clayton Munro were descended from William Burke, the pioneer settler in North Queens, who spoke Micmac and was very influential with the Indians. The Munros themselves, always friendly to the Indians, had a good deal of the same influence.)

My family now tried to persuade Jim to take out a legal mining lease, covering the site of his gold, wherever it was. It would protect his rights, and at the same time it would end the spying and persecution of men like Hamilton. But Jim shook his head stubbornly and said, “Bad luck for Injun show white men where is gold.”

Soon after this Lizzie died. In their middle age, being childless, Jim and Lizzie had adopted a half-breed girl named Madeleine. After Lizzie’s death Jim married Madeleine, and they had one child, a son. Jim continued to market his gold through the banks in Annapolis and Liverpool.

One day in 1884 a tragic accident occurred in Kejimkujik Lake near Jim Charles’ Point. Three hunters —Gideon Burrell, Stewart Ruggles and a man named Stoddard — set out across the lake in a small bark canoe. The water was rough, the canoe capsized, and all three were drowned. Almost at once malicious tongues began to wag. Soon there was a story that Jim Charles had shot at the men with a rifle, hitting one or more of them, and so causing the canoe to capsize. It was a lie, of course. The bodies were recovered some time afterward, and they bore no trace of wounds. But the story persisted amongst those who had always held Jim a murderer. Some openly accused him.

Jim was badly frightened. He was getting old now. And now that gold had been discovered at South Brookfield the woods were full of prospectors, many of them rough characters from American mining camps. He dared not go to his own secret “mine” any more. In fact he hardly dared to set foot outside his shack.

He had spent his money recklessly in the years gone by. He had nothing now but the expensive watches, the fancy harness and the rest of it. After a time he had to sell these to buy food.

Some years before he died, a false story appeared in a Halifax newspaper to the effect that the notorious Indian, Jim Charles, had died, and had made a death-bed confession to the murder of Stoddard, Burrell and Ruggles. I had a church in Guysborough County at the time. I wrote home at once, to ask if it was true. The answer was that Jim Charles was alive, though very poor, and that the story was a bit of imaginative malice on the part of someone in the Caledonia district.

Not long after this another man named Hamilton turned up at Kejimkujik. He was no relation to the dead Jim Hamilton, so far as anybody knew, but he went to Jim Charles’ shack, told the old Indian that he was going to be arrested for the murder of the three hunters, and proposed, “Show me where your gold mine is, and I’ll get you off.” Jim was terribly alarmed, but he clung to his secret. However, after much brooding, he made his way to the farm of a man named Lewis, whom he trusted. He had come to a decision. So long as he kept his secret to himself the spying and the persecution would continue. He dared not go near his mine — and he needed money badly. The solution was to share his secret with a white man, a friend he could trust. Lewis was such a man; moreover he was active and resolute, not the sort that the shifty characters of the Caledonia “rush” would dare to trifle with.

Lewis agreed to take out a mining claim in his own name and Jim’s. The next thing was to visit the spot, measure off the claim and drive the stakes. He and Jim slipped away across Kejimkujik Lake in a canoe. It proved to be a long journey. All the men who had been beating the bushes about the shores of Kejimkujik in search of Jim Charles’ gold were wasting their time. The way led by portage to Mountain Lake, thence to Pescawess Lake, thence by the Shelburne River through Beverley Lake and Pine Lake to the very source. Thence by a rough and toilsome portage to Oakland Lake, the source of the Tusket River, which flows in the opposite direction, towards the western end of Nova Scotia.

Lewis was astonished and amused. The secret of Jim Charles’ gold mine was that it wasn’t on the Mersey watershed at all. It was on the Tusket! At last Jim said, “Soon now.” They were getting far down the Tusket towards the present village of Kemptville. Suddenly they heard an odd sound ahead. It was faint at first, and old Jim looked puzzled. It grew louder as they came around a bend and saw men, and buildings, and the smoke of a steam engine.

Old Jim had kept his secret too long. His mine had been discovered by prospectors working up the Tusket River, and now there was a mill on the spot. What he had found was a large and rich pocket of free gold at a spot where two seams joined, and the junction came at a point that was actually part of the streambed. The stuff had caught his eyes, shining in the shallow water. He must have cleaned out most of this alluvial gold, but there was enough left to catch the notice of the Tusket prospectors, and from that they had gone on to mine the actual seams. It was the Kemptville mine, which ran successfully for many years.

When they returned to Kejimkujik, Lewis and Jim Charles decided to keep mum about the whole thing. Who would believe that Jim’s famous mine was on the Tusket, or that it was now being fully exploited by an organized mining company?

(Here ends quotation from Rev. Dr. C. A. Munro)

Record of the N.S. Dep’t. of Mines and Forests shows that:-

Gold was discovered at Kemptville, Yarmouth County, in 1881, by James and Joseph Reeves. In 1885 a crusher began to operate, and for three years very high grade ore was crushed. In the year 1885 the mine produced 624 ounces of gold. In following the seam the mine produced less rich ore, and never again achieved the profit of 1885. Nevertheless it continued running, with some interruptions, for many years. It appears to have closed down finally in 1928.

**************

Information from Claude W. Hartlen, funeral undertaker at Milton, Queens County, in 1926:- Jim Charles, when he was very old and decrepit and poor, came to live at Two Mile Hill (near Milton) with John and Andrew Francis, Indians. He used to hobble about on two sticks. He died soon after. Mr. Hartlen prepared the body for burial. It was very lousy, and some of the lice crawled on to Hartlen’s clothing. The coffin was a plain pine box. Harlen ran a sawmill then, mostly making barrel staves. He also made coffins, but at that time had no hearse. In those days there was only one R.C. priest in Queens County, and he resided at Caledonia. Hartlen thought the Indians had sent for the priest to perform the funeral rites, but on arrival he found that they had not. They said they could not afford the priest. Two Indians had dug a shallow grave in the churchyard. When Hartlen expressed his concern about the absence of a priest, John Francis said “Oh, chuck the old bugger in anyway.” So the coffin was interred without ceremony. This was in the 1890’s. Hartlen could not remember the exact year. In those days Hartlen ran a little sawmill, sold fire insurance, and acted as the Milton undertaker as a side line. Indian burials were casual affairs, usually conducted without benefit of clergy. It was customary to haul the pine coffin all the way to Liverpool on a hand-cart. If the dead Indian had been popular, the little Micmac group at Two Mile Hill, men women and children, used to walk to Liverpool, taking turns at pulling the cart. They brought food in baskets, and after the burial they sat about the churchyard and held a sort of picnic. Usually the men had a bottle or two of rum. It was quite a cheerful affair. At evening they went home.

*************

Legends of Jim Charles and his gold mine are still current in Queens and parts of Annapolis and Yarmouth counties, and there are still people who believe that some sort of El Dorado exists in the woods of western Nova Scotia, untouched since Jim Charles took away his last pouch-full. Here are some of the legends:

 

I. Lane Smart, of Caledonia.

Smart’s father was an American mining engineer, brought to Queens County by a syndicate operating a mine there during the gold boom of the 1880’s and 1890’s. Isaac (best known as “Ike”) was brought up in North Queens, and was a guide to fishermen and hunters most of his life. Information given in 1945.

“I’ve heard a lot of tales about Jim Charles. Who hasn’t? My own guess is that he had no mine. That young squaw Madeleine was very chummy with the miners when she came to Caledonia, she was a pretty thing, and her lovers used to pay her in gold dust and nuggets. In other words she was old Jim’s mine. The miners used to steal gold out of the sluices, even out of the crucibles. It got so bad that all the miners coming off shift were searched for nuggets and dust; but the thefts went on. Gold dust and nuggets were common currency around Caledonia for years.”  (Note: according to Dr. Munro’s testimony, Jim Charles was selling gold in Annapolis many years before the Caledonia gold rush.)

 

Here is a letter to T.H.R., written by James B. (“Big Jim”) Macleod of South Brookfield, a famous guide and woodsman

“South Brookfield, June 3rd 1944

“Dear Comrade Tom — Mr. Munro, or Dr. Munro, or I should say Rev., I think is Clayton Munro formerly of Maitland, Annapolis Co. After his father’s death his mother married a Nixon. Alister Nixon of Maitland is a half Bro. Mrs. John Ford of Milton I think a Sister. I remember the first time I seen him he was on a river drive, Tenting in the pines below S. Brookfield Church. He came to Sunday-School on Sunday. The seat of his pants were badly torn. My Half Brother Parker McLeod and he were great chums. His letter does not change my idear about the Jim Charles mine. I still think it was in the vicinity of Loon Lake (i.e. on the Kejimkujik River —THR) Ike’s theary regards the matter will not agree with date of Jim Charles. As the Whiteburn mine found and worked by Hugh McGuire, James McGuire & William happened years after. I can remember when the McGuire Boys worked that mine. With a pistol fastened to a spring pole to break the quarts. They cut a wide swath them days. Jim driving his span of greys rigged up to a fancy carry all, with their silver mounted harnice. Drink finely got them. Hugh had a Hotel at Caledonia, now the Alton House. He died where Jack McGuire now lives. His wife still lives. Jim moved to Liverpool. He was the Dandy then. The country was not good enough for him. He died in Liverpool. You no doubt know his family.”

***********

Legend related to Helen Creighton, June 1947, by Thomas “Red Tom” Boyle, then living at Port Mouton but formerly of West Caledonia:-

“Jim Charles’ wife used to drive to town with gold, and would go to the States with it. He was a very treacherous Indian. He made baskets. After his first wife died he married another Indian squaw named Multi, and when he had to go out hunting he would tie his wife so she couldn’t get away. Jim shot at two Burrells. He thought they were trapping on his ground, and he shot three men altogether; two Burrells and their brother-in-law Stoddard. Bullets were found in the body. Jim Charles wore a pair of small gold earrings. His first wife dressed well. They had a horse and carriage, and lots of gold, and they used to go through the woods. There is a brook that leads to his tenting ground. Jim would wander off, but he would never show anybody his mine. His gold came out freely. My wife had a chunk of Jim Charles’ gold. Before the canoe shooting he shot a man named Hamilton.

Jim Charles had a brother-in-law named Bradford, a fine Indian, but scared to death of Jim Charles. Everybody was scared of him.”

******************

Legend related to Helen Creighton, July 1947, by Louis Pictou, Micmac Indian, Lower Granville, Annapolis County:-

“They made buttons out of Jim Charles’ gold, and grandmother made bullets.

Jim Charles brought his gold to Annapolis himself. He had a gold mine and he brought nuggets from the size of a pin-head to a pea. How he found them, it was a sort of dry summer, water was scarce and he was hunting and he wanted a drink and he went to a brook. He had to follow it down to a pool, sort of a little falls. While he was drinking he see this stuff in the water, and he reached down and got some of this stuff and picked it up. After he looked around, he saw it on the shores. He used to go there and take the gold to Halifax. After a while the white folks got wise to it and got after him. ‘Now’, they said, “Mister Charles, they claim you found a mine out there to Hedge Lakes. How much will you take for that mine?’ He didn’t want to sell, but three or four of them went with him to Hedge Lakes, and he got out of the canoe and got on shore, and he warned them. ‘I’m going, and I’ll be back in an hour’s time, but I don’t want anyone to follow.’ So he went, and he come back sure enough, and he brought these people the gold. They had liquor and they tried to get him drunk, but he was wise to that, and they tried to coax him to show where he got that stuff, and he wouldn’t. That mine was never found, by an Indian or a white man.

“They claim he killed a man, and then the rest of the Indians claim he didn’t. The Indians claim he wouldn’t have done a thing like that. People round Lequille said he was a real nice man, not treacherous.”

*************

Legend related to Helen Creighton, August 1947, by Louis Harlow, Micmac Indian, at Bear River, Annapolis County:-

“Jim Charles’ wife was a great medicine woman, and during this time they had a dance, and old Jim went down and was running around with a girl. A white fellow who was courting the same girl came in, and he struck Jim Charles. When Jim Charles fell he picked up a piece of wood, and killed the white man right there. They put Jim Charles in jail, and he pretended he was sick and couldn’t stand the confinement, so they put up a tent for him. He escaped from the tent and went to the woods.

He thought the dogs were after him, so he jumped in the water and swam till he came to a beaver house, and he stayed there. There was a big rock called Jim Charles’ Rock. Finally he went out and wrote to the people in Liverpool to come and get him. They tried him and cleared him.

“Jim Charles must have killed Ruggles. He was a lawyer who was against him. There was no Indian in the canoe with Ruggles. After it happened, other men came to him and said, ‘Uncle Jim, they’re lying about you’. It wasn’t true, but they told him they were coming after him. He went in the woods then to escape, and died of exposure.

“Jim Charles had a gold mine, and his wife knew about it, and where it was. He used to go to Halifax with fur, and he had two stocking-legs filled with gold. George King, the mail driver, saw him and told me himself. When he first went to Halifax he had an old horse, and whenever a team came by he had to go to one side to let them past. He didn’t like that, so after he sold his fur and got his gold he looked round for the best horse in Halifax, and he bought a trotter. He had a sleigh all varnished up and painted red. He never told about his gold, because it was believed that if the Indians found a gold mine, and told the white man, the Devil would come to the Indian and he would die.”

****************

Legend related to Helen Creighton, August 1947, by Charles Charlton, of Milford, Annapolis County:

“The three men in the canoe which Jim Charles is supposed to have shot at were Stewart Ruggles; Gid Burrell, a shoemaker; and Zeke Hanley, a white guide. They were in a little 60-pound birch bark canoe, which was overloaded. Some of the birch bark canoes were so cranky you had to keep your hair parted in the middle, and others were so cranky you daresn’t change your mind. Sid Camden brought the corpse of Burrell through here in a daggin with a single ox, all wrapped in moss. His body was the last to be found. The only killing I ever knew of around here was old Jim Charles killing a white man who was too familiar with his wife.” (Note by THR: “Daggin” or Dagan” was a western Nova Scotia word, probably Acadian in origin, for a wagon pulled by a single ox.)

(Note by THR) In July 1957 Arthur B. Merry came to my house with an old gun that he had found on the bottom of Kejimkujik Lake. It was a very dry summer and the lake was low. Paddling a canoe over a shallow place near his property on the east side of the lake, Merry had noticed the gun and fished it up. His property was the old Charlie Minard place, and it included the Indian burial ground. Merry thought the gun might be one of those lost when Stoddard and the others upset their canoe in 1884. It was badly corroded by rust, but one could see that it was a cap-fire, muzzle-loading, smooth-bore gun, very light and short in the barrel.

(Note by THR) Fifteen or more miles west of Lake Rossignol, near the place where the boundaries of the western counties come together on the map like the wedges of a pie, lies a small lake called Koofang by the woodsmen. Somewhere in the vicinity of “Koofang” is a huge boulder with a cave under it, known as “Jim Charles’s Rock”. This is where Jim hid for some years after he killed the man Hamilton. The name “Koofang” (which means nothing in English, French, or Micmac) is obviously derived from the old French word “couffin”, meaning a type of basket, perhaps because the lake had that shape. Modern surveyors misunderstood the pronunciation, and marked it “Two Fan Lake” on the N.S. government map.

(Note by THR)

In May 1966 Reginald Dickie, a land surveyor employed for many years by the Mersey Paper Company, told me that Jim Charles’s grave was on the point in Kejimkujik where he had his cabin; the mound can be clearly seen, and for many years the proprietors of the Rod & Gun Club maintained a wooden cross or headboard on which was carved or painted Jim Charles’s name.

This was in contradiction to my information from Claude Hartlen, long since dead.

On May 22, 1966 I drove to Maitland Bridge and had a long talk with farmer and woodsman Cecil Baxter. It was a Sunday and various elderly members of the Baxter family had gathered for a reunion, including a Doctor Baxter, a dentist, who now lives in retirement in Halifax. Doctor Baxter could recall seeing Jim Charles talking to Baxter’s father some time in the 1890’s. All of these elderly people knew the story of Jim Charles. Cecil Baxter, who had traveled a good deal in the backwoods west of Kejimkujik as a younger man, knew the whole area intimately. In essence this is what he said:

Clayton Munro’s mother, after her husband’s death, continued to live on the Munro farm, and later she married James Nixon, who was a widower. Hence James Nixon’s son Allister, and Clayton Munro, were half brothers.

David Lewis, the friend and confidant of Jim Charles, had a small farm on the road from Maitland Bridge to Kejimkujik. He was more of a woodsman than a farmer, and spent a good deal of his time in the forest. It was David Lewis who went along when Jim Charles offered to show the whereabouts of his “mine”.

But Lewis was never sure whether Jim’s astonishment was real or false when they found a real mine operating on the Tusket. Jim had resorted to so many tricks to deceive the white folk about his “mine” that it had become almost a habit.

Also there was some doubt about Jim Charles’s sanity by that time.

After Jim Charles was formally cleared of the murder of Hamilton various people made threats to see him hanged. Jim Charles took to the woods and hid himself away for three years up the Shelburne River. Near Koofang Lake there was a big rock and a cave beside it, where Jim lived during these three years. Woodsmen afterwards found the place and always referred to it as “Jim Charles’s Rock” and “Jim Charles’s cave.” It was not on the shore of Koofang Lake but back on the land where there was a good view. During these three years alone, living by hunting and fishing, constantly afraid of discovery by white men, Jim’s mind became a bit queer. His squaw knew where he was, and eventually he returned to the cabin in Kejimkujik when she convinced him that there was no more danger. He told some of his white friends that during the time he was living in the cave near Koofang Lake some people hunted for him with two dogs. One dog was of normal size, the other was huge. He was much afraid of the big dog.

Eventually Jim Charles’s squaw died, and his son Maiti went away to the States. I have heard that Malti learned the blacksmith’s trade in Maine and stayed there the rest of his life.

I have heard that during the days of Jim Charles’s affluence he joined the Masonic order. I don’t think there was a Masonic lodge in Caledonia then. Possibly he joined the lodge in Liverpool or Annapolis. The Indians hereabouts were nominally Catholics, and I have heard it said that Jim Charles must have been the only Catholic Freemason in existence.

Jim Charles definitely was not buried on the point in Kejimkujik. When he was old he went to live with an Indian family named Francis in Milton, near Liverpool. He died and was buried down there. The “grave” on Jim Charles’s Point in Kejimkujik was a natural mound near the main building of the Rod & Gun Club. When the Club became a hotel for sportsmen, one of the proprietors used to tell his guests that Jim Charles, the famous Indian murderer and gold miner, was buried under that mound. He put a wooden cross or headboard on it, with Jim Charles’s name, and spun yarns about Jim’s ghost being seen walking about the point at night. It used to delight the women guests.

The Rod & Gun Club was built about 1907 by a group of sportsmen, mostly from Annapolis. After some years one of these men — I think he was a Mills from Annapolis — bought out the interests of the others and turned the place into a summer resort for families, mostly well-to-do Americans. It changed hands a good many times during the years since. The most recent owner was Norman Phinney. The Parks Branch of the Department of Northern Affairs expropriated his and other properties at Kejimkujik when they took over the whole area. Norman Phinney now lives at Wilmot, near Middleton in the Annapolis Valley.

My father remembered the drowning of Ruggles, Burrell and Stoddard very well.

The day was very calm, and the canoe foundered because it was overloaded. They had been warned that the canoe was overloaded. They were heading from Jim Charles’s Point towards Hog Island when it foundered. For quite a time they struggled in the water, screaming for help. The cries were heard at a distance of two miles, at the John Lewis house.

The magistrate was Charles Harlow Ford, a member of the Masonic lodge. He was an outstanding magistrate in his day, and people from all over the countryside came to him for legal advice. He would hold court in his house, and disputes and grievances would be settled through him. Charles Ford and David Lewis were both friends of Jim Charles. The wife of David Lewis was an Indian, Esther Jeremy, a sister of the late Joe Jeremy of Molega.

Hamilton was killed at what is called the Glode Field, in a hollow, not far from the road going in to Kejimkujik.

 

Other documents today:

Pinehurst Lodge (and Jim Charles)- Raddall

The Lost Gold at Kejimkujik – Randall from Footsteps on Old Floors

The Flight of Jim Charles   /drf



[1] Note: I spell KE-JIM-KU-JIK, phonetically, following the Indian pronunciation. The meaning is obscure. According to the Indians the literal translation is “the-part-that- swells”, and some illustrate by saying “like a bladder with a narrow end”. Sesbresay’s History of Lunenburg County (page 341) says that the cove at Aspotagan was alternately called KEBEJO-KOOCHK by the Indians meaning “a closing of the passage”. Both names obviously have one etymological origin and seem to refer to the shape of the lake or cove. However the ancient Indians built eel-weirs on the Kejimkujik River (below the lake) whose stone remains can still be seen. In a sense these might be called “a closing of the passage”. Such weirs, in the Fall rains, would raise the lake and spread its area to some extent.


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