On Tuesday April 25, 1922, five people made their way to Thomas Cahill’s store in Freeland, PEI. A two-story structure that included living quarters, it was the typical general store of its day: a central aisle with two long counters on either side, the goods for sale stacked high on floor-to-ceiling shelves behind. A customer would hand their order to a clerk, who would gather the items from boxes and tins and barrels, write out a receipt, and accept payment or make note of credit. The customer would place the items in a wooden box they brought in from their wagon, or a basket they carried on their arm if they were walking.

While poking around in our basement earlier this month, I found two receipt books from Cahill’s store mixed in with 50-year-old receipt books from the general store operated by my parents, Harold and Vivian Phillips. They bought Cahill’s store in 1946, but from Laughlin “Lin” Murphy, who I believe bought the store from Cahill in late 1922. My parents operated and lived in the old store until 1952, when they built what they believed was the first self-serve general store in rural PEI. That new store had little shopping trollies that customers could put their items in as they made their way along the three aisles of the store. Though my parents were proud of this modern facility, some old timers refused to pick out their own groceries, so the old fashioned service always existed in some form in our store up until they sold it in 1971.

I was familiar with the receipt books my parents used, but Cahill’s books are slightly different in that the receipt lists both the person who was buying the goods and the person who was picking them up at the store. This is double joy for a history buff, more names to make more connections!

It’s a miracle these books made it through three owners and the dismantling of the original store. Little else survives from that store except a couple of photographs, a few drawers from the counters repurposed as wonky workshop shelves by my father, and a gripper device used to quickly reach items on high shelves.

Being spring on PEI, April 25 could have been cold and snowing or hot and sunny, or both over the course of the day! A horse and wagon might have kicked up a bit of dust on sunnier parts of the red dirt roads as they travelled, but could have also bogged down a bit in the swales. If the roads were too muddy, people would have walked or rode a horse to the store.

First to arrive was Joe Kelly, picking up an enormous amount of salt and what was probably a five pound can of baking powder for Clara Gavin. Not sure who she was, but a woman named Sis Gavin was often mentioned by one of my mother’s uncles, and she kept house for William Bryan after his wife died in 1914. Joe Kelly lived not far away from Bryan’s farm, so Clara could possibly be Sis. If I look to the north from our house, I can see the dark outline of the spruce trees that surround Joe Kelly’s house, perhaps the oldest building in Foxley River.

Next was John McArthur, though I’d bet it was really MacArthur, picking up a $4.50 bag of flour, which would have been a 100-pound bag! There was a Malcolm “Mac” MacNeill operating a lobster cannery on the Sandhills at that time, so John could have worked for Mac and the flour was destined to feed the cannery staff.

Next were neighbours and cousins Nicholas and Raymond Bulger, both born in 1902. Perhaps they travelled to the store together. In later years, both of these men followed the well-worn path to the New England states, only returning to PEI for vacations.

Looks like Nick picked up 5 pounds of sugar, some sort of pills, soap, 10 cents worth of candy and some tobacco. The soap was probably something like Sunlight soap, which was used to clean everything. Most country women usually made their own lye soap, but perhaps Mrs. Bulger had run out. Nick had 12 dozen eggs to sell, and got 26 cents a dozen. That sounds like a ridiculously low price to us, but would have been good money then, and possibly the only money the family received that week. Cahill probably took most of the eggs he bought from his customers into Conway Station and sent them on the train to be sold in Summerside.

I think Raymond bought 10 pounds of wire nails at 6-and-a-half cents a pound, 1 pound of twist chewing tobacco, and three large boxes of wooden matches. With matches, tobacco, twist and candy, the boys would have a jolly ride back to Foxley River!

The last customer recorded on that Tuesday was Ferdinand “Ferdie” Kilbride, a neighbour of the Bulger boys and one year their junior. Try as I might, I can’t for the life of me make out the two items that Ferdie bought. The first was a bottle of something or other, and the second is a big mystery. Let me know if you can read this scrawl. [Update: an eagle-eyed reader suggests that the first item is “1 bottle witch hazel”, and I agree!]

If these folks, most of them close neighbours related by birth or marriage, had bumped into each other on their trip, there would have taken plenty of time for a chat to catch up. The weather would be finely dissected, preparations for crop planting compared, updates given on family here on PEI and in far-flung Boston or Toronto. In the distance they might have heard the surf breaking on the Sandhills like I could this morning, heard the robins and chickadees calling. The young men might have been planning what fun they would be getting up to on the weekend!

Peter Bulger’s descendants still farm his land, and Bulgers and Kellys are well represented in our community. I worked for Thomas Bulger’s grandson on the same farm Thomas owned. Sadly, the last Kilbride to live in Foxley River died a few years back. The Bulger, Kelly and Kilbride families came here from Ireland in the 1830s, so the disappearance of an original settler family name is especially poignant.

I had no idea these books existed, so was pleased and excited to find them. All these people came back to life in an instant, their movements through the landscape I know so well, the challenging lives they lived in the backwoods of PEI. An enviable time, in some ways, simple and straightforward, but still before the miracles of antibiotics and electricity, and with one terrible war behind them and one lurking in the future. There is certainly no ideal time to have lived, and I’m content with the here and now, but oh how I would love to have spent five minutes in Thomas Cahill’s store catching up with my long-gone neighbours.