Fence-Line Legacies: The Story of Maria Latham

Author’s note: This story of Maria Latham is taken from a longer article, “‘Queen of Lady Farmers’ and Married Women as Landowners on the Canadian Prairies,” published in Prairie History #9 (Fall 2022). Please see this article for more information on Maria and the stories of other extraordinary married women in the Moose Jaw area who were landowners, farmers, and businesswomen.

Looking north on the Boharm grid between two quarter-section first owned by Maria Latham. The cluster of trees on the right side of the road marks Maria’s old homestead. Photo by Jessy Lee Saas, 2021. Photo courtesy of author.

As many prairie stories do, this one begins with the land.[1] At the edge of a dugout on a farm 20 kilometres northwest of Moose Jaw is a line of rotting fence posts strung together with three twisted rows of wire. It is late winter. There is a lazy prairie wind rustling the grass, a soft grey sky promises snow. The orange moss, weathered posts, and rusted wire preserve the story of Maria Latham, the “Queen of Lady Farmers.”

Photo courtesy of the author.

Before Maria became a farmer on the Canadian prairies, she was a farmer’s wife in Wales. Around 1868, Maria married John Latham, who ran the Shotton Hall Farm in Cheshire.[2] At the time, John already had six children and would have another six with Maria. In 1881, John had 207 acres of agricultural land and employed five labourers, as well as his six eldest children who worked as farmhands and dairy maids.[3] On paper, John appeared to be a successful farmer. However, within a year, the county declared John Latham bankrupt.[4]

Faced with possible ruin, Maria seems to have taken charge.

Faced with possible ruin, Maria seems to have taken charge. The month before John was declared bankrupt, in October 1882, Maria purchased a half-section of land northwest of what would become Moose Jaw from the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). Maria paid $800 for 320 acres – already surpassing the amount of land her husband had owned in Wales.[5] Not only was Maria taking productive steps to secure her family’s future, but Maria was doing so in a way that was at direct odds with the Government of Canada’s intended settlement plans. According to the federal government, homesteading had to be done by men. As the newly appointed Minister of the Interior, Frank Oliver, so eloquently said the year Saskatchewan became a province, “‘the object in giving homesteads is to make the land productive, and this would not be the case if [they were] held by women.’”[6] The Dominion Lands Act of 1872 divided prairie Canada in 160-acre quarter-sections that were available to any male over the age of eighteen for a $10 fee.[7] Under the Act married and single women – with the exception of widows with young children – were not eligible to apply for homestead land in prairie Canada. However married and single women could own land if they purchased directly from the CPR.[8] Therefore, Maria’s purchase of a 320-acre homestead, possibly using her own savings, is notable as it shows she understood her access to land was restricted as a married woman and yet she still found a way to work within the system.

In April of 1883, at forty-eight years old, Maria Latham travelled to the Canadian prairies alone with her five youngest children, ranging from ages five to eleven.[9] A month later, John filed an entry for a homestead and a pre-emption plot on the quarter-sections directly bordering Maria’s land.[10] Likely, Maria and John had initially planned to recreate a large-scale farming operation by choosing adjoining lands. However, this was not the case.

Homesteading men who owned two or more quarter-sections between 1882 and 1900 in township 17, range 27. Maria Latham owned the most land in the district until 1898. Matthew Kunkel, HGIS Lab, University of Saskatchewan, 2021. Photo courtesy of author.

Upon arrival in Canada, John moved to his homestead with his eldest son from his marriage with Maria, while Maria remained in Moose Jaw with their five youngest. [11] Over the next seven years, John cleared 36 acres, built a fence enclosing roughly one acre, had two horses, two pigs, and one relatively small house. For his work, he received a patent for his home quarter-section but failed to prove-up the land enough meet the requirements on his pre-emption plot which he then lost.[12] Meanwhile, Maria continued to raise their children in the city, oversaw the operations on her own farm, and purchased, owned, and operated one of only three horse-powered threshing outfits in the Moose Jaw region. In 1885, Maria’s outfit did the threshing for a total of 54 farms from the town of Caron to east of Buffalo Pound Lake.[13] Maria had direct control not only over the breaking, planting and harvesting of her own land but she also managed harvest for over fifty other farmers.

In the summer of 1890, life took an interesting turn for Maria. On Monday, July 7, John rode into town looking for a doctor. Two days later, John Latham died.[14] Despite the havoc John’s sudden passing must have caused his large family, his death did not deter Maria. Eight days after John’s death, Maria purchased the eastern half-section directly neighbouring John’s homestead. Again, Maria bought from the CPR, this time at $4.00 per acre, her total bill being just under $1300, and, again, she paid in full.[15] By March 1891, less than a year after her husband’s death, Maria had applied for entry onto the pre-emption plot John had lost not three years before.[16] Immediately, Maria moved to the new farm with her four youngest children, Francis “Frank” (21), Herbert (18), Margaret “Maggie” (17) and Trevor (14).[17] By the spring of 1891, Maria had 800 acres of land in her name and an additional 160 acres in her late husband’s name.

In December of 1891, Maria voluntarily wrote to the CPR to praise the quality of her land. Her letter, along with others from farmers around Saskatchewan, was compiled into a promotional booklet published and distributed by the CPR in 1892. As the only women to contribute, Maria wrote: “it requires energy, perseverance and prudence to make a success of farming in this country. But possessed of these and a little capital, one can scarcely fail to do well.”[18]

And, indeed, Maria succeeded. In 1891, Maria planted 400 acres of crop, and between 1891 and 1897, Maria was averaging 50-80 heads of cattle, 14-18 horses and 15 pigs.[19] In comparison, her neighbour, Samuel Rathwell, reported in 1888 that he only had 25 heads of cattle, ten pigs and five horses.[20] Samuel was one of the most prosperous farmers in the region, having either patented or purchased six quarter-sections by 1898.[21] However prior to 1898, Maria appears to have surpassed Samuel, and all of her other male farming neighbours, in how much land and livestock she owned.[22] After a successful harvest in 1897, Maria’s other neighbour and the general organizer for Saskatchewan’s Grain Growers Association, Frederick Green, wrote to the editors of the Moose Jaw Times that Maria had harvested an astonishing 4,000 bushels of grain and was the “queen of lady farmers.”[23]

Frederick Green was not alone in his praise. Andrew Dalgarno farmed nearby and was the close friend of Maria’s neighbour to the south, Ben Smith.[24] Ben and Andrew owned one of the first stream-threshing outfits in the region and would assist Maria at harvest. Years later, Andrew would tell his family stories about Maria.

In the stories, Maria was remembered as “an attractive and rather alluring widow called Queen Lady Farmer by her neighbours.”

In the stories, Maria was remembered as “an attractive and rather alluring widow called Queen Lady Farmer by her neighbours.” In fact, the Dalgarno family remembers a story they once heard where Ben was so eager to help Maria that his wife, Sarah, said that he would “thrash [Maria’s] wheat first even if Queen Victoria herself was in need.”[25]

The pond Maria Latham dug to meet land improvement requirements. Jessy Lee Saas, 2022. Photo courtesy of author.

In 1900, at sixty-seven years old, the “alluring widow” Maria submitted her homesteading patent application detailing the improvements she had completed since applying for entry onto the land John had failed to prove-up. A few months later, Maria’s application was approved. In the years Maria lived on her farm, she had built a 16x22 house, a 26x40 stable, dug a pond, and enclosed 120 acres in a three-wire strand fence.[26]

Maria’s legacy is in the fence line. Tucked between the snow banks and frozen blades of grass, where an old pasture meets a dugout at the edge of the shelterbelt is a landscape of story. A place where the “Queen Lady Farmer,” Maria Latham’s words live: “If I can make farming pay in this country after paying for all the labor required in it (as I do), surely an active, energetic, persevering, prudent man need not fail of success in this North-West.”[27]

JESSY LEE SAAS is currently completing her PhD in Canadian prairie history at the University of Saskatchewan. Although Jessy Lee was raised in Moose Jaw on Treaty Four territory, her parents now call Maria Latham’s old farm home. When not researching history in the archives, Jessy Lee is searching the prairie for signs of other landscape legacies.

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Endnotes

[1] This story takes place on Treaty Four land – the traditional territory of the nêhiyawak (Plains Cree), Lakota, Nakota, Dakota, nahkawininiwak (Saulteaux), and Métis Nation. Although this article does not address settler/Indigenous relationships, Maria Latham would have known the Lakota community who lived in the Moose Jaw area during the 1880s and 1890s.

[2] England & Wales Census 1881, Township of Hawarden, Hamlet of Shotton, Rural Sanitary District of Hawarden, page 21.

[3] England & Wales Census 1881, page 21.

[4] “The Bankruptcy Act, 1869,” The London Gazette, 14 November 1882, The Gazette Official Public Record database, item 25167, page 5096.

[5] CPR Land Sales Catalogue, “Latham, Maria (Wife of John Latham),” 1882 October 2, vol. 79, no. 2171.

[6] John C. McKay, Ann Calder’s Children, (self-pub., Burlington, Ontario, 1983), 91; Catherine A. Cavanaugh, “‘No Place for A Woman’: Engendering Western Canadian Settlement,” Western Historian Quarterly 28, no. 4 (Winter: 1997): 504-505.

[7] There were other requirements such as a becoming, if not one already, a British subject.

[8] As part of the settlement project, the CPR had been given land grants by the Canadian government to resell to incoming settlers – these 160-acre CPR quarter-sections were often listed between $2.50 to $4.00 an acre and were much more expensive than the one-time $10 fee the federal government charged.

[9] “Passenger lists of the SARMATIAN arriving in Halifax, N.S. and Portland, ME on 1883-04-23,” Passenger Lists, 1865-1922, LAC, item RG 76, page 5.

[10] Under the Dominion Lands Act homesteaders had to file for entry onto the land and meet certain “prove-up” requirements before receiving a patent (ownership) for the land. A pre-emption was akin to placing a hold on a second quarter-section pending additional “prove-up” requirements were met.

[11] “House to Let,” Moose Jaw Times, August 10, 1894, page 8; September 29, 1894, page 8; October 12, 1894, page 8. The eldest son was Arthur Latham who 14 years old in 1883. Arthur grew up to be a prominent businessman in Moose Jaw and was one of the owners of the Russel Block on River Street. John’s first six children appear to have remained in Wales.

[12] John Latham’s Application of Patent, 6 September 1886, Homestead Records, Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, S 42.345-90.

[13] From Buffalo Trails to Blacktop: A History of the R.M. of Caron #162, (Caron, Saskatchewan: The Caron History Book Committee, 1982), 176.

[14] “Town and Country,” Moose Jaw Times, July 11, 1890, page 3.

[15] CPR Land Sales Catalogue, “Latham, Maria (Wife of John Latham),” 1890 July 17, vol. 108, no. 4623.

[16] Maria Latham’s Application for Patent, 29 March 1900, Homestead Records, Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, S 42.550326.

[17] Maria’s eldest daughter, Minnie had recently married local farmer and political Edward Nicholas Hopkins and remained in Moose Jaw. Census of Canada 1891, Provincial District N.W.T, no. 199 Assiniboia West, Moose Jaw & Regina Division No. 5, page 57.

[18] Canadian Pacific Railway, What Farmers Say: The Experience of Farmers Cultivating the Lands of Manitoba, Assiniboia, Alberta and the Saskatchewan, 1892, Monograph Collection, University of Alberta digitized by Canadiana, no. 30253, page 4.

[19] “Boharm,” Moose Jaw Times, May 29, 1891, page 2; Maria Latham’s Application for Patent.

[20] Samuel Rathwell’s Application of Patent, 13 February 1888, Homestead Records, Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, S. 42.169150.

[21] Samuel Rathwell’s Application of Patent; CPR Land Sales Catalogue, “Rathwell, Samuel K.,” 1898 November 5, vol. 117, no. 10050, 10051, 10052, 10053.

[22] In her division alone Maria had around 48 other male farmers.

[23] F. W. Green, “Good Farming Pays: The Elevator Monopoly Again,” Moose Jaw Times, October 29, 1897, page 1; Heritage of Wheatland: Tuxford and Area, (Tuxford, Saskatchewan: The Tuxford Heritage Committee, n.d.), 146.

[24] Andrew Dalgarno’s Land Record, 13 February 1891, Land Grants of Western Canada, 1870-1930, LAC, item 114943.

[25] Shirley Tort, “Memorial Page for Andrew Dalgarno (14 Apr 1856–2 Apr 1945),” Find a Grave, 27 July 2012.

[26] Maria Latham’s Application for Patent.

[27] Emphasis added. CPR, 4.