Historical Definitions

Wind Bag

Joe McNamee’s definition of a local lady who monopolized the  party phone line “That old windbag is on the phone again”

Patentee

Persons who wanted to apply for Crown Land, would submit a Petition (application) to the Crown. If successful , the Crown would issue a land grant, to the petitioner, then called a settler. If the settler took up residence on the land and fulfilled certain settlement duties, like clearing and farming a portion of the land and building a house. Then the Crown issued a patent to the settler, indicating ownership of the land had passed from the Crown to the individual. In Dalton and Carden townships this occurred in the 1860’s to 1880   .

Apoplexy – stroke

Ague – fever & chills of malarial infection

Consumption – tuberculosis

Cramp Colic – appendicitis

Dropsy – edema (swelling), often caused by kidney or heart disease. Dropsy would be called congestive heart failure today. It is an accumulation of fluid around the heart, for a variety of complex reasons, and one treatment is administration of digitalis (foxglove leaves) in the old days

Lung Fever – pneumonia

Poke

A large wooden collar put around a horses neck so as to stop a

horse from pushing over a fence. The collar had a long tongue that

hung to the ground in front of the horse’s chest thus stopping the

horse from getting it’s chest against the fence to push it over.

Whitewash.

A solution of lime and water used to clean the farm stables

This increased the light and reduced the flies

–Mostly used in diary business

Pleurisy which was an old term for Tuberculosis

Stone Boat

Just a wooden platform that lay on the ground and was pulled by a single horse A farmer would role several heavy stones on to it and the horse would draw it the edge of the field where the farmer would role the stone into the fence corner