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From Broad Axe to Clay Chinking
Beaverley
[About June | Home | Next]
Gustave Hiller was born in Poland, one of eight children of Michael and Louise Hiller. His parents, one brother and two sisters immigrated to Brazil. After working on a coffee plantation and also hauling rock to be crushed into limestone, he got a job on board a ship and sailed to the United States. Here, Gustave and a friend jumped ship and made their way to Canada.
Gustave ended up in Alberta where he met a brother that had come there earlier. He filed on a homestead in the Rabbit Hill district, a place not far from Leduc. In 1892, he married Ernestine Falkenburg. Their oldest son, Dan, and two other boys, Albert and Fred (who both died very young) were born at Rabbit Hill. Gustave bought another piece of land just south of the homestead and five more children, Robert, Martha, Bill, Bennie, and Minnie, were born there.
In 1910, Gustave checked out the Fort George area as he had heard the climate was milder. He bought land, planted fruit trees and, in 1915, Ernestine, and all the children, moved up there to be with him. 1916 was a bad year and all the fruit trees froze, putting an end to the orchard he had created. In 1919, he bought land in the Beaverley District and began farming once more. Gustave and his sons built granaries, barns, house, tool shed, machine shed and blacksmith shop. Some of the buildings are gone but the ones that are left have been photographed. They had cows, horses, chickens, and pigs, sometimes staying up all night to watch over the safety of the little piglets after being born. After Bennie took over this farm, he turned the loft over the chicken house, into a workshop. Here he had a wood lathe and carpenter tools and made beautiful furniture and other handcrafted wood articles. When he got too old to run the farm, it was sold.
This big old barn, built around 1931, stands among the trees on a piece of land, which was once a homestead, belonging to William Hiller. William Hiller was born in Alberta in the year 1908. In 1914, at the age of six years, he came with his family to Prince George. They made a couple of moves before moving out to a farm in the Beaverley district in 1919. William, or Willie as he was called, had to work hard from a very young age. He quit school at thirteen and helped with haying and harvesting. When he was fourteen he spent the winter cutting and hauling wood to town to Spaners Men’s Shop, where he traded for clothes.
In 1922, his father traded a house, which they had in town, for a homestead on West Beaverley Road. Willie and his father, Gustave Hiller, built this big barn. William worked in Alberta, harvesting, but was paid no money and got kicked in the leg by a horse to boot, which laid him up. His brother gave him enough money to buy a ticket back to Prince George. He then worked at slashing brush and digging ditches. He later worked on building the road, going to Vanderhoof.
With all the haying and harvesting, William had another thought in mind. He wanted to hunt and trap. In 1928, he rented a farm and he worked it and trapped besides. In 1929, he met the teacher of the Mud River School, Marjorie Giles, and in June of 1930, they were married. In April of 1931, they moved onto the homestead at West Beaverley. They had no water here and had to drive their stock to a watering hole some piece away. In the winter, Marjorie melted snow, carrying snow by the washtub and dumped it into a big wooden barrel in the kitchen. This worked well as long as there was snow but when that was gone, William had to haul water from Beaverley Creek, at the bottom of the Mud River hill.
They made another move to a farm on East Beaverley and Muralt road so the children could go to school. Bill Hiller had a sawmill here. This new farm, which was sold again, is now the present day Christmas tree farm. Over the years, the couple had eleven children. These children went to Beaverley School, just as their father had done. The Beaverley School on Muralt Road was built in 1918. Today it is being used as a hay shed, and has one side cut out of it, but it is still standing among the poplars on Muralt Road.
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