Cyrus Alexander Bailey, born in 1821 in this Cookshire house known as "The Old Home", died in 1894. His grandparents, when they arrived in Eaton Township from Vermont in 1797, had travelled fifty kilometres through woods with no other guide than a trail of blazed trees, known as a "spotted line". As was typical of early nineteenth-century rural families, they had nine children and established all four sons on parts of their original property. For many summers Cyrus' father, who with his second wife raised seven children, hauled potash and other Townships' produce in a flat-bottomed boat down the St. Francis River to Trois-RiviÅres. Cyrus himself was mayor of Eaton Township for many years, secretary-treasurer of Compton County's municipal council for twenty-seven years and Commissioner of the Circuit Court from 1850 until his death. He was part of a very influential family group centred about his brother-in-law, the long-time Compton Member of Parliament, John Henry Pope. Through this connection Bailey became a director of the Eastern Townships Bank, the Stanstead and Sherbrooke Mutual Fire Insurance Company, the Eastern Townships Agricultural Exhibition and both the International and the Hereford Railway of Compton County, as well as contractor for the French-Canadian colonization roads to Ditton, Hampden, Chesham and Auckland Townships.
Cyrus and his wife raised eleven children but local opportunities for this generation were becoming limited so three of them moved to the American and Canadian West. This photograph was taken shortly after Cyrus' death. In it his widow and three daughters are dressed in mourning, while his son-in-law, a horse trader, shows off his fine driving equipage. The house, said to be the first frame house in the township, is a good example of the style favoured by the practical American settlers. It is starkly plain, with none of the Victorian embellishments which followed later in the nineteenth century. Covered with clapboard siding and a shingle roof, this house has small windows, no shutters or veranda and no trees or shrubs for ornamental purposes. The original chimneys, with the fireplaces, oven and ash hole, were still standing at the time the photograph was taken, though they had been made ninety years earlier from homemade bricks. The square timber building standing between the house and barn is probably the first home of Bailey's grandparents, relegated to the role of shed and summer kitchen. This photograph appeared in History of Compton County by L.S. Channell, a local history published in 1896.
