Salt Spring Island Archives
The Broadwell family came to Salt Spring in 1882, and featured fairly prominently in the island’s history through the 1880’s and 1890’s - by 1888 Broadwell had acquired more land than anyone else. Their son Joel attended school at the log schoolhouse at Central, taught by Raffles Purdy. Their daughter Anna married Henry Caldwell, and the Caldwell family remains to this day. The 1901 census has Joel Jr. running the store and post office, Joel Sr, being the farmer. Mrs Broadwell died in 1901. Ernest Crofton came to Salt Spring in 1898 or 1899, and worked for Cecil Abbott to learn farming. According to Times Past, the Broadwell’s house was sold to Ernest Crofton in 1902. He had married Miss Bullock in January 1901. From Denise Crofton I thought Ernest and Miss Bullock, once they had married, lived at Booth canal. (But I see Rev Wilson wrote "June 2 (1912) The Ernest Croftons have bought Mouats' place by the Canal and are going to build a nice house and live there." Nevertheless the Driftwood in 1961 still called the property the old Broadwell farm, which Gavin Mouat bought in about the late 1920’s), and again when the house was torn down in 1983 it is referred to in the Driftwood as the Broadwell house and post office.
Looking through Pat Crofton’s album, I was thinking that the photographs of the Broadwell house were from the 1890’s (we do already have some of these same photographs already, some from the Bullock collection, identified as the Broadwell’s home, store, and post office), and that the Croftons were there because it was one of the places all the men hung out around - the Rev. Wilson’s home was one, because here were all the daughters to court and marry; the Stevens boarding house near St. Marks was another, because here the young bachelors boarded; and the Broadwells was the third, because here they came to get their mail (including their remittance money), borrow books from the lending library kept there, and spend their money on supplies. All three of these properties were close together, at the Central Settlement. (Mrs Broadwell and Mrs Stevens were sisters) Edward Johnston wrote of the Broadwell home being a place of arrival and gathering and departure (his relative, Pascal, was working there for Mrs Broadwell as a very young man for a few years, when about the same age as Joel Jr). All this was in the 1890’s, Edward Johnstone in 1898, at the same time as the Tolson brothers (Leonard being the writer about this). Edward Cartwright of A Late Summer, who worked for Jack Scovell at the turn of the century, describes hunting on the Broadwell property regularly, up Broadwell Mountain. The diarist who visited the Musgraves at Musgrave Landing in the earlier 1890’s also mentioned Mrs Broadwell as a motherly figure to courting young people, who flocked there for the mail and supplies, as he and his friend did. Reverend Wilson’s wife described young Joel Broadwell Jr. as "lighthearted", and Mrs Broadwell as "a little fat humorous old lady with more smiles even than the son and shaking when she laughed like a jelly-fish". Mr Broadwell, an American, was more austere.
However, this time my attention WAS caught by the photograph of Ernest haying in the Broadwell fields; this photo must be after 1902. Therefore others may be also.
(Mr. Broadwell did own much more land than that at Central; perhaps they lived in another house also: May 1910 Rev Wilson received news from his daughter Evelyn that ‘Broadwell’s ranch on the Mountain is sold" (Rev. Wilson had written Sept 28 1901,"Drove up the Mountain to see Mrs Broadwell who is dying" - which doesn't sound as if she was living in the house across the road at Central, but somewhere up Broadwell Road on what is now called Channel Ridge.)
In 1947, Bevil and Marjorie Acland opened Acland’s Resort on Baker Road in a home originally built by Ernest Crofton. This house was originally started in 1914, but its construction was held up by the outbreak of WW1.The resort’s name was changed to the Booth Bay Resort in 1960, when it was bought by Thomas and Frances Portlock.
NOTE: Valdez Ward became Ernest Crofton’s second wife. (She features in the Crofton Albums)
Usha Rautenbach
