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4 Unknown to him they still held the rights to the pine on his new property. As a result, for the first two years, he could not clear his land and sell the pine. They nearly starved. They never trusted a lumber company after that and made a point to never sell more than one load of logs at a time, insisting on an immediate cash payment. Fortunately, he got a job. He became clerk of Foley Township in 1878 at a salary of $25 a year and continued in this work until he died in 1916. By that time the job earned $300 a year. He was clerk for 38 years. He became an expert on municipal law. There are still in the old office at the Farm, Ontario municipal law books back to 1876. People, even local lawyers, consulted him on municipal law. Foley Township Office was in the farmhouse from the 1890's to the 1940's. Many people crossed the threshold at the front door to the little office at the back of the hall to consult him on township matters. The Council met in the nearby Schoolhouse and came to the house for lunch which was served at a cost of 25cents each. Across the road and down the hill from the old log house, Malcolm McDougall, also from Scotland, lived in another log cabin on 150 acres. He had received the land as a free land grant from Queen Victoria in 1872. The original document is still in existence. He wanted to move to the nearby Christie Road and his son, Murdock (Murdock's Lake) bought the land, taking out a mortgage to do so. He was unable to pay the mortgage and Andrew Oastler bought it from Murdock McDougall in 1878 for $300. They wanted this farm badly as it had on it a spring creek. This did not freeze over in the winter and you did not need to chop ice to allow the 5 horses, cattle etc., to drink. Up to this time, in winter they were chopping holes in Oastler Lake to allow the animals to get to water. On this property in 1889 the Oastlers built the present Oastler Farm house. The carpenter was Mr. Alfred Badger. It took him about a year as he built barns in between. It came to the stairway banister and there was no money left to finish that job costing $50. Mr. Bdger put in the banister anyway and it was paid for later. The house was built of pine with cedar shake on the outside. It was a three-story, fourteen room house, with woodshed and woodshed attic. It was built before the railways, three of which eventually traversed the Farm. They were able to take advantage of the railway construction and boarded some of the surveyors, engineers and contractors. Thomas Graham of Ottawa, Manager of construction, was one of these. It was here that he met Julia Raitt Oastler, the second daughter. She was the little school teacher of Foley School No. 2 and taught there in 1895-97 and again in 1899. She said she had up to 60 pupils in the little one-roomed school. One little fellow came to school with an over-sized overcoat on him. Miss Oastler didn't ask him to take it off, not knowing if he had anything on under it. This boy, Wade Wayne Wilkinson Watts, belonged to a large and struggling family. Many years later, the little boy, then an aged man, and a wealthy rancher from Saskatchewan, told that when he went to school in his bare feet he got so cold that he would rouse a cow so he could warm his feet where the cow was lying. Thomas Graham married Julia Oastler in 1900. He was then road-master on the Canada Atlantic Railway from Depot Harbour to Madawaska.