The Elopement - Mary Jane Yeo
Daughter of James Yeo Jr.
Mary Jane Yeo, daughter of James Yeo Jr. and Sarah Jane Glover, was fifth in a family of 10 children. She was well-educated and was also a talented musician. She met a young man, a merchant from Tyne Valley, and although her father forbade his daughter to see Donald N. Forbes, the courtship was serious.
Many nights, the couple met under the cover of darkness, D.N. coming to Green Park with meat for the dogs so they wouldn’t bark as he proceeded very stealthily throughout the night.
At one point, Mary Jane was sent to the convent in Charlottetown, but she was terribly homesick--it is said that D.N. drove to Charlottetown and they exchanged notes by letting down a ball of yarn from her window. It is interesting that Lucy Maud Montgomery was teaching in the Bideford area for a year, and Chapter 2 of The Golden Road parallels this particular elopement story.
Once, when Mary Jane sent an order for a pair of shoes, 'DN' placed a message crumpled up in the toe of one of the shoes, he intentionally mismatched, and commanded the courier to give them personally to Mary Jane. When the mismatched shoe was returned to the store, her reply, of course was on a crumpled up piece of paper concealed in the toe.
And so the story goes that on the day of the elopment, D.N. was to sail into Campbell Creek on one of the Ellis’ ships that was being loaded. When ready, he would fire a pistol and Mary Jane would come to him. Her parents, on that day, were in Summerside. Mary Jane was with her younger sister, Edith. She was frying potatoes at the large kitchen hearth when she heard the shot being fired. She calmly folded her apron, walked out the door and picked up a little suitcase she had hidden in the bushes. She hurried to the creek, was swiftly garbed in fisherman’s clothing. The schooner sailed out of the port, eluded those who were watching for the couple in Yeo’s ports from Port Hill to Tignish. They crossed Northumberland Strait and landed in Newcastle, N.B. [now Miramichi] and were married in the Church of St. Andrew’s, Anglican.
In recent years, the family requested a copy of the information from the church registry book. Mary Jane Yeo, on August 24, 1882, stated that her age was 22. She was born in 1863 which would have made her only 19 years old at the time of the marriage.
Upon return to PEI, James Yeo Jr. refused to have anything to do with Mary Jane and her new husband. They moved back to the Forbes home farm in Lot 16 where the first child, Ernest, was born a year later. The family eventually moved to Tyne Valley where D.N. and his brother, James, ran a mercantile business.
Did James Yeo ever make up with his daughter and family? When the third son, Reg, was small, James Yeo rode his horse into Tyne Valley and the little guy said to him, “That’s a mighty fine horse you have, mister.” It was a story of a heart melting...when the boy told him his name, he recognized him as his grandson. He vowed to give a horse “just like this one” to the boy one day, and he kept this promise.
THIS IS A THREE STAGE MULTICACHE.....To locate the second stage look DOWN and count the steel bars. This number will now be "A", and complete the following equation to locate the second stage of this puzzle.
N 46 35. (278 - A) W 063 53.(460 + A) Where "B" will be equal to the number panes near the top of this structure. (CHECKSUM: N = 27 W = 35)
NOW TO FIND THE FINAL CACHE GO TO: N 46 35. (503 + A) W 063 53. (214 + B)
( CHECKSUM: N = 25 W = 21 )
THIS CACHE IS LOCATED NEAR TO WHERE WE THINK MARY JANE BOARDED THE ship - AND COMMENCED HER LIFE OF WEDDED HAPPINESS. SHE DIED IN NOVEMBER 1953, AT THE AGE OF 92 YEARS, AND IS BURIED BESIDE THE LOVE OF HER LIFE IN THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH CEMETERY IN TYNE VALLEY. THIS IS A FAMILY STORY PASSED THROUGH THE GENERATIONS, SHE WAS MY GREAT GRANDMOTHER .
REMEMBER: THE DECISION TO SEARCH FOR ANY GEOCACHE (OR PARTICIPATE IN ANY OUTDOOR ACTIVITY), AND THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY LIES WITH YOU