Mary Jane Yeo, daughter of James Yeo Jr. and Sarah Jane Glover, was fifth in a family of 11 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 secretly continued into a serious love affair.
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. Also, there is the story of her dropping notes to him in a ball of yarn from her bedroom window as they dared not to speak in case they woke her father.
D.N. worked in his brothers store in Tyne Valley, and 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 also concealed in the toe.
And so the story goes that on the day of the elopment, D.N. was to sail into the Green Park area on a sailing ship.. When ready, he would fire a pistol and Mary Jane would come to meet him at a pre arranged location on the shore . . Mary Jane was with her younger sister, Edith. She was frying potatoes at the large kitchen hearth when she heard a mutually arranged 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 shore, was swiftly garbed in fisherman’s clothing to mask her identy to those on shore. The schooner sailed out of the port, eluded those spies 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 Anglican Church of St. Andrew’s,
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, Mr Yeo 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, and the families were re-united.
The location of this cache is 'probably' near to where DN was impatiently awaiting the arrival of his love. Mary Jane met DN and rowed out to the awaiting sailing ship and their life together began.....