The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

W 34â€"THE LONDON FREE PRESS, Thursday, Dec. 20, 1973 She had already shown an interest in collecting events. Her daily diaries of neighborâ€" hood, national and world hapâ€" penings, begun 30 years ago, can recall the weather the day President Kennedy was shot or remind her husband, Ross, the last time the sow farâ€" rowed. It was Mrs. McClintock who agreed, with some misgivings, back in 1949, to direct the Tweedsmuir community histoâ€" ry project that Women‘s Instiâ€" tutes were being asked to unâ€" dertake in those days. The choice is obvious beâ€" cause this Oxford County vilâ€" lage south of Ingersoll knows the whiteâ€"haired, 73â€"yearâ€"old woman â€" with a hint of Scotâ€" land in her voice â€" as its hisâ€" torian. By ROGER DRAY ¢ of The Free Press CULLODEN â€" The United Church here will close its doors the end of December for the last time in 117 years. Natâ€" urally, they‘ve asked Catherâ€" ine McClintock to write its hisâ€" tory. Mrs. McClintock,. who finâ€" ished her formal education at the grade school in Avon, had some doubts when the Womâ€" en‘s / Institute pressed the The man was trying to track down his ancestors. The Mcâ€" Clintocks were able to tell him. about his great uncle moving a house next to their® for his greatâ€"grandmother. The nextâ€" door lot had been the site of the village blacksmith shop at one time until that ancient frame . building . was moved across the road to where it now serves as a tin shop. They still laugh about the time a man from Toronto knocked on their door last summer after making enquiâ€" ries in the village. "Is this where Kate the hisâ€" torian lives?" he asked when Mr. McClintock opened the door. The McClintocks sold their farm and moved to a smaller house in the village seven years ago after raising six sons. atherine do church history? The history trail had> some pitfalls. More than.once, Mrs. McClintock .remembers, . she ‘"got in trouble‘‘ over informaâ€" tion gleaned from one family in the village and disputed by another. What was â€"supposed to be a committee project became her personal challenge. No.: one else seemed to have time for it. ‘"When they asked me to do it, I felt I° wasn‘t qualified," she remembers. "But I tried and tried. I kept scratching things down in a notebook. To put it down and put it toâ€" gether is quite a job." She w a l k e d doorâ€"toâ€"door through the village, interviewâ€" ing longâ€"time inhabitants and gathering their mementos of events in the past. With her drug store Brownie camera, she added pictures of Culloâ€" den‘s‘older homes and other landmarks. She travelled to the county offices in Woodstaock . to reâ€" search an old Oxford atlas. She compiled honor. rolls for two . world (wars and wrote family histories. > Once the job was started, there was no stopping the enâ€" thusiasm of Kate McClintock. Tweedsmuir history chairmanâ€" ship on her in 1949. Mrs. McClintock knows its weight because she had to mail it to the government ofâ€" fices in Toronto last Novemâ€" ber for microfilming. Culloden‘s Tweedsmuir hisâ€" tory is now 11% pounds of handwritten pages, photoâ€" graphs and worn documents in a hardbound cover. She points a finger at a khaki clad. figure in a yelâ€" lowed photograph of a group of First World War soldiers menacing. the photographer with fixed bayonets. They are all from Culloden but she remembers: one «n particular who signed up in a drunken stupor. "He didn‘t realize it ‘til afâ€" ter he had sobered up. I reâ€" member the provies came looking for him at our house while I was across the road cutting wood with my dad." Her own recollections, orally interjected, color the more matterâ€"ofâ€"fact presentation in her book. For Mrs. McClintock, the story had life. "‘This village was once quite a goin‘ place," she‘ll tell an inâ€" terested visitor, describing the churches, hotels, shops. and mill that served a once greatâ€" er Culloden population. It came back more than There » are +some. quarterly s â€" "meinbership tickets" the Culâ€" O â€" loden Methodist church issued (â€"â€" to Sollowers in 1879 and a recâ€" Â¥ 09( of the $1,200 cost of erectâ€" i®: a frame building in 1856 n f o v the village‘s first church, «* Knox â€"Presbyterian. It was ~* bricked over 20 years later for ] \ $1,300. There are original â€" governâ€" ment Jletters in the flowing script of the period that apâ€" pointed Andrew Smart as Culâ€" loden‘s second. postmaster in 1873 and his wife as postmisâ€" tress at his. death in. 1893. Their daughter gave them to Mrs. McClintock. A handwritten page is dated by its mention of the burning off a store in 1853 where the village. weekly newspaper, the Culloden Lively. Times, was published by Hugh Mann. three months later in pieces, its pages torn from the binder and in chronological disarray. The only hint of its misadvenâ€" tures was the arrival in Culloâ€" den of the Tweedsmuir history prepared by the Sault Ste, Marie institute. - Culloden‘s history, its index still missing, has yet to be sorted out. although. much â€"0f its content is selfâ€"dating. Another page, apparently inâ€" troductory, says the name Culâ€" loden, probably brought by a forgotten Scottish settler, is a Gaelic word meaning "back of the swamp." 00 costâ€" building e‘s first 1t is the same building Culâ€" loden United proposes to close New Year‘s eve because there is not enough support for more than one church on the cireuit out. of Brownsville, two miles south. Services were being held at « Culloden United only once in two weeks although Mrs.®Mcâ€" Clintock . was still teaching Sunday school regularly. "If you live in a community and don‘t have community spirit, you don‘t have any spitâ€" it," she saysâ€" "That‘s what the good Lord put us here for." Will she take on the church history? Mrs. McClintock shows: the same . reluctance she . must have â€" displayed ‘when . the Women‘s Institute gave her the Tweedsmuir history PrOâ€" ject. FRT EW ENe BAE Wsd oh She has had three heart atâ€" tacks in the past 10 years and she . was nearly 25° years younger when she started the Tweedsmuir project. > "Tâ€"couldn‘t go out and do it today," she says, speaking of the monumental community history. "I don‘t feel like it." ~) Yeah, she, PrO \ says. "She . stuck out., ) | 1 G Bd ABS CAE J t ETT Buther husband chuckles and reminds her she <has no choice with the church history. F & B $R i d en 3f h(:{ h, she promised," ne "She. stuck her neck ») he