Gypsy Heart
Gold Member
The following is the summary of a paper presented to the members of the Harper Women's Institute, by Clyde Bell, on November 21st, 1963. Mr. Bell [was] a director of the Perth Museum Inc. His family came to the Harper District in 1817, and his great grandfather, James Bell, was granted a Crown Deed for the West Half of Lot 23 in the 6th Concession of Bathurst Township on April 27th, 1827.
The paper is based on the recollections of his neighbour, the late G. E. Wilson, the stories told by his late father, Wm. R. Bell, and on the records in the archives at the Perth Museum.
Andrew Shiperal, the first school teacher at Harper, was a citizen of the United States. In fact, he had come to Canada as a soldier during the war of 1812 to 1814, but he didn't have much liking for the war, so he walked away and left the rest to do the fighting. He sems to have lived around the Brockville district, or The Front, as it was then called, but he moved inland when the Rideau Settlement was begun. You can understand that an American deserter was not very popular in the Military Settlement of Perth, so he made his way to the Harper district, where he found work clearing land for Winkworth Brown. Sometime during the 1820's, Archibald Campbell gave Mr. Shiperal a plot of land on the Seventh Line for a cabin and a school.
Shiperal had around $100.00 in United States gold coins, and for some reason he placed these, along with his papers, in a bottle and buried it near his cabin. During the winter, the settlers helped him erect a schoolhouse, but the following spring, he could not find the bottle containing his papers and the gold coins.
Thirty years later, he and his two sons returned from the United States, and offered one half of the gold coins to anyone who could find them. Mrs. Tom Wilson remembered the young men about Harper digging in McNee's field, but, if the coins were ever found, this fact was never divulged by the finder. Uncle George Wrathall owned this property at one time, and he kept telling me that I could have the gold coins if I could find them. So far as I could see, Uncle George would get his field dug up and I would get the exercise.
Andrew Shiperal was an outstanding person in many ways. He must have had a fair education, for he later "got religion" and became a Methodist minister, and no doubt helped form the Methodist Congregation at Harper, for he held services in his school house. We know this from the books written by the Rev. John Carroll, who was the Methodist Minister in Perth at one time, and the son-in-law of Capt. Adams at Glen Tay. Mr. Carroll writes about Brother Shiperal holding services at his school and in the homes throughout the Mississippi Circuit. Jane Brown had a Protestant Catechism that Mr. Shiperal had given her during the 1830's.
The students had to pay the teachers a small fee in cash, or in kind, and this was the teacher's salary. Grandfather Bell, who was born in 1822, attended Mr. Shiperal's school until the first school was erected on the sixth line of Bathurst, where the Hon. Arthur Meighen's grandfather taught for a term or two, before moving to teach in the school at Balderson. Mr. Shiperal married a Miss "Mary" Maria Buell of Perth. They returned to the United States sometime around 1840, and lived in the State of Pennsylvania.
