JOE RIVERS WYATT

Joe Rivers Wyatt was born in Derbyshire county, England in 1866 on rented land owned by Lord Howard. His father was also game keeper and then when the senior Wyatt passed on Joe took over the farm and also the job of game keeper. They ran a dairy farm and sheep on the Moors. In 1902 Joe Wyatt came to Canada and landed in Winnipeg early in the spring and took a job with William Martin of St. Jean Baptiste just south of Winnipeg, where he was to look after a registered Galloway herd of cattle. He got a number of them ready for show and in the summer of 1904 showed them at the Canadian National Exhibition in Winnipeg, where they took grand champion female and first place Galloway Bull. While at the Exhibition Joe took typhoid fever due to the very poor quality of water at the show. Just shortly after the show Jessie Booth, the girl that was to be his wife landed in Winnipeg and found no Joe to meet her but Mr. Martin was there to get her and took her to the farm. They were married a few days later while Joe was still in bed, too weak to get out to go to his own wedding. Jessie nursed him back to health and then they made the trip to Alberta.

They brought all their belongings and three car loads of Registered Galloway cattle from Mr. Martin to Mr. Tom MacMillian, Mrs. Martin was Tom MacMillian's sister. These were some of the first registered Galloway cattle to come west (maybe the first). Joe unloaded them down a gang plank out of the railway cars just east of the present CPR Station in Calgary and drove them to the MacMillian farm which was just a few miles south of the present town of Turner valley. Mr. and Mrs. Wyatt worked for Tom till the next spring and Mrs. Wyatt told me that she never saw a white woman for over 7 months, pretty tough for a girl just out of a busy mill close to Manchester, England. In 1905 the Wyatts went to work for Jack and Tom Bolton, who were just on the south side of Sheep Creek, where the bridge is now on Highway No.2. They rented the farm for the next 2 years and while there Tom took up a Homestead out in the Buffalo Hills in 1908 and moved out the next spring, where they farmed the rest of their lives. They had three boys, William, who passed away in his first year, James and Frank (who is still on the old homestead).

James Wyatt moved from the old Homestead to his present place (SE ¼ Sec. 2-19-R-W5), which is just about 7 miles from where Joe and Jessie Wyatt were when they first came to Alberta and is still the in the cattle business where he raises Registered Hereford cattle and is Canada's leading breeder of Appaloosa Horses.

From, "IN THE LIGHT OF THE FLARES," pg 742-743
1979 published by The Sheep River Historical Society