Report for Dauphin Branch of MGS – March 15, 2024
Submitted by Virginia Fox, President
The Dauphin Branch is working on our obituary files and trying to get them up to date and in sync with our obituary index as well as the cemetery records for this area. This is a very big project and we hope that it will help all of us to better understand the whole process by which we will attempt to make information available much more readily to our patrons.
We will start working on this project tomorrow, March 16th at our MGS holdings located at the Dauphin Public Library. We are grateful to the people who have signed up to come and help us with this very essential part of our work.
We are including an overview of the information on the Boundary Commission Trail, which started at Emerson and ran west, close to the 49th parallel, and ultimately to Fort MacLeod, Alberta. Don White included this information at our Heritage Display last month at the Dauphin Public Mall.
Don’s report tells us that one of the first known pictures of the area south west of Morden, Manitoba was taken in 1873; showing a supply train, on the Boundary Commission Trail, that was sent out by Her Majesty’s British North America Boundary Commission to survey the 49th parallel. This picture was used extensively to advertise and promote the area. The wagon train had just crossed the Dead Horse Creek. A great number of wagons drawn by ox or horse would have crossed this same point during the first eighty-two years of the nineteenth century.
In the 1920’s Don’s grandfather purchased the NE1/4 20-2-6-W1 where the pictures was taken. Don remembers he and his Dad following the depression of the trail going around the base of the hill and up the valley into the open field.
There is a cairn marking the location where the wagon train would have crossed the Dead Horse Creek.
Don has very kindly shared the beautiful painting of the wagon train for all who are interested in this bit of history in Manitoba. Thank you so much, Don.