Edgar Allen Kipp

1860s

Born 8 April 1867 on Kipp Road in Chilliwack, British Columbia, a road named for his pioneer family. He learned Chinook jargon before English, since the only nearby children to play with were First Nations.

1870s

Went to the first school in the Chilliwack area, half a day in Chilliwack and half in Atchelitz. In 1879 he placed 8th of 40 on the province's honour list.

1880s

Took up his own quarter-section in 1884, building a small frame house and a stable and digging two miles of ditches. By the end of the decade he was working as a carpenter out of a shop on Main Street, and in 1889 he joined the Oddfellows.

1890s

Framed the new Methodist church at Cheam and built a house on Westminster Street that the Chilliwack Progress called "one of the finest residences in the city." Married Sarah Jane McConnell on 21 October 1891 at her father's house; the guests threw rice. Turned to farming and became one of the valley's most decorated livestock breeders, moving to a larger farm at Cheam in 1898 and to his father's old homestead in 1899.

1900s

Swept the prize lists at Chilliwack, New Westminster, and Victoria with his Guernsey cattle, Shropshire sheep, and pigs, and shipped prunes from the homestead orchard as far as Winnipeg. Helped found Chilliwack's co-operative creamery, fruit shippers' union, and farmers' exchange.

1910s

Managed the Elk Creek Waterworks from 1910 to 1919, laying miles of new water mains across the fast-growing valley. In 1912 he pulled a child out of the path of an oncoming car at the Merchants' Picnic.

1920s–1930s

Went back to carpentry. Hosted his daughter Dorothy's wedding to Arthur Menzies at home in 1922. After Sarah's death in 1933 he spent long stretches with his daughters in Ferndale, Washington.

1940s

Retired about 1940 and gathered four daughters' families for a reunion at the Peace Arch in 1941. Died at Chilliwack General Hospital on 26 August 1948, fifteen years to the day after Sarah.

A Chilliwack Childhood

Edgar Allen "Ed" Kipp was born on April 8, 1867, on Kipp Road in Chilliwack, British Columbia, a road named for his family, the son of pioneer settlers Isaac Kipp and Mary Ann Nelmes. The valley was still thinly settled, and the only children nearby were First Nations, so Ed learned the Chinook trading jargon before he learned English. He and his brothers kept the kitchen wood-box filled with kindling, cared for the animals, and learned to farm, and the children played tag, horseshoes, tug-of-war, baseball, duck-on-a-rock, prisoner's base, drop the handkerchief, and peggy, and shot marbles their father brought back from business trips to New Westminster. His mother often went out at night to give medical care to neighbors. If a younger sibling still needed nursing while she was away, young Ed would carry the baby to her on horseback in the morning so it could be fed.

He attended the first school in the area, splitting his days between the schoolhouse in Chilliwack and one at Atchelitz. In 1878 he and his sister Jennie qualified for high school, and in 1879 he made the provincial honour list, placing eighth of forty students examined. Frontier life left its mark as well. His brother Albert, called Allie, was splitting wood on the chopping block while the other children played nearby when Ed slipped and fell with his hand on the block, and he lost a little finger. It was more than his mother felt she could treat, so Ed was taken by canoe all the way to New Westminster.

Homesteader and Carpenter

In 1884 Ed took up land of his own, a quarter-section where he built a small frame house, dug two miles of ditches, and put up a stable. By the late 1880s he was a carpenter, in partnership for a time with S. J. Turner in a shop on Main Street. He built houses around Centreville, lost a bid to build the Rosedale schoolhouse to a much cheaper offer, and in the summer of 1890, with a partner named Bailey, framed the superstructure of the new Methodist church at Cheam, a building with a stone foundation and a tower, meant to seat two hundred.

His showpiece was his own house on Westminster Street, finished in May 1891: a parlor, dining room, and spare bedroom downstairs and three large bedrooms upstairs, each with its own closet. The Chilliwack Progress called it "one of the finest residences in the city." That October, at seven in the morning on October 21, 1891, he married Sarah Jane McConnell at her father's house. The guests threw rice, and the newlyweds left on the CPR for Vancouver. A few days later members of the Presbyterian church and choir called at the house to present them with a clock.

Champion Breeder

Through the 1890s Ed turned more and more to farming, and to breeding livestock in particular. In 1897 he brought in purebred stock from Ontario, including Shropshire sheep from a ram line that had won at the Chicago World's Fair and what were believed to be the first Duroc-Jersey pigs in British Columbia. That fall his father sold him nearly all of his own show animals, and Ed arrived at the New Westminster exhibition with a herd so strong that the judge said his aged Guernsey bull would have taken first prize at a national show. The next year he took home $267 in prize money with a Toronto-champion bull named Excelsior's Duke and a ram called Chancellor II, and he won every single Duroc-Jersey prize on offer.

Year after year after that, Ed swept the prize lists at the Chilliwack, New Westminster, and Victoria exhibitions with his Guernsey cattle, Shropshire sheep, and Duroc-Jersey and Yorkshire pigs. Some prizes were cash, others were things like five pounds of Capstan tobacco or a box of Royal Crown soap. He sold breeding stock throughout British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. In 1898 he moved to a larger farm at Cheam to make room for his growing herds, and in April 1899 he and his brother Frank moved back to rent their father's old homestead.

The Old Homestead and Family Life

The homestead Ed farmed through the 1900s held a piece of Chilliwack history: the valley's first apple tree, a Bellflower his father had planted in 1864. By 1902 Ed had two silos, each filled with sixty tons of chopped red clover, and 170 Brown Leghorn hens laying some 1,500 dozen eggs a year, and in those years the herd grew to more than a hundred cattle, mostly Guernseys. His 220-tree Italian prune orchard produced a thousand boxes in 1901. The whole family helped pack them, carefully so as not to rub off the bloom, and the boxes went by ferry to the railway at Harrison Mills and on as far as Winnipeg.

The farm had no telephone, radio, or electric lights, but family life was never dull. An elderly pioneer friend of Isaac's, J. J. Sperry, lived with the family and looked after the chickens from an office and couch he set up in the coop, where Sarah brought him his lunch. The children's bassinet was a First Nations basket that Ed had fitted with rockers, until two of his daughters set it floating down the creek, with a doll inside playing baby Moses, and it was never seen again. Back in 1897, while they still lived in town, Ed had brought home a squirrel in a cage as a family pet, and that June the Queen's Jubilee celebrations ended with a torchlight procession to his field for a picnic, bonfire, and fireworks. On summer trips to Cultus Lake he would dam a spot in the stream to keep the butter and eggs cold.

Public Life in Chilliwack

Ed's civic life ran for decades and across a striking range of institutions. He sat on a jury in New Westminster in 1892, chipped in a dollar a month toward a night constable for the town, served year after year as a municipal pathmaster, and ran unsuccessfully for council in 1895. He was an officer and director of the Chilliwack Agricultural Society, which ran the annual fair, and a director of the New Westminster exhibition and the provincial Dairymen's Association. He was among the first trustees, and later vice-president, of the Chilliwack Co-operative Creamery, to which he delivered about 1,500 pounds of cream a month, and he helped found the Fruit Shippers' Union and the Farmers' Exchange.

He was just as devoted to the Oddfellows' Excelsior Lodge, which he joined in 1889. He became its Noble Grand in 1892, oversaw the construction of an addition to the Oddfellows building in 1906, and that same year was made a district deputy grand master at the Grand Lodge session in Victoria, which ended with a ten o'clock banquet at the Driard Hotel. In 1914 he received a Veteran's Jewel for twenty-five years' membership. At the Chilliwack Merchants' Picnic in July 1912 he pulled a small boy, Jack Henderson, out of the path of an oncoming car, and in 1914 his house served as the town's polling place.

Manager of the Elk Creek Waterworks

From 1910 to 1919 Ed was the local manager and superintendent of the Elk Creek Waterworks Company, overseeing a huge expansion of Chilliwack's water system as the valley boomed. In 1911 alone the company laid some nineteen miles of mains. After the fire chief complained that summer that the water pressure was too low to fight fires, the directors had Ed lay a new twelve-inch main across town, and the system was judged big enough to serve a city of 50,000. The new mains reached out to Rosedale and Sardis, and between March and mid-June 1912 his crews of forty-five men laid about twenty more miles of extensions, including lines to South Sumas and to the railway station, where the railway planned a 40,000-gallon tank for its locomotives. His daughter Frankie worked alongside him in the company office. In January 1918, when an ice storm cut off the town's water for nearly two weeks, Ed directed the repairs. He resigned in March 1919.

Family and Final Years

In the fall of 1912 Ed and his cousin William Henry Nelems took a long holiday back east to Buffalo, Toronto, Woodstock, Hamilton, and London, planning to return through Chicago, Denver, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco. After leaving the farm, Ed built the family a house at the corner of Young Road and Alexander Avenue, a street named for his son Alex, with a small creamery in the basement, where he usually kept a couple of cows for milk, cream, and butter. His daughters scattered as they married, several of them south across the border to Washington; Gladys and Frankie both ended up in Ferndale. Ed and Sarah hosted their daughter Dorothy's wedding to Arthur Menzies at home in 1922 and spent Christmas 1931 with Gladys's family in Ferndale.

Sarah died in 1933, and in the years that followed Ed lived for a time with his daughter Dorothy Menzies and made long visits to Ferndale. In 1937 he rode along with Gladys's family to see the old fort at Fort Langley, and in April 1941 he gathered the families of four of his daughters for a reunion dinner at the Peace Arch on the border. He went back to carpentry in his sixties and worked as a contractor until he retired around 1940, at about seventy-three. Ed died at Chilliwack General Hospital on August 26, 1948, after four years of Parkinson's disease and a year and a half of heart trouble, fifteen years to the day after Sarah. He was buried in the Odd Fellows cemetery in Chilliwack, and his estate of about $8,450 was divided evenly among his children. His grandson Ray remembered a man who liked checkers and cowboy stories, and who had taught his daughter Gladys the Varsovienne, a folk dance he may have learned from his own father.