CIHB - Thomas Cannon, St. Lawrence

A few years ago while working on a local heritage project I had access to some CIHB files and scanned a few files which were from the area I grew up in Lot 3 and where I now live in Lot 23.  I was thrilled to find the record of my grandmother's (Anne Jane Cannon) homestead located on the Olde Tom Road in St. Lawrence, PEI.  The CIHB recordings were carried out by students, mostly history majors.  Here's the CIHB documentation of the Cannon homestead - the house was built by my great-great-grandfather Charles Cannon and his son Thomas.

 Below:  the west side of the Cannon Homestead, facing the Olde Tom Road.

Below: the south side of the house, the main house had one large room and to the rear was the kitchen and with the shed-roofed porch.

Below: the east side of the house - facing the wood-working shop and barns.

Below:  The north side of the house, only two windows, the kitchen and a little window in the stairwell.  The Cummins 1928 PEI Atlas shows Charles Cannon owning 140 acres on this farmstead.

The house was very small - my grand-uncle John Cannon, a hard-working, illiterate bachelor, lived here until the mid 1980's when one day he was admitted to the hospital for a 2-weeks period to recover from an illness.  When it was time for him to come home, a young neighbour (who had bought a small building lot from him a couple of years earlier) took him home to live with he and his family.  However, it was only long enough to have my uncle sign-over his entire 140-acre farmstead.  Then Uncle John was tossed out with no place to go eventually ending up at a long-term Seniors Home in Summerside.  My aunts thought they'd bring legal proceedings against the neighbour but were advised the transfer of land was legal, although unethical.  The house, barn, pump house, wood-working shop were demolished not long after.