This is a picture report on work being done on the Grave of                                        Mr. Pat Johnson. 1860-1951
This grave is located at the far left corner of the Old walled cemetery. It is in an area where a lot of the rain runoff carrying topsoil ends up.
I recently make a little headstone from a black piece of marble which I sandblasted a copy of a crucifix my G.Grandfather Bernhardt Schmuck brought from Soufflenheim, Alsace in the 1850's. This head stone makes it easier for people to find Pat's grave as it is one of the most visited. I have asked for permission to raise the monument to around 6" above it's present depth.
​Ron.
 PS; I have no idea why I kept having the feeling of making a crucifix marker for Pat Johnson's grave when ever I was                        working in this section of the cemetery.
          A few months after placing the new crucifix marker on Pats grave I received a copy of Pat Johnson's history from                    Diane Strickler who has been working to collect and update the history of the OWC.
          I'm sure after you read her account of Pat Johnsons life below you will soon see why the need for a crucifix                               monument came to me.
                                                                             Ron Schmuck   Nov 4 2021

                                  Pat Johnson
​                                   1860- 1951


His real name was Pat Walter Johnson, but he was known for miles around as Pat the fortune teller. His skin was black and very dry. His eyes were dark and hollow and stood out. He had a gray afro and often had a show of white stubble on his jaw, although some people remembered him having dark hair. He didn’t talk a lot. No one knew his age but thought he was born around 1869. If he had any close family, no one ever saw them. He was known to have said he was the seventh son of a seventh son. No one knew exactly where Pat had come from although rumour had it that he had come to Ontario on the underground railway from Detroit. 

On his shoulder he carried a knapsack in which he collected anything neighbours might give him, or animals that had been killed on the road. 

He owned a single barrel shot gun with the wood stock partly burned off. He also had a German shepherd dog which he kept on a chain, when he went on his travels.  The children loved to play with his dog.  Children were never afraid of Pat and many often wondered why not, because he was different from anyone they had ever known.

--------------------------------------------------

In 1921-22 he lived just above St. Agatha in a sugar shack owned by David Roth and did odd jobs in the area, fixing fences, cutting wood, etc.  In 1923 he helped at the St. Agatha orphanage, doing shovel work when they put the root cellar In.  
 

Around 1925-26, people living on the Elmira Road would see him walking to Guelph.  He would stop in about once a month at Dalzilios and would be given food which he ate on the verandah. 
 

It was 1929, the end of October or beginning of November, when he came to Andrew and Catherine Weiler’s home on a rainy Saturday night. He wanted supper and a night’s lodging. Andrew was in the barn milking the cow when his son Leo came out to the barn and said there was a man who wanted to stay for supper. His dad told him he could stay. After supper he played Leo’s banjo and stayed the night.  He had breakfast the next day with the Weiler family, but because it was Sunday, he wouldn’t play the banjo.

Pat made it a habit of going to the Weiler home for a meal, whether it was for breakfast, at noon or for the evening meal.  This went on till about 1933.

Approximately 1930-31 Pat went and helped the Letson’s in West Montrose.  He lived in a shack and fed their horses so they could get an earlier start at working in the fields.

Walter E. Lasby is thought to have met Pat in the fall of ’33. It was a rainy day and Pat had a sack over his shoulder and he was wet. He asked Walter for some dry matches. Walter offered him a place to stay in a log house that he owned, where he could start a fire and dry out. Although it was thought Pat Johnson would stay only for a short while, he lived there close to 20 years.

The house was a 2-storey clapboard with a one-storey section used as a summer kitchen. It had a basement and a woodshed attached. The house was heated by a wood stove. The windows were all smoked up, and the knocked out ones upstairs were boarded up. 

Inside the house, the furnishings were simple. An oil lamp sat on the table, surrounded by little piles of newspapers and clippings. Against the wall was a couch which served as a bed. He never had a telephone or hydro.

Pat Johnson kept a small garden with a few potatoes and cucumbers in amongst the weeds.

He was fond of his whiskey “hooch” and his tea. He always threw the tea leaves out the door as he had no sink with a drain in the house.   

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pat was superstitious and he always thought someone was trying to poison him. He was known to pray the rosary and refused to answer his door until he was finished.

Pat was known for miles around as a fortune teller and it was felt he could read people’s minds. He was known for finding lost people.  Some claimed he charmed warts off  people and showed other people how they could do it.

People found out by word of mouth that Pat had a special gift for telling them when something bad or good was going to happen to them. He used large cards for fortune telling. Ben Elchert was missing and when neighbours and friends went searching for him, they asked Pat.  Pat went through the playing cards and could not find a man, but could see a woman with a chain around her neck.  Ben was found with a nightshirt on and the chain was indeed around his neck.  Once the word was out, Pat had many visitors.

He took great pride in helping people find lost articles and helped in finding people. He liked talking to people and was always at home on weekends when people came to have their fortunes read. He never advertised this gift. People came from far and near. Many local people came to see Pat and have their fortunes told but important people came too, including the sister of the then Premier of Ontario. 

There was a rumour going around that the “Boyd Gang” notorious bank robbers from Toronto, were seen going to Pat to find out if they would be caught.  

People gave him money for fortune telling which he applied to his meager living costs. For the most part it was his only income. He would sometimes hire out for a day or two to help during haying and harvest, fixing fences, cutting wood, etc. and was paid in canned goods. Somehow, he managed to scrape an existence out of the odd jobs with the farmers and from his weekend fortune telling,

No one knew for sure whether Pat could see into the future. No one knew if it was his way, perhaps the only way he had, of relating to people, so he used it to his best advantage. One prediction he made while looking over the vast fields “Someday this land will be ploughed from road to road” He also fore told that someday, the land he lived on would flourish and would grow corn (corn had never been planted in this area before).

 
  
The first Monday of every month was the Elmira Hog fair which was held behind the Steddick Hotel.  It was the custom or tradition for area farmers to go to this market.  This particular Monday, Bill Bye oldest son of George & Maggie Bye had gone to Elmira and as the custom, stopped in at the Steddick Hotel for dinner and refreshments.  However, he stayed on into the evening because he liked country music.  Bill left Steddicks and took the Bye lane home.  The lane was filled with snow and Bill got stuck.  Bill left the car running so he could listen to the radio and eventually was asphyxiated.  
When he did not come home his family went searching and found his car in the lane. The provincial police were called.

Neighbours had not seen or heard from Pat for a couple of days so they asked the  provincial police to check on him. When they couldn’t get an answer at Pat ‘s, the police in turn requested the registered owner, Lorne Bolger, accompany them.  It was then that Lorne Bolger grabbed a post nearby and broke into the house.  This was on Tuesday, February 12th, 1951.  Pat was found dead; with a crucifix in his hand.  His clothes were wet but he wasn’t frozen. 
 
Pat even predicted his own death. He never liked Lorne Bolger, although it was Lorne who gave him the roof over his head. He could see Lorne coming after him with a piece of wood and this ended up being true. 

The day before Pat died, Leo Weiler had taken some bread and butter and other food staples over to Pat who wasn’t well.  Leo made a fire to warm the place and Pat did eat, although he must have died sometime through the night or early the next morning.


 


No one was sure what religion Pat was, although he did pray the rosary and it was thought he must be Catholic. However he was never seen in the local church. 

At the time, there was some controversy about who would bury him, a Roman Catholic priest or a United Church minister. He was not in good standing in either church. 

He was laid out at the Towriss Funeral Home in Elora. He had on a white shirt with a black string bow-tie and black coat and was laying in a blue casket.  He was buried on the 14th of February at the expense of Wellington Township. When he was prepared for burial, the scars across his back could be plainly seen. He had obviously been a slave earlier in his life.  In many ways he had remained a slave even in his later life, relating only to a few neighbours and his weekend visitors who came to him to have their fortunes told.  Being black in the 40's in a small rural community in Southern Ontario did not offer a very satisfactory social life.

    He also had a will prepared by Reginald Cowan Bruce of Elora on Sept. 24, 1948 and bequeathed Ann Frances Goetz all his property and appointed her mother Alberta (Weiler) Goetz his sole Executor and trustee.  As a little girl, Ann very readily sat on Pat’s knee and never felt strange towards him which is why the family felt Ann was remembered in this special way.  Because so many people saw him make change for money from an old tobacco can, it was thought that he kept his money on his property. The yard was dug up and the house ransacked in search of containers. Nothing was ever found.
 
 

A very simple service was held by Father Joseph Diemert from St. Boniface parish in Maryhill who said some kind and thoughtful words. Thanks was given for his life and he was committed back to God. He was laid to rest in St. Boniface cemetery
on February 14, 1951, in an unmarked grave in the unblessed part.  Years later neighbours and friends collected money to purchase a marker.  Not sure if the marker is placed over Pat’s grave but it is in the general area. (How can a whole cemetery be blessed but one section not be blessed?)  

Pall bearers were 4 township councilors, the reeve and the township clerk.

He is the only black person buried in the St. Boniface Church “Old Walled” cemetery.

If you have more information, pictures etc of Mr Pat Johnson Please send an email to me at                                                               [email protected]
.....................................................................................................................................................
     I have asked the St. Boniface Cemetery board for permission to raise Pat's headstone up 8" out of the mud and to plant grass etc.
                    in Sept 2020 (at my own expense) 
          but as of Nov 3 2021 no reply has been received. Ron Schmuck
***************************************************************
                                      REPLY FINALLY RECEIVED !!
   I finally received a reply from the St.Boniface Cemetery Board
                           Sept 2022, who met for their annual AGM.
                                             who said to me, 
         Not to make any improvements to
                   Pat Johnsons grave!!--------------
                  No reason was given---------------

 

I will leave the little Cross headstone that I made and installed for Pat Johnson in place and let the cemetery board remove it and throw away themselves.