Auchmar

📜 SERVANT SUNDAY

Christina Appleton, Maid of All Work

Imagine doing almost every household task… alone.

Meet Christina Appleton, maid of all work.

The title sounds simple.

It was not.

Cooking assistance.

Laundry.

Bedrooms.

Coal.

Water.

Floors.

Serving.

Cleaning.

Repeat.

Victorian servants did not have “job descriptions” as we know them.

Some did nearly everything.

Butter Pats & Print, Victorian, Original

In the 19th century, butter pats were used to shape butter into bricks, making butter ready for sale and use.

The excess moisture would be squeezed out of the butter, which was then transferred to a wooden board. The butter maker would hold one of these pats in each hand and work the butter into shape. Butter pats and moulds were washed in salted water to help prevent the butter from sticking to them.

These wooden pats are thin, light and easy to hold. The inside face is serrated to grip the butter and squeeze out any further water. It was also used to make patterns on the finished butter.

The butter was stamped with a wooden stamp or print. The stamps were carved with designs that identified the individual farm dairies. Designs ranged from agricultural motifs, such as wheat ears, primroses and farm animals, to abstract patterns. The stamp in this picture has a simple flower motif.

If the butter was made in winter, it would usually be paler than summer butter due to the poorer quality of grazing for the cow. Because of thi,s food colouring made from marigolds and carrot water was sometimes added and worked into the butter with the pats.

Butter pats are also known as Scotch Hands.

📜 SERVANT SUNDAY

Mary Campbell, “Granny’s Cook”

Not every servant appears in a census.

Some survive in history through a single sentence.

In a letter written by little Isaac Victor Buchanan, he casually mentions:

"Nobody knows I am writing to you except Mary Campbell, Granny’s cook."

And just like that — Mary Campbell enters the historical record.

No census listing.

No detailed biography.

Just a quiet glimpse of a trusted household figure.

Mary likely cooked for Agnes Buchanan during her final years — years marked by grief, illness, and helping raise her young grandson after tragedy struck the family.

Sometimes history survives not through official records…

…but through the simple certainty of a child who knew exactly who mattered in his world.

Do you have a family story where one small detail unlocked a larger history?

📖 From my book on Auchmar and the rise and fall of Victorian domestic service.
https://www.amazon.ca/Servant-Life-Auchmar-Leanne-Pluthero/dp/B0GTK1PGVM

Below we have a photo of Isaac Victor Buchanan, the first grandchild, whom Agnes would help raise in her home on James Street. While living there, Isaac Victor would mail a letter mentioning Granny's cook.

I was going through some of my old files on my computer and came across this photo.

This is the north lawn when the Sisters of Social Service once owned the land. I don't have it listed with a date, but this is prior to their building of the chapel and dorms.

What I do love about this photo is that you can see the little room that once came off the kitchen. There are only a few photos of this area, and none are as close up. This room would have been torn down or enclosed during their 1963 expansion of the main house.

In 1873, Isaac Buchanan sold part of his north lot to the Ontario Government to build an asylum.

Deb and the Kitty.

A small black buggy.
A cat dressed in doll clothes.
A quiet moment…

Until the ride began.

Bumping across the ground… the cat escaped—mid-ride.

Childhood at Auchmar wasn’t always peaceful.

Agnes Evelyn Buchanan (1856–1882)

Born December 20th, 1856 — the first child born inside Auchmar.

Evelyn, known within the family as Evie, grew up in the heart of the Buchanan household at a time when Auchmar was still full of life, guests, music, and movement.

“She would act so differently toward them. She would cultivate their affections so much more than she had ever taken the trouble to do.”

Even in reflection, Evelyn is remembered through quiet honesty, affection, and the weight of family memory.

She would later write with deep awareness of how life might have been different had she lived longer.

Robert Andrew Washington Buchanan never saw Auchmar.

He died just before his father would acquire the land that would become the family home — the place so deeply tied to the Buchanan story today.

But in Agnes’ life, he was never “before Auchmar.”

He was always part of it.

A presence in her memories. A name spoken in the same breath as the children who survived. A small grave marked a before and after in her life as a mother.

She buried him in a new country, in a new life, and carried him into every version of home that came after.

Some children are part of a house not because they lived there… but because they are forever held within the people who did.

Some children live long enough to be remembered in milestones. Others live only in memory.

For Agnes Buchanan, Robert Andrew Washington — “Bobby” — never grew older in her world than four years old.

Even after the house filled with more children, more noise, more life… There were still moments that belonged only to him. A Leap Day birthday that came only once. A small grave in Hamilton. A memory preserved in stories told quietly to children who never met him.

And yet he was never forgotten.

In her writing, even years later, he is still there — not as a distant tragedy, but as a child deeply loved.

Some losses don’t fade with time. They simply change shape in the heart.