TITLED FARMERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 33, 8 February 1930, Page 10 (Supplement)

TITLED FARMERS.

TILLING PRAIRIE LANDS.

PRINCES AND BARONS.

CANADA'S WEALTHY OWNERS

British Columbia and southern Alberta have more titled landowners than any other part of North America. These two western provinces are the meetingplaces of princes, „ barons and counts., Here live men and women of culture and refinement, not'in feudal castles but in frame houses as successful farmers.

The largest titled landowners in British Columbia are the Marquis of Exeter, Lord Egerton of Tatton and the Marquis of Anglesey. ' These three members of the English nobility own vast tracts of farm land, chiefly devoted to the raising of stock. The Marquis of Exeter's 100Mile House, on the Cariboo road, is famous to rancher and tourist alike, while Lord Egerton's adjoining place lia3 1000 head of Hereford and Shorthorn cattle and vast hay fields. The Marquis of Anglesey, who until just recently also specialised in stock, sold his herd, to the Marquis of Exeter and Walhachin.

Others have bought farms in Alberta to be managed by a foreman, a place where they. could come for a rest and from which they could derive a profitable income.

In this class, the absentee landlords—absent only because of other duties abroad—the Prince of Wales is listed. He has 3095 acres in the High River district assessed at £3,034. Then there are Lord and Lady Arbuthnot. They farmed for a number of years prior to 1920, when news came that they had succeeded to the title. Now Lord Arbuthnot is Lord Lieutenant of Kincardineshire, and his lady looks back to the day when a telegram brought the word of, the succession while she was out in the fields helping in the threshing.

The Earl, of Egmont, till this year Frederick J. T. Perceval, is another absentee landlord whose succession to an old title has caused him to leave his ranch for a seat in the House of Lords. The Earl of Minto, a former GovernorGeneral of Canada; Lord Aberdeen and the Duke of Sutherland were among the first British peers to establish ranches in Western Canada. The latter carries the largest holdings, 9202 acres, which are assessed at £11,400. The Earl of Minto's holdings are 1908 acres, assessed at a Valuation of £3,300.

With the signing of the armistice and the downfall of many old families and estates came the influx of titled men, some with money and'others without, who have surmounted all difficulties and are now farming successfully in this regal district.

There arc the two brothers, Barons Joseph and Andre Csavossy, young Hungarian noblemen. They arrived in 1925 after they had searched the ends of the earth for a place to settle. For a while they tried Kenya Colony, British East Africa, but found it wanting. They came to Canada to look around and stayed on a 1600-acre farm that they bought at once.

Feudal Estate Planned By Barons. With them came four families who had once been" feudal tenants on their vast estates in Hungary. The end of the war saw these estates turned over to Roumania. Being unable to live under this new flag, the two brothers sold their land and buildings, intent on finding a new home. When they came to Canada, these four families of retainers were summoned to become part of a system of tenantry such as they had been accustomed to in Hungary.

The Csavossy ranch was turned oyer to pasture and wheat growing. Dairy farming was their aim, and to that end they hoped their tenants would : help. But the Hungarian peasants, seeing that their neighbours owned their own land and that other farmers who had once been peasants were .now free land owners, threw off the yoke of feudal suppression, left the barons and went on their own.

To-day prime beef and wheat constitute the produce of the Csavossy ranch. Another section of the land has ~ been added to the original two and a-half sections, and the ranch prospers. A de HaJvilland Moth light airplane 'has been added to the farm machinery. It has ajiangar and landing field near the ranch house. The barons fly to Calgary for business and pleasure.

In tliis rolling country with its background of mountains another peer and his wife found a new life after the war. They hired out as farm hands, these two who were descended from one of Britain's outstanding families. No one knew of their identity. The man worked at pitching hay and cleaning barns, and his wife attended to the vegetable gar-* den and the chickens for their employer. Then one day they bade their "teachers" good-bye, to buy 018 acres at Fort Saskatchewan, just north of Edmonton.

Here Lord and Lady Rodney settled in 1920, after Parliament had commuted a £2,000 perpetual annuity, granted to Admiral Rodney in 1782 for defeating a French fleet off Jamaica. The farm has grown into a profitable undertaking. All the milk and cream for the hospitals of Edmonton coines from there. Lady Rodney raises 200 turkeys every year.

Sometimes titled young men come to tlie farm as well. The Due de Nemours and John Stanley, a nephew of the Earl of Derby, are two such The former is a grandson of the? late King Leopold of Belgium. The manager of the ranch for some years was the grandson of a British peer. Lord Edward Montague lived at the farm for five years, working as a farm hand. Then he married an Edmonton girl and is now in England on a honeymoon. Later he plans to come back to Calgary to work his oil interests in the Turner Valley, bought to some extent with the earnings at the Rodney ranch. French Noble's Large Estate. Then back in the region where the Prince of Wales has his E. P. Ranch lives the family of the late Count Henry de Foras of Savoi, a family of French nobles, who have been there for many i years. The Count Henry died recently I but his sons and daughters carry on.

When the French family first came to Canada they brought many servants. Like the Hungarian peasants of the Barons Csavossy, these retainers decided to settle on their own. Then there'

was hard work for the count, his wife sons and daughters. Sometimes capital was low,, and the story is told that for a number of years two of the sons would go to Calgary after the crop had been harvested to work as linesmen for the telephone company and so add to the revenue derived from the farm. There are many titled farmers in the Canadian West whose identity will never be known —refugees of Russia and the Balkan countries who had to flee for their lives. Now and then one of these is discovered, making an heroic fight to win a living from the soil. But those who went out West with their titles fully or partly displayed are many. There is Prince. Erik of Denmark who, before his marriage a few years ago to a Canadian heiress, lived on his farm, near Calgary, and there is Admiral G. Oomo, a relative of the King of Italy, who operates a grain farm.