Perspectives from the Past – Part 1

One of my intermittent hobbies is genealogy research. I love digging for clues and finding pieces of the puzzle, but I’m not as good at documenting what I find. I end up with a bunch of names and dates scrawled on scraps of paper – but I don’t put them together to see the story they tell. That sounded like a good pandemic lockdown project.

This post will be of interest mostly to my relatives, but it also helped me process what the world is going through right now. It made me conscious of what a miracle it is that I came to exist given everything my ancestors had to survive for me to be here today. It also helped me see my life in historical context, a single page in a long, constantly unfolding, story. It gave me that combined sense of awe and insignificance, like when you’re in the mountains or at the Grand Canyon.

I also learned more Canadian history doing this little project than I did in school. I hated history class – memorizing names and dates – but when those events are placed in the context of people’s life stories, they become much more interesting. This is the story of my maternal great-great-grandmother and her descendants .

My mother’s mother’s mother’s mother, Jane Clark, was born in 1855 in Staffordshire England. At 19, she married James Morgan, a plasterer from Wales.

By the time Jane was 26, they had three children – George, Eliza, and Sara – with a fourth on the way. Then 6-year old George died. Four months later, they had a son named James. Before that year was out, 2-year old Sara had also died.

Four years later, Jane and James emigrated to Australia with 8-year old Eliza, 4-year old James and a new baby named Ernest.

Jane had two more girls, Annie and Miriam. Miriam died shortly before her first birthday. Five months later, 5-year old Ernest died. At 40, Jane gave birth to her eighth and final child, a boy named William.

Around 1906, the family emigrated to Canada, settling in Winnipeg. Eliza, James and Annie were all married by then. Eliza and her husband had a daughter, born in Australia, and Annie and her husband had two daughters, born in Wales, the eldest being my grandmother.

William, the youngest child of James and Jane, was about 16 when they moved to Winnipeg. He lived in a boarding house down the street from his parents. The family were Salvationists and a few years after arriving in Canada James Sr. and William had the opportunity to attend a Salvation Army Congress in London. William was a member of the Salvation Army’s youth band. It was a joyous occasion as many Salvationists were returning to England for the first time since emigrating and were excited to reunite with family members. The ship set sail from Rimouski Quebec on May 29^th, 1914. After watching the sun set on the Laurentian Mountains, the passengers headed to their berths. A fog settled over the river. Later that night, a Norwegian ship, loaded with coal, bore through the fog and struck the Empress of Ireland, tearing a gaping hole in her side.

News of the ship’s sinking spread fast and relatives tried desperately to find information about their loved ones. The following day, the Winnipeg paper reported that James and William were among the survivors.

JAMES MORGAN AND SON ARE BOTH SAFE

Unbounded relief came to the home of James Morgan yesterday when it was learned that Mr. Morgan and his son William, who were passengers on the wrecked boat were safe. The Morgan family are Salvationists and the father and son were returning to the old country to attend the army convention. The younger man was very anxious to attend the convention and his father, although dreading the voyage, agreed to go with him. Mrs. Morgan bore up well under the strain of the anxiety, but her relief was great when the safety of her loved ones was announced.

Two days later, the newspaper issued a correction, stating that nothing had been heard of them and the report had been made in error. Jane’s sons-in-law, Thomas and Elias, travelled by train from Winnipeg to Quebec to investigate further. The sinking of the Empress of Ireland was Canada’s greatest maritime disaster, with 1,011 of the 1,477 people aboard perishing, including James, 62, and William, 19.

Jane passed away in 1931 at the age of 76, having tragically lost five of her eight children and her husband. She left behind her three surviving children – James, Eliza and Annie – their spouses, and 13 grandchildren.

Annie, my great grandmother, had married Joseph “Elias” Davies, the son of a coal coker in Wales in 1907. When WWI started, Elias enlisted as a bandsman but was later transferred to the Royal Flying Corps and trained as an Air Mechanic, 1st Class. He was shipped to France where he became a mechanic for Billy Bishop, Canadian flying ace and war hero. After the war, he joined the Air Board and the family moved to Borden, Ontario and then to Ottawa.

In 1922, Elias was on a business trip near Whitney Ontario. He went out on a motorboat alone and drowned.

“It is reported that while the motor was running he stood up in the boat, lost his balance and fell into the water. The boat speeded away, leaving him without any means to save himself.”

One story is that he was showing off and lost his balance. Another is that he took his own life. He was 36 years old and left behind his wife Annie and their four daughters, aged 6-14.

Annie and the girls moved back to Winnipeg and, a few years later, moved to Vancouver. There must have been some hard financial times for the family, especially as the Great Depression hit. Growing up, I was surprised that my great-aunts Lil and Beth didn’t eat pasta but my mom explained it was because they associated it with being poor.

In 1931, Annie’s eldest daughter, May, married Arthur Green (Art) in Winnipeg.

Art and May had a son, Don, and a daughter, Marilyn (my mom).

Because Art worked for the railroad, they were allowed free train travel. Don and Marilyn loved spending summers with their aunts and grandmother in Vancouver, despite having to attend two church services on Sundays. Annie was still very active in the Salvation Army.

When WWII started, Art and his five brothers volunteered for service.

One of the sons, Albert, died of his injuries in a Hong Kong prison camp. He was 31.

My grandfather remained in Canada on active service during the war then returned to his job with the Canadian National Railroad. Six years later, he passed away from cancer at the age of 43.

My mom had to leave school in grade ten to find work. She was at the top of her class and had been offered an Eaton Scholarship, but there was no discussion. The family needed the extra income. Don had already left school by then and continued working to help support his mom and sister.

Two years later, Don married Leona, and they went on to have four children, six grandchildren and a great grandchild. They celebrated 64 years of marriage in 2018 and he passed away later that year, just shy of his 85th birthday, the first in this branch of the family tree to make it past 82. His family called him the Energizer Bunny because he just kept going and going every time the doctors thought he might not pull through.

My mom got work in the office at General Motors, where she met my dad. They were married 52 years and had 3 children and 3 grandchildren. Mom lived to 76 and dad was 82.

Both Don and my dad had polio as children, likely during the 1941 epidemic in Winnipeg. Before a vaccine was developed in the 1950s, polio was the most feared disease in North America. It affected mostly children, leaving many paralyzed, and no one knew what caused it or how it spread. The experience left a strong impression on both my dad and my uncle. My dad, who was probably 6 at the time, remembered being told to stay in bed but sneaking out of bed to play on the floor, until he heard the name of his classmate on the radio. He’d died of polio. My dad hopped right back into bed and stayed there. He later said that he considered every day since then a bonus. My Uncle Don recalled the loneliness of spending a month in the children’s hospital when he was 8 years old, with no visitors allowed and only being able to see his parents through the window, many floors below.

Years after her husband Art passed away, May remarried a man who treated her like a Queen during courtship, but then moved her out west, isolated her from family and friends, and mistreated her. Eventually she convinced him to let her go home to Winnipeg for a visit and she never returned.

My great-aunts Lil and Beth never married and lived together for the rest of their lives. Beth had epilepsy, which in those days carried a far greater stigma than it does today and was likely a contributing factor in her staying single. Vi married and had two children.

My great-grandmother Annie lived to be 74, and her daughters lived into their 70s and early 80s.

That’s the abridged version of the Morgan/Davies/Green side of the family. Now I’ll have to see what stories I can unearth about my paternal ancestors. Stay tuned (further) western relatives.