Fairmount Villa

July 8, 2026 Lucy H. Anglin Leave a comment

by Janice Hamilton and Lucy Anglin (second cousins)

Fairmount Villa was the home of our great-great-grandparents, Montreal notary and landowner Stanley Clark Bagg (1820-1873,) or SCB, and his wife, Catharine Mitcheson Bagg (1822-1914). SCB died of typhoid at age 53, but Catharine continued to live in the house with her son and four daughters until they all married, and she remained there until her death at age 92.

1913 – CMB, Mary Heloise Lindsay, Ada Griffiths & son Julius

In his family history notes, Stanley Bagg Lindsay, SCB’s and Catharine’s grandson and Lucy’s great uncle, reminisced about playing in Granny’s garden. “There were apple trees, especially one which was easy to climb and play house in. There was an iron bench under it, painted blue green…. There was a chestnut tree which we loved, the summer house, the white statutes of Adam and Eve with no arms, … the bleeding hearts, snowballs and lilacs … Nora the housemaid and Jessie the cook, who made good ladies fingers and sponge cakes and who we could always see through large sunken window which gave light to the kitchen.”

“There were the stables, the horses, the rockaway and the brougham (buggy) and Willis the coachman with white mutton chop whiskers whom we liked and who afterwards drove a wagon for Joyce the confectioner. We were very fond of Odell Comtois who did sewing…. She was practically one of the family.”

Stanley Lindsay continued in his notes about visiting Granny Bagg: “We fondly remember her sitting at the front drawing-room window at Fairmount, her white lace cap perched on her head, watching the world go by.” He concluded^, “The garden had become quite shabby.” “It seemed a large garden to us. It went as far as our house which was at the corner of Milton Street. The west side adjoined the Wilson-Smith property. Long before our house was built, a large house called Tara Hall stood just north of Milton Street. Mother [Mary Heloise (Bagg) Lindsay] remembers it burning down one night when she was a child. Where the house used to stand is a street called Tara Hall.”¹⁰

The property records date back 300 years. In 1701, the land where the house later stood belonged to a religious community called the Charon Brothers. Later, in the mid-1700s, the Grey Nuns (Soeurs grises) inherited it. Around 1780, the sisters sold three lots at the crest of the hill, which would later become Sherbrooke Street. These lots were subdivided and resold multiple times^. In 1837, merchant Stanley Bagg (the father of SCB) purchased lot number 58A at a sheriff’s auction. Sheriffs often seized properties when owners couldn’t pay their debts and auctioned them off at a discount for new buyers.

Catharine Mitcheson Bagg – circa 1843

When SCB and Catharine were married in 1844,⁵ Stanley sold the property to his only son. It was at the north-west corner of Sherbrooke Street, running 2½ arpents north along Upper Saint–Urbain Street to the property line of Durham House, where SCB was born and grew up.

The notarial act in which the transfer was recorded described the Fairmount property as having “a two-storey stone house and other buildings thereon erected.”⁶ So the house was probably still under construction in 1844, and SCB and Catherine lived at Durham House with Stanley for a few years until Fairmont Villa was built. Their first child, who died at age two, was born at Durham House, but the others were all born at Fairmount Villa.

Some years later, an addition was added to the west side of Fairmount Villa. It included SCB’s office and a second front door so that farmers coming to pay the rent they owed to SCB did not have to walk through the house to get to the office.⁷

In his letter to The Montreal Gazette, Sydenham Bagg Lindsay, Stanley’s brother and Lucy’s grandfather, also noted there was a family chapel at Fairmount Villa, called the Oratory of the Holy Cross. “The stained glass window in this chapel depicted Christ as the Saviour of the World; it was given in recent years to the Anglican Church at Lake Echo….”⁹

Sydenham explained that the name Fairmount Villa was reminiscent of Philadelphia. Catharine Mitcheson grew up in a rural area just north of Philadelphia called Spring Garden.⁸ (It is part of the city today.) Philadelphia’s famous Fairmount Park was located nearby. The naming of Fairmount Villa after a place associated with Catherine’s early life was something of a family tradition: the house in which Catharine grew up was called Menteith House, after Catharine’s mother’s birthplace, Menteith, Perthshire, Scotland.

This painting of Monteith House, the family home in Spring Garden, was painted by Catharine Mitcheson. Bagg family collection.

After Catharine’s death in 1914, the house was sold to the Asch advertising company, which eventually became known as Claude Neon. The City of Montreal expropriated the property in 1948 in order to widen Saint-Urbain Street.

In September 1948, The Montreal Gazette published a letter announcing the demolition of Fairmount Villa, a house that had stood proudly on Sherbrooke Street near Saint Urbain for over a century.

The house has been gone for over 75 years, yet it’s not entirely forgotten. After all, Fairmount Avenue in Montreal’s Mile End neighbourhood was named in its honour in 1892!

Photo credits:

Studio of Inglis, “Residence of Stanley Clark Bagg,” 1875, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec http://numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52327/1956159 (accessed Dec 6 2019)

Chas. E. Goad, Atlas of the City of Montreal from special survey and official plans, showing all buildings and names of owners, 1881, plate VII; detail of digital image, digital image 10, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec,http://numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52327/2246915?docref=MtCYGy_XY512L82RM1ifMA (accessed Dec. 16, 2019)

Photographer unknown. Catharine Mitcheson Bagg in her 90^th year, 1912. Photo glued into the Bagg Family Bible, Bagg Family Fonds, McCord Museum, Montreal.

Sources:

1. Sydenham Bagg Lindsay, “Montreal Landmark Destroyed,” Letters From Our Readers, The Montreal Gazette, Sept 1, 1948, p. 6.

2. Justin Bur, Yves Desjardins, Jean-Claude Robert, Bernard Vallée et Joshua Wolfe, Dictionnaire Historique du Plateau Mont-Royal, Montréal: Les Éditions Écosociété, 2017, p. 149.

3. Justin Bur, email to the author, Dec. 9, 2019.

4. J.A. Labadie, Inventory of Stanley Clark Bagg’s Estate, notarial act #16732, 7 June 1875, item no. 236; Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.

Stanley Bagg only bought about half of lot 58A, but he also purchased two neighbouring lots, greatly expanding the grounds. Later, SCB sold off a part of the property that he didn’t want, creating a long narrow piece of land along Upper Saint Urbain Street that he divided into lots.

5. The wedding took place on Sept. 9, 1844 at Grace Church, Philadelphia.

Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Historic Pennsylvania Church and Town Records; database and images; Reel: 1078; Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.ca, accessed Dec. 16, 2019,) entry for Catharine Mitcheson; Citation Year 1844, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Church and Town Records, 1669-2013, citing Historic Pennsylvania Church and Town Records. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

6. Henry Griffin, notarial act # 20645 (approximate page number;) June 1, 1844; also mentioned as items 235 and 237 in the inventory of SCB’s estate, prepared by J.A. Labadie, notarial act #16732; Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.

7. Stanley Bagg Lindsay, handwritten notes on Stanley Clark Bagg; Lindsay family collection.

8. 1840 United States Federal Census, database; Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.ca, accessed Dec. 16, 2019), entry for Robert Mitcheson; Citation Year:1840; Census Place: Spring Garden Ward 1, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Roll: 487; Page: 259; Family History Library Film: 0020555; citing Sixth Census of the United States, 1840. (NARA microfilm publication M704, 580 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C.

9. Sydenham Bagg Lindsay, Ibid.

10. Stanley Bagg Lindsay, handwritten notes on Catharine Mitcheson; Lindsay family collection.

genealogy, Montreal, Quebec

The Life and Times of Stanley Clark Bagg, part 2

July 1, 2026 Janice Hamilton Leave a comment

(condensed and revised from several articles that appeared on my personal family history page, Writing Up the Ancestors, around 2020)

In February 1841, my future great-great-grandfather wrote a letter to my future great-great-grandmother, explaining that his grandmother had asked him to write. It doesn’t take much reading between the lines for me to suspect that he was smitten. Perhaps his grandmother had also noticed.

Stanley Clark Bagg (SCB), 20, who lived in Montreal, wrote to Catharine Mitcheson, 18, in Philadelphia: “Grandmother not having received a letter from yourself or your respected parents for a very long time, felt desirous to hear from you or them, and requested me to write, hoping that you or someone of the family would have the goodness to write.”¹

SCB and Catharine were first cousins once removed. SCB’s grandmother, Mary (Mitcheson) Clark (1776-1856) was the older sister of Catharine’s father, Robert Mitcheson (1779-1859.) Both Mary and Robert grew up in County Durham, England and immigrated to North America as adults, she to Montreal and he to Philadelphia. Mary married young, while Robert didn’t marry until he was around 40.

Catharine Mitcheson Bagg, William Notman, year unknown, private collection.

In the summer of 1840, Catharine and her brother Robert visited Montreal to attend another cousin’s wedding. That was probably when SCB and his future bride first encountered each other.

In his letter to Catharine, SCB wrote, “This winter is quite a gay one and scarcely anything is talked of but the parties and concerts, but still we are very lonesome and have been so since you and Robert left here, particularly after (cousin) Mary was married. We all regret very much that you and Robert are not here to participate in the pleasures of the season, but hope shortly to have the pleasure of again seeing you here. Father has gone a few days journey and now I am entirely alone, and can assure you that keeping ‘Bachelor’s Hall’ is not the most agreeable mode of living.” After adding some gossip, SCB ended the letter, “Wishing you every happiness that this world can afford. I subscribe myself, your affectionate cousin, SC Bagg”.

If anyone objected to the fact that SCB and Catharine were related, the couple must have overcome those objections. They were married on September 9, 1844, at Grace Church Episcopal Chapel, Philadelphia. Catharine’s brother, now Reverend Robert McGregor Mitcheson, performed the service.²

They signed a marriage contract several days before the wedding, stipulating that they were to be separate as to property.³ SCB pledged to pay all household expenses and expenses for their children. He stated that he had mortgaged one of the properties he had inherited from his grandfather. If he died before Catharine did, that money would be used to fund a $100-a-year annuity for her, however, if she remarried, she would no longer receive this annual payment. These clauses were designed to ensure she would live comfortably, and to protect her from his creditors, but also to protect his property from a second husband if she remarried.

SCB and Catharine settled in Montreal, where he worked as a notary and where he owned extensive properties. They spent their first year or two of marriage living with SCB’s father in his home, Durham House, while their own house, Fairmount Villa, was under construction nearby. Their first child, Mary Ann Frances Bagg, was born at Durham House on Aug. 19, 1845. She died at age two while they were visiting Catharine’s parents in Philadelphia.⁴ Twenty years later, SCB wrote a poem about losing his first-born daughter. ⁵

Eventually, the couple went on to have five children, one boy and four girls: Robert Stanley (1848-1912), Katharine Sophia (1850-1938), Amelia Josephine (1852-1943), Mary Heloise (1854-1938) and Helen Frances (1861-1935.) Fairmount Villa was a large house and it must have been filled with noise and activity. SCB probably had to get used to this because his own upbringing had been so different: he was an only child who lived in the countryside, his father was often occupied with business concerns, and his mother had died when he was 14.

SCB’s Career

SCB had graduated as a notary in 1842, about a year after he started corresponding with Catharine. After graduation, he and his father took a trip to England together, and SCB opened his practice after they returned. His first recorded notarial act was a rental agreement dated Nov. 1, 1842.

Through 1843 and 1844, clients hired him to write wills and leases and protest unpaid debts. For example, he prepared a lease for his grandmother, dated 17 Jan. 1844. His index described a “lease of a two-story stone house on the continuation of St. Lawrence Street, by Mrs. Mary Clark to P.R. Turner.”⁶

He also managed his own properties, and perhaps he did not find being a notary very interesting. His index shows he took several long breaks in 1846 and 1847 and only prepared two or three notarial acts a year in the 1850s. He closed the practice completely in 1856. Three years later, he was named a Justice of the Peace in Montreal. Numerous Justices of the Peace had been named, so they shared the workload. It must have been his turn in 1865 because he heard almost 40 cases that year.⁷

Continental Notes

The family took a year-long trip through Europe in 1868-1869, and SCB wrote a small book about some of the places they visited, including Paris, Venice, Strasbourg, Waterloo and the ruins of Pompeii. Published in 1870, he called the book Continental Notes for Private Circulation.⁸ The irony is that, 150 years after this book appeared, it is far from private: it can be found in university libraries, and it is also available on the Internet.

I hoped to get to know my great-great grandfather better by reading his own words. At first glance, the book seemed dry and impersonal. This was disappointing, considering that SCB had made the trip with his wife, her sister and the five children, ranging in age from seven to 20. Surely there must have been some amusing incidents along the way that he could have described. But SCB explained in the introduction that the book was based on his personal notes, some of which were written before leaving Montreal.

On closer reading, however, it became clear that Continental Notes reflected his personal interests, which included history (especially the Roman Empire and the early history of Christianity) and archaeology.

He described the Hôtel de Cluny in Paris as one of the finest remains of the ancient mansions of Paris of the 16^th Century, adding that the Palais des Thermes, once the residence of the Roman Governor of Gaul, was connected to Hôtel de Cluny and housed a collection of antiquities that was open to the public. That museum of medieval art is still there and is home to a famous series of tapestries, The Lady and the Unicorn.

Stanley Clark Bagg, portrait by William Raphael done from a photograph after SCB’s death. Private collection.

One of the other spots SCB mentioned was Hyères, a town located near the Mediterranean coast of France. It had been a winter resort for centuries, with French kings among its regular visitors. SCB mentioned its warm winter climate, which may have been one of its attractions, and went on to write, “The environs of Hyères abound in vineyards and olive gardens.… This reminds me of the good Samaritan who poured oil and wine into the wounds of the man that fell among thieves. Who can walk through these pleasant vineyards without thinking of our blessed Lord when he said, ’I am the true vine, and my Father the husbandman.’”

Many years later, I came across some notes that probably referred to that family trip to Europe. Someone had put them in the Bagg family Bible, perhaps so they wouldn’t get lost.⁹These little reminders, including hints such as, “Do not fill trunks, nor take too many; read up references, prepare routine, currency, etc.; letter of introduction useful; a soft answer turneth wrath away; keep cool, be firm, good-tempered, polite.” probably reveal as much of SCB’s attitude about travel as his book does, and most of them remain good advice today.

The Coin Collector

When SCB’s name appeared in a Montreal city directory in 1866, he was not listed as a “gentleman,” as one might expect. Instead, he gave his occupation as President of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Montreal, a voluntary position related to his hobby.¹⁰In fact, numismatics, or the study of old coins, was probably his greatest interest.

In an article for the Society’s journal, he wrote: “In coins and medals, more than in any other monuments, the past is preserved and its heroes and great events are kept memorable, forms of worship, manners and customs of nations; titles of kings and emperors may thus be determined; — in fact, coins have been frequently of the greatest service, by illustrating doubtful points of history, and even by bringing to light circumstances and events unknown to us before.”¹¹

He gave the example of the Roman Empire: while most of the statues, arches and palaces the Romans built have crumbled to dust, “paltry coins remain monuments of the might of the age; they represent, and record, fresh as the day they were coined …”¹²

A small group of English- and French-speaking numismatic enthusiasts started getting together around 1860. When they founded the 20-member Numismatic Society of Montreal on Dec. 8 1862, it became the first numismatic society in Canada and the fifth in North America. SCB was founding vice-president.

In 1863, SCB read the first paper before the Montreal society, an article titled “Notes on Coins.” His second presentation, given later that year, was “Coins & medals as aids to the study and verification of holy writ.” The society’s name changed in 1866 to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Montreal. At that time, SCB was the organization’s president.¹³ He also served as an editor of the society’s quarterly journal.

In order to keep up with the latest discoveries about coins, archaeology and science, SCB was a member of several organizations, including numismatic societies in London and in Philadelphia. He was also a corresponding member of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin and a life member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Natural History Society of Montreal.

His own coin collection was not exceptional, however. In his will, he left it to daughter Mary Heloise, and at some later time, the collection was sold. In 2016, a coin-carrying case that SCB had owned, as well as an inventory and about 40 coins and medals, came on the market. At that time I corresponded with the dealer, who sent me some photos.

Coin expert Ted Banning suggests that SCB’s most important contribution to the field was not as a collector, nor even as a writer, but as one of the founders of the Numismatic Society, because 20 years after his death, the society played an important role in saving one of Montreal’s most important heritage buildings, the Chateau Ramezay.¹⁴

Built in 1705 by Claude de Ramezay, a Governor of Montreal in colonial New France, over the years it had various owners and uses, including the offices of a fur trading company and the headquarters of invading American forces in 1776. When the government decided to sell the building in 1893, the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Montreal rallied public opinion to save it from demolition. The City of Montreal acquired the building and rented it to the society, which converted it into a museum. In 1929, the city ceded the building to the society and today it remains a museum and a UNESCO-recognized historic site.

As for SCB, he lived a charmed life, but it was not a long one. Montreal was an unsanitary city, with a high death rate, especially for the poor. Wealthy people like SCB fared better, but they were not immune. SCB died of typhoid fever on August 8, 1873, age 53, at Fairmount Villa, surrounded by family members.

Sources:

1. Transcription of SCB’s letter, plus notes, probably by grandson Stanley Bagg Lindsay; Lindsay family collection.

2. Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Historic Pennsylvania Church and Town Records; Reel: 1078, database, Ancestry.com (http://:Ancestry.ca, accessed Dec. 22, 2019,) entry for Stanley Clark Bagg, 9 Sept. 1844; citing Historic Pennsylvania Church and Town Records. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

3. Nicholas-Benjamin Doucet, “Marriage entre Stanley Clark Bagg et Catharine Mitcheson,” notarial act # 30488, Sept. 5, 1844, BAnQ.

To learn more about the laws of Quebec regarding civil matters, including community of property in marriage, see Bettina Bradbury. Wife to Widow. Lives, Laws and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Montreal. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011.

4. The child’s death is recorded in the Bagg family Bible, Bagg Family Fonds, McCord Museum, Montreal. She died in Philadelphia on Oct. 14, 1847. The funeral was held on Oct. 21, 1847 at Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal, (Ancestry.ca, citing Gabriel Drouin, comp. Drouin Collection. Montreal, Quebec, Canada: Institut Généalogique Drouin) and she is buried with her parents, grandparents and other family members in the Bagg family crypt, Mount Royal Cemetery.

5. Stella (pseudonym of Stanley Clark Bagg), Leisure Moments: A Few Poems, Montreal: printed by Daniel Rose, 1871. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=aeu.ark:/13960/t92819p4n&view=1up&seq=10

6. Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, “Archives des notaires du Québec, Montréal District judiciaire de Montréal; Stanley Clark Bagg, 1842-1856, CN601,S11” http://bibnum2.banq.qc.ca/bna/notaires/affichage.html?serie=06M_CN601S11 (accessed Dec. 31, 2019)

7. Library and Archives Canada; “Cases Before Justices of the Peace,” The Canada Gazette, vol. XXIV, no. 8, Published by Authority, Quebec: Feb. 25, 1865, p. 781, entry for Stanley Clark Bagg; http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/canada-gazette/093/001060-119.01-e.php?image_id_nbr=55914&document_id_nbr=3045&f=p&PHPSESSID=oo3dok1snqetmppvat92ncmo44 (accessed Jan. 11, 2020).

8. Stanley Clark Bagg, Continental Notes for Private Circulation, Montreal, printed by Daniel Rose 1870. https://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.02377/1?r=0&s=1 (accessed April 8, 2020)

9. I found these notes in the family Bible at the McCord Museum, Montreal and copied them then, but when I looked again a few years later, they were no longer there.

10. “Stanley Clark Bagg, JP, President of Numismatic and Antiquarian Society, Fairmount Villa, 583 Sherbrooke Street.” Mackay’s Montreal Directory, 1866; p. 76, entry for Stanley Clark Bagg; digital image, Ancestry.ca, Canada, City and Area Directories, 1819-1906, (database on-line, accessed March 17, 2020.)

11. Stanley C. Bagg, “Notes on Coins,” The Canadian Antiquarian and Numismatic Journal, p 4, Montreal: The Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Montreal, October, 1873. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=aeu.ark:/13960/t77s8v32h&view=1up&seq=10 (accessed March 19, 2020)

12. Ibid p. 8., https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=aeu.ark:/13960/t77s8v32h&view=1up&seq=15 (accessed March 19, 2020)

13. Warren Baker, “The First Twelve Years: Canadian Numismatic Publishing 1863-1875, an Annotated Bibliography,” Montreal, 1989.

14. Ted Banning, “Bagg helped bring social numismatics to Montreal,” Canadian Coin News, March 19, 2012.

genealogy, Germany

Stuck in Europe: Still Travelling Alone

June 24, 2026 Mary Sutherland Leave a comment

After travelling in Europe for a week by myself, I decided to go home. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the money for a one-way ticket, so I was stuck in Europe for another three weeks. My return ticket, subsidized by the Canadian German Exchange Society, only cost $135, so I couldn’t think of paying 1800 DM ($680) for a one-way ticket. I never thought to call my parents and ask for money. In 1973, people weren’t connected all the time; there were no cell phones, no internet, few credit cards and no online banking.

With the decision made, I needed to stay in better places and at the top of my list were Youth Hostels. I took a train from Frankfurt to Mannheim and there, looked for the Youth Hostel (Jungen Heberge).“Bought a membership to the Youth Hostel for 30 DM today in Mannheim. After three days I will be saving money.” I also hoped to meet other travellers and not spend all my evenings alone in a hotel room.

I then travelled south to Karlsruhe and subsequently to Freiburg. There I met Brenda, a girl from the exchange group, whom I had sat beside on the plane to Europe. She had been working in a hospital and didn’t want to travel alone. A German woman she worked with had a week’s holiday, so they were travelling together. Too bad we didn’t know we were both alone earlier, but she planned to continue working until our group meet-up in Frankfurt.

I looked forward to visiting Switzerland, the birthplace of my paternal grandfather. It never occurred to me to look up any relatives, as this was before genealogy became interesting. I didn’t even go to Fleurier, my grandfather’s hometown.

In Lausanne, I met a girl Joyda, from Halifax. She was hitchhiking around Europe and wanted me to join her. I tried sending my suitcase back to Frankfurt but without a train ticket it would go as merchandise and take two weeks. So we were on the road, Joyda with her backpack and me with my suitcase and other bags! It took us five rides to get to Thun. The last in a milk truck. We took a boat up the lake to Oberhofen and spent two nights in a hostel there. “Found some swings in a park, the first I have seen in Europe, and swung!” The next day we hitchhiked to Bern. We got a ride with a middle aged man who invited us to his house for lunch. Joyda was anxious to get to Bern for a train to Basel so he drove us to the Bern train station even though he wasn’t going there, just putting mile on his new car. There, Joyda and I parted ways. I had enjoyed having a companion.

After Bern, I took a train to Zurich. They had a brand new youth hostel with quilts instead of dirty blankets, solid bunks and hot water showers with a dressing cubicle. This earned a two-night stay. I counted down the days to Frankfurt.

“I was going to spend the day shopping in Zurich, but I only bought a charm. Met a Canadian from Thompson, Manitoba on a bridge (he must have seen the flag on my jeans). Bought me tea, a hotdog for lunch, beer in the afternoon, chicken and beer for supper and more beer! Plus, we went rowing on the lake. The only problem was, he was an illiterate bum and very difficult to understand. Wants to marry me after he goes to Alaska and makes twenty thousand a year and I have finished school!”

After escaping marriage in Zurich, I travelled back into Germany, to Munich. There I met a girl in the youth hostel whom I had met two weeks earlier. It was like finding my best friend, so I had fun in Munich. I only had two more days until meeting up with the group. My last train trip was five hours to Frankfurt with only old people in the compartment.

I spent my last night alone in Frankfurt at a hotel where the porter actually took my suitcase up to my room. The next morning, I walked to the train station and met all the kids from the group. It was a relief to be told what to do. We took buses to the airport, got rid of most of our luggage and drove east toward Berlin. We stopped for lunch at Kirschheim and then waited an hour and a half at the East German border. We were told we couldn’t stop anywhere in East Germany before Berlin, but thankfully made a bathroom stop.

“We arrived in Berlin at 10:30. Took 45 minutes to find the hotel. The bus driver was U-turning all over Berlin, asking instructions from drunks. We finally arrived at the hotel and no supper! Went hungry to bed.”

In the morning we had a bus tour of Berlin which included a stop at the Wall separating east and west. We climbed the lookout and looked over the border at the East German guards, fencing and barbwire. The Wall would remain there until November 9, 1989.

“Today went into East Berlin. Had to wait almost an hour at the border. Filled out forms, had to say how much money we had and changed 5DM to East German marks.”

We were told we had to spend the 5 German Marks. We had trouble finding things to buy and I just spent some on ice cream and a bitter lemon drink. I came back with coins in my pocket.

East Germany was really depressing. Many of the bombed-out buildings still stood, while none were seen in the west. Ugly, huge apartment complexes lined the streets. Karl Marx Allee had some stores but mostly empty of merchandise. What department store in the West would have only one washer, one stove and one fridge? We visited the Pergamon Museum with its ancient artefacts and the Dom Cathedral before heading back to the west for shopping on Kurfürstendamm.

I enjoyed travelling with the group. After spending time with Brenda, I was sorry we hadn’t travelled together but I was glad I was brave enough to tour by myself, rather than spend the whole summer working on the chicken farm. We boarded the buses and travelled back to West Germany. After a night in Kassel, we arrived at Frankfurt Airport for our flight to Canada. I couldn’t wait to get home but carried loads of memories.

Notes:

I kept a notebook journal throughout the summer. I also kept track of my spendings. I certainly didn’t buy much food!

I had a camera with me, my first. A small viewfinder one. I wasn’t used to taking pictures and was shy about photographing people. There were only three pictures of people. I only took slide film and mailed it to Kodak in Canada to be developed.

I arrived back in Montreal with 170.35 DM, which was $64.00 in 1973.

Stories about the first part of the Summer of 1973:

Travelling Alone

My Chicken Farm Summer

Asia, Black Sea Germans, genealogy, Germany, Greece

I Wanna Believe!

June 17, 2026 Dorothy Nixon Leave a comment

40 plus degrees in Athens, 2010. Do I look as if I belong? On the same trip, in Plomari, Lesvos, Greece, an old Romani woman tried to sell me some lace. I turned her away. Little did I know she might have been a relation. Now, I wish I had bought the lace.

The Truth is Out There. Or Is It?

A short time ago, I wrote a story here about my unknown bio-father’s origins or, at least, his possible origins. He was probably half Black Sea German and Half Pontic Greek. That was my best guess, anyway. My paternal grandparents were likely a mixed German and Pontic Greek couple, I thought, maybe from Odessa, maybe from the Crimea, maybe from Dobrudja in Romania. (Yes, I had done my homework.)¹

I was leaning heavily on Ancestry’s ethnicity estimate for this highly unscientific theory – my latest ethnicity estimate says that my DNA signature is 16 plus percent Germanic (North Western Germany and Southern Germanic) and 18 percent Anatolia and the Caucasus. Then I have bits and pieces of other places from Denmark (7%) to Mongolia. I get no journeys for the paternal side.

To put this into perspective, I use my mother’s ethnicity estimate. She is a dyed-in-the-wool (sic) back-to-the-boat French Canadian. Ancestry gives her side 37 percent Quebec, 3 percent France, 2 percent Norway, 6 percent Cornwall (Brittany?) 2 percent Northwestern Europe/Southeastern England, and a touch of Indigenous. My one journey is spot on, a swatch of land north of Montreal, the Lachenaie Seigneury.

I have 25, 000 cousin matches on my mother’s side, the closest being related to my mother’s grandmother, Melina Gagnon, at 200 centimorgans.

I have a mere 2,000 matches on the paternal side. Only a handful are ‘closer’ cousins, 30-60 centimorgans. These closer matches live in Turkiye and have Turkish names or live in Germany and have German names. To muddle things up, quite a few of my Turk matches now live in Germany.

Some of my German matches have extensive trees, many that lead to 1860 Besserabia, specifically the Odessa Region, more specifically Hoffungstal and Kassel villages. These are classic Black Sea Germans. One triangulated group with a common ancestor is from Galicia, near L’viv.

None of my Turkish matches have good family trees, but almost all (with one notable exception, my closest match at 3rd cousin)⁵ have the Pontic Greek journey. I reached out to some of them and they seem very confused about their ‘Greek’ heritage.

This is the sum total of my evidence. It’s all I have to go on. Hence, my half-and-half theory. It makes good sense, I think, until you factor in all of those pesky Romani Gypsies.

Those Mysterious Gypsies

Yes, I have many, many Romani cousin matches, all distant, 15-30 centimorgans. Indeed, the vast majority of my paternal cousins are from the ‘Traveller’ community.

These Romani hail from virtually every corner of Europe.

Yet, my ethnicity estimate on Ancestry gives me only one or two percent Romani – and that took years to show up. Why so many Romani matches with so little Romani DNA?”⁶

Call Mulder and Scully?

From the very beginning in 2017, I perceived something bizarre on My Heritage. I had a large group of matches, many closely related to each other, all sharing a slim slice of chromosome 17 with me. And, weirdly, these matches lived all over the place in Romania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Albania, North Macedonia, Cyprus, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Turkiye, Greece, Finland, Sweden, Poland, Ukraine, Austria, Switzerland, the UK and, yes, Germany.

I was flummoxed. I created a database to make sense of these crazy matches. I joked to my son, “I need to call in Mulder and Scully because the truth is out there and it’s likely very strange.”

But, then, in 2018 Ancestry updated its ethnicity estimate to give me that bit of Romani DNA. Eureka! And, get this, they gave me the Romani journey, too, the only journey on my bio-father’s side. (Alas, they have since removed it.)

Genealogical Mish-mash

Soon after, My Heritage added their ‘communities’ function based on tree evidence and I could see that these chromosome 17 ‘aliens’ were branches of a Romani Gypsy community reaching from Russia to the UK, with the bulk derived from ‘Vojvodina Serbia/Hungary’ as well as ‘Greece/Turkiye/North Macedonia/ and Albania. ²

I looked up Vojvodina. Four subgroups of Romani live in Serbia, apparently: a Romanian or ‘Wallachian’ one; a “white” or Hungarian one; a Bosnian one; and a Turkish one. That didn’t help.

It was a mind-boggling genealogical mish-mash.

It Wasn’t About the Bomb

I’m no scientist, obviously, despite that early effort with a database. When in the mood, I turn to colourful doodles – and meditation – to open my mind to the elusive TRUTH.

Over the years I’ve filled many notebooks with genealogy doodles, trying to open my mind. Years ago, apparently, I wrote “Gypsies are Key.”

(No luck yet.)

Still, it is clear I am not the product of some kind of alien intervention, or genetic remodelling caused by the massive thermo-nuclear bomb the Americans set off at the Bikini Atoll in March, 1954, when I was conceived. The fallout reached Quebec, apparently. (Wouldn’t that make a good plot for the new X-Files show?)

The truth of my origins is much more down-to-earth. I am a (very small?) part of an ancient and storied community, one that has long been misunderstood and much maligned. Even the word Gypsy has pejorative undertones. They were called Gypsies because it was believed they came out of Egypt when they actually came of out India.

The Problem with the Half-and Half Theory

In those early days, eight long years ago, on My Heritage I had around 40 Romani matches. Today, I have hundreds and hundreds on both the Ancestry and My Heritage platforms, some 50-100 percent Romani, others with lesser amounts. Every day, I get a couple of new Gypsy-related matches, attached to Europeans and Anatolians. (Today’s match, for instance, gets 11% Romani and 75% Ukrainian.) These days, it seems, these Chromosome 17 Romani are essentially the ONLY matches I get on my bio father’s side^.5

Here’s my problem: If my bio-father’s Turkish side has chromosome 17 Romani (Albanian names like Gashi and Krasniqi and Berisaj prevail) and his Germanic side has chromosome 17 Romani (often Hungarians with Horvath, Varga, Toth surnames) and these people are all related, how can my bio-dad be ‘half-and-half,’ say with a mom attached to Baden-Wurrtemberg and a dad to Trabzon?

Maybe my bio father was some kind of mish-mash himself and not strictly half Germanic and half Pontic Greek. Maybe the bit of Romani ancestry I have is key to knowing from whence this man came, as I mused on paper many moons ago.

Whatever, I have to assume that the online algorithms (iffy embryonic science or mere infotainment to begin with) are missing something essential…

The Discovery

As it happens I may have discovered a possible explanation for my bio-father’s wacky heritage. It involves an intriguing new theory – not mine.

A while back I got a ‘Romani’ match on My Heritage who had a huge hidden tree (very unusual) and who also matched with me on two chromosomes, 17 as well as 9 (not unusual.)

I messaged the man and he replied that he is a genetic genealogist managing the profiles of a large group of Gypsies from all over the place. (But, I already knew all about that.)

Months later, I contacted the scientist again because, frankly, I had no other avenue to explore with respect to my unknown bio-father.

This time the man, Dr. Douglas Schar, pointed me to his website.

I learned he is a trained scientist (PhD in Botany) of German/Swiss Jewish and Romani extraction. His current area of exploration is Crypto-Jewry and, right now, he is tracing a huge group of Romani people (my group, his group) that he postulates is made up of Crypto Jews.

Gypsy/Jewish Woman?

Now, I can’t pretend to understand the science behind this man’s work but, if I understand his blog posts, he suspects this particular group of Romani (not necessarily ALL Romani) are descended from Yemeni Jews who went to India and then joined a group of Jewish traders, the Rhadanites, on the Silk Road.

This theory is a work in progress, he told me by email. More and more ‘pure’ Romani (members of the Traveller community from all over Europe) are being added to the online databases every day – and finding Jewish heritage. This scientist does not think he is revising the old Out-of- India theory; he says he is just ‘filling in the blanks.’

Yes, he postulates on his blog, the Romani Gypsies came out of India but they were Jewish Indians. They followed the Silk Road, back and forth, from Asia to England, mixing with both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews along the way.³

YourDNAPORTAL OUT OF INDIA Lakania map for my genes. This map sure makes the Silk Road Theory look good.

I Still Wanna Believe

I admit, I like the theory: MDLP algorithm gives me high levels of Romanian Jew and Uzbek Jew. And I get big time Iraqi Jew and Yemeni Jew on the Ancient Near East Algorithm. (Dr. Schar is using the Dodecad algorithm on Gedmatch so as ‘to compare apples and apples.’)

MDLP 22. I suspect the bio-guy was a Ukrainian or Greek, not from any online info, but from my family situation in 1954.

Could this genetic genealogist’s theory explain my unknown bio-father’s wonky, opaque ancestry that perplexes all the online algorithms?

Could it be, that from this perspective, I am much more than one measly percent Romani Gypsy, even if my bio father, whoever he was back in 1954 Montreal, identified as Ukrainian, or German, or Swiss, or Greek or Hungarian or Romanian Jew, or English or French Canadian or WHATEVER. Could it be that, on my bio-father’s side, I derive from a group of people as yet not widely understood?

Good grief. I doubt I will ever know the Truth, even if it is ‘out there’ and, perhaps, not so otherworldly at all.

END

Dr. Schar’s website:

https://gypsyandjewish.com

Dr. Schar’s papers are available on Academia.edu

I did enough research to start on three fictional origin stories about a meet up between a Pontic Greek and a German: Reading Ovid in Dobrudja, Reading Gogol in Odessa and Reading Euripides in Crimea. Each of those authors, all favorites of mine in college by happenstance, have ties with those specific countries.
Two surnames comes up in more than one Romani tree: Gashi and Krasniqi, both the names of Albanian tribes. The Gashi tribe went to Serbia and North Macedonia, which fits. Mustafa too is a common surname. Other Romani communities my matches have include “Serbia/Germany/ Turkiye/France” and “Serbia/Bosnia/Bulgaria/Romania” and “Romani in Russia/Germany/Poland/Czech/Latvia/Lithuania.” See, a real mish-mash.
To further amend the “Out of India” narrative, Dr. Schar says he also believes “this migration was not just east to west, rather that people went east to west and west to east several times in a lifetime. They were most likely traders who travelled the Silk Road, to and fro. “
The other day I watched a show on YouTube about the Middle Ages Guilds in England and learned the top two guilds, in wealth, were textile and spices. (Silk Road items for the wealthiest in England.)
My closest Turkish match on Ancestry (whom I presumed was Pontic Greek) also has 1 percent Romani on her Ancestry ethnicity estimate. (We share 60 centimorgans or third cousin.)Unlike me, she still gets the Romani journey along with the Slovak/Hungary Border journey. (The two appear to go together here.) Oddly, she does not get the Pontic Greek journey. How can that be? (I messaged the lady immediately. She seemed totally perplexed about her Anatolian, Greek Islands, Romanian, Ukrainian, Romani ethnicity results. Soon, she went radio silent on me. That always happens with my Turkish matches, friendly at first until they realize they are not what they think they are.) I have related matches on Tinos in the Cyclades and some platforms give me Andros Island next door. Very specific!
Endogamy is the logical answer. The Romani community is highly endogamous so a 25 centimorgan match ( or even a thousand plus 25 centimorgan matches on the same chromosome) might not mean anything much. In fact, you can say the same for my French Canadian ancestors :)Unless there’s a tree match don’t trust the centimorgan count.

View of the waterfront square from a small resto around the corner from my older brother’s holiday home in Plomari, Lesvos, Greece. Delicious Dolmades. Best I’ve ever had – and I worked in Park Extension, Montreal in the 1980’s. Displaced Greeks from Pontus, Turkiye were sent to Lesvos in 1923. I recall an old Romani woman pestered me at a resto to buy her lace. I declined. She mumbled something that I took to be unpleasant. I thought, “Don’t be mean. I’m as witchy as you are.” Little did I know she may have been a distant cousin. I now wish I had bought the lace!

Ancestry’s Southern Romania: “Some of the ethnicities modern Romanians belong or can trace their roots back to are Hungarian-speaking Székelys, Saxon Germans, Jews, Roma, and Greeks, to name a few, and this mix of cultures is reflected in the foods, architecture, and music of Romania.“

genealogy, Quebec, Stanley Clark Bagg

The Life and Times of Stanley Clark Bagg, part 1

June 10, 2026 Janice Hamilton 1 Comment

Revised and Condensed

In this article, I refer to Stanley Clark Bagg (1820-1873) as SCB to differentiate him from his father, Stanley Bagg (1788-1853,) and from his son, Robert Stanley Bagg (1844-1912).

Many young people spend a long time deciding what they want to be when they grow up. The career of Stanley Clark Bagg, however, was determined long before he was born.

Stanley Clark Bagg, Montreal, QC, 1863, photo by William Notman; McCord Stewart Museum, Montreal.

SCB was destined to become a large landowner on the Island in Montreal, thanks to the foresight of his grandfather. John Clark, a butcher who had immigrated to Canada in the late 1790s and purchased several adjoining farms along the west side of Saint Lawrence Street. This was the road that led out of the old city gates and past the eastern slope of Mount Royal, to the north shore of the Island of Montreal.

When Clark died in 1827, he left some of this property to his daughter, Mary Ann (Clark) Bagg, but he left most of his estate to SCB, his only grandchild.¹ SCB was just seven years old then, and he spent much of his youth preparing for his future responsibilities as a landlord and a gentleman. For many people whose ancestors had settled in Canada, or who had themselves immigrated to North America in the 19^th century, owning land was their greatest dream, so property brought social status, as well as having monetary value. SCB was set for life.

Unfortunately, being a landowner wasn’t what he really wanted to do. According to grandson Stanley Bagg Lindsay, SCB wanted to be an Anglican minister. “He was a very religious man and I understand would have entered the ministry, but for the fact that would have entailed leaving Montreal, where there was no theological college, and going to Lennoxville (in Quebec’s Eastern Townships), where theology could be studied at the University of Bishops College. With all his property interests in Montreal and getting married in 1844, it was not possible for SCB to be away from Montreal for so long.”² Fortunately, SCB had the means and the time to read, write (including articles, poetry and hymns), travel and support philanthropic organizations, such as the English Workingman’s Benefit Society of Montreal, which he founded.

SCB’s mother, Mary Ann Clark, wife of Montreal merchant Stanley Bagg. She was born in Durham, England and came to Canada as a baby. artist unknown. private collection.

Stanley Clark Bagg was born on Dec. 23, 1820, the son of American-born merchant Stanley Bagg and his English-born wife, Mary Ann Clark (1795-1835.)³He grew up at his parents’ home, Durham House, on St. Lawrence Street, just outside what was then the small city of Montreal.

SCB probably grew up playing in his father’s orchard and learning to ride a horse – a necessary skill in those days. He was educated by an Anglican minister and studied at McGill, then just a small college. A hired farm hand would have looked after the cows, chickens and other animals at Durham House, but perhaps SCB was also required to do some farm chores.

On Feb 10, 1835, when SCB was 14, his mother died. His father never remarried, although he probably hired a housekeeper to cook and help look after young Stanley. Soon after Mary Ann’s death, Stanley senior met with a group of friends and relatives in front of a judge to choose a tutor, or guardian, for the boy. Stanley was named his son’s tutor and Gabriel Roy, husband of Stanley’s sister Sophia, became sub-tutor.⁴ Stanley also acted as executor of both John Clark’s and Mary Ann’s wills, so he managed the properties and SCB’s funds until his son turned 21.

Two years after Mary Ann’s death, Lower Canada faced a crisis as some moderate nationalists and members of a more radical group known as the Patriotes took up arms in a rebellion, demanding responsible government. Troops from the regular British army, joined by members of the local volunteer militia, prepared to defend the status quo.

Stanley Bagg was a major in the 1^st Batallion Loyal Montreal Volunteers⁵ and SCB served as a standard-bearer at the Battle of Saint-Eustache.⁶ About two weeks before his 17^th birthday, he witnessed the bloodiest battle of the rebellion in the village of Saint-Eustache, northwest of Montreal. Fought in December 1837, this event resulted in the deaths of 100 rebels, and many buildings in the area were destroyed by fire.

SCB continued to participate in the volunteer militia for more than 20 years, going on inactive status in 1859 with the rank of captain.⁷

At about age 16, he started to train to be a notary. Notaries played an important role in Quebec society, recording people’s wills, marriage contracts, business agreements, disputes (especially when money was owed) and, most importantly for SCB, property deeds and rentals. As a notary, SCB would be familiar with the laws pertaining to property transfers.

He served a four-year apprenticeship with notary W.S. Hunter and, in August 1841, his father indentured him for a final eight months to N.B. Doucet, a well-known Montreal notary.⁸ Doucet undertook to instruct him, give him access to books and render him fit to serve as a notary, while SCB undertook to apply himself.

The Custom of Paris

In 1840, many English-speaking citizens of Quebec could not read the civil laws that governed their everyday activities. Although Quebec had been a British colony for almost 80 years, the collection of civil laws called the Coutume de Paris (Custom of Paris) had not been translated from French into English. So in 1841, SCB translated excerpts of the Coutume de Paris, completing the project shortly before he finished his apprenticeship.

Today this manuscript — the earliest recorded translation of the Coutume de Paris into English — is housed in the library of York University’s Osgood Hall Law School in Toronto, and it can be found online at https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/library_digital/1/

The first page of SCB’s translation of the Coutume de Paris.

SCB’s translation consists of about 200 pages, neatly handwritten in a small, hardcover notebook.⁹ He focused on definitions of French legal terms in English, and English translations of laws governing rights of property ownership, marriage and inheritance. On the final page he noted, “The laws of every nation are more or less mixed with the laws of nations that have passed away, but none more than the laws of Canada, which have for their basis the jurisprudence of France and England.”

By the spring of 1842, a few months after he turned 21, he had finished his apprenticeship. As a legal adult, he could now manage his inheritance, collect the rent for the farms he owned and buy and sell properties. Perhaps he also started to think about marriage and opening an office as a notary. First, though, he and his father travelled to England to explore County Durham, in the northeast, where his mother had been born.

A Trip to England in 1842

The trip was a combination of business and pleasure. The business involved selling property that SCB’s maternal grandfather had owned in Durham, and the pleasure involved a whirlwind tour of London, Scotland, Ireland and France, as well as visits with various great-aunts and great-uncles who still lived in England.

A few months after his return to Montreal, SCB wrote to his cousin in Philadelphia, describing the trip. Unfortunately, he did not include any details or impressions of their adventures, but he listed the places they visited.

Their trip across the Atlantic was fast. The age of the trans-Atlantic steamship had arrived in the 1830s, and SCB wrote, “We made the passage to Liverpool from Halifax in the incredible short space of nine days and six hours, which was I believe the shortest passage ever made across the Atlantic. From Liverpool we went to London, thence to Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, York, Darlington, Durham, Stockton, Sunderland, Newcastle, Shields, Tynemouth, Otterburn …. ”¹⁰

In Scotland, they explored both Glasgow and Edinburgh. After a few days in London, they crossed the Channel to France, visiting Paris and several other cities before returning to London. SCB wrote, “We left London shortly afterwards for Ireland, and having visited Kingstown, Dublin and Kilmainham, returned to Liverpool, where … we embarked on board a steamship and after a boisterous passage of 14 days arrived at Boston exceedingly gratified with our tour.”¹¹

Anchor-maker William Mitcheson, brother of SCB’s grandmother Mary Mitcheson Clark, lived in London, and the Baggs visited him there. While in County Durham, they visited more Mitcheson relations, including Mrs. Dodd (Mary Mitcheson’s sister Margaret) near Ryton, and Mrs. Maugham (Mary’s sister Elizabeth) at Sunderland.

It is clear that the visit to Durham was the highlight of the trip, but not because of the business they finalized there. In fact, SCB did not mention it at all in his letter. When he turned 21, he gained control over an inheritance of property in Durham from his grandfather, John Clark (1767-1827). The property generated rental income, but SCB wanted to sell. In a notarized document dated after their return to Montreal, Stanley Bagg listed the sales of three properties in Durham.¹²

Meanwhile, SCB’s real interest was in ancient legends, old coins, Norman castles and the like, and he was enthralled with the ancient city of Durham. More than 20 years later, he presented a lecture to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Montreal on “The Antiquities and Legends of Durham.”

He described the legend surrounding the founding of Durham city by 9^th century monks. When Danes attacked England’s northeast coast, the monks fled their monastery on the Island of Lindisfarne with the miraculously well-preserved body of their former bishop. Eventually they built an abbey at the future site of the city and buried him there. Today, that bishop is remembered as Saint Cuthbert, and pilgrims still visit the huge abbey church, Durham Cathedral.

In his 1866 lecture to the Numismatic Society, SCB described his feelings on that trip. He recalled, “The first time I had the privilege of attending a divine service in Durham Abbey, I was enraptured with the sweet and masterly chanting, unsurpassed in the empire. My father and I obtained seats in the choir. The service was exceedingly impressive, so much so, that …. whenever the portion of the Psalter chanted upon that occasion recurs in the services of the church, it carries me back in imagination to the first service I attended in the venerable abbey of my mother’s native city.”¹³

This article is condensed from a series of articles about Stanley Clark Bagg (my two-times great-grandfather) posted in 2020 on my personal family history blog Writing Up the Ancestors (www.writinguptheancestors.ca). Part 2 will follow on July 1, 2026.

Notes

King Louis XIV made the Coutume de Paris the civil law of New France in 1664. It did not include criminal law or cover commercial law. Some of its provisions dated from feudal times and were based on concepts such as moveable property (objects that can be moved) and immovable property (such as land and buildings), as well as community of property between married couples, provisions to protect widows and inheritances for daughters.

After the British Conquest of New France, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 introduced British Common Law to the colony, however, French Canadians resisted this new way of doing things. In 1774, the government passed the Quebec Act, bringing back the property and family laws of the Coutume de Paris, while British Common Law applied to criminal matters. Some reforms were made in 1840, but legislators realized that the laws had to be updated to meet the needs of a changing society. The old seigneurial system of land ownership was being phased out, and new laws were needed to make it easier for commerce, investment and industrialization to expand.

The new Civil Code of Lower Canada, which came into force in 1866, clearly had some roots in the Custom of Paris, making Quebec’s legal traditions unique in Canada. Today, Quebecers still rely on notaries to prepare their wills, property deeds and marriage contracts.

Sources

1. Henry Griffin, notarial act #5989, “Last Will and Testament of Mr. John Clark of Montreal,” 29 August 1825, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ); also, George Dorland Arnoldi, notarial act # 3842, “Last Will and Testament of Mrs. Mary Ann Clark, wife of Stanley Bagg,” 10 December 1834, BAnQ

2. Unsigned, undated (probably Stanley Bagg Lindsay), “Stanley Clark Bagg,” Lindsay family collection.

3. Stanley Clark Bagg, born Dec. 22, 1820; baptized Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal, July 2, 1822. Institut Généalogique Drouin; Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Drouin Collection; Author: Gabriel Drouin, comp.,Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968 [database, Ancestry.ca: on-line]. (Accessed 23 Dec. 2019) entry for Stanley Clark Bagg, citing Gabriel Drouin, comp. Drouin Collection. Montreal, Quebec, Canada: Institut Généalogique Drouin.

4. Although Lower Canada was a British colony at the time, it retained many legal traditions, including this one, stemming from the French Regime. “Tutorship: minor Stanley Bagg” BAnQ microfilm #1857, Tutelles, 5 Decembre 1834 au 20 Mars 1835, Document 174 – 27 Feb. 1835.

5. Elinor Kyte Senior, Redcoats and Patriots: The Rebellions in Lower Canada. 1837-38, p 214, Stittsville, ON: Canada’s Wings, Inc., 1985.

6. Pierre B. Landry, “BAGG, STANLEY CLARK,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 10, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed December 24, 2019, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/bagg_stanley_clark_10E.html.

7. “List of Officers of the Sedentary militia of Lower Canada, 1862,” database, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.ca: accessed Dec. 23, 2019), entry for Stanley C. Bagg, citing List of Officers of the Sedentary militia of Lower Canada, 1862, Quebec: S. Derbyshire and G. Desbarats, 1863.

8. Joseph-Hilarion Jobin, notarial act #2977 23 Aug 1841, “Indenture of Stanley C. Bagg to N.B. Doucet,” Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec; abstract by Sherry Olson.

9. Bagg, Stanley Clark, “A Collection of Extracts from the Coutume de Paris: Translated from the French,” 1841. https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/library_digital/1/

10. Letter from Stanley Clark Bagg to Rev. R. M. Mitcheson, Dec. 6, 1842, probably transcribed by Stanley Bagg Lindsay; Lindsay family collection.

11. Record in a passenger list of Stanley Bagg and S.C. Bagg travelling from Liverpool to Boston aboard the Acadia. Boston Courier (Boston, Massachusetts, Monday, Sept. 19, 1842, issue 1921;) 19th Century Newspapers Collection, special interest databases, www.americanancestors.org (accessed April 18, 2019.)

12. Joseph-Hilarion Jobin, “Account and mortgages from Stanley Bagg Esq to Stanley Clark Bagg,” 8 October 1842, notarial act #3537, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.

13. Stanley Clark Bagg, “The Antiquities and Legends of Durham: a Lecture before the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Montreal,” p. 21, Montreal, 1866. https://archive.org/details/cihm_48731/page/n4 (accessed Dec. 27, 2019) This article can also be found here: http://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.48731/1?r=0&s=1

England, genealogy, Montreal

John Clark of Durham, England

May 27, 2026 Janice Hamilton 1 Comment

revised and condensed

According to family lore, my four-time great-grandfather John Clark (1767-1827) was a butcher who came to Canada from County Durham, in northeast England, with his wife and young child around 1797. A search of the baptismal records of Durham for the mid-1700s brought up more than a dozen men named John Clark. Which one was mine?

Fortunately, about 100 years ago another descendant left a note in the family records: “John Clark, pork butcher, 9-6-1767.” I checked the parish records again, and there it was: John Clark, of Wingate Grange, was baptized at Kelloe parish church, County Durham, on 9 June, 1767.

Portrait of John Clark, private collection. It may have been painted after his death from a miniature by Sir Martin Archer Shee RA, (1769-1850).

County Durham was later known for its coal mines, but when John Clark was born, the region was mostly farmland, and Wingate Grange was a rented farm, located several miles south of the city. A rental noticepublished in the Newcastle Courant in late 1777 described Wingate Grange Farm as being “526 acres and tithe free, within six miles of Durham, well watered and enclosed; a draw kiln lies contiguous and limestone upon the premises; there are two very good farm houses, four barns and all other necessary buildings.”

John was the eleventh of the twelve children born to Ralph Clark and his wife Margaret Pearson. Ralph Clark was born in rural Kirk Merrington Parish, County Durham in 1721 and Margaret Pearson was baptized in 1725, also in Kirk Merrington.¹ Ralph and Margaret were married on May 8, 1746 in Kirk Merrington² and their first child was born a year later. The family probably rented Wingate Grange around 1763, and the three youngest were baptized at St. Helen Church, Kelloe Parish.

St. Helen Church, Kelloe Parish. JH photo.

When John was just eight years of age, his mother died. His father wrote his will the following year and died in November, 1776.³ Knowing that his children would be orphaned, Ralph was clearly concerned about their prospects, and in his will he gave his cousin Robert Dent, of Morden Red House in Sedgefield parish, some financial control over the bequests left to the younger children.

Ralph realized that each of his children had different needs, so he varied his bequests to them. He also ensured that not just his sons, but also his daughters, received inheritances.⁴

Daughters Letitia and Elizabeth were already married when their father died. Letitia (also known as Lettice, and married to butcher Richard Jefferson,) was to receive £15. Ralph seems to have been particularly concerned about Elizabeth. He left her £40 in trust, and her husband “shall have no power or control whatsoever and shall in no wise be liable to the payment of his debts or otherwise.”

Son Thomas was left £20 and a horse. Anne was to have £40 and a third of Ralph’s household goods when she reached 21. Ralph jr. and Edward would each get £60 when they reached 21. Lancelot, the youngest child, was to receive £90 when he turned 21. Ralph appointed William, Mary and Margaret as joint executors and residuary legatees. John was to receive £70 when he turned 21 – about £8500 in today’s money.

I do not know where John lived after his parents died. Perhaps he stayed with his sister Letitia, and perhaps it was her husband who trained John to become a butcher.

Fields of Wingate Grange Farm. JH photo.

In 1785, John Robson Clerk married Eleanor House.⁵ If this was my John, he would have been just 18 years old. This marriage had been left out of the family stories until I found The Marriage Bonds and Allegations document associated with John’s second marriage.⁶ This document stated that John was a widower when he married Mary Mitchinson in 1794. I know nothing about Eleanor, including where or when she died.

John’s second marriage took place on June 10, 1794, at St. Giles parish church, on a hill above the Wear River. Mary Mitchinson, or Mitcheson, (1776-1856), was my eventual ancestor and the daughter of Joseph Mitcheson (1746-1821) and Margaret Philipson (1756-1821).⁷ The fact that John and Mary were not married at Whickham parish church, where she had been baptized and her parents were later buried, suggests that perhaps her parents did not approve of the marriage.

St. Giles Parish Church, where John Clark and Mary Mitcheson were married. JH photo.

The following year, Mary gave birth to a daughter, Mary Ann Clark, and around 1797 the family boarded a ship, bound for a new life in Montreal, Canada.

A Freehold Estate in Durham

According to another family legend, John owned a freehold estate near the cathedral in Durham. I imagined a large house surrounded by shady old trees. This was a misunderstanding on my part: the term freehold estate simply refers to a property, or real estate, that is “free from hold” of any entity besides the owner. I also imagined that Clark lived on his own land. When he married Mary, he lived in St. Giles parish, a largely agricultural suburb of the city of Durham, however, I found no evidence that he owned property there.

Furthermore, if he owned land in England, why would he want to go to Canada? I began to wonder whether John Clark owned property in England at all.

John Clark’s will, written in Montreal in 1825, settled the question. It stated, “The said testator doth will, bequeath and devise unto his said daughter Mary Ann, her heirs and assigns, the whole of his real estate of all and every nature and description soever, situated and being in the city or town of Durham or in the neighbourhood thereof in England.”⁸ In other words, Clark did own property in Durham, but his will gave no clue as to its use or location.

Over the years, I hired several professional researchers in Durham to search collections such as land tax records, deeds, enclosure records and tithe applotment records at the archives in Durham, and they added small pieces to the puzzle. Finally, after many years of looking at this question off and on, it became clear that the exact nature and location of this freehold estate will likely remain a mystery, however, Clark’s property may have been located in the heart of the city.

Durham is a very old city built on a peninsula surrounded by the meandering River Wear. Several bridges cross the river, leading to the market square, and from there, Sadler Street goes up a hill to Durham Cathedral and Durham University. At one time, Sadler Street was also known as Fleshergate and butchers had their shops there.

Sadler Street, Durham, England. JH photo

An old Durham city deed notes that a man named John Clark was an occupant of the building at no. 5 Sadler Street until 1796,⁹ which was shortly before my ancestor left for Canada. He was probably renting or subletting, since his name is not listed among the main parties to the deeds.

When Clark died in 1827, he left his Durham property to his daughter, Mary Ann. Her husband, Montreal merchant Stanley Bagg, was executor of the will. Clark also left 13 bequests of 50 pounds each to several of his brothers and sisters in England, and to several of his wife’s relatives.

In 1829, Mary Ann decided to sell the property in Durham.¹⁰ It was probably difficult to manage the property from across the Atlantic, and she could use the proceeds to pay these bequests. William Mitcheson, John Clark’s brother-in-law who was an anchor maker in London, was appointed an executor of Clark’s will in England, however, I was unable to find proof of Clark’s will being probated in England.

It is clear, however, that the family sold some property in Durham in 1842. Mary Ann had died in 1835, leaving it to her son, Stanley Clark Bagg (SCB), who was then a minor. Stanley Bagg was the executor of her estate until SCB turned 21 in 1841.

The following summer, Stanley and SCB travelled to Durham and sold the remaining property. On their return, Stanley recorded the names of the three buyers in a notarized document in which he admitted he had used some of the rental income from the Durham properties for his own purposes. He arranged to repay his son and listed the names of three people who purchased the properties, as well as the name of a Mr. “Bromwell” who had collected the rents. The name “Bramwell” was listed in the document regarding no. 5 Sadler Street at the Durham University archives.

Several questions remain: how extensive was Clark’s property? Did the properties SCB sold in 1842 represent all of Clark’s English real estate? And how and when did Clark acquire it in the first place? His father left him 70 pounds when he was a child, so perhaps someone helped him invest it wisely.

Later in life, John Clark proved to be a successful butcher and an astute businessman who supplied meat to the British army and invested in properties near Montreal.

Notes:

This article has been revised and condensed from four articles previously posted on my personal family history blog Writing Up the Ancestors: John Clark of Durham, England, May 30, 2014; A Freehold Estate in Durham, May 4, 2019; Ralph Clark’s 1776 Will, April 17, 2019; A Trip to England in 1842, Feb. 7, 2020 (also posted on Genealogy Ensemble)

Special thanks to Margaret Hedley, Past Uncovered, for research in County Durham, 2018-2019, and to Geoff Nicholson, a highly respected genealogist in the area. We corresponded for several years, and in 2009 he took my husband and me on a tour of the area. Geoff died in 2021.

Recently a Clark descendant who lives in New Zealand, contacted me to say that he has researched two more generations of the Clark family, bringing their tree back to the mid-1600s. He has posted the Clark family tree on MyHeritage.com and the Kane-Wilson and Hurworth-Hirst public member’s tree on Ancestry.

When I first did this research, I found the record of John Clark’s birth at St. Helen Church, Kelloe parish, Easington, in the Northumberland and Durham Baptisms on Findmypast.com. Find My Past is a good source for County Durham records. Another good place to search for obscure County Durham records is Durham Records Online, www.durhamrecordsonline.com. The Northumberland and Durham Family History Society is an active organization with an extensive website and helpful members. See https://ndfhs.org.uk/. The Story (formerly The County Durham Record Office) has a variety of historical resources; see https://www.thestorydurham.org/.

The note about John Clark’s date of birth was made by his great-grandson Rev. Sydenham Bagg Lindsay (1887-1975) of Montreal. I found it in the Bagg family bible at the McCord Stewart Museum in Montreal around 2010.

Marriage of Johannes Dent to Elizabetha Clark in Sedgefield in 1721: “England Marriages, 1538–1973,” database, FamilySearch(https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NLZY-9MB : viewed 10 February 2018, Johannes Dent and Elizabetha Clark, 16 May 1721; citing Sedgefield, Durham, England; index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City; FHL microfilm 91,112.

In 2012, I found a record of the marriage of John Robson Clerk and Eleanor House in Kelloe parish in the Bishop’s Transcripts on familysearch.org. The link – www.familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/NKXW-BHM — still leads to a record of the marriage, but the image is no longer available. The Bishops Transcripts were copies, made annually, of the original parish records. John did not usually use his middle name, but he is remembered as John R. Clark on a plaque in the Bagg family mausoleum in Montreal, Canada

Prior to most marriages in England, banns were read and people could express their opposition to the union. Couples could bypass this step by paying a fee for a marriage license. A marriage allegation is a sworn statement in connection with the license application, in which the couple state there is no known reason for the marriage not to take place. The Durham Diocese, England, Calendar of Marriage Bonds and Allegations, 1494-1815, can be found on Ancestry, while familysearch.org has the records for the years 1692-1900. CHECK

I have written a number of articles about the Mitcheson family in Durham, Montreal, London and Philadelphia, searchable on my personal family history blog Writing Up the Ancestors (www.writinguptheancestors.ca), and will copy them to Genealogy Ensemble in the near future.

There are several clues that father and son visited Durham. In 1866, John Clark’s grandson, Stanley Clark Bagg, wrote an article called “The Antiquities & Legends of Durham, a lecture before Numismatic & Antiquarian Society of Montreal” in which he recalled his own visit to the cathedral with his father more than 20 years earlier. There is a record in a passenger list of Stanley Bagg and S.C. Bagg travelling from Liverpool to Boston aboard the Acadia. Boston Courier (Boston, Massachusetts, Monday, Sept. 19, 1842, issue 1921;) 19^th Century Newspapers Collection, special interest databases, http://www.americanancestors.org; accessed 18/04/2019. A search for Mary Ann Bagg in the Durham University Archives online catalogue brings up a result in the Durham Cathedral Library: J.H. Howe Collection. It cites Montreal parish records showing how John Clark was related to Stanley Clark Bagg, and includes an affidavit from Montreal notary Henry Griffin and a note from Charles Bagot, Governor General of British North America, verifying the information. Reference: JJH 11 Dates of creation: 1842 JJH 11/1, 27 April & 9 May 1842. Similarly, there is a note appended to Clark’s will, dated 13 May, 1842, from Charles Bagot, certifying the information; attached to records for lot 110, Saint-Laurent Ward, Montreal, p. 395, Registre foncier du Québec online database.

Revised Sources

1 “England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975,” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NBC9-BQD : accessed 11 February 2018), Margret Pearson, 31 Oct 1725; index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City; FHL microfilm 91,097, 94,097.

2. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “International Genealogical Index (IGI),” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/2:1:MDK6-CRN : accessed 15 April 2019), entry for Ralph Clark, batch A23286-7; citing FHL microfilm 455,471. This marriage is also included in Boyd’s Marriage Index, 1538-1840, Findmypast.com

3. Burials, Stockton District, record # 573795 2, St. Edmund the Bishop Church, Sedgefield, 8 Nov. 1776, Ralph Clerk {Clark] of Wingate Grange in the Parish of Kelloe.

4. Will of Ralph Clark, Oct. 11, 1776; 1776/C8/2, University of Durham Special Collections Department.

5. Marriage of John Robson Clerk and Eleanor House “England Marriages, 1538–1973”, FamilySearch https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NKXW-BHM, Entry for John Robson Clerk and Eleanor House, 10 July 1785.

6. England, Durham Diocese, Marriage Bonds & Allegations, 1692-1900, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q21P-XMQK : accessed 29 July 2017), John Clark and Mary Mitchinson, 07 Jun 1794; citing Marriage, Durham, England, United Kingdom, Church of England. Durham University Library, Palace Green; FHL microfilm.

7 “England, Births and Christenings, 1538-1975”, database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:N5D4-DGM : 5 February 2023), Joseph Mitchinson in entry for Mary Mitchinson, 1776.

8. “Last Will and Testament of Mr. John Clark of Montreal,” Act of notary Henry Griffin, #5989, 29 Aug. 1825, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, p. 9.

9. Durham University Library, Special Collections Catalogue, http://reed.dur.ac.uk/xtf/search, results for John Clark, Durham City Deeds, Bundle 22, Sadler Street alias Fleshergate, 5 Sadler Street, east side, Reference: DCY 23/1-34, Dates of creation: 1776-1856. The entry says, “These premises were described as a burgage [land or property in a town that was held in return for service or annual rent] and shop, with appurtenances, almost throughout. In 1856 it was called a freehold dwellinghouse and shop….The occupants of the property included, initially, John Clark, by 1796 one Haswell ….”

10. Annex attached to John Clark’s Last Will and Testament, by notary Henry Griffin, 10 Nov. 1829 and attached to records for lot 110, Saint-Laurent Ward, Montreal, p. 391, Registre foncier du Québec online database.

genealogy

From Civil War to Blitz: The Story of Plymouth’s Charles Church

May 20, 2026 Marian Bulford 2 Comments

There is an old church in my hometown of Plymouth, Devon, England. As a child, I was used to seeing it right in the city centre. To me, it looked like a total wreck: no roof, with grass growing wildly inside the four remaining walls. I often wondered why was it still there?

Once one of the finest post-Reformation Gothic churches in the country, Charles Church now stands unexpectedly in the middle of a busy, modern roundabout. To anyone approaching it, the ruins serve as a deeply evocative landmark—a symbolic, silent witness to the devastating bombardment of the city during the Second World War, and the countless lives lost during those long years. For anyone familiar with Plymouth’s history, it remains the spiritual and symbolic heart of the city’s endurance. But the history of this place begins long before the Blitz.

Charles Church 1889

Built around 1640, the church came to be because King Charles I granted permission for a second parish to be created to ease the burden on the ancient St. Andrew’s Church. It wasn’t that St. Andrew’s was too small—it could comfortably seat 1,200 people—but rather, the town was experiencing deep religious controversy. Plymouth had grown into a fiercely Puritan town (a friction hinted at years earlier by the Pilgrim Fathers, who noted they felt at home here, “kindly entertained and courteously used by divers friends there dwelling”).⁽¹⁾

Because of these theological differences between the Crown and the mainly Presbyterian Puritan townsfolk, the King ignored the request for a new church for seven years.

Eventually, Robert Trelawney—a Plymouth-born merchant, MP, and royalist sympathiser who would later settle lands in Maine—persuaded the King to finally sign the Act of Parliament in the summer of 1641. It cost the town £150. Construction was soon interrupted by the chaos of the English Civil War. ⁽²⁾

Although its first minister, Francis Porter, began preaching to his flock in 1643, the building wasn’t officially completed and consecrated until 1665. Naturally, it was dedicated to “King Charles the Martyr.”

For the next three centuries, Charles Church was a thriving centre of spiritual life. By 1818, it was an Evangelical parish undergoing a massive expansion under its most famous minister, the Reverend Dr Robert Hawker. Dr Hawker served the parish for an impressive 43 years. He was a deeply compassionate man, beloved for educating the poor and supporting the needy. ⁽³⁾

It was during this vibrant era, in 1818, that my own history intertwined with the church. My third great-grandparents, Mary Rogers (born in Penryn, Cornwall, in 1791) and William Bulford (born in Topsham, Devon, England, in 1786), were married there—very likely by Dr Hawker himself. William worked as a rope maker at the nearby Devonport Dockyard, and together he and Mary went on to raise eight children.

Portrait of Dr Robert Hawker

As the 19th century pressed on, the parish’s compassion would be tested by tragedy. In June 1832, Plymouth’s first terrible cholera epidemic struck, brought ashore by infected sailors. It tore through the densely populated town. The doctors did what they could, but without the medical knowledge of isolation, hundreds succumbed.

The tragedy struck the rectory itself: Charles Church Vicar James Carne and his wife, Charlotte, died within just four days of each other, having caught the disease while tirelessly tending to their dying flock. A memorial tablet honouring the victims used to stand in the churchyard.

A second wave of cholera devastated the overcrowded, unsanitary slums of the nearby Barbican in 1848. Local clergy, like the medically trained Rev. G.H. Hetling and Rev. George Prynne, walked the slums day and night. The devastation was absolute; on one haunting night, they entered a tenement housing court off Stonehouse Lane only to find every single inhabitant dead.⁽⁴⁾

The church survived the centuries of pestilence and political upheaval, only to meet its own end on the nights of March 21st and 22nd, 1941. During the height of the Plymouth Blitz, German incendiary bombs rained down, entirely gutting the beautiful structure.

Charles Church after the bombing, March 21st and 22nd, 1941

Instead of rebuilding it, the city chose to leave the shell intact. Today, it remains just as I saw it as a child: a roofless monument, encircled by traffic, keeping its silent vigil for the parish it served for 300 years. ⁽⁵⁾

Click the link below to see a photo of Charles Church today.

Taken 30 Sept 2009

https://smartframe.historicenglandservices.org.uk/p/dp086899/ca3b16c11b12ff33e38d0f6e213f1b3f?source=aHR0cHM6Ly9oaXN0b3JpY2VuZ2xhbmQub3JnLnVrL2ltYWdlcy1ib29rcy9waG90b3MvaXRlbS9EUDA4Njg5OQ%3D%3D

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Church,_Plymouth

2.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Trelawneyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hawker

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Barbican,_Plymouth

5. https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/photos/item/DP086899

genealogy, Montreal, Quebec

Thomas Workman’s Legacy

May 6, 2026 Janice Hamilton Leave a comment

A wealthy Montreal businessman during his lifetime, Thomas Workman (1813-1889) has been largely forgotten, however, several of the companies he helped to found still exist, and his bequest to McGill University supports cutting-edge research today.

Thomas was the eighth of the nine children of Joseph Workman (1759-1848), a teacher turned estate manager, and his wife, Catherine Gowdy (1769-1872). Thomas was probably born at the family home in Ballymacash, a village near Belfast, Ireland (now Northern Ireland). His parents were strict and ambitious for their children and believed that too much hugging would spoil them.

Members of Thomas’s family moved to Canada a few at a time. In 1819, the oldest son, Benjamin, decided to start a new life in North America and booked passage on a ship bound for Quebec. Over the next few years, brothers Alexander and John followed. Fourteen-year-old Thomas, accompanied by Samuel (16) and Francis (12), arrived in Montreal in 1827, following a hazardous voyage across the Atlantic. The brothers lived with Ben and his wife and attended the Union School that Ben owned, studying grammar, mathematics and the classics. Their parents, sister Ann (who was my two-times great-grandmother) and brothers William and Joseph followed in 1829.

In Ireland, the family attended the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland in Dunmurray, and, like its minister, they strongly believed in freedom of thought in religion. When Thomas first arrived in Montreal, he attended a Presbyterian church, but after his brother Benjamin played a key role in founding a Unitarian congregation in the city in 1842, Thomas became a life-long Unitarian.

Like a number of Irish-born Protestants, Thomas joined the Doric Club, an organization founded in Montreal in 1836 to help maintain Lower Canada’s British connection.¹ Along with a number of other Doric Club members, Thomas participated as a loyalist volunteer in the bloody battle of Sainte-Eustache during the Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837-38. The following spring, he was promoted to the rank of first lieutenant.

Thomas was described as someone who did not show much emotion, but he did have a life-long close bond with his brother Dr. Joseph Workman, who lived in Toronto. They visited each other and shared interests, such as the new theory of evolution.²

In 1845, Thomas married Scottish-born Anna Eadie (1822-1889). Although they had no children, they moved into a large house at the northwest corner of Sherbrooke and University Street in 1877.

Thomas Workman’s house on Sherbrooke Street, Montreal. Photos of this house have sometimes been erroneously identified as his brother William Workman’s home.

Thomas began his business career working for a Montreal merchant. In 1834, he was hired as a junior clerk at the hardware firm Frothingham and Workman, where his brother William was a partner. Nine years later, Thomas became a partner, and when both William Workman and John Frothingham retired in 1859, Thomas became head of the company. At this time, Frothingham and Workman was the largest hardware wholesaler in Canada, importing tools and supplies from Britain and the U.S. and with its own manufacturing facilities near Montreal’s Lachine Canal.

Like many of his peers, Thomas was involved with several companies over the course of his career. He was a director and later the vice-president of Molson’s Bank, which was incorporated in 1855 and merged with the Bank of Montreal 70 years later. He was a founding director and first president of Sun Mutual Life Insurance Company of Montreal (now simply known as Sun Life) from 1871 until his death 18 years later. He was also involved with the City and District Savings Bank, founded by the Bishop of Montreal and a group of city business leaders to help working people save money. It later became the Laurentian Bank. His other business interests included shipping, insurance and real estate.

A Liberal in politics, Thomas was elected in 1867 to Canada’s first federal parliament, representing the riding of Montreal Center. He did not run in the following two elections, but in 1875 he returned to the House of Commons as the Member of Parliament for Montreal West. The topics he addressed in parliament mainly focused on business interests such as canals, railways and exports and imports.

Governments did not fund health and social services as they do today, so Montreal’s wealthy citizens gave generously to a variety of causes. Thomas donated to the Mackay Institution for Protestant Deaf Mutes (now the Mackay Centre School), and he was president of the Irish Protestant Benevolent Society for two years. He was also a governor of the Fraser Institute and Free Library of Montreal, known in recent years as the Fraser Hickson Library.

Thomas’s wife Anna died in June 1889, and his brother Joseph commented that when Thomas succumbed to diabetes a few months later, he probably died of a broken heart.

Thomas and Anna are buried in the Workman family plot in Mount Royal Cemetery, where their massive headstone is inscribed with their names on one side, and the names of his parents and brother Samuel on the other.

The smith workshop in the Workman Engineering Building at McGill, around 1901.

Thomas was reputed to be a millionaire – a rare achievement in Canada at the time. The organization that benefited the most from his estate was his neighbour, McGill College, now McGill University. He bequeathed his house to McGill, and it became home to the School of Music. The Otto Maass Chemistry Building is now located on this spot.

In addition, he left $120,000 to the fledgling department of mechanical engineering, then known as the Applied Science Faculty. Half of that sum paid for the construction of a new building to house machine and technical shops, including a foundry, hydraulics and electrical science.³ The Governor General of Canada laid the building’s cornerstone at a ceremony on Oct. 30, 1890.⁴The Workman Wing of the Engineering Building is still there, although it has undergone many changes over the past century and a quarter.⁵

Thomas also provided long-lasting funds for research. The current Thomas Workman Professor of Mechanical Engineering studies satellites and space robotics, while the current Thomas Workman Emeritus Professor’s expertise is in the interactions between fluids and structures, with applications in the power-generating industry and the aeronautical industry.

This article is also posted on my personal family history blog, http://www.writinguptheancestors.ca

Photo credits:

Thomas Workman, Montreal, QC, 1869. William Notman, I-36832, McCord Stewart Museum

Thomas Workman’s House, Sherbrooke Street, Montreal, Quebec, 1912-13. Wm. Notman & Son, VIEW-12850, McCord Stewart Museum

Smith’s Shop in the Workman Building, McGill University, Montreal, about 1901. Photographer unknown. MP-000025286, McCord Stewart Museum

Sources:

1. Gerald J. J. Tulchinsky, “WORKMAN, THOMAS,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 11, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/workman_thomas_11E.html, accessed May 4, 2026.

2. Christine I. M. Johnston, The Father of Canadian Psychiatry: Joseph Workman, Victoria: The Ogden Press, 2000, p. 94.

3. MacDonald Engineering, the Workman Wing and the Electrical Wing. https://cac.mcgill.ca/campus/buildings/Macdonald_Engineering.html, accessed May 4, 2026.

4. Keen Science’s New Home. Laying the Corner Stone of McGill’s Latest Buildings, The Gazette, Oct. 31, 1890, p. 2. www.newspapers.com accessed March 10, 2026.

5. McGill. Civil Engineering. History of the Department, https://www.mcgill.ca/civil/about-us/history, accessed May 4, 2026.

genealogy, Germany, Netherlands

Travelling Alone

April 29, 2026 Mary Sutherland Leave a comment

After two months working on the Knorzer’s chicken farm, they drove me to the train station in Osterburken, where I boarded a train to Heildelburg and then Frankfurt. I had a suitcase, a red vinyl shoulder bag, a little yellow nylon backpack and a map of Western Europe. I certainly wasn’t equipped for backpacking around Europe. My return flight from Frankfurt was in 30 days.

I had no plans for travelling in Europe that summer in 1973. Although I had applied to the Canadian German Academic Exchange Society, I didn’t expect to be chosen. I had an offer of a summer job at F.W. Horner’s, a pharmaceutical company in Montreal, where I had worked the previous summer. That job would look good on a CV. So, I hadn’t been looking at maps, planning a route, finding places to visit, or searching for accommodations.

The seventies were a different time with no cell phones, internet or social media. Your every minute wasn’t being recorded. Even making a transatlantic phone call took preparation.

My only previous experiences of travelling alone were train trips from Montreal to Kingston, to and from University. Getting off the train in Frankfurt was a big deal.

“A little man on the train offered to take my suitcase off, then buy me coffee, then his apartment for 5-10 days, then to come to Canada and marry me and then to just go to a hotel for the night.”

That was my introduction to travelling alone. I kept walking, holding my suitcase and luckily he didn’t follow. I found a hotel near the station for 24 DM per night. The next day I walked around Frankfurt in cold rain. I had seen enough so the following morning, I began travelling north.

“ Took the train from Frankfurt to Cologne. Got on a first-class train and when the conductor came around, had to pay 25DM extra. Left my suitcase in Frankfurt. Need 50 DM to claim it again.”

A British fellow in the car tried to console me by saying I would get to Cologne quicker with no stops. I had all the time in the world, but limited cash. I found a hotel in Cologne through the tourist information.

“Walked along the Rhine. Went to the Botanical Gardens. Didn’t go to the zoo as you had to pay. Went to the Youth Hostel but no one was there. Will try again tomorrow.”

I figured staying at Youth Hostels would be less expensive and more fun than staying in a room in a cheap hotel. Most of the hotels I stayed at had single rooms without a private bathroom but breakfast was included. It was usually just crusty rolls, butter, jam and coffee or tea but good enough. I don’t remember there being lots of people in the hotels I stayed in so communal bathrooms weren’t a problem. I would spend the days walking around the different cities. I would buy food for dinner and take it back to my little room. I never went out at night. I had already begun thinking about going home early.

Still, I continued north and on the train to Amsterdam, I met two Norwegian girls and two Dutch boys. On arrival, the boys bought us Dutch hot dogs and gave us an abbreviated tour of Amsterdam in the pouring rain.

“ They then took me to a student hotel but as it was full, waited til I got a reservation at another hotel. In a room with eight, six English girls and an American from Connecticut.”

Amsterdam was an easy walking city. I walked over bridges and canals, went into museums, saw original Rembrandts and bought souvenirs but thought more and more about going home. I began retracing my steps and taking trains south.

“The train to Bonn was late so I came to Dusseldorf. Staying in the Diana Hotel. Rooms get worse as you go higher up. My room is about the size of the bed. Costs 22DM. Still can’t decide whether to stay.”

The next day I did travel to Bonn and spent two days there in a hotel that looked like a mausoleum but only cost 15DM. I spent my time walking around, stumbled on Beethoven’s birthplace and ended up walking along the Rhine. That was my favourite thing to do.

Beethoven’s Birthplace the pink house in Bonn 1973

“Took the train to Frankfurt. Had decided I would go home. Went to a travel agent and found it cost 1800 DM one way so I decided I would stay in Europe for another three weeks!”

This was an easy decision because I didn’t have that much money. I couldn’t believe how much it cost and kept saying, it’s only one way. The agent said, that’s more expensive. With the money I brought with me and with my chicken farm salary, I only ever had 1300 DM. It never even crossed my mind to phone my parents and have them send me money. So I was stuck in Europe for three more weeks.

Notes:

In 1973, one Canadian dollar equalled 2.67 DM

I took all the pictures with my first camera. My first attempts at photography. I used slide film, so I only saw the results after I got home.

My Chicken Farm Summer

England, genealogy

The Prettiest Village in North Yorkshire

April 18, 2026 Dorothy Nixon Leave a comment

Here I am carrying our haul from the craft fair. This is one of the most photographed houses in the UK apparently. Its image is found on cookie tins, etc.

During my childhood in the 1960’s, my father, Peter, often promised to take me to England where his parents were born and where he spent all of his school years. On one occasion the ticket and passport were in my hungry little hands. But, somehow the trips always fell through. “Business,” he said, but I knew it had to be more than that.

My father’s ties to England were strained. He actually was born in Malaya to British expats, Robert Nixon and Dorothy Forster from the north of England. As was the tradition, he and his younger sister, Denise, were sent back to England at a very tender age to attend school – and to live with random relations during the summer months.

Being a child of Empire, he had no clannish ties to England, and, yes, many sad associations with the country, abandonment for one. This likely accounted for his ambivalence about going back ‘home.’

(I read somewhere that upper class British parents were cruel to their children just for this reason, to discourage attachments that would keep their children close to home when the Empire needed them. My father’s people definitely were not upper class, not nearly, but it amounted to the same thing.)

It wasn’t until the mid 1990’s that my father finally decided to cross the pond – on his own this time. He stayed with his sister Denise in Hampshire and took drives north, one time to see ‘an old auntie’ – or so he said.

My father had passed away before I ever got to England. That was in 2006. I, too, stayed in Hampshire with my Aunt Denise. I had a lovely time. My aunt was a most loving and gracious host.

Only twice before had met my Aunt Denise, the first time when she surprised us in Montreal in 1978 (I had just graduated from university) and then in 2005, when she travelled to Canada to see my father in his final days.

Arriving at her Hampshire home, I noticed something rather touching on the side-board in her living room: a framed photograph taken of us at the summit of Mount Royal back in 1978.

The photo on the side-table. Whether she had put it there 30 years before or whether she had just put it there for my visit, it was a nice gesture.

After visiting Denise, I stayed in quaint Harrow-on-the-Hill because my cousin Peter, a former England rugby star, was a teacher at Harrow School. He took me to eat in the prof’s dining hall in that storied institution.

Just recently, in September of 2024, inspired by some YouTube videos, I took my second trip to England, a genealogy trip to Helmsley, North Yorkshire where my grandfather, Robert, a lowly footman at Duncombe Park in 1911, was born.

I had long wanted to visit Helmsley but my husband isn’t keen on driving in England. My son has no such qualms however so we went took the trip together.

After settling into our comfy air bnb cottage in the center of town, we took the nearby path, part of the famous coast-to-coast Cleveland Way, six miles back and forth to Rievaulx village where my father’s great grandmother Ann Nesfield lived most of her life – and where his grandmother, Mary-Ellen Richardson was born.

The Fairy Staircase (Emily Carr’d-up). Going down was almost as hard as going up, the stairs were so unevenly spaced.

As I staggered up-and-down the daunting Fairy Staircase between Helmsley and the small village of Rievaulx, I mused to myself about all the ancestors who likely trod on the same steep, uneven steps. No doubt trysts and assignations happened on these stairs, tucked away as they are in the woods between the two places.

That long six mile walk did me in, though, so the next day I did not feel like visiting York, our planned destination. Instead, we drove to a nearby village Thornton-le-Dale. The YouTube video claimed it was the prettiest village in North Yorkshire, so why not?

We walked around the picturesque place, bought some gifts at a crafts fair in the Town Hall, visited the duck pond as well as a thatched cottage that is famous in the UK, and then ate chili at a place called Baldersons Welcome Cafe in the center of town. There was a very classy gift shop attached – so we browsed.

Then we embarked on a shorter one mile hike on a very narrow path past gurgling streams and through fields of grazing sheep to an odd little place, Ellerburn, that consists of two or three delightful thatched cottages and one (rather smelly) church, St. Hilda’s, founded in the early Saxon era. Then we drove back to Helmsley, things getting a little tense in the town of Pickering because of a U-turn that got us trapped on a very narrow, very steep street.

We took a photo of this resto’s sign, not realizing it is a family business and has been so for a century.

Helmsley has long been the market town in the area. Today, it is a pretty touristy kind of place with fancy hotels and even a Micheline starred resto. My father’s ancestors, I have learned, were farmers, labourers and preachers. I imagine boiled mutton and oatcakes were their mainstays, not “herb fed chicken with liver parfait” and the likes served up today in the local eateries.

My son and I had a great trip, despite the many rainfalls, first to Edinburgh, then to Helmsley and then on to Whitby on the coast whence came the Nesfields who, of course, were mostly fisherman and sailors.

Ellerburn, “where time stands still,” a place so small the Google car didn’t get there- but you can have a meal in the “Tea Cozy” tea room.

But, the oddest of coincidences: Two weeks after I had returned home to Canada, my Ancestry app sent me a ‘photo hint’ for someone in my tree and I recognized the restaurant my son and I had just visited in Thornton-le-Dale, Baldersons Welcome Cafe! (Had it shown up before our trip, it would have meant nothing to me.)

It seems Ethel Nixon, my great aunt, who I had hidden away in my Ancestry family tree, married a local man, PB Balderson in 1925, a fact I had forgotten. It took me only a few minutes of Internet research to discover that the restaurant I had visited by chance was a 100 year old family business!

I contacted the resto on Facebook and Ethel’s great granddaughter replied. She told there’s a picture of the family on a wall inside the restaurant. Too bad! We had dined in the outside garden area.

What a missed opportunity!

Driving into Helmsley on good roads (thank goodness). Was the rainbow for me – or are rainbows frequent because of the highly variable North Yorkshire weather? (Precise weather forecasts are useless in these parts, we learned.)

So, my great aunt Ethel Nixon, unlike her older brother Robert, the footman turned Malayan planter, stayed close to home marrying a local man in the bakery business. They moved around a bit, but eventually started up bakery/cafe in oh-so-pretty Thornton-le-Dale. Perhaps Ethel was the ‘old auntie’ whom my father saw during his England trip. She died in 1996.

The cafe (now also a bakery and gift shop) stayed in the family and has been managed down the decades by Ethel’s children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. All this is a town considered, then and now, to be one of the prettiest places in the North of England.

Lucky Edith. Lucky descendants.

Cool, wet Whitby. Whitby Castle at the top. Anne Nesfield my dad’s great grandmother was born in suburban Sleights. Hence his middle name : Nesfield. Whitby and Pickering in Ontario are named after these towns. The original surveyor was apparently from North Yorkshire.

The ‘old auntie’ apparently explained that his father, Robert Nixon, humble servant, of Hemsley, North Yorkshire went to Malaya in 1912 because he got ‘the daughter of the local Earl’ pregnant. A close relation who contacted me on this blog claimed he was always told that Robert got a servant pregnant. No biggie there.

So either Robert was sent away by an angry and rich father or he REALLY didn’t want to marry a poor girl like himself and decided to get as far away as possible. How awful!

(I haven’t yet found an unknown relation on Ancestry.) It cost money to travel to Malaya, though – and the opportunity to go out there and possibly get rich was usually given to the sons of wealthy men.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Working together to help genealogists discover their ancestors