Monthly Archives: September 2023

Dundee, Immigration, Montreal, Newspapers, Quebec, Scotland, Verdun

The Trip of a Lifetime

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My father, Edward McHugh, didn’t really talk about his family’s trip of a lifetime. After all, Dad wasn’t even born yet. But it must have been discussed by everyone when he was a boy. In 1911, the first member of the family, Mary Ann McHugh, moved from Dundee, Scotland to Montreal.

At the time, booking agents in the United Kingdom advertised and recruited potential immigrants to Canada. There was an acute need of domestic help and agricultural workers. Between 1890 and 1920, Canada experienced its third wave of immigration and its peak was between 1911 and 1913, just before World War I.1 The following type of advertisement was common in the newspapers.2

Booking agent advertisement

Maybe one of these advertisements gave the McHugh family the idea to emigrate to Canada. Or maybe Mary was ready for an adventure. She was just 21 when she disembarked from the SS Grampian that had left Glasgow on June 24, 1911 and arrived in Quebec City on July 9, 1911.  She would have had a medical exam when she arrived to ensure that she was in good health and did not have an infectious disease. Conditions for immigration to the colonies were well known in the United Kingdom. The February 11, 1911 edition of the Hamilton Observer, in its article, Canadian Notes, People Prohibited, details the reason some potential immigrants could expect to be refused by Canada. The article explains the booking agent’s liability for the immigrants that arrived in Canada for a period of three years following their arrival:

“The following classes of people are prohibited from landing … feeble minded, idiotic, insane, or who have been insane within five years, afflicted with any loathsome, contagious, or infectious disease; anyone who is a pauper, who is destitute, who is a professional beggar or vagrant.”3

All of the members of the McHugh family worked in the jute mills in Dundee. The 1911 census indicates Mary was a jute weaver, which probably meant that she operated a jute weaving machine.4 She lived with her mother, Sarah Jane McLaughlin, and her brothers, Edward and Francis. They lived at 1 Tait Lane, Dundee. Her other brother, Thomas, my grandfather, lived with his wife and seven children at 9 Tait Lane.

The picture below shows the jute weaving machine.5

Mary must have been satisfied with her new life in Montreal, Quebec. Within a year, her mother and her two brothers, along with my grandfather, had followed her to Canada. Six months later, my grandmother, Elsie Orrock, and her seven children joined her husband, Thomas, in Montreal.

The McHughs lived close together in Dundee and they also lived close together in Verdun, Quebec. While I will never know for sure why they decided to emigrate, I can guess that they wanted a life that was not as hard as the one working in the jute mills. There are a few clues that this was not a spur of a moment decision but a planned family decision.

Mary left first and, if it did not suit her to live in Canada, she would have been able to easily return to Dundee. Her mother and brothers were still there. By the time her mother emigrated, along with her three sons, they arrived with $150 CAD, about $4,750 in today’s dollars. Browsing through the passenger lists, I can see that they had a lot more money than many of their fellow passengers. 6 They were not a rich family, so this amount of money would have taken some time to save up.

Coincidentally my grandfather joined the Freemasons in 1910 and achieved a Master Mason diploma and a Mark Mason diploma.7 By that time, he already had six children. He worked long hours in the jute mill, including Saturdays. Why would he join the masons when he was already a very busy man providing for his family, plus taking care of his widowed mother, and his siblings who still lived at home? There is no evidence that he ever joined the masons when he arrived in Canada. I believe that it is possible that he joined the masons to in case he needed the contacts to find employment. As he quickly found work, his busy family life prevented him from pursuing his membership in the masons.

Only one of my grandfather’s siblings stayed in Scotland, Sarah Jane McHugh. She was not living with the other McHughs at the time of the 1911 census. But she remained close to the family. Surprisingly, she travelled to Montreal to be a witness at her brother’s wedding at the Notre Dame Basilica in Montreal on May 8, 1913.8 That would have been quite a trip for Sarah Jane to make.

  1. Wikipedia, Immigration to Canada, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Canada, accessed 27 September 2023.
  2. Irvine Herald and Ayrshire Advertiser (Irvine, Strathclyde, Scotland) · 13 Oct 1911, accessed Newspapers.com, downloaded 24 August 2023.
  3. The Hamilton Advertiser (Hamilton, Strathclyde, Scotland) · 11 Feb 1911, accessed Newspapers.com, downloaded 24 August 2023.
  4. Scotland’s People, National Records of Scotland, 1911 Census, Sarah Jane McHugh, downloaded 23 June 2019.
  5. V&A Dundee Design Museum, Women’s Day tweet, 6 March 2020.
  6. Passengers lists for S.S. Grampian arriving in Port of Quebec, May 21, 1912, Library and Archives Canada, https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/immigration/immigration-records/passenger-lists/passenger-lists-1865-1922/Pages/image.aspx?Image=e003578022&URLjpg=http%3a%2f%2fcentral.bac-lac.gc.ca%2f.item%2f%3fid%3de003578022%26op%3dimg%26app%3dpassengerlist&Ecopy=e003578022, accessed February 3, 2022.
  7. Thomas McHugh, registration of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, dated 25 August 1910.
  8. Registration of marriage of Francis McHugh and Helen Smith, 8 May 1913, downloaded 6 January 2022.
Genealogy, Loyalists, New Brunswick

Petticoat Pioneer

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(reposted from June 2020)

Charlotte Haines (1773-1851) was only ten years old when the breakaway 13 colonies won the War of Independence in April 1783. Those residing in the new United States of America, who had remained loyal to the British Crown, were persecuted and forced out of their homes and their belongings seized. Chaos reigned everywhere and families were torn apart.

One fateful day around this time, young Charlotte sneaked away to visit her British Loyalist cousins, against the expressed wishes of her American Patriot stepfatheri. Upon her return, standing outside the front door, he refused her entry back into the family home.

Charlotte was my three-times great-grandmother. Her daughter Margaret Ann Peters married Daniel Hanington and their son James Peters Hanington was my grandmother’s father.

The British government came to the aid of these Loyalists and arranged for transportation for those who wished to leave the new America. Charlotte’s grandparents, Gilbert and Anna Pugsley, rescued young Charlotte and her brother David. Together they sailed from New York for ten days on the “Jason”ii, with 124 other “refugees” as part of the final large scale evacuation and landed in New Brunswick (then still part of Nova Scotia) in October 1783…just in time for the brutally cold winter.

Charlotte has been the favourite subject of a couple of books and several folktales. She warranted her own chapter in “Pioneer Profiles of New Brunswick Settlers”iii and is the main character in a children’s book titled “Charlotte”iv. One folktale claimed that she was the first Loyalist to set foot ashore (not true) and in doing so, she lost her “slipper” in the mud (possibly). The matching slipper (unlikely) was donated to the New Brunswick Museum years later, however, it looks somewhat too big and stylish for a ten-year old girl. But they make wonderful stories and fully recognize young Charlotte as one of the first “petticoat pioneers” of New Brunswick.

Children’s story about Charlotte Haines by Janet Lunn

Fourteen thousand Loyalists established a new settlement in 1783 along the St. John River and shortly afterwards they petitioned for their own colony. In 1784, Great Britain granted their request and divided Nova Scotia into two — New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The Loyalists, who made up 90 percent of the population of New Brunswick, became a separate colony with its capital, Fredericton, 90 miles upriver from Saint John.

The Loyalists and their children were entitled to free land once they provided the necessary proof. Charlotte, as the biological daughter of John Haines, a Loyalist on record, appears in 1786 documentation as one of the grantees of 84 lots on Long Island, Queen’s County, along with several other prominent Loyalists – although she was only 13 at the time. I can imagine her grandfather Pugsley nodding discreetly in her direction as he looked after her interests.

For their first three years, the British provided the Loyalists with a few simple tools, blankets, material for clothing and seeds for wheat, peas, corn and potatoes. The rations of basic food supplied by the British supplemented the abundance of game and fish available to them in the forest and streams. Most lived in tents on dirt floors until they were able to build primitive log cabins. Tree by tree, stump by stump, the fertile uplands were cleared to widen the fields making them ready for crops.

The Loyalists kept meaningful social contacts through various community events. Neighbours organized “frolics” whereby the men would work together to clear land, move rocks, build a barn or complete some other task which proved impossible for one or two people. At the same time, the women prepared meals and the children had a chance to play with friends. Women also held their own frolics to make quilts, card wool or shell corn. These Loyalist neighbours were dependent on one another in times of sickness, accidents and childbirth and supported one another at gatherings for weddings, funerals and church services.

Perhaps Charlotte met her future husband at one of these popular frolics. At 17, Charlotte married William Peters (also from a United Empire Loyalist family) in 1791 in Gagetown. Soon afterwards, the happy couple moved downriver, settled in Hampstead and built a home where the St. John River widens to a magnificent view.

At that time, there existed only ten miles of roadway in the whole province and another 20 years would pass before there would be an 82-mile long road linking Fredericton and Saint John. However, in the meantime, the river served as a “highway” enabling the transport of passengers and necessary goods between the two cities.

When the steamboats first chugged noisily up the river in 1816, William decided to compete with them and he built a 100-foot long side wheeler powered by 12 horses walking up and down the deck and propelling the boat along.

A drawing of The Experiment – an example of another horse powered side wheeler.

William actively pursued his interest in politics, and as the first representative of Queen’s County in the New Brunswick Legislature, he spent a lot of time in Fredericton (50 miles away) attending the sessions of Parliament.

Meanwhile, back home, Charlotte managed their entire land-holding on her own. Eventually they had 15 children, five sons and ten daughters. She bore her last child at 50 years old according to the baptismal certificate. They all survived except their son John who drowned at 21 attempting to save another man’s life.

Not only did she clothe, feed and care for them all (including the servants) but also provided much of their early education as well. On Saturday evenings in the summer, the fiddlers would play rollicking tunes and the tapping of dancing feet could be heard in big houses and cabins alike. When winter shut down the fields, and with food plentifully stored in the cellar, the spinning wheels would begin to hum during those coldest months.

By the time William died in 1836, they had recently relocated to Woodstock (100 miles upriver from Hampstead) with two of their younger children, James and Caroline. Their older children were married with homes of their own scattered along the St. John River Valley. Around this time, she wrote a letterv to her daughter Susan, Mrs. Thomas Tilley:

I take my pen to address a few lines to you to inquire after the health of you and all of your family.  The grate distance we are from you prevents me from hearing.  You heard of the death of your Father at Woodstock.

Charlotte described William’s death in some detail and then continued:

I hop [sic] this may find you all well.  I am not well.  My head troubles me very much.  There is not one day that it don’t ake [sic] so that I cant hardly stir.  My cough is something better.  James and Caroline is well and harty [sic] and quite contented hear.  I like the place and if your Father has lived and been hear to see to it we might have made a good living.  It is pleasant and a good place for business but we must try to due the best we can.  The place is out of repair and soon would have been a common if we had not come hear.  I should be glad if my friends was near to us.  I don’t know as ever I shall see you all again.  I thought to have gon [sic]to see you all before I came up hear but I was so sick that I could not go down to see you.  James and Caroline wishes to be remembered to you and all the family.  I desire to be remembered to Thomas and the children and tel them I should be glad to see them and you.  Give my love to all inquiring friends and except a share for yourself.
This from you afectionet [sic] Mother, Charlotte Peters

Although she had her share of aches and pains at that time, she lived another 15 years and ultimately enjoyed the blessing of 111 grandchildren.

She had a powerful influence over all her family for she believed that their heritage carried a great responsibility to others. When the grandchildren would visit, her graceful hands were always busy winding yarn or knitting a sock while patiently answering their questions and reciting passages from the bible.

One of her grandchildren, Samuel Leonard Tilley, later known as Sir Leonard, served as Premier of New Brunswick and went on to became one of the Fathers of Confederation.

Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley 1864

A common tale states that Tilley proposed the term “Dominion” in Canada’s name, at the London conference in 1866, which he gleaned from Psalm 72:8 – “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth”. Ultimately, as Minister of Finance in the federal government, he was also instrumental in seeing the transcontinental railway completed.vi

Young Charlotte Haines might have felt all alone in the world at age ten but, when she died 68 years later, the epitaph on her tombstone proclaimed her legacy: “…Lamented by a large circle of descendants and friends by whom she was universally beloved and respected.”

The gravestone of Charlotte Haines Peters and family – St.John’s Anglican Church, Gagetown, Queens County, New Brunswick

Charlotte’s daughter Margaret Ann Peters and her husband Daniel Hanington “Roaring Dan” (my great great grandparents).

Notes:

iCharlotte’s mother, Miss Pugsley, died when she was very young. Charlotte’s father remarried Sarah Haight before he died. Then Sarah remarried Stephen Haviland who was Charlotte’s stepmother’s husband (step step father?)

iiThe Ship Passenger Lists, American Loyalists to New Brunswick, David Bell, http://www.uelac.org/Loyalist-Ships/Loyalist-Ships.php as seen 2020-03-28

iiiCharlotte Gourlay Rovinson, Pioneer Profiles of New Brunswick Settlers, (Mika Publishing Company), 1980, p.143.

ivJanet Lunn, Charlotte, (Tundra Books), 1998.

v https://queenscountyheritage.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/loyalist-of-the-day-charlotte-haines-peters/ as seen 2020-04-02

vi Conrad Black, Rise to Greatness: The History of Canada, (Random House), 2014.

Image – https://wiki2.org/en/Experiment_(horse-powered_boat) as seen 2020-06-11

Genealogy

Memories of Bygone Visits

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Have you ever wondered how names are given?

In the Jodouin family of 9 children, six girls, and three boys the names were:

Alice, Aline, Arthur, Eugene, Adele, Lucille, Emile, Estelle and Louise.

A number of them were named after relatives

Three of those names began with the same sounding A! Sometimes Mom would go through the entire list of her children before finding the one she wanted to address! Perhaps Granny had the same situation. In any case, my Aunt Adele became known as “Ted” even though she was very feminine and truly a fashion plate, always dressed ”to the nines”.

Aunt Ted, ?, Granpa, Luce, Mom, and Granny Jodouin                

For many years I wondered how she received the nickname. It seems that she looked like a little teddy bear with her big brown eyes and thus she became affectionately known as Ted. The name stayed with her all her life. She was “Aunt Ted!”

Marie Adele Jodouin was born in Sudbury, Ontario, during the Holiday season, on December 28, 1901. She was the fifth child of Louis and Louisa Jodouin.

The Royal Bank on Durham Street in downtown Sudbury

She worked as a Secretary to the Manager at the Royal Bank in Sudbury.

To this day, fond memories of bygone visits either to Sudbury or Asbestos still come to mind.

Back row: Uncle Leo and Aunt Dickie-Middle Row: Granny Jodouin, Mom, Aunt Ted – Front: Paul, Claire, and Denise – Dad took the photograph.

One of those visits occurred in the summer of 1946. Our family had moved from Sudbury to Asbestos, Quebec in the fall of 1945. We all missed our northern relatives, especially Mom. Granny, Aunt Ted, Aunt Dickie (Louise), Uncle Leo, and Cousin Denise arrived in the Packard driven by Aunt Ted. They were welcomed with open arms. Mom was in seventh heaven seeing her family. Their visit was the highlight of that summer.

When Grandpa Jodouin passed away in 1943 they sold the family home on Elm Street and built a small bungalow on John Street just around the corner from Aunt Dickie and Uncle Leo. In their new home, Granny had her Baby Grand piano as the centerpiece in their living room. The last memory of Granny etched in my mind was in 1948 when we were heading home to Asbestos. She sat down and played “Say Aurevoir But Not Goodbye”. She died in May of 1950.

Over the years there have been many visits back and forth to Sudbury. One of them happened in the summer of 1951 while spending several weeks with Aunt Ted in her home on John Street. During that time, she trotted me off to the dentist. He decided that the tooth growing off-kilter in my lower palette needed to be removed! That is something one does not forget. It is often a reminder of my caring aunt.

“Do you have a special aunt among your relatives?”

Years later, around 1955, Aunt Ted made another trip to our home in Asbestos. It would be the last time she visited us. Each one of her visits over the years has become more meaningful, and I realize just how much she was an influence in my life, and for that, I am truly grateful.

John, Claire, Aunt Ted, and Paul – Dad most likely took the photograph.

Aunt Ted passed away quietly at the age of fifty-five during the summer of 1958. I was deeply saddened and, for reasons unknown to me, did not attend her funeral. She is buried in LaSalle cemetery next to Granny, Grandpa Jodouin, and my parents.

Alas! Over time the ground around the tombstone had shifted and unfortunately, it became necessary to lower the impressive towering granite tombstone. It is no longer the marker it once was.

United States

Launching “Up for the Season”

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I was a journalist and magazine writer for many years, and I have written dozens of articles about my ancestors, but none of these projects has been as well received as the small book I recently co-edited about the small coastal community where I spend my summers.

Biddeford Pool, Maine has been welcoming summer residents for several generations. My mother came here as a child, and I have summered here since I was four.  Now, only a few long-lived members of my mother’s generation are still with us, and stories from the past are disappearing.

So in 2019, inspired by the success of my family history blog, I started a blog about the Pool’s summer community. I wrote some of the articles, but the main goal was for people to write their own stories.  My friend Dabney described the Sunday mornings of her childhood when everyone went to church wearing their Sunday best, then returned home to enjoy roast beef or fried chicken for lunch. Jesse told readers what he learned about life while racing his sailboat in the mid-1960s. Lisa recalled the 1950s when Mr. Anderson, dressed in a summer suit and straw hat, delighted the neighbourhood children by taking out his false teeth and giving them a toothless smile.

These were great stories, but the blog was a failure. Nobody noticed the publicity flyers I made up, and the posts were not frequent enough to land on people’s radar. When one friend asked, “what is a blog?” I knew the project was doomed.  

Upon our return to Maine in 2022, after a two-year absence due to Covid, I asked some friends what they thought I should do with the blog: delete it as a failed experiment, try to revive it, or turn it into a book? We decided on a book. We included all the articles from the blog and added many new stories.

The book is called, Up for the Season: Memories of Summer at Biddeford Pool, edited by myself and Christy Bergland, an artist from Baltimore whose grandfather first came to the Pool as the summer doctor in 1907. The title is a quote attributed to a local lobster fisherman who knew many of the summer residents in the 1950s. When he saw a cottager for the first time each summer, he would ask, “Up for the season?”

co-editors Janice Hamilton, left, and Christy Bergland, right. photo by Richard Levy

The theme of the book is, when and why did your family first start coming to Biddeford Pool? It turns out that many of the men who started coming to the Pool in the late 1800s and early 1900s lived and worked together in mid-western cities such as Cincinnati and St. Louis, and they recommended it to their friends as a good place to bring their families.

The book is probably a hit for several reasons. First, people love to hear these stories about the days when men wore tuxedos to the annual Labour Day dance at the golf club and children got their first taste of freedom as they explored this safe little peninsula. unsupervised by parents.

The quality of the writing is another reason. While most of the contributors are not professional writers, they are nevertheless gifted storytellers. Eagles Nest, a turreted house overlooking the rocky shore, came to life when LeeLee mentioned the seagull who arrives for cocktails on the porch. This was a perfect example of “show, don’t tell.”

For me, putting this project together was a lot of fun because it was a group effort. Christy and several other friends helped with all the important decisions, such as the title choice.

A fun book launch. photo by Harold Rosenberg.

We hired a copy editor to catch the typos and a book designer to do the layout. The printing was done by Rapido Books, a Montreal printing company that I had previously used for a family history book. They shipped two boxes of 50 books seamlessly across the border, and they have an online bookstore for print-on-demand copies. Over the course of this summer, Christy and Mary handled the book sales and accounting with Jo’s assistance. As of the end of August, we have sold more than 100 copies and accumulated a profit of several hundred dollars that we donated to the Biddeford Pool Community Center.

Marketing in a small community where everyone knows everyone is not complicated. We put up posters in key locations advertising an early July book launch, and an announcement appeared in the Community Center newsletter. The launch, held at Lisa’s old shingled family cottage by the bay, was an overwhelming success. We also held a smaller event at the end of the summer where several of the authors read their stories aloud.

Today, many family historians are taking the next step beyond researching their ancestors’ BMDs , and they are writing about their families. Writing about the individuals, families and businesses in a community is not very different from writing about ancestors, and the sources of information — interviews, newspaper articles, city directories, census data and so on – are also the same.

Now that Up for the Season has been so well received, we are hoping that people will be inspired to start writing volume two. Many stories are waiting to be told.