The front and back of a Christmas card sent out from Jim and Ida Nelson from their family farm south of Belhaven. Unsure of the date but suspect 1920-30 since they moved to their new Sutton West home around 1930. These are Ethel's parents and the home she grew up in prior to moving west with Noah Draper.
Can you spot the differences between the 2 photos above? If you click them they enlarge for clear views of Belhaven taken from the same spot but 102 yrs apart. Sure, the false front is gone from the bottom photo and the front verandah is enclosed, but look at the shape and positions of the windows, as well as the placement of the power poles. If you compare these photos with the one in last week's 1911 Courtship Letter you see that the James Nelson family farm is situated down the road and among those trees on the left. Author of Letter: Ethel Isabell Nelson, age 21 (b 1890) Dated: 1st Oct 1911 (events confirm date as 25th) Addressed to: Mr. N.C.Draper, My Dear Noah Mailed from: Belhaven, Ont. Relationship: Courting Profession: Farmer's Daughter Writing instrument: Fine point pen, black ink - In Ethel's last letter she blamed the pen for the messy letter with smudges, but this letter is almost as bad, if not worse. I believe it may be the ink and not the pen because even after 102 yrs, the ink smudges on my hands - as if it still hasn't dried. Good thing I've made a point of placing each opened letter in a large ziploc bag while handling it or it will be illegible before the next 100 yrs rolls around. Written on: Off-white, textured, plain, linen-like paper, 9.5 inches x 6.5 inches, folded in half in booklet form and written as 1, 3, 2, 4 although I've set them in order here for legibility. People/places mentioned in this letter: - *Sadie Nelson - Ethel's 16 yr old sister - *Christie Nelson - Ethel's 11 yr old sister - *Veda - 16 yr old daughter of Noah's sister, *Eva Amelia and *Joe Perrault of *Grand Coulee, SK - *Fanny - 16 yr old cousin of Veda's on the Perrault side (Noah teases her) - **Mabel Wright of Queensville - this week's Genealogy Notes - Mrs. Walker *Prosser - neighbor and mother of *Cecil Prosser - *Cecil Prosser - future husband of Sadie - Frank *Morton - neighbor and friend - Stanley *Bruels - neighbor and brother of Ethel's friend, Maud - Edith Draper of Belhaven - check labels for *Edith/Edythe Draper - *Mahoney girls & Dora - close neighbors and friends - Stanley *Mahoney - brother of the Mahoney girls - West boys - the men who went to work the huge *western *harvest in August Places/things mentioned in this letter: - *Sutton Fair - Sutton is a few miles northeast of Belhaven - *Queensville - several miles south of Belhaven Cliche/Phrase - hustle - I've always thought this was a modern word Legend: * Look under the Categories/Labels in the right side column for more posts on this person/place/thing. If you don't see a label, use the search box at the top of page. ** see Genealogy Notes below
Genealogy Notes Mabel Wright - Mabel Wright of Queensville came home with Sadie Friday night to stay over Sunday.
Ethel had written the line about Mabel as if Noah knew who she was talking about. Was Mabel one of the many relatives of the Draper and Nelson families who resided in and around Queensville, East Gwillimbury Twp? A quick search of the family tree showed only one person of the Wright family - Clarinda Wright b 1794 who married Lewis Card b 1793. But with Wright being Clarinda's maiden name, any offspring would bear the surname of Card. Of course, Mabel could descended from one of Clarinda's brothers, but with 100+ years between Clarinda's and Mabel's birth dates, I'd need more information before trying to search for that connection. Instead, I decided to go backwards using the ancestry.ca search engine... Step 1 - Search for Mabel Wright, Queensville, 1911 Result: 1911 Canada census showing Mabel Wright, 16 yrs old of East Gwillimbury Parents - John and Mary Wright and lots of siblings Ancestry Hints - Mabel Wright Birth Record Step 2 - Pull up Mabel Wright's Birth Record for Mother's Maiden Name Result: Parents - John A Wright and Mary Ann Cunningham Step 3 - Search for marriage record of John Wright and Mary Ann Cunningham Results: Marriage Record of Oct 16, 1878 in East Gwillimbury Parents of John A Wright: John and Mercy Wright Step 4 - Search for marriage record of John and Mercy Wright as no hint given Results: Early Marriage Record showing Jan 11, 1848 No parents listed, but shows bride as Mercy Pearson and John's birth of abt 1809 Step 5 - Search for John Wright b 1809 and Mercy Pearson Results: Another member's tree showing John William Wright b 1809 Hull, England Step 6 - Search for John William Wright, b 1809, Hull, Yorkshire, England Results: - Several member tree's with slightly different dates and spouses - many 1841 England census records for John Wright Step 7 - Search Passenger and Immigration lists for travel between 1808 and 1848 Reason - John married Mercy in 1848 Ontario which is where she was born Results - pages of listings for several England & Wales Criminal Registers, 1791-1892, and the discovery that the name of John Wright is as common in the UK as John Smith is in the US Summary - I stopped searching the ancestry records as it became too intensive and I wasn't getting anywhere. New Search using Local history book on East Gwillimbur : East Gwillimbury in the Nineteenth Century by Gladys M. Rolling, Ryerson Press, Toronto, 1967 This book contains several mentions of the Wright family in East Gwillimbury and Queensville including some of those mentioned above. It also has many references to other families who are related to the Drapers, Glovers, and Nelsons. Again, it's too inconclusive to make a direct connection at this point, so I'll let the search end here for now. Although I didn't get the answer I was seeking, I hope that by following the steps of my search, you will have gained an idea of how easy it is to find people, and in particular maiden names, etc to help in your own search. I have run into a problem with the 1911 Courtship letters. Last week's letter didn't have a date, but I guessed it was written on Sep 10, based on certain events. The letter which was to follow didn't have a date, either, so I was going to use Sep 15 because Ethel had a Sep 18 and it seemed to follow. Except Ethel always wrote one a week, not within a few days of each other. But when I read the 2 letters again, I realized the 18 talked about an upcoming Box Social and the remaining undated one talked about the result of the box social. It also talks about the Federal election results which didn't happen until Sep 21st. With that in hand, I concentrated on Sep 15 - and ran into another problem - a BIG one. This week's letter - the Sep 15 one - mentions Willie Sweet and Laura Traviss being engaged. Since both surnames are in the family tree I didn't think anything was wrong until I looked at the tree and discovered that we did indeed have several Sweets - but their branches of the tree weren't filled out and thus, I didn't have a Willie who would eventually marry a Laura Traviss. After 3 days of sorting through the records, deleting duplicate people, and searching out facts, I've realized that the Sweet men remarried often, as did the women, but not quite as much. I worked the tree back to a common ancestor and started forward again and finally found my man. But it will take another day to write the post now that I have all the facts. However, in the same letter, Ethel mentions Huntsville and so while I'm working on the Sweet family, I thought I'd show you the souvenir postcard collection I mentioned briefly weeks ago when Ethel was in Huntsville and talking about the steamboat, the Wa Wa. This collection was sent to Ethel from her oldest child, Midge, in 1944 when she vacationed in the Huntsville area of Muskoka District, just like her mother did 33 yrs earlier. Forgive the overlap in the photos below, but I wanted you to see how the postcards are all joined together. And now for the flip side...
When I searched my historical photo archives for something to show the 1911 political debate of Reciprosity (Genealogical Note #3), this cowboy and his horse, named "Reciprocity" came up. And honestly, I'd rather show this image than a political one any day. Author of Letter: Ethel Isabell Nelson, age 21 (b 1890) Dated: Sep- 1911 (Possibly Sep 10th due to facts in letter) Addressed to: Mr. N.C.Draper, My Dear Noah Mailed from: Belhaven, Ont. Relationship: Courting Profession: Farmer's Daughter Writing instrument: Fine point pen, black ink Written on: Off-white, textured, plain, linen-like paper, 9.5 inches x 6.5 inches, folded in half in booklet form. Ethel is very talkative this week and has written 7 pages using 2 pieces of writing paper. People/places mentioned in this letter: - Mother - *Ida Amelia Glover Nelson - Pa - *James Henry Nelson - *Sadie - Ethel's 16 yr old sister - *Veda -16 yr old daughter of Noah's sister, *Eva Amelia and *Joe Perrault - Mr. Perrault's - *Joe Perrault's trip to *Banff for his arthritis *Manuel - Ethel's 6 yr old brother, *Emanuel Nelson - Uncle *Emanuel Nelson - Ethel's Pa's paternal uncle - Ursula *Cole - Ethel's 16 yr old 2nd cousin on the maternal *Greenwood side - **Mr. & Mrs. Frank Terry and daughter Edna May - Noah's cousin - **Cousin George of Udora (Drury and Alf Westgarth) (*Ida Amelia's cousins) - *Edith Draper - Noah's 25 yr old cousin whose finace lives in the West - Noah's mother - *Sarah Sophia Deverell Draper - Uncle - *Emmanuel Nelson - Uncle of Ethel's Pa - *James Henry Nelson - Mrs Harry Glancey of Newmarket and son Roy, school teacher - local friends - 'the boys' - the local men who went west to find work during harvest - Orville and the rest of the boys - Neighbor Orville *King - Mr. Merritt - Sadie's school teacher - Ethel and Noah's friends and neighbors who went to Toronto for the Exhibition: - Stanley and May (use search box) - Della, Dora, and Hattie M. - Gordon *Crowder - Morin Yorke - *Mary Smith of Belhaven - friend who visited Ethel in *Huntsville - Lulu Sheppard - neighbor - Mr. Prosser's - could be any of the *Prosser families - Irene and Maud *Bruels - Ethel's old girlfriend - John Morris - ? (still researching) - Professor *Dales - frequent visiting minister Local Polititians: Mr. Armstrong, *Lennox, and Robinette Mr. Heise - Previous residents, Mr. Heise and family, were in the newspaper travelling through. Not sure if it's the same one Ethel's talking about. Places/things mentioned in this letter: - *Toronto, Ontario - Sutton, Ontario - Udora, Ontario - Mount Albert, Ontario - *Newmarket, Ontario - Brandon, Manitoba - *Banff, Alberta - **reciprocity - trade agreement between Canada and the U.S. Cliches/Phrases/Word Use - kid - phone Legend: * Look under the Categories/Labels in the right side column for more posts on this person/place/thing. If you don't see a label, use the search box at the top of page. ** see Genealogy Notes below
Genealogy Notes Genealogy Note 1: Cousin George from Udora Ethel mentions Cousin George in 2 places in this letter and at first I wasn't sure if she was talking about the same one... - pg 3 - George ??? from Udora came in here just before tea - pg 6 - George has gone home. He is a cousin of ours from Udora. A scaffold he was on broke & he fell... Since I didn't recall any of Ethel's relatives living in Udora, I tried to do an Ancestry.ca search. The problem is that it only lets me search for people, not places. Very inconvenient as I've run into this before. However, this week's Newmarket Era mentions a scaffolding accident - one of many back then - and although the names weren't familiar, I clipped it out:
Of course, the problem with the above snippet is that it mentions Alf and Drury Westgarthe and not cousin George ???, whose last name I couldn't make out from Ethel's writing. But with the light bulb flashing above my head, I looked at Ethel's writing again and sure enough, she had written George Westgarth from Udora, although another check on the family tree still didn't match the name. So, I did a wide search for a George Westgarth from Udora and a George D Westgarth came up with Ellen Greenwood as his mother. Since Ethel's maternal grandmother is a Greenwood, I checked for Ellen on the family tree and there she was... sister of Sarah Elizabeth Greenwood, Ethel's grandma. Which meant Ethel's mom, Ida Amelia, and George D were cousins. Good to know, but it still didn't match Alf and Drury Westgarthe in the newspaper scaffolding accident. However, a search for George D's birth record confirmed his name was George Drury Westgarth. Ethel doesn't mention George's brother Alf, but she does say that George's face looked like he'd had lost a round with the reigning boxing champ. It also adds more cousins to the family tree. Genealogy Note 2: The Franklin Terry's Ethel writes that she saw Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Terry and that she thinks, "their daughter is home from the West. came rather unexpectedly. but I guess Welcome "eh". Obviously Ethel and Noah share something that they're not telling us, but I'll tell you all I found out... We first encountered the Franklin Terry's when Noah made a brief mention of their son, Manford Terry, who is Noah's cousin on the Draper side. Manford was married to Etta May Prosser and they lived near Belhaven, North Gwillimbury Township. In 1911, Manford is 30 yrs old and he has 2 sisters, Edna May is 28 yrs old, and Olive Gertrude is 12 yrs old. Their sibling, William Burr, died at the age of 12 from erysipelas which is a skin infection caused by acute streptococcus bacteria. Edna May is the daughter mentioned in this week's letter. In January, 1908, she married George Robert Fogg, a saddle merchant from Togo, Saskatchewan, who was visiting relatives in the North Gwillimbury area. George took Edna May back West where he lived in the same community as his parents and a couple siblings. Since his father was a harness maker, and George was a saddle merchant buyer, I suspect he worked for his father although that's not written on the Census records. I found a birth record for George and Edna's 1st child - a son born December 1908. But then I can't find anything else until the 1916 Saskatchewan census which shows them living in Saskatoon, SK, with a 2nd child, a daughter born in 1913. George is a wholesale saddle buyer and the rest of his family seem to be out in Alberta. I have searched dozens of census records and cannot find George and Edna on the 1911 Canada census anywhere. So either they didn't register, their records are missing, or their records are so badly misspelled that the ancestry computers aren't picking them up. I even did a 30 page line-by-line search for them in the Togo, Sk area without results. So I suppose we'll have to wait and see if Noah knows where they are. Genealogy Note 3: Reciprocity
Ethel tells Noah that "...we are having a lively time over reciprocity. Suppose you are up there." It's federal election time and the newspapers are filled with the debate over the trade agreement called Reciprocity. Here are a couple samples... The back of the above photo is written in Norma Draper's hand and says, "Grandpa and driver." It was only from reading the early 1900 newspapers that I knew the driver was the horse. Actually, the first time I read a news article about a runaway driver I thought they were talking about a person and didn't understand why he'd be running away. After re-reading it though, I came to understand the terminology of the driver being the horse that was used mainly for pulling the family's buggy, wagon, sleigh, or what have you. So when Noah mentions that he's working his driver, he means he's got his main driving horse working out in the field, and since most work horses weren't trained to pull wagons, etc, he has to walk if he wants to go anywhere. Author of Letter: Noah Clement Draper (24 yrs old) Dated: Sept 3rd 1911 Addressed to: Miss E.Nelson, Belhaven, Ont., My Dear Ethel Mailed from: Grand Coulee, Sask. Relationship: Courting Profession: Farmer Writing instrument: Fine point pen, Black ink, but looks grey in places and then darkens as he dips his pen in the ink jar. Writing Paper: Thick, textured, linen-like paper, 9 inches x 6.5 inches. Paper is folded in half, written in booklet form, but for the 2nd page, Noah turned the paper and written down the length of the 2 pages before closing it, turning it again, and writing page 4 on the back. People/places mentioned in this letter: - Mother - *Sarah Sophia Deverell Draper, Noah's widowed mother - *Veda - Noah's 16 yr old niece, daughter of his sister *Eva Amelia and *Joe Perrault - *Sadie Nelson - Ethel's 16 yr old sister back in Belhaven - plasters (plasterers) - carpenters - painters - **harvest - the office - the Post Office - my driver - Noah's main horse for pulling the wagon, buggy, sleigh, etc (see pic above) Cliche/Phrasing: - "Well kiddo..." * Look under the Categories/Labels in the right side column for more posts on this person/place/thing or use the search box in the header ** see Genealogy Notes below
Genealogy Notes In this week's letter, Noah writes that he has 160-170 acres of wheat cut and about 120 acres to go. That's just the binding and stooking. Sometime in the next month or so, Noah will get a harvest crew together and they'll thresh the stooks which separates the wheat kernels from the chaff. Some farmers owned their own threshing machines, but many hired threshing crews that went from farm to farm similar to the corporate harvest crews of today. The following photographs were copied this past summer from one of the albums in the Norma Draper Photo Collection. The album is mostly in chronological order starting in 1912 with the harvest photos being the first pictures in the album. Noah served in WW1 from 1916 to 1919 and then the family moved to Victoria, BC where they lived from 1920 to 1924. There are 2 harvest scene photos below and each has been cropped a couple times. The originals show so much sky and ground that the people are minuscule. Therefore, I cropped each photo first by cuttting one third off the top and the same from the bottom. What you see in the next 2 images are the result of that first cropping. The 1st image shows the men standing around, posing. This was the first photo in the album. But the image below shows the men working as can be seen by the stream of chaff from the thresher blowing out above Percy's head on the far right. (click the image for a bigger view - I hope.) These next 2 images have been cropped further by cutting another third off the left side so we can clearly see Noah and Percy. The image below wasn't annotated by Ethel like the one above, however, it appears that the men stopped their work and then moved forward together for the shot. When I zoomed in as much as I dared without losing definition, I could clearly tell that Percy Draper is on the wagon because of the jaunty angle of his light colored hat. But where was Noah? I finally found him by looking for his clothes - the partially unbuttoned coat over coveralls - the only worker to wear his coat in this fashion. He's on the thresher, behind where the horses are standing. Unfortunately, his face appears to be a blur so he might be looking down and his hat is hiding his face, but he's using the same stance in both images and it's one that I've come to recognize from many of his pictures - thanks again to his daughter Norma's preservation of the family pictures. There's a good probability that the husbands of Noah and Percy's sisters, Ethel Maud and Eva Amelia, are somewhere in the photographs so if any of those family members see this and recognize someone, please contact us.
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