Qu’appelle Snapshot

Winnipeg, 1910. Herbert’s favourite Western City.

Why did I assume Herbert Nicholon wasn’t enumerated on the 1911 Census? He was.

I instantly found him in a Qu’appelle Saskatchewan boarding house.

There are at least 8 other boarders in this place, 7 men, one woman, all in their mid to late twenties, with one guy 32.

The woman is a stenographer at a law office. Like Herbert, she is a Canadian born Scotch Canadian Presbyterian. 3 of the other men are Canadian born, one of these in an English Anglican.

Four of the men are ‘new Canadians’ arriving around 1905. Two from England, one from Scotland and one from Germany. He’s a Lutheran.

Herbert lists himself as an accountant. Four other boarders are salesman, but they work in stores, 3 general stores one drug store..and the other boarder is a ledger something, which sounds like a clerk. And one of the men is a bartender!

The owner of the place is Welsh Canadian and he is a teacher at a public school. He and his wife are Baptists.

Wow!!!

On the same page, there is a Hungarian Canadian waitress, she has been in Canada since 1903. Also a German Russian waitress, who has been in Canada since 1908. 3 other Hungarians working as Cook and Waitresses.

All the rest are Canadians of UK Origin.

The Stenographer is making 500 a year. Two of the salespeople 850. and the other one making 1000! A huge salary by Eastern standards, but everything is so expensive there, as Herb writes.

Herb lists his salary as 800. (I have to check what he told his parents he was making. Hmmm. Let’s see if I catch him in a lie! No he didn’t. But he soon quit his accountant job at the bank to work on commission for Massey Harris. In this job, he devised schemes to rip off the farmers – to make extra money. What a nice guy!)

The teacher, a man, makes 1300.

Double WOW!

Now, I have to wonder why the Montreal Council of Women told the Royal Commission that stenography was high paying and that some stenographers make up to 1200. a year. (A stenographer was a catch all phrase for office worker with typing skills. ) I have just found two stenographers, one in MOntreal, one out West and they make about $500, less than a newly graduated teacher with diploma.

Nicholson Family Saga: Letter 4, A wedding, a funeral, a graduation and a Coronation

June 15, 1911,

Dear Norman,

You’re letters of the 11th and 12th just received. I hope you have already received one from me with Herb’s enclosed.

You will be surprised to hear that Edith had a trip to the city by auto with the Skinners. (Whoops. She told him about this in last letter.) She had a delightful trip, no breaks or stops and arrived home at 7 o’clock safe and very hungry. We had everyone come in for a cup of tea and I had just baked bread so they thought that was fine.

Edith had Lulu Stevens sewing for a few days, so I got her to do same for me. I had my muslin dress also one from the print you bought me. And my white skirt. So we won’t be sewing all summer as we used to do.

Charlie Wilson came up and told me he could not do the lawn, so I will have to look for someone else tomorrow.

Old Mr. Hill died yesterday at 5.pm, the 14th. Funeral Saturday, the 17th. Masonic. I went up for a while this evening.

Today Mrs. Campbell, Grace (Cross) and Bert (Cross, a woman) called. They were asking for you. I told them it was a great deal better than La Tuque. I trust it is.

Is the handcar safe? It will be easier than the walking. Happy to hear McKechnie is all right. If he is a Liberal and a Mason he will be better!

I am sorry you are having such a hard time with flies. Well, their season soon will be past.

Well, the Census man was around. I gave him your age as 60. Was I right. You know I always save a few years for myself. He did not take Herb’s or Marion’s. So that is over.

Flora will finish her exams tomorrow. She has kept well. The weather has been cool, so that made it pleasant.

Dr. Moffat’s loss is the talk of the town. Dr. Skinner said he has heard they will not be able to pay him for than 15 cents on the dollar.

Marion is not going to wait for the wedding (Isabel McCoy’s) as it would keep her too long in town.

As you can see by Herb’s letter he feels lonesome to think of you being so far away, but if we all keep well, we will all be together for the summer months.

We will manage everything here all right until then. Only it does seem ages since you left. We have not got used to staying alone.

Kenneth got your letters. Big Kenneth said he thought you were taking Laurier’s place while he was away at the Coronation.

He told me to tell you he said so.

Christina Watters went into Montreal to May’s (daughter’s) graduation, which is today. Henry (Dr. Henry Watters of Newton, Center, Massachusetts and May’s brother) is coming up if he can get away.

Right now, Edith is at the Skinner’s playing cards. Flora is looking over her lessons, so I thought I would write to my best fellow.

(Uncle Dan (Margaret’s brother) says you are all right on the railroad. He was often out in the woods, he says. Still I think 63 miles a long distance. Is it all woods from Cochran? Will the work last long there?

I have mailed you your check book. We have not seen the Herald all week. Take good care of yourself. I will write again soon.

With much Love,
Margaret.

Marion Nicholson never did get enumerated for this 1911 Census. How do I know? Grace Cross lives in Montreal at 5 Tupper, with her mom. They are former Richmondites. A Mrs. Ellis owns the house next door and takes in boarders because that’s where Marion lives during the school year. Only 2 boarders are listed at that address, a nurse-in-training and a stenographer.

Census Page for Nicholsons. The Skinners are Frank and Ruby, son Floyd.

May Watters, Norman and Margaret’s niece, is graduating from Macdonald Teachers College.

According to the Census Records, her family lived in Kingsbury in 1911. (The Census has them as Waters!) May stayed with the Margaret and Flora 1908-1910, likely to attend St. Francis.

She is the same age as Flora but one year ahead at school. Henry is her older brother (born 1880) and, from all accounts an exemplary young man, indeed, everything Herbert Nicholson is not. Henry is hard-working, kind, generous and devoted to kin. In the summer of 1909, he takes his dad on a visit to the homeland. Norman remarked on it in a letter. “Dr. Henry and his father are sailing by this time. When they get back you will get a whole new set of stories when he calls. It’s nice of Henry to take his father on that trip. Every boy is not so thoughtful. Some if they have the means would prefer to go alone or with friends “

May and Flora visit him in 1908 (and ride in his Stanley Steamer to the Wellesley Campus)and Edith and Marion visit him in 1912 and are taken to Norumbega Park. Henry is unmarried and lives with his sister Christina, who is a few years older than May. But his clapboard Colonial house on Commonwealth Avenue is equipped with all the latest gadgets, Flora says.

“Big Kenneth”… These Scots tended to rotate but a few names, Malcolm, Norman, Kenneth, John.. so they needed ways to distinguish one from the other.

Isabel McCoy is the daughter of family friends in Montreal. They live on Hutchison and in the 1911 Census Isabel is listed as ‘professeur’ earning 700. a year. Marion earns 650. in 1912. May, if she gets a job on the Montreal Board, can expect to earn 550. to start. Were she a male graduate, she would earn 800. to start.

The pencil has faded on the 1911 Census form, but Norman puts his salary at 1,200. That’s 100 a month. Unfortunately, it gets halved in 1912.

Margaret is worried for Norman. She senses railroad work is dangerous, and it is. A highly publicized book has just come out to that effect. And then there’s the mud and the blackflies and extreme heat and the extreme cold. But it’s the loneliness and boredom that gets to Norman the most. At 60, he is too old to play on the Residency hockey team. As a Presbyterian who has signed a temperance pledge he does not drink or gamble.

The Past is not a Foreign Country

The Nicholsons on the 1911 Census, the typed online page.

I have spent over five years researching the background to the Nicholson letters – and that family holds few secrets for me any more.

But looking over the 1911 Census material yesterday, (put online by volunteers), it got a little eerie.

It was fun to learn that Mrs. Skinner was named Ruby, a gem of a first name (too bad women’s first names were hardly used back then) and that her husband was Floyd.

And it was fun to learn that only two area families had live-in domestics, both on College street. One was George Alexander (of the insurance fiasco). Clayton and Isabella Hill did not have a maid living with them.

In the first chapter of Flo in the City I have Flora say that The Hills are one of the few families with maids. So I’ll change it to the Alexanders.

I decided to flip through the Census pages for the area around Tighsolas, and discovered something else of interest. Most men living outside of that little pocket of fine homes near College Street were labourers and almost all of them worked at the Boston and Last Factory (where Norman gets his firewood) or for the GTR.

In general, the Tighsolas letters are a window on the ‘elite’ of Richmond.

The Nicholsons saw themselves as among the elite – the business class – which gives me even more perspective on their state of mind as they struggled financially in the 1908-1913 era. http://www.tighsolas.ca/.

Of course, at one time, Norman had been a very successful area businessman. But he fell on hard times starting in 1900. He was broke by 1907. Herb’s disgrace, in 1910, must have been the icing on the cake.

Still, Normans 1922 obit in the Richmond Times, describes him as ‘one of the most respected persons of this place.’

As I wrote in the last blog, their friends in Montreal were very well off. And these were good friends, who bent over backwards to help the girls succeed in the city.

And of course J.C. Sutherland was the Superintendant of Protestant Education after 1911 and likely helped Marion in her career.

I knew this of course, but I didn’t quite ‘see it.’ The census material makes me ‘see it.’

Mrs. Montgomery’s health problems, hinted at in the letters, “her usual problem” had to do with conceiving, I’m pretty sure. We’re dealing with miscarriages here, I guess. She had only one child and that one in 1910 when she was 40.

Oh, and I learned Mae Waters lived in Kingsbury. The census has their name as Waters even though the Nicholsons always write Watters. Go figure. I’m pretty sure the tombstones said Watters. (So don’t believe everything you read.)

Of course, the Montreal Census might take days and days to scan. I couldn’t find my husband’s grandfather, but he lived in Westmount. Maybe that city’s info hasn’t been put online. Otherwise, I can’t figure it out.

I tried, in vain, to find the birth family of my Aunt Flo. She was ‘adopted’ by my grandparents after 1911. She had been born around 1906, and I always thought her family name was St-Clair, but there are no St. Clairs living in the City.

I wish I had her birth certificate. She spent some time in the Veteran’s Hospital in Ste. Anne de Bellevue. Maybe they have a record of it on file.

More Census Sense 1911

My grandfather’s name on the 1911 Census. He lived on St. Hubert at the time.

Well, I couldn’t find any secondary sources about the families in the Royal Arthur Catchment Area in 1911, so I went straight to the source.

The Census is online. Or part of it is.

At first, for the area of St. Cunegonde I found only French Catholics, but then I found an area with English, Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists.

It’s a working class area, for sure. Salaries are all well below 1,000, with 1,500 being the amount needed to raise a family well in those day, according to sources.

There were firemen, policemen, bakers and clerks, machinists, stablemen, stenographers, bricklayers and waiters and couturiers. Stenographers did not appear to make that wonderful salary stated in the Report to the Royal Commissioners by the Montreal Council of women, 1,200. More like 2 -4 hundred. Clerks could make 400 to 1,000, so it was a broad field.

The highest salary I saw was 1,250 for a bricklayer, of Spanish American extraction. I am guessing he had a special skill.

I found one porter, American Presbyterian, so likely black. But there has been no indication that Jewish garment workers live in the area.

Well, I also tracked down the McCoys, the good friends of the Nicholsons, from an old Richmond family. They lived on Hutchison, but I knew that. Isabelle was the MOM (according to this,) 63 years old, and Marie the daughter, a teacher, or “professeur” making 720. Well, Isabelle is the daughter. Mr. McCoy did not deign to put down his salary, but his servant chef, a Mr. Kelly, an Irish Catholic, made 1,200. this man’s wife lived in, so likely helped out.

Servants were expensive back then.

You can see why the McCoys could afford to go to Europe in 1912.

Most people on his street had a live-in servant, it seems.

I wasn’t able to find the Clevelands, yet. I have no idea where they lived, so I am curious. Unless it is Lorne Crescent.

(Yep, I found them. On 5 and 7 Lorne. It appears two Cleveland Brothers are living side by side, one is the dentist and the younger, Walter is the father to Ross and Thorburn and is in clothing. I merely looked up Cleveland for Quebec. Virtually every Cleveland lives in and ar0und Richmond. They are an old family. Just a couple in Montreal, tho. No salary for the dentist brother or clothier brother, Walter, but he had insured himself for 10,000. They both employed help, recently arrived English youths, 22 and 23, Kathleen and Hileck (boy?) and paid them peanuts, 200. But they lived in, so that’s an ok salary. Edith made the same as a teacher in Westmount and had to find lodgings.)

And I also tracked down the census entry that Margaret wrote about in her letter.
Edith is marked in as a teacher, but living in Richmond. Odd. They call themselves Scotch, even though they are Canadian born. But that’s what people did. Nathan Montgomery, her neighbour, is marked as retired. Hmm. Retired, with a new baby (whom I met in 2005) and buying an automobile.

The Nicholsons may have been struggling, but they had good friends who were flush with cash. Connections. Connections. Can’t get ahead without ‘em.

Census Sense

I think this is Edith and maybe that’s Charlie Gagnon, who died in a Cornwall hotel fire in 1910.

Well, the 1911 Canadian Census includes a bit about conjugal status in, basically, all the towns and cities.

Richmond, in 1911, had 618 single men and 699 single women. The town had a total population of 2,175, a decline from the previous census.

The town had 416 dwelling and 436 families.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the Census man came around on June 15, 1911. Margaret said they did not take Herb or Marion’s stats.

Herb was drifting around the West and Marion was working in Montreal. Odd, because so was Edith and both women were living in a boarding house. But Edith got enumerated as a resident of Tighsolas, with Flora.

So Edith became a statistic and Marion and Herb didn’t. I suspect Marion didn’t figure in any part of the Census, Herb certainly not.

So the many many young people drifting around looking for work (or actually working) didn’t figure in Canada’s big picture in 1911.

Even more odd. The table lists Single, Married, Widowed, Legally Separted and Divorced. There were no Legally Separated or Divorced listed for Richmond. (As the Nicholson letters reveal, people of their acquaintance did ‘break up housekeeping’ and even apply for divorce.)

But the number of married women doesn’t equal the number of married men. And this is the same for many towns. What gives here? Is there a category missing from the Census? Perhaps ‘illegally separated and moved far away’. Norman Nicholson, despite being away on the railroad in Ontario, was listed as living at Tighsolas in Richmond.

In general, in Canada, there were more men than women. Why? Immigrants, I guess. Workers. In the UK, after WWI when their stock of eligible males was devastated, some magazines counselled single women to go to Canada. But they warned the single men were not to be found in the big cities of the East, only on the frontier.