Do you believe in magic? If only the magic of the Internet.
It’s been about six years since I discovered that treasure-trove of paper memorabilia, including 300 letters from the 1908-1913 period, once belonging to my husband’s ancestors, the Nicholsons of Richmond.
I’ve learned an amazing amount since I wrote an article about my find for Townships Heritage WebMagazine back in February of 2004: a lot about the Scots of the Eastern Townships; a lot about teachers at the turn of the century; a lot about that very pivotal era in Canadian history, from 1896 to 1922, when Canada was “a nation in transition,” as one historian puts it.
(The family papers show that old Norman Nicholson was a member in good standing of the Sussex Preceptory No. 9, Knights Templar, Sherbrooke. He became a Life Member in 1917. Perhaps this pic is for the occasion.
And because of a magical series of coincidences, I have learned one more sweet fact, a year later, that the fancy sword Norman Nicholson is wearing in the picture from that article is not a militia sword, but a Masonic sword.
How did I find this out? Well, one Thursday evening in 2005 (as I returned from a visit with Esther Healey at the Richmond Historical Society) I found an email awaiting me. It was from Matthew Farfan, editor of Townships Heritage WebMagazine. A couple in the Okanagan Valley of BC, we’ll call them the C’s, had gotten in touch with Matthew, wanting to get in touch with me: They had Norman’s sword!
How come you have Norman’s sword? I asked in a return email. Because I took it as a kid from Mrs. Nicholson’s home, Mr. C answered. (How he loved that old house, he wrote, the steep basement stairs, the wondrous attic filled with fantastic things. He told me the barn in the back was ‘boy central’ in the era of Beatlemania and go go boots.
Mr. C’s parents had rented the house from my husband’s great aunt, Edith Nicholson, in the late 50’s until the middle 60’s. Somehow the sword had been swept up in the bustle when the family moved out.
Mr C assumes he took the sword, because he remembers playing with it, a lot, even “terrorizing” his sister with it. What boy wouldn’t play with a sword like that: a traditional ceremonial Mason sword, adorned with all kinds of mysterious symbols, a knight’s head and a Christian cross.
Phone my wife, Mr.C instructed. She’ll tell you about the sword. So I did – on the jump. At what a story Mrs. C. related! The sword has been hanging on the BC couple’s wall since the death of her in-laws. Prior to that it had traveled all over North America, as far as Ventura, California.
A family heirloom comes home. Husband Blair and friends. Bullwinkle and the late Tessa.
A few months before that, Mr. C’s sister, the little girl once ‘terrorized’ by the sword, paid them a visit and happened to mention, out of the blue, that the ornate weapon on the wall had a name engraved on it. (All Masonic swords do.) The name being ‘Norman Nicholson.”
A few months more passed and Mrs. C, who has never been to Quebec, had the sudden impulse to return the heirloom to its rightful descendants.
She Googled ‘Norman Nicholson’, but no luck. Too many of them. She entered “Margaret Nicholson” into the search engine and presto, she up popped the Townships Heritage website page with my article – with the picture of Norman with the sword staring her right in the face. On the article I had written but a few months before!
Now, how did she know to enter the name ‘Margaret Nicholson’? Because Mr. C remembered that in his childhood stamp book, there’s an old letter addressed to a Margaret Nicholson of Richmond, along with a picture of an old man with handlebar moustache brandishing holding his sword in a ceremonial stance.
So it is likely that over forty years ago a curious little boy who was to grow up to be a BC geologist, plumbed the depths of that same Nicholson treasure chest full of letters and memorabilia; the one that later made its way to my mother-in-law’s house – the one I discovered in 2005 - and taken that envelope and an appealing photograph of a swashbuckling septuagenarian. He may have cut stamps out of other envelopes, because many of mine are missing stamps .
Still not convinced that magic has anything to do with it?
Norman ’s sword arrived by Purolator the Tuesday before Halloween. Pre-paid. I handed it to my son, Mark, (Norman’s great-great grandson, one of many) and later to Blair, his father, and he placed it on the living room mantle.
That night, as we watched TV in the family room downstairs, we all heard a thump in the living room upstairs. My husband went up to find the album I keep on the coffee table, the one containing the best Nicholson memorabilia, even Norman’s death certificate (pulmonary embolism 1922) on the floor. It had popped open and pages were strewn all over the carpet in front of the fireplace.
Of course, it was likely the dog, but I took no chances. I placed a portrait of Margaret taken in 1912 beside the sword…I’d like to think that’s what he was looking for.
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**Tighsolas means “House of Light” in Gaelic. The family homestead was filled with windows. The Nicholson Family letters are at www.tighsolas.ca
Threshold Girl, a novel about a student in 1911 Montreal, is available at www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf
I posted this originally on the Townships Heritage website, but I’ve been staring at the sword, which is leaning against a wall in the living room, beside another heirloom, a shell from WWI brought home by my husband’s great uncle Ted from the other side of his family tree. Isn’t it weird how THINGS outlive people.
I am sitting on the couch in front of two golden vases, Thomas Forester Rembrandt bases, England, Stoke on Trent 1900. They belonged to my grandparents. Edith’s little copper elephant is also on the mantle that showcases 3 magazine covers from 1900 -1910 era. Pretty women on the Delineator and Harper’s Bazar. Images survive people,too.
