Bits and Pieces… of Flo History

I dug out a plastic grocery bag filled with Nicholson miscellany, really remnants I didn’t know what to do with five years ago.

I was hoping to find something important and relevant to Flo in the City, my work in progress about a girl coming of age in the 1910 era, now that I know so much more about the family.

And sure enough, I did.

Above is a receipt for piano lessons. Flora got lessons in 1910, although they are not mentioned in the letters. (I assumed she did.) and guess who gave it to her, Majory Sutherland, who died suddenly the next year.

I also found an invoice for 1910. the Bell Telephone Company of Canada.

6 months exchange service at 20.00 dollars a year. 10.00. As I have written about in this blog, the Nicholsons rarely used the phone long distance, but did phone for groceries and such.

I also found a pamphlet published in the 20′s about the Church Union debate… It starts out “In 1911 the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Canada asked for a vote of the people on the proposed union with Methodist and Congregationalist Churches. The result was 113000 in favor of union and 50, 753 opposed to union, out of a total membership of 297, 619. The Assembly in 1912 decided ‘that in view of the extent of the minority opposed to union, it was unwise to proceed to consummate the union.’

How interesting. Not quite a democracy, I guess.

And I found a little blue letter in very poor handwriting, from Framingham, July 30, 1923… another document that sheds light on the 1908-1913 Tighsolas Flo in the City Era.

It is from Nathan Coy and he is writing Margaret, telling of his wife’s Marion’s (Mrs. Coy’s) death.

Apparently Margaret had been visiting in Newton, and not been able to visit Mrs. Coy (her name Marion suggests she is one of the Lewis Scots).

Nathan Coy says he took her to Oxford and buried her with her little girl, so she had had a girl who had died.

And then he writes something interesting..”We all mourn for our departed friends but my case seems doubly hard. (He’s been an invalid for years with serious asthma.)

Of course you lost your dear husband (Norman died in 1922) but you have four nice children to comfort you while I have only an insane son who is fast getting worse. I was out to see him last week, but could not make him realize his great loss.

Well, it seems, Chester didn’t have a good end. In 1912 it seems that Mrs. Coy has hopes of him marrying one of the girls, and he does go visit them in Montreal in 1913, but alas… Marion sort of mocks this.. “Chester is the man, these days.”

He lost his mind somewhere. Boy, Mrs. Coy had a sad sad sad life.

And I have a list of the officers of the St. Francis Lodge..C.J.Hill, Margaret’s brother in law, D. M. Rowat, A S Rainbach (bank manager)W. J. Ewing..

W A Moffatt and F E Skinner are part of the finance committee.

And the Reverend Carmichael is on the charitable committee: a bit odd as the Prebyterians were against the Masons…

The Prodigal Son

Margaret and Norman. Norman is in full Masonic Regalia. It’s funny, the Presbyterian Church was not in favour of its members also being Masons, yet, Norman, a Presbyterian was a Mason. And he paid hefty fees to stay in the brotherhood. Practicality. All the important men of the town were Masons. In 1912, the Order of the Eastern Star comes to Richmond and Marion joins, as does Edith.

What do I know about Herb Nicholson before 1908?

He likely attended St. Francis Academy, and, from the school fees paid by Norman, he likely graduated.

He went to work for a local doctor in 1901, but it sounds like a summer job. A letter from one of Margaret’s sisters, Christy, suggests that Margaret and Norman were hoping he would become a doctor.

Instead, he went to work for the Eastern Townships bank.

In 1905, when Marion was living in town and going to McGill Normal School, on Belmont (which would be somewhere under Place Bonaventure today) Herb was in town.

Marion wrote many letters from Normal School and talked about seeing Herb occasionally. I guess it was his reluctant duty to see his sister. From her letters, he was not keen on visiting friends in Montreal.

Herb wrote well and if he worked in a bank he likely was good with numbers. His fatal flaw, he was one of these people who thought he was smarter and better than anyone he worked for.

Working in a bank, back then, as a clerk was probably no picnic. Indeed, he describes what it is like in his letters.

He also describes curling, watching a speed skating event in Montreal, going to a sugaring off, and to the brand new Dominion Park, where he rides a roller coaster but calls it a train. These are the kind of social activities he can talk about to his mother. No doubt he took part in other kinds.

He doesn’t mention his love life at all. Again, in a letter Christy suggests he is ‘a ladies’ man’.

In 1905, when he is in Montreal, he mentions he hasn’t written because he has been too busy visiting friends in Westmount and then later in the letter he says “Don’t be surprised if I get married.”

He does not mention the names of these friends. The Nicholsons have no ‘connections’ in Westmount. It is very possibly B.S.

So he’s hinting that he is going to marry a girl from a wealthy family, without saying it. That is the only time he mentions anything about his love-life in all the letters from the era.

Well, as future chapters of Flo in the City (my novel in progress based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/ ) will show, Herb goes out West in 1910 – and under sleazy circumstances. He does eventually marry, twice. And he ends up in California, where he dies in 1967. He is the only Nicholson not to be buried in St. Andrew’s Cemetery in Richmond.

Henry Watters, the doctor cousin from Boston, who is everything Herb is not, is buried there, however.

This is not to say Herb doesn’t have his qualities. His letters are interesting. He is opinionated, like all the Nicholsons, and he has some interesting things to say about life out West.