Category: Family history

Family Fonts

Font
•  A receptacle in a church for the water used in baptism, typically a free-standing stone structure.
•  A source of a desirable quality or commodity; a fount. Example: “they dip down into the font of wisdom”
— from Lexico.com, in association with the Oxford University Press

My sister Beth and I traveled to London this year in search of ancestral haunts. What we found was ancestral fonts:

• Baptismal fonts in churches where our ancestors were christened, and
• London pubs, those classic fonts of British ale, which were associated with our great-grandmother.

This is the story of finding those fonts.

Our first font, of the baptismal variety, was found in the crumbling St. Leonard’s Church in Shoreditch. We went there because our great-grandfather, William Estall, was born in Shoreditch in London’s East End in 1852. He came into the world on New Inn Yard, a street that has changed many times over the years. In the late 1500s the area housed London’s original playhouse, The Theatre, where Shakespeare cut his teeth as an actor and playwright. The globe map on the right shows The Theatre in relation to New Inn Yard. [Click on it to enlarge.]

As we sat across the street from the location where William Estall was born we could see the site where a recent archeology dig uncovered the foundations of the Theatre. It was torn down in 1598 and moved across the River Thames and rechristened The Globe. Likewise, a couple hundred years later William Estall’s birthplace was constructed and that too was later torn down. Though we couldn’t see either structure, we let our imaginations travel back in time to see a pensive William Shakespeare stroll along the lane and a swaddled William Estall being whisked off to the nearby St. Leonard’s church in his mother’s arms.

William Estall was baptized in September 1852. We found St. Leonard’s Church (also known as the Actors’ Church due to its use by The Theatre’s owners and actors), but it was covered in scaffolding and our hearts sank knowing that we wouldn’t be able to see inside it. Beth, however, walked into its soup kitchen for the homeless, and the gentleman running it said he’d try to find a way inside for us.

He breezed us by a construction worker who warned against our entry, over debris, down dark stairways, and finally found a door into the unlit church. And there, sitting off to the side, was the font, the very one used to baptize wee Willie.

As we gazed on it, a sense of how fleeting our lives are gnawed at me. The infant William grew into a man, fathered our grandmother Bessie, and passed away. His infant daughter grew into a woman, mothered our father, and subsequently passed away. And here we were, in the senior years of our lives, feeling the smooth surfaces of the font — feeling a connection to one who went before us — knowing that our time too was limited. In a way, the font was like a stone marker — not a headstone commemorating a death, but one commemorating the start of a life and of the string of lives to follow.

Having found Bessie’s dad’s baptismal font, we were also fortunate enough to come across her mother’s. This was when we visited St. Mary Magdalene Church in Woolwich, south of the River Thames. After a morning of contemplating time and the universe via the clock and astronomical exhibits at Greenwich, we took a bus to Woolwich to visit the streets our great-grandmother Sarah Ann Hutchings once graced with her young presence.

The highlight of the afternoon was visiting St. Mary Magdalene Church, the mother church of Sarah and her family. Of course the door was locked, but we rang the bell and were escorted in by a kindly lady running the church’s daycare center who showed us around the inside of the church. My eyes were immediately drawn to the stone font near the front of the church, where our great-grandmother Sarah, her mother, and her grandfather were baptized in 1860, 1838, and 1817 respectively. The church is also where Sarah’s great-grandparents were married in 1804. This building holds a special place in our history.

One good font leads to another, and we walked from the church to the nearby pub where Sarah lived and worked as a barmaid at the time of the 1881 census. The Mitre pub is undergoing renovation on the inside but the outside is virtually unchanged from the time Sarah worked there.

Disappointed that we couldn’t have a drink there in her honor, we continued through town along the high street, turned down the lane where she lived at the time of her baptism (Union Street then but today called Macbean), and over to the market square. The market fronts on the Royal Arsenal Gate and the arsenal beyond it where her father, a blacksmith and engine fitter, probably worked. Her ‘step-father,’¹ Robert Billinghurst, also worked at the Arsenal, in his later years as a foreman.

As was our custom, we took a mid-afternoon break at a pub, in this case the Dial Arch, a former gun factory on the Royal Arsenal grounds, where Beth had a Pimm’s and I had a cask ale. While slaking our thirsts and resting our feet we could gaze at the ornate Royal Brass Foundry where guns were cast from the early 1700s until 1870. This would have been one of a number of buildings where Sarah Hutchings’s father worked his blacksmith trade.

Also noteworthy about the Dial Arch is that it was the birthplace of the Arsenal Football Club in 1886, which went on to become one of England’s premier teams. A marker in the shape of a soccer ball can be seen in the bottom left corner of the photo.

Our toast to Sarah was delayed but not denied.

The Mitre was not the only pub where our great-grandmother Sarah lived.

Shortly before our trip to London I was browsing historical maps to find an old family neighborhood in Bethnal Green, namely the area where William Estall once lived on Totty Street and Sarah Hutchings later lived on nearby Palm Street. This neighborhood was badly damaged by German bombing during the Second World War [see map at left] and the city decided to turn it into a park. I thought a stroll through the park would be a quiet way to contemplate and pay tribute to our ancestors.

As I was looking at a satellite image I was struck by the presence of a lone building surrounded by acres of parkland greenery and ponds. I switched to street view and saw that the building was the Palm Tree Pub. It looked like it was situated about where the former Palm Street lay. When I looked at the address painted above the door it seemed vaguely familiar and I began digging through Bethnal Green workhouse records to find the address where Sarah Hutchings lived in 1887.

Amazingly, the address on the building, numbers 24 and 26, showed it was where our great-grandmother Sarah lived in 1887. This was almost like a cosmic sign, the only building still standing in the neighborhood is where Sarah called home for a time. What kismet. Oh, we HAD to have a drink there!

Our first attempt was thwarted by a security guard who informed us the pub was being used for filming a television show.  (It turns out that a few movies and shows featured the pub due to its old-time atmosphere.) But hey, it was mid-afternoon, time for a drink and a sit-down, so we found another nearby pub, this one also from the Victorian age. A kind local patron there heard our story and walked back to the Palm Tree to see if he could get us in (Londoners were nothing if not helpful to us) but the security guard was unmoved. So the Palm Tree was put off for another day.

Delayed, but not denied
On a beautiful Sunday afternoon, after service at the church where our grandmother Bessie was baptized —yet another visit to a family font — Beth and I walked over to the Palm Tree Pub to finally have a toast to our great-grandmother Sarah Hutchings.

When we entered the pub we stepped back in time — 132 years to be exact — to a place where Sarah would have undoubtedly had a pint or two before retiring for the night upstairs.² Perhaps she even worked the bar.

But running the bar today was its 80-year-old owner, Alf Barrett, who served our drinks with a twinkle in his eye and regaled us for an hour or two on the history of the area, including his rotten luck to have bought the pub right before the city demolished the temporary housing erected after WWII (eliminating much of his local clientele) and turned the neighborhood into a park. But Alf, and the Palm Tree, are still standing, and between its jazz music, scarlet lighting, and retro atmosphere, it’s in much demand today. Alf was kind enough to comp Beth a free glass of wine given her winning personality and connection to the site. Sarah Hutchings would have been pleased.

Alf also helped us understand something about our great-grandfather William Estall. William was a dock worker according to our grandmother’s birth certificate. I assumed he worked the wharves along the canal that runs through Bethnal Green. But Alf was the third person on this trip who said he must have worked the docks by the River Thames. I told him I thought that was too far away, but Alf assured me it’s not — in fact, he worked there when he was a youth. So I’ve settled the issue in my mind: William was one of the hundreds of men who showed up every day for a chance at work at the docks down by the Thames.

Alf advised us to visit the Museum of London Docklands on the Isle of Dogs to get a sense of their lives. It looked to be hard, physical labor, and except for the “favoured casuals” (day laborers) it was hit or miss to catch a day job.

“The favoured casuals were known as ‘royals’, the aristocrats of the casual workforce. If more men than the royals were needed, then the foreman would select the fittest-looking from among the other casuals. One method of doing this, albeit rarely employed, was to throw brass tickets – the guarantee of entry and work – into the waiting crowds and watch the men scrabble and fight to pick them up. The toughest and best suited for the work ahead would secure a winning place by using their brawn and not their brains. Those who missed out would have to wait until next time.”
— Historical Eye, “Top of the Docks,” https://historicaleye.com

Alf also recommended we partake of the Sunday Roast at the nearby Narrow restaurant on the river at Limehouse. It was a great recommendation: the food was good, the gin and tonic tasty, and the view spectacular.

Hats off to good ol’ Alf, he was a font of information.

 

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1. Sarah’s mother Harriet took up with Robert Billinghurst shortly after Sarah’s father died. Robert was still legally married at the time and there is no indication that he ever adopted Sarah, she maintaining her birth father’s surname until her own marriage in 1891.
2. Though the original building was replaced in 1935, it was built along the same lines and at the same place as the original according to historical sources.

A Final Farewell

“It’s time to say goodbye, but I think goodbyes are sad and I’d much rather say hello. Hello to a new adventure.”
— Ernie Harwell, signing off after his last Detroit Tiger broadcast in 2002

In 1906 Bessie Estall and her sister Lily, aged 15 and 13 respectively, left England for Canada, marking an end to their London childhoods. They’d been motherless since their mom’s passing in 1899; fatherless since he abandoned them in 1901; and orphaned after their dad’s death in March of 1906.

Bessie, Lily, and their sister Rosie attended the Anerley School run by the Lewisham Workhouse for the five years following their abandonment. Then, in May of 1906, the three sisters were sent to the Macpherson Training Home in Hackney to prepare for emigration to Canada.

My sister Beth and I wanted to see this last place in London that Bessie would call home. Finding it required a bit of detective work prior to our trip to London, however. The Charities Directory listed it at 2 and 4 Tower Street. But finding that on a map today is impossible. Fortunately, web sites that track street name changes over the years solved our dilemma, and a street sign confirmed we were on the right track: Tower Street was renamed Martello, so it was off to Martello Street for us.

Getting there after an exhausting day of walking around Bethnal Green meant we had the choice of walking another 20 minutes or taking a bus. It was an easy decision … and a good one, as it turned out, because we got the front row seats of a red double-decker, affording us a nice view.

Annie Macpherson opened the Training Home in 1874 “with prayer and thanksgiving. It consists of two large old-fashioned houses thrown into one, and the situation is, for the neighbourhood, remarkably open and airy.”¹ That was due to its location facing the large park called London Fields that I imagine was sometimes used by the children … under strict religious supervision no doubt. Beth and I used it also, finding a bench to rest our weary feet, soak up some sun on a beautiful July afternoon, and gaze at the decorous home where once Bessie, Lily, and Rosie learned by day and slept by night.

Unfortunately Bessie and Lily’s stay at the Training Home led to not just a farewell to London, but a farewell to Rosie as well. As Lily related the story to her son Ed Schrotzberger:

Rosie was sent back to the Lewisham Workhouse System and never saw her sisters again.

On 26 July 1906 Bessie and Lily left the Training Home, boarding the overground train at the London Fields station for the ship in Liverpool that would take them to Canada. Rosie caught the overground in the opposite direction to return to the Lewisham Workhouse. This day would mark Bessie and Lily’s farewell to London and Rosie’s farewell to her sisters.

A view of the back entrance to the London Fields overground station as seen from a walk from the former Training Home. Silhouetted carefree children frolicking in the roadway arch are reminders of what was lost on the day that Bessie left her childhood city and one of her sisters behind.

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Notes:
1. Clara M. S. Lowe, God’s Answers: A Record of Miss Annie Macpherson’s Work (London: Ballantyne Press, 1882), p. 110. The drawing of the Training Home is from the same source, p. 111. 

The Education of Bessie Estall

• The Sandon Act of 1876 imposed a legal duty on parents to ensure that their children were educated
• The Elementary Education Act of 1880 required school boards to enforce compulsory attendance of children from 5 to 10 years of age
• The 1891 Elementary Education Act provided for the state payment of school fees
— Wikipedia: History of education in England

Bessie and her siblings were the first generation of British children to benefit from the Victorian Era’s enlightened move toward compulsory and free public education.

We can trace the Estall children’s schooling through the Infants Admission Registers of the Bethnal Green schools where her father William dutifully enrolled them.¹

From the image above we see that William Estall registered Thomas and Betty (we find her variously listed in records as Bessie, Betsy, Betty, and Elizabeth) in the infant section of the then-named Globe Terrace School on July 1st of 1895. Thomas was five years old, Bessie was four. The family was living in Quinn’s Buildings a short walk away. The children would remain at the elementary school until the family entered the Bethnal Green Workhouse in February 1900, meaning Bessie would have been at the school until she was almost 9 years old.

The school, built in 1874 and enlarged in 1885 to hold 1500 children,² is still in operation. My sister Beth and I visited it on the off chance they’d let us in the gate. As it turned out, we got the grand tour.

Our host was Gill (pronounced like “Jill”) Ruskin, the school’s family and safeguarding support officer. She’s passionate about genealogy, acts as the school’s unofficial historian, and was herself a student there when growing up. We couldn’t have stumbled upon a more enthusiastic and knowledgeable guide.

Gill pointed out the original building (the central portion with the curved facade) and how it expanded with the growing population in Bethnal Green. She also pointed out the entrance doors for the boys, infants, and girls as the sexes were segregated in Bessie’s day.

Gill showed us the classrooms, gym and lunchroom (no talking allowed in Bessie’s day), then showed us the playground on the school’s roof. As we came down from there using the former girls stairway I could feel my skin tingle knowing we were on the same stairs that Bessie and her sisters trod well over 100 years ago.

In Bessie’s time the school served the largely impoverished families of the infamously downtrodden East End. Gill explained that the more recent school population was primarily from immigrant Somali and Bangladeshi families, so the school still served the under-privileged members of society … at least until the last couple of years. The area is undergoing gentrification and the school is now one of the most sought after in the borough. We could see why: the staff is passionate, compassionate, professional, and sensitive to the needs of children coming from different backgrounds and social levels. Gill pointed out that the children are protected by Geneva Convention guidelines, which are posted in the school. In a sense, the Globe Primary School is aptly named for the 21st century multi-cultural London.

After the Estall family entered the Workhouse in 1900 and her father abandoned the children the next year, Bessie and her sisters were educated in a Workhouse school in the southern reaches of London on the other side of the River Thames. We didn’t have time to visit that area but the school building in Anerley no longer stands anyway.

What we did get to experience was the school in Bethnal Green that gave Bessie and her siblings their basic education when the family was still intact. We got to walk the halls, stand in the rooms, and traverse the stairs where our young ancestors grew up. It was thrilling to feel the connection. And it was quite a, well um … an education.

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Notes:
1. William first enrolled Alfred in the Essex Street School in June 1890; then Harriett at Globe Terrace in April 1891; Thomas (previously enrolled at Cranbrook School) and Bessie at Globe Terrace in July 1895; Susan “Lily” at Globe Terrace in June 1896; and Rosie at Globe Terrace in January 1898.
2. British History Online, “Bethnal Green: Education,” https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol11/pp242-260

The Baptism of Bessie Estall

“Dearly beloved, forasmuch as all men are conceived and born in sin, and that our Saviour Christ saith, none can enter into the Kingdom of God, except he be regenerate, and born anew of water and of the holy Ghost: I beseech you to call upon God the Father, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that of his bounteous mercy he will grant to this Child that thing which by nature he cannot have, that he may be baptized with water and the Holy Ghost, and received into Christ’s holy Church, and be made a lively member of the same.”
— Church of England, Book of Common Prayer: Public Baptism of Infants

Bessie Estall was baptized when she was 17 days old on Sunday morning, May 3, 1891 at St. John’s Church on Bethnal Green, two blocks from her parents home. She was among five infants baptized that morning at the ebony and ivory colored stone font at the back of the church. She was sponsored in this rite by her aunt Emma, wife of her father’s older brother John.

When the church doors closed, the sounds of the street were immediately hushed, replaced by the rustling of parishioners on the creaking wooden benches, the fussing of the gathered infants and the shushing of their parents, the sonorous intonations of the priest, and the thundering notes issued by the organ pipes in the loft over the font in what surely must have sounded like the voice of God to the children in attendance. The priest began the ceremony from the Book of Common Prayer with “Dearly beloved, forasmuch as all men are conceived and born in sin…”

Though the noises of the neighborhood were locked outside the doors, the brass censer swung by the white-robed altar attendant spread smoke inside the church that mirrored the chimney smoke hanging in the air outside.

The priest took Bessie (or Betsy, according to her baptismal entry) in his hands and “discreetely and warily” dipped her in the baptismal water, saying “I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.” He should have gone for a full immersion: in the summers I spent with my grandparents I don’t remember Bessie ever going to church. It may be safe to say that she didn’t maintain her mother’s faith—unsurprising in light of the disease, death, and desertion visited upon her in childhood.

My sister Beth and I visited St. John’s twice while we were retracing our ancestors’ steps in London this summer, once to explore and photograph it, and once to attend Sunday morning service. The church, built in 1825 and restored in 1871, is showing her age, her makeup cracking around her hairline. But she’s still beautiful and her spirit is buoyed by a thriving art community that creates and displays its wares within and on her walls as well as in the balcony, belfry and crypt.

I’m not religious, and initially balked at my sister’s desire to attend Sunday service, but I’m glad I went. It allowed us to imagine our ancestors sitting among the pews, to sense their spirit of awe and devotion engendered by the church’s rites and rituals, their sense of community among their neighbors and fellow parishioners. Perhaps appropriately, this Sunday’s service included an address by social workers who were caring for the homeless of the borough, a subject that was probably not far from the minds of our struggling ancestors. (Ironically, we were accosted by a homeless man as we left the service.)

There was one infant among the parishioners on the day we attended service, though a baptism was not performed. It’s a shame, I would have liked to experience one. Bessie went on to attend the baptisms of four of her siblings, including the one of her youngest brother Robert in 1899, two weeks after which Bessie’s mother passed away in the Workhouse infirmary. It would possibly be the last time Bessie attended services at St. John’s.

A span of 120 years would pass before her granddaughter, Beth—likely named after her—would attend a service here in her memory.

Our Grandmother’s Birthplace

“The wave of urban renewal that swept the world in the 20th century gave us inner-city highways, modernist downtown malls and high-rise housing projects. It destroyed countless fine-grained, human-scaled neighbourhoods.
     “We lost more than just physical buildings. Each of these communities contained something less tangible – neighbourhoods like these are ecosystems. They incubate communities and cultures that do not and could not exist elsewhere.
     “Sometimes a neighbourhood lives in the memory of the displaced and their descendants, as powerful in death as in life.”
                       —Matthew Halliday, “Vanished Neighbourhoods,” The Guardian (on-line), 18 July 2019

Bessie Estall was born in London in 1891.  My sister and I wanted to visit the sites where Bessie, our grandmother, lived as a child. With copies of old documents in hand we found the neighborhoods, and in some cases, the buildings where she and her forebears were born, schooled, worked, worshiped, and departed.

This is the story of one of one of those sites.

Bessie was born on April 16, 1891. Her birth certificate records the event happening at 11 Museum Buildings in Bethnal Green in the East End of London.

The English census of 1891, taken eleven days before Bessie’s birth, also puts the family at 11 Museum Buildings. There were five family members living in the flat, soon to be six with Bessie’s arrival.

The current residents of the flat graciously invited us in for tea and a look at the place where Bessie was born.

Although it’s difficult to imagine life in the Victorian era through the lens of modern-day London, walking through this building’s old portal into its courtyard, and then through the flat’s doorway, gave us a sense of place that documents and Google street view can’t match. Yes, we were 128 years too late to bump into our forebears, but we still carried their genes around as we roamed their neighborhood. And we brought a little something to leave behind, a small carved ironwood turtle that our hosts placed on their bookcase, to keep a bit of the family’s thoughts and spirits alive in Bessie’s birthplace. As the opening quote relates, “Sometimes a neighbourhood [and a family] lives in the memory of their descendants, as powerful in death as in life.” Through our visit, we, with the help of our hosts, were able to build such a memory.

View of Bessie’s birthplace taken from the courtyard, which is the bottom flat in the center of the photo at left. Also a view of the living room windows taken from the building’s outside back, below, with some graffiti evident.

The only thing worse than no history is misleading history.

So it is with some trepidation that I present the history of the Anthony family of 16th and 17th century London.

My mother’s grandmother was Anna Anthony, who came from a family line that stretched back to an Englishman who settled in North America in 1634. That immigrant, John Anthony, was reported to be a descendant of a Dr. John Anthony from St. Bartholomew’s parish in London.

The trouble is that no definitive link exists between Dr. John and Immigrant John. Sure, an esteemed 19th century historian of the Anthony family believed they were related, though he couldn’t prove it. And yes, many on-line Anthony family trees show the connection, citing Genealogy of the Anthony Family from 1495 to 1904 by that family historian Charles L. Anthony.

But speculation isn’t fact, so the historically accurate story has to begin with immigrant John Anthony.

That’s a shame, because the Anthony’s of London were some pretty interesting characters, and they even seem to foreshadow one of the folks in our undisputed line of Anthony men in America.

So I’m going to include a chapter in our family history that I’ll call The Apocryphal Anthony Family of London. Take it for what it is … an interesting story, and one that may even be about our ancestors.

My sister and I are going to travel to London this summer and we’ll visit the sites haunted by the Anthony families of yore: the Tower of London and St. Bartholomew Church and Close. We’ll raise a glass to them at the Hand and Shears pub on Cloth Fair. We’ll listen for the whispers, look into the shadows, and imagine the lives of London’s Anthony families of the past, thinking that maybe, just maybe, we are carrying their genes in our own hereditary makeup.

With that, click here for the apocryphal chapter of our family bible: The Anthony Family of London.

Just in time for the holidays, ghosts of the family come back to show us our past lives and point the way to the future.

We’ve finished researching our London ancestors so we can root out their “haunts” and recreate their lives in our upcoming trip to England.

Here’s the story of Bessie (nee Estall) Schutze’s father and grandfather, and great … well, you get the idea. The story begins in 1721 in the shadow of the Tower of London. It ends in 1906 in a Workhouse infirmary. It’s a three-act play with a sprawling cast of characters.

Read the story here. (click to open)

And as Tiny Tim would say, “A Merry Christmas to us all; God bless us, every one!”

What better way to enjoy vacation than to combine travel and family history?

London, here we come!

I wanna visit Big Ben (the tourist attraction) and Little Bessie (that’s my grandmother). Walk the streets where she grew up at the end of the 19th century in the notorious East End.

So I’ve been digging into her past to discover her family — who they were, what they did, where they’re from. Bessie’s mom is a particular fascination:  there’s speculation she was a prostitute.

I researched and wrote her story so we could better understand her life and time. Her story’s at  Sarah Ann Hutchings: In the Shadow of St. Mary Magdalene.

And what’s a hunt for family haunts without a treasure map? Here’s one to get us started.

Time travel to Victorian London with us if you dare. But watch out for Jack the Ripper and mind the piles of horse sh**  as you step.

P.S. In commemoration of Remembrance Day, and the 100th anniversary of the end of WWI, the post below highlights Bessie’s brother James Estall Kent, who provided a different perspective on war.

“As soon as the incident is forgotten, so are you”

This line, written by my great-uncle Jim Estall to my father, was from a 1933 letter found among my dad’s mementos.

What’s the story?

Prior to finding this letter I didn’t know about James Estall, my grandmother Bessie’s brother.

Bessie’s family broke apart after her mother died in 1899. James, her youngest brother, was adopted out in 1900 at the age of two when the rest of the family headed for the poorhouse.

Jim’s adoptive parents were a brass scale maker and his wife, John and Ellen Kent, from London’s East End. The family moved to Enfield, a small town north of London, and a decade later also adopted Jim’s sister Rosie after she was released from the poorhouse system as a teenager.

With good parents and now his sister in the fold, Jim’s life was looking pretty sunny as he headed into his teens. But war clouds were gathering. Clouds that, as it turned out, would darken the life of his generation over two successive wars.

The Great War.

Jim, who’d adopted his parents’ surname, was on the cusp of his 17th birthday when England declared war on Germany in August of 1914. As soon as he turned 18 he volunteered with the Royal Field Artillery and was sent to France. The National Roll of the Great War 1914-1918 summarized his four years of service thusly:

 

Shiny medals are nice, but Jim found they turn dull when the country recovers from war and gets on with life. As he indicated, once the battles are forgotten, so are the veterans. Jim was relatively lucky — he was among the 1.6 million British soldiers injured rather than among the 750,000 who died. But he developed a jaded outlook which he shared with his nephew while trying to dissuade him from joining the military service in America.

Two years after his return from war, at the age of 24, Jim married sweet Rosetta “Rose” Webb. Their wedding photo looks prototypical British, the ladies posing in their bonnets and the gentlemen in their vested suits and starched collars. Most of the guests were from Rose’s family, as Jim didn’t have any of his own.

Jim wrote that Queen Elizabeth I regarded the area around Enfield as a ‘happy hunting ground’ and that one of her palaces was in the centre of the town. He explained, tongue in cheek, that his wife Rose, a town native, “was not connected with Queen Elizabeth, although perhaps some of her relations may at some time [have] done a bit of washing for her.”

Jim was a motor driver, “a position that makes me travel the country,” which he used to advantage by visiting historical sites, particularly those associated with great English authors like Shakespeare and Milton. [This makes me, an English Lit grad, appreciate Jim all the more.]

He seemed to have a sunny outlook, as his wife wrote that “if he wasn’t laughing or passing some joke, I should think he were ill.” Together they raised two sons, Jimmy and Jeff, born in 1922 and 1930 respectively.

The 1939 England Register lists him as an “undertaker’s chauffeur,” which probably kept him closer to home so he could spend more time with the boys. But the man who helped transport the dead to their graves was to suffer another war-time loss of his own.

The Second World War

His older son Jimmy, like his dad before him, volunteered for service when the country went to war and he came of age, this time during World War II. Jimmy joined the Royal Air Force, the group that Churchill famously referred to in a 1940 speech:  “never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

The personnel of No.15 Squadron in June 1942. Jimmy was undoubtedly among those pictured.

Jimmy was with the 15th Squadron, a heavy bomber unit which delivered their loads over the Axis powers on the continent. He went missing in September of 1942, and his dad unfortunately never even had the opportunity of transporting and burying his own son.

 

Jim treasured his long-lost family, proudly signing his letter to Leonard as “your loving uncle.” Of Jim’s two sisters in the United States, Bessie made initial contact by mail after WWI and Lily went to visit him in 1962 when they were both getting on in years. I can only imagine his happiness at the reunion.

And now, all these years later, we’re happy to meet him vicariously through his letter to my father.

Jim passed away in 1965. Rose followed in 1983.

Now, as we commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I — optimistically called the “war to end all wars” — we remember the sacrifices made by Jim’s generation…

…and of his advice regarding the glorification of war.   “It’s all rot.”

I seem to come from a family of lovers, not fighters.

Few of my ancestors served in the military, and fewer still saw combat. In the American Civil War a Rebel family member lasted a week in the Confederate army and a Yank three months in the Union’s before they were discharged.¹ In the British Army of the 19th and early 20th centuries, one of my kin was discharged for being unfit, one committed suicide, and one deserted.²

In short, my family was more likely to pass mustard around the dining room table than to pass muster in the Army.

So it was with some surprise I found a picture of a World War I doughboy amongst the piles of family photographs. Who was this outlier, I wondered, and what was his story?

The soldier, Malcolm Livingstone MacKellar, turned out to be my mother’s cousin, and he served in a U.S. Army field artillery regiment in France during World War One.

Malcolm, or Mac as he was called, was born in 1892 on a farm outside of Alvinston, Ontario, the youngest of three children of Duncan and Maggie (nee Livingston) McKellar.³ Malcolm was named for his paternal grandfather, who according to a family note, was not a “church person” and used rough language.⁴ However the grandfather was “industrious and smart,” traits that Mac apparently inherited.

Mac had a somewhat rocky start in life. His mother died of blood poisoning before he was three — which, incidentally, was the duration of her illness, one apparently contracted during pregnancy or childbirth. His father died of uremia when Malcolm turned eight. As a consequence, in 1900 the three orphaned farm children were taken in by their maternal grandmother Sarah Livingstone who was living in Detroit with her daughters.

The grim reaper wasn’t done with Malcolm’s family, though, striking down his sister Sarah with pulmonary congestion (possibly TB) and heart disease in 1907 at the age of 16. Only two of the original five MacKellar family members were left: Malcolm and his older sister Katie. But they were surrounded by a supportive family. The 1910 census shows the 18-year-old Mac living in a household that included his sister Katie, his grandmother, four aunts, an uncle, and a cousin. The Livingston clan was a tight-knit bunch.

The Maturation of Malcolm

Mac did well in the schools he attended. He was apparently smart and sociable, evidenced by his election as president of his eighth-grade class at Amos school, and president of his senior class at Western High School. A newspaper article mentions him addressing his high school graduation in 1911.

The decade after high school was a time of growing maturity for Mac and his city. Detroit became an industrial powerhouse as the emerging automobile industry set up shop there, and Mac rode the wave to become a chief clerk at the Anderson Electric Car Company, whose factory was located a few blocks from the Livingstone home. The year 1917—when he was age 25—was a particularly pivotal year for Mac: In April he applied for naturalization in his adopted country; in June he registered for the newly instituted military draft; and in October he married a 22-year-old stenographer, Edna Persinger, likely a co-worker at Anderson.⁵

Lead Up to War

Clouds were building on the eastern horizon as Europe was embroiled in a war that began in 1914. The U.S. had remained a non-combatant heading into 1917, but declared war in April of that year as Germany ordered its U-boats to sink American supply ships heading to Britain. American conscription was authorized and Malcolm’s draft registration card showed he was in the process of becoming a citizen, was of medium height and build, had blue eyes with dark brown hair, and was working at Anderson.

Over the next two years the Army inducted 2.7 million draftees. Mac ended up as a corporal in Battery C of the 329th Field Artillery Regiment, 160th Field Artillery Brigade, 85th Division (the National Army of Michigan and Wisconsin). The regiment was mustered in and trained at the newly constructed Camp Custer near Battle Creek, Michigan. Mac joined the unit a couple of weeks after his marriage, arriving just before Thanksgiving of 1917.

Horsin’ Around

On December 12th the battery received their horses — “164 of the wildest, head shy, hard kicking and sharp biting, four-legged animals that ever graced (or rather disgraced) the name of horse,” according to Sgt. Menzies, a chronicler of his battery. [All of the following war-time quotes and most of the photos are from the book All The Way with the Boys of the 329th Field Artillery.] The winter was snowy and cold, making the conscripts’ lives an endless cycle of “shovel snow one day, coal the next, stable police, then kitchen police, afterwards guard (oh, those terrible 22 below zero days on which to walk a post) and between times … we drilled and drilled and physical cultured and went to various specialty schools.”The battery, at a strength of about 185, had only a few more men than horses. Though many of the Detroit conscripts were more familiar with automobiles than horses, the Army found the animals were still more reliable than vehicles for traveling through deep mud and over rough terrain and they were used for pulling artillery.⁶

Valentine’s Day in 1918 was the first time Battery C hitched their horses up to the artillery pieces and caissons and actual drill practice began. April brought pistol practice and shortly thereafter artillery firing on the range, first with sub-caliber shells for short distance, then regulation 3-inch shells at normal distance. In early May “rumors of leaving for overseas were becoming more pronounced and drill periods were made harder and longer.”

Battery C left Camp Custer on July 16th, traveling by train to Camp Mills on Long Island, New York, a “city of tents” where they arrived at midnight in a drizzling rain and stayed until the end of July. They boarded the British Steamer Maunganui for their overseas transport on July 30th, 1918.

The Girl They Left Behind

Their ship was part of a convoy, a “spectacle as it sailed down the harbor of New York, out into the sea … out past the girl every man left behind…the good old Statue of Liberty.” The convoy “assumed a formation protected by a British cruiser and an American destroyer which took the lead, small sub-chasers describing a circle around the convoy, and two seaplanes circling overhead.” Thus began their 12-day journey to the Old World, disembarking in Liverpool on August 11th amid whistlings and cheers of the gathering crowds and embarking on a train to Southhampton on the southern English coast.

The following day they sailed to Le Havre, France, lying in the harbor all morning waiting for the tide to come in. It was the first of many stops in that war-torn country. It was outside of Le Havre they got their first dry wash: “a brisk massage of the entire face and body with the dry hands was considered to be enough to give us the semblance at least of cleanliness, and in after months it turned out to be sufficient as we really had no means of bathing.”

They traveled through the French countryside on their way to Camp Cöetquidan, an historic French camp used for military training since Napoleon’s time. The battery spent two months training at Cöetquidan “in all branches of artillery work with the French 75’s and the last few weeks before we left we were simulating actual conditions at the front.”

Mac took advantage of the training time to send a picture home to his aunt (my grandmother Sarah Livingstone [later McCrie]) with a message on the back revealing his sense of humor:

Aunt Sarah: Taken Oct. 6/’18 Somewhere in France. Guaranteed Hole proof hats. My partner has a gas mask enclosed in the satchel and as you will note we are both equipped with burglar alarms. With best to yourself and family. Mac.

He also wrote a letter on the 11th to his aunt Belle (nee Livingstone) Duffy in which he expressed optimism for an early Allied victory.

Battery C was issued its complement of supplies, horses, and materiel and left on October 23rd by train for the front. Again crossing much of France, they arrived at Domgermain on October 30th, where the rest of their trek would be on foot. “Since then our artillery has been on foot and has seen a bit of France at that. After detraining we marched about two miles towards Toul and camped out in our pup tents. The next morning our shelter halves were so stiff with frost we could hardly roll our packs.” Apparently the field soldiers, like in Civil War days, each carried half a tent and paired off with a fellow soldier for the night. It was near Toul they saw their first air fight, as a German plane “came over to do some observing, but hundreds of shots from anti-aircraft guns drove the Boche (German) high up into the air where he could not see anything of advantage to him.”

The Sights and Sounds of War

Moving northeast toward Metz, “the roar of the guns kept getting sharper and we realized we were drawing nearer to the front.” That sensation was reinforced when passing through the badly shelled towns of Bernecourt and Flirey, where there was “hardly a wall left standing.” On November 1st they reached Mort Mare Woods (Bois de Mort Mare), where they stayed a few days. A network of German trenches and dugouts, reinforced with concrete and iron, showed the Germans had planned a long occupation and only weeks before had abandoned their ammunition, machine guns and supplies as they pulled back. The action wasn’t over, though.

On the 5th of November Battery C moved out. “We were not exactly scared but a queer feeling came over us, as we were marching along in the darkness, not knowing whether we were going right into action, or not.” The next night “we went forward under cover of darkness, scheduled to pass through Thiaucourt, a large city which had recently been held by the Germans but recaptured. But the Boche was favoring the town with a harassing fire of gas shells, and it was necessary to take a circuitous mud road around the place. … The first night was a night of uneasiness to most of our valiant warriors, as the shells were falling around us all night and it was our first experience under real shell fire.”

The ammo dump was a few kilometers away from where they took up position, and troops sent to resupply the guns saw a German plane fly over, and shortly thereafter “shells began flying all around the dump, but luckily not one burst near the ammunition. The entire trip back was one continual round of explosions and the road was bright as day from the bursting shells.”

The next night was worse. “This night we experienced a heavy bombardment with gas and the night being foggy, the valleys were loaded to the brim for hours.” The battery was ordered to dig in the next day, which they spent all day doing, and on the 9th “the firing data, including a range of 4,000 meters, was sent down, and when the command to fire was given, our first message to the Boche was sent hurling over in the form of shrapnel.” On the evening of the 10th “as it grew dusk all the guns of the battery started to fire, and one session followed another in rapid succession throughout the night.” They stopped at 7 a.m. on the morning of the 11th of November.

The war ended that day at 11:00 a.m. — the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month — but “at just five minutes to eleven, two big shells came over from Fritz and landed alongside our positions, a parting farewell, as it were.” And that was that. Mac and his battery saw about a week of action on the front.

The Return Home

The battery spent the next three months in the nearby town of Pont-à-Mousson on the banks of the Moselle River, reflecting on their experiences and, on Thanksgiving Day, offering up

“a prayer truly of thanksgiving that we had been brought safely through these months of the most terrific warfare the world will ever witness, and that this old earth will ever in the future be a safe place for all humanity to live in and enjoy the fruits of its labor.”

If only.

The regiment celebrated Christmas in Pont-à-Mousson, decorating the walls “with views of Detroit, the Statue of Liberty, Uncle Sam,” and holiday greetings.

The regiment began their trek back to America on February 11, 1919, by boarding a train in Dieulouard and wending their way through France. “The valley of the Loire was particularly interesting—many chateaus, rugged hills and beautiful woods appearing before our eyes. We passed through many towns on our way eastward, as it seemed we were always bound to wander across a great part of France, apparently the French way not being to go from one place to another in the most direct route.” They finally ended up in Brest on the west coast, and on March 26th boarded the Leviathan, an aptly named ship carrying 12,274 soldiers and a crew of 2,000 for her cross-Atlantic cruise. “We…passed that beloved old girl ‘Statue of Liberty’ about nine o’clock on the morning of…April 2nd. Such rejoicing as we passed up the harbor!”

They left Camp Mills in New Jersey on April 17th and arrived in Michigan the next day. A half-hour stop at the Michigan Central station in Detroit was a short, joyous homecoming before continuing to Camp Custer. On April 23rd his military stint finally ended, and Mac became a civilian again, on his way back to Detroit and his wife Edna.

After the War

Malcolm returned to his job at the Anderson Electric Car Company, now working as a cost accountant. He and Edna started a family, with son Glenn born in May of 1923 and Donald in July of 1926. About the same time Mac switched gears from accounting to sales, now working as a representative of Yates Woolen Mills.

According to a 2016 article in The Oakland Press, in 1923 Malcolm established MacKellar Associates, “representing two woolen mills and selling woolen body cloth, upholstery and headliners to the automotive industry. Customers included Packard Motor Company, Studebaker, and the ‘Big Three.’ The original office was located in the historic General Motors Building in Detroit. It continued as a one-man sales operation and secretary for 20 years. Then, Malcolm’s sons, Glenn and Don MacKellar joined the company and they expanded their product line with injection molded plastics and decorative metal parts.” The family-owned company continued to expand and is now in its fourth generation of MacKellars.

A family note states that Malcolm, who had a summer home in Boyne City, was an “executive type organizer, free spender, money maker, expansive.”⁴ Mac’s wife Edna was also apparently socially adept, becoming the president of the Rosedale Progressive Club in 1945 as reported in the Detroit Free Press.

Mac passed away in January of 1957 at age 64, following a heart ailment. His wife survived another twenty years, passing away in August of 1977. Malcolm’s remains were buried in Grand Lawn Cemetery in Detroit. His older sister Katie, who died in 1986 at age 97, is buried nearby.

Mac’s story is an interesting tale, one reflecting its time and country:  an immigrant orphan raised by his grandmother, aunts and uncle; who rose to the top of his class in public school, served overseas in a World War, started a small business, and made a good life for himself and family in his adopted land. It could serve as a model for the nation in our current era.

Mac was a guy who passed Army muster, passed through mustard gas, and undoubtedly passed the mustard across the family table. As they’d say in the Army, he seemed pretty squared away.

Endnotes:

¹ Hugh Ronald joined the North Carolina infantry in 1861 and was home on extended sick leave a week later. He was separated after a few months when it became clear he was not returning. Barney Anthony joined the New York infantry in 1863 and trained for 3-1/2 months before being rejected for physical disability (old age) as his unit was preparing to deploy.
² William Estall was discharged from his regiment, being found unfit for further service in 1879 after his extensive visits to the infirmary. His step-son Thomas committed suicide while stationed in Eqypt in 1910. Andrew Templeton deserted the Gordon’s Highlanders infantry unit in 1864 shortly after joining and fled from Glasgow to Canada.
³ Sarah (nee Campbell) Livingstone, Malcolm’s maternal grandmother, had a penchant for adding vowels to surnames. When she married into the Livingston family, she added an “e” to the end of the name, making it Livingstone. When she took in her orphaned grandchildren, she added an “a” to their name, going from McKellar to MacKellar.
⁴ Characterizations of the MacKellar family are from family history notes left by Margaret (nee McCrie) Mead, a cousin of Malcolm MacKellar. See Livingston Family History at http://genealogy.thundermoon.us/history/livingston%20family%20history.pdf
⁵ Edna Persinger’s father worked as a foreman at an auto company, and her sister worked as a clerk at Anderson Electric Car Company. It is probable that Edna, a stenographer, also worked at Anderson.
⁶ “Horses in World War I,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_World_War_I