Tag Archive for McGlade

Civil Registration, Medical Records, Photographs

Tuberculosis in Ontario

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The Archives of Ontario has an online exhibit entitled Medical Records at the Archives of Ontario: Tuberculosis Records. As this exhibit notes, tuberculosis was once “a leading cause of death in the industrialized world.” In Ontario, public health efforts to control, if not eradicate, this disease involved the founding of numerous clinics and sanatoriums, the establishment of a Tuberculosis Case Register, and various public awareness campaigns, including a 1921 silent film, sponsored by the Ontario Provincial Board of Health, which carried the dire and didactic medico-moral message that it was “Her Own Fault,”

in which ‘the girl who fails in life’s struggles’ meets her downfall because of poor diet, late hours, and a penchant for fashion sales. She is soon hospitalized with tuberculosis, while her opposite, ‘the girl who succeeds,’ is promoted to forewoman at the factory.
How absolutely awful to assign such blame to the victims of tuberculosis. But interesting to note that in this 1921 film, factory work for a young woman (and even an ambition to the post of factory forewoman) was apparently depicted as something positive.

In my family tree, those who died of tuberculosis include my great-grandfather Arthur Joseph McGlade; my great-aunt Margaret Hilda Lahey; my 2x great-aunt Mary Ann Killeen; my 3x great-aunt Julia Moran; and my first cousin twice removed Charles Alexander Sullivan. The cause of death for these people (sometimes listed as “tuberculosis” or “pulmonary tuberculosis,” sometimes as “consumption”) is taken from the Ontario civil registration of their deaths.
The central subject of this haunting photograph is a man whose name I do not (yet) know. He was, as per the note on the back of the photograph, “Auntie Anne’s first husband,” and the photo was taken “at the sanatorium” (but which sanatorium? and where?), where he was obviously a patient. Click thumbnail to see larger image:
 mcglade_derouin_anne_firsthusband_sanatorium.jpg
Left to right: Delia Lucie Derouin; Jack (John Eugene) McGlade; Unknown; Anna Matilda Derouin. At a sanatorium, presumably in Ontario; late 1930s to mid-1940s?
Auntie Anne was Anna Matilda Derouin, the younger sister of my maternal grandmother Delia Lucie (Derouin) McGlade. Her second husband was a Walter (“Woddy”) McIlquham, whom I met as a child and who is associated in my mind with the town of Carleton Place (Lanark Co., Ontario). I did not know she had had a first husband until I came across the above photograph. My mother cannot recall his name, but thinks he died of tuberculosis.

Photographs

Honora (“Annie”) McDonald/McDonnell (1841-1914)

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My great-great-grandmother Honora (“Ann,” “Annie”) McDonald (or possibly McDonnell?).
Born about 1841 (April 1841 according to the 1911 Canadian census) in Co. Clare, Ireland, the daughter of Patrick McDonald (or McDonnell?) and Catherine Dea. Apparently emigrated to Canada as a young girl (late 1840s to mid-1850s?). Her first husband was a David Mahoney (also born Co. Clare), who died about 1867 at Smiths Falls, Lanark Co., Ontario, leaving her a widow with three young daughters. She then married (21 March 1872) Eugene McCarthy (born about 1834 at Farranamanagh, Kilcrohane, Co. Cork, Ireland), whose first wife Catherine Traynor/Treanor had died in 1871, leaving him a widower with four young children.
Eugene McCarthy and Honora McDonald/McDonnell had two daughters: Ellen McCarthy (who married John Fowler) and Catherine Honora McCarthy (my great-grandmother, who married Arthur Joseph McGlade).
Honora (McDonald/McDonnell) McCarthy died at Toledo, Leeds Co., Ontario on 19 April 1914. She is buried at St. Frances de Sales Cemetery in Smiths Falls, Lanark Co., Ontario, with her first husband David Mahoney.

Anne_McDonald_McCarthy.jpg

Newspapers

Paper of Record Returns (Subscription Only)

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Paper of Record used to be available (free of charge) at its own site; was then purchased by Google, which apparently had some “scan quality and permission issues;” and was then available through World Vital Records(but no longer).

It’s now available at its own site again, but only through paid subscription/membership. Worth it for me at the moment, since it allows me to go through decades and decades of the Perth Courier.
Some of the scans aren’t great, though, which means that the search function won’t always work very well. For example, a search of the Perth Courier, using a start date of 1856, December, 12, with “McGlade” in the “Search for” box, turns up nothing (“Your search has not returned any results”). But I know that the name “McGlade” can be found on page 1 of the Perth Courier, 12 December 1856, where John McGlade is listed as a Defendant in a case of “Breach of Peace on Sabbath,” for which offense he was convicted and fined one pound (see this post for details). And how did I know that “McGlade” could be found on that page, given that the Paper of Record search box turned up nothing? Because I went through the paper the old-fashioned way (but online, and in digitized format, so: new-fashioned too!), page by page, month by month, and etc. Which the Paper of Record allows you to do, even when its search function comes up blank.


Census Records

Blended Families

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When I first read the Perth Courier’s obituary (January 1941) for my great-grandmother Catherine McCarthy (Mrs. Arthur McGlade), I was puzzled to read that she was survived by, amongst other people, a sister named Miss Mary Mahoney. Miss (as in, never married) Mahoney? But shouldn’t that be Miss Mary McCarthy?

Well, no, not necessarily. Not if Miss Mary Mahoney was a half-sister of Catherine McCarthy, with a father named Mahoney who had previously been married to Catherine McCarthy’s mother Anne McDonald (or possibly McDonnell). Simplest explanation in the world, and of course it should have immediately occurred to me. But I was so focused on the surnames McCarthy and McGlade, that it actually took a bit of digging to make sense of it all.
The “blended family” is nothing new, of course. Back in the day when a woman dying in childbirth was no rare or unusual occurrence, and when a man in the prime of life, and seemingly hale and hearty the last time his neighbours ever saw him alive, might be carried off by influenza within the course of week, remarriage was quite common, and households containing children from a previous marriage were therefore quite commonplace. If you were a widow or a widower with a parcel of young children to be fed and watered, your best bet was probably to find yourself a new spouse: a new husband to bring home the bread, or a new wife to bake it. And the possibility of a remarriage is something to keep in mind when you’re looking through the 19th-century census returns: don’t assume that all of the children in a household are the children of the enumerated married couple of that household.
When Eugene McCarthy married Ann McDonald (21 March 1872), he was the widower of Catherine Trainor, with whom he had five known children (with one of them, Charles, presumably dying in infancy). And when Ann McDonald married Eugene McCarthy (21 March 1872), she was the widow of David Mahoney, with whom she had three known children, all of them daughters. Here is their blended family household from the 1881 Canadian census (transcription by ancestry.ca, with original image [LAC] here):
mccarthy_eugene_household_1881census.jpg
The above household contained children from three separate marriages:
1. Eugene McCarthy and Catherine Trainor (Jeremiah, James, Mary, and John McCarthy);
2. David Mahoney and Ann McDonald (Mary J., Abigail, and Annie Mahoney);
3. Eugene MCarthy and Ann McDonald (Ellen and Catherine McCarthy)
Abigail (Catherine Abigail, nickname “Abby”) Mahoney is mentioned in Catherine McCarthy’s (Mrs. Arthur McGlade’s) obituary as “Mrs B. Dignan,”  which again, was initially a bit mystifying to me. She married Bartholomew, son of James Dignan and Catherine Cahill, whose nickname in combination with his surname (“Bartley Dignan”) is perhaps my favourite name ever to be found in my family tree, though with the duo of Mickey and Maisie Moran running a close second (when John Levi [Leavy] “Mickey” Moran married Mary Katherine “Maisie” Dunn, to become Mickey and Maisie Moran, that couple should have put on a Broadway show or something, their paired names had such a lovely alliteration).

Headstones, Newspapers

Michael James McGlade (1856-1897)

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Headstone for Michael James McGlade, son of John McGlade and Bridget Dunne. He died in a horrible head-on collision railway accident near Topeka, Kansas, and was buried at St. John the Baptist RC Cemetery in Perth, Lanark Co., Ontario:

mcglade_michael_james1897.jpg
From the Perth Courier (10 September 1897), a notice of his death:
mcglade_michael_perthcourier_10sept1897.jpg
And from the Perth Courier (17 September 1897), a notice of his burial:
mcglade_michael_perthcourier_17sept1897.jpg
Note the mention of the American lawyer (“a lawyer named Dolpin”) who accompanied his remains. This would have been big news in the town of Perth, and no doubt expectations ran high for some sort of legal settlement against the railway.
Apparently these expectations were dashed. There’s a story here about a failed lawsuit against the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway. I don’t yet have all the details, but the case (Atchison, T. & S.F. Ry. Co. v. Ryan) made it into several compilations of late-19th and early 20th-century railroad cases, including, for example, American and English Railroad Cases, ed. Thomas Mitchie, Vol XXI (1901), which I discovered through Google Books.