Though our Vancouver Genealogy of the Archbald family starts with JAMES ARCHIBALD (May 24 1866 - 1934), the families real hero is his wife Jenny d/o Alexander Ryan and Ellen McCallum. She was the family matriarch who raised their ten children and brought them west from Flatlands, New Brunswick.
Jenny’s inner strength, as well as sadness and a hint of mischief, stares out at me from her portrait. Her daughter Ora Jane said that Jenny “didn’t have much time for frivolity”. Yet my mother (Nina’s eldest child, Dell) added that Jenny had beautiful ankles, loved songs like “Danny Boy” and “An Irish Lullaby”, and that even in her old age would break into an Irish jig at the slightest provocation.
JAMES & JENNY IN FLATLANDS
My great grandmother Jenny Archibald had been materially comfortable back in Flatlands, New Brunswick. She had a large house with 11 rooms, a good buggy for the summer and sled for the winter months. Her husband James employed 7 to 10 men in his sawmill. Jenny’s father, Alexander Ryan, supplied many of the logs. When she wasn't feeding the men, Jenny was looking after her ten children or managing the family's general store. She also made all her children's clothes and fancy silk bonnets.
The hobos passing through Flatlands had long known Jenny to be an easy mark, but one encountered more trouble than he had expected. He was annoyed by the fact she fed him table scraps: "Is this all you've got to eat!" Jenny didn’t reply, but opened the door for her Great Dane to come in. The tramp abruptly decided it was time to leave.
A drunken logger made a similar discovery of my great grandmother’s iron will. Spying Jenny up in the hayloft, he said he was coming up to get her. "Oh no you're not", she replied. "Yes I am", the drunk teased. Jenny suddenly brandished a Peeve and promised "One more step and you're going to get this through your head!"
Jenny’s daughters have other memories of Flatlands. The children usually got a stocking filled with fruit and candy, and a present, for Christmas. One year Ora Jane opened her present to find out that she was getting a much smaller doll than her older sister Nina. She fought hard to control her tears, but her mother saw the disappointment. The next morning Jenny drove to Campbellton and purchased a big doll for Ora too. As they grew older, (my grandmother) Nina grew to love skating on the frozen surface of the Restigouche River. By the age of 9, she had become the pianist for the Presbyterian Church on Sunday mornings and the Baptists in the evenings. Ora Jane helped teach some of the younger children in the two-room schoolhouse that all the older Archibald children attended.
Lindsay was the mischievous one of the bunch. One day while James was napping, little Lindsay stuffed a dozen match heads into his pipe. James woke up and lit his pipe – then started screaming as the flames seared his nose! "Any of the rest of us would have really got it about then", Ora says. “But James never did punish Lindsay.”
Their grandmother Jane (nee Cheaters) Archibald “was a sweet old lady who lived in a little shack at the top of the hill. She was very attractive, covered her hair with a bonnet, and used to smoke a pipe, which she kept in one pocket of her long flowing dress. Grandma used to bake cookies for us, and always took time to visit with children.” James’ younger brother, Charles, lived with her. Ora Jane affectionately remembered him for the many hours he pushed her swing and the purple material he once bought her for a dress.
On Sunday afternoons, the family used to go across the Restigouche to Jenny’s parent’s home. Both Nina and Ora Jane dreaded the ordeal. They were made to sit still, in their best clothing, while the adults talked. . Their grandmother Ellen "was a strict old lady, who believed children were to be seen and not heard", Nina once told me. Ora Jane added that, "She wouldn't let Nina play her piano!" Their grandfather Alexander Ryan’s memory is more faded.
The family’s years at Flatlands were numbered. They earned a lot of money, but her husband James drank more of it up in the neighboring port of Campbellton than the family saw. He even stole the money from Jenny’s store, so that she tried to hide it from him. Everyone at the bar was his friend until the money disappeared. Then they put him in the wagon and the horses would bring him home. Sometimes the toupee that covered his bald pate would get knocked sideways, and Jenny would be ashamed to acknowledge that she knew him. Then there were the stories of his involvement with other women.
THE TREK WEST
One day, around 1911, Jenny decided she couldn’t put up with her husband’s foolishness anymore. She packed a large basket with food, put all ten of her children onto a train with her, and set off for the West Coast. She was then 42. Nina, her oldest child at 15, had managed to earn enough money from teaching piano to pay for her train ticket. Wesley, then 13, might have had money had he not been in bed the last year recuperating from burns to his hip and upper legs. He had been working in his father’s sawmill when the accident occurred. Jenny’s youngest, Patrick, was only a baby. On the advice of her bank manager – who had long ago foreseen the day she might need to leave her husband - Jenny had managed to save up $250.
They stopped at Bellingham, on the northern coast of Washington State, where Jenny’s sister Elizabeth lived. Her husband, William Archibald, was another of James’ brothers. He was a logger and may have been working in the woods when Jenny and her family arrived. Elizabeth was now used to the long separations. The first one, when he had traveled West from New Brunswick seeking work, had nearly killed her. The doctor could not find the source of the illness that wasted her strength away. A telegram from William – urging her to join him – had been the cure. The two sisters undoubtedly had a great deal of talking to catch up on, but Jenny decided she didn’t want to become an American. She had $50 left from her original stash.
VANCOUVER
Leaving her children with Elizabeth, Jenny crossed the border into British Columbia. Half of the province’s population was then living in Vancouver or one of its’ suburbs. She found employment at the city’s Crystal pool, sold aprons and did every other job she could find.
She eventually moved the family into a large house at 672 Homer Street. This was in the East End, Vancouver’s original residential area. After the more affluent moved to Point Grey and working families to South Vancouver, the East End was left for the poor. Many immigrant families, including the city’s 3,000 to 4,000 Chinese, were there. Some of the larger homes were turned into boarding houses for new arrivals and seasonal workers. Jenny moved her family into the top floor and rented the downstairs rooms out.
She had no difficulty cooking for a large number of people. She threw everything – steak, chicken, canned food - into spaghetti. Her favorite meal was pot roast, because it didn’t have to be fussed over. My mother remembers her suppers usually consisting of great quantities of food, none of which was especially tasteful.
Jenny brought a number of rural New Brunswick remedies with her. She treated fevers by boiling cabbage leaves until they were supple and then wrapping them around the sufferer’s feet. Someone with a cold had red pepper ointment spread on their chest, drank a teaspoon of ginger, squeeze of lemon juice and spoonful of honey in hot water.
None of her folk medicines proved effective when her daughter Della was struck with osteomyelitis in 1913. Though rare since the advent of anti-biotic drugs, this bone infection can lead to “a long illness and serious crippling”. At the onset, the victim “perspires freely, is restless and irritable and may be nauseated and vomit. Severe pain develops as a result of the pressure by the accumulating exudate and the destruction of bone. The pain is aggravated by slight movements or jarring.” Della had to remain in the hospital for a year.
One day her eldest daughter, Nina, returned home sobbing that a man had exposed himself to her. Without another word, Jenny picked up a stick and went looking for him. I do not know which of the two is more lucky that they never met.
As the opportunities arose, Jenny found her older daughters jobs. Nina initially dusted china, and then worked for B.C. Electric. Ora Jane had worked two days at a fifteen cent store when the manager asked her name. He checked the records and then told her, “there’s no Ora Jane Archibald working here.” (Telling me the story, 80 years later, she chuckled, “I must have gone back to the wrong store.) She became a telephone operator.
WORLD WAR ONE
Two of their sons enlisted after Canada entered World War I. Wesley was killed. Jenny seldom mentioned it in the years that followed, but she probably in the crowd that greeted Lindsy when he was discharged in Vancouver on February 4, 1919.
"He was different when he got back," Ora Jane told me. Aside from the fact he drank heavily, she couldn't explain why.
LIndsy also had venereal disease, which so disgusted his sister Nina that she would have nothing to do with him.
JAMES & JENNY TOGETHER AGAIN 1915-25
My mother insists that Jenny had only taken James back as a boarder in 1912, but a bone china cup testifies to another intention. The inscription, made by a Chinese man, says: "Mr. & Mrs. Archibled, Jan. 1921."
The 1921 census lists James Archibald as the head of the family living at 672 Homer Street. Only seven of the children were still living at home and they had four boarders:
James Archibald - Head - 55 - born NB - Presbyterian
Jane Archibald - Wife - 52 - born Quebec - Presbyterian
Vera Archibald - daughter - 19 - born NB - Presbyterian
Opal Archibald - daughter - 19 - born NB - Presbyterian - salesman/Grocery store
Isabel Archibald - daughter - 17 - born NB - Presbyterian
Jean Archibald - daughter - 15 - born NB - Presbyterian - operator/telephone
Pat Archibald - son - 9 - born NB - Presbyterian - student
Della Archibald - daughter - 13 - born NB - Presbyterian - student
William Sutherland - Head Roomer - 50 - born Scotland - Methodist
William Egerton Honeyball - Roomer - 35 - born England - Church of England - druggist
Michael Greenock - Roomer - 26 - born Russia - Church of England - labourer
Arthur McPhee - Roomer - 28 - born BC - Church of England - machinist
The 1925 Vancouver City Directory lists James as still living at 672 Homer Street. The next year he moved to Kway Street, and Jenny to Alberni. Three of their ten children - Della, Isabell and Patrick - were still at home, and another (Vera) was attending a school in the United States. Patrick, the youngest Archibald, was only 14 when the final separation occurred.
Jenny Archibald continued to look after her children, sometimes taking things if another member of the family didn't have enough. Going through Nina's clothes closet, Jenny said " You've got a lot of things Nina, Opal hardly has any." Jack Cross lost some shoes that way. Ora Jane once foolishly left two coats at her mother’s. Her sister Della ended up with the dark one, but Ora Jane never did discover who received her favourite of the two.
1931 Census - 2212 Ferndale Street, Vancouver
Jennie R Archibald - (Head, age 61, born Quebec) Homemaker, earned $1,800 - Presbyterian
Patrick Archibald - (Son 19, born NB) - clerk, Vancouver Hotel earned $480 - Presbyterian
GOING BACK TO RESTIGOUCHE FOR ELLEN'S FUNERAL
There is no record of Jenny going home when her father, Alexander Ryan, died in 1921, but she did go east for her mother’s funeral in 1931. Ellen McCallum may have still been alive when she arrived because Jane was allegedly present when Ellen confirmed the “truth” of our descent from Queen Victoria on her deathbed. (Our Restigouche relatives have a different version of the story. A McCallum footman who eloped with a nobleman’s daughter.)
The six poll bearers that had born her coffin were all grandsons. Not all branches of he family could be represented: Elizabeth was dead; Cameron in Chicago, and Jenny appears to have come by herself.
While she was in the area, Jenny also returned to the Archibald family's original home, which had passed to Charles and his wife Sarah (McDavid) Archibald.
Their daughter Mildred (Archibald) Rolfe wrote, "Jenny came home to visit us and her relatives in Quebec. I remember her as being a very happy person. Both Jenny and Margaret had great personality and a lot of laughter when they were together. Jenny made me a coat out of two of Margaret's old coats, I was very proud of it
LATER YEARS
Jenny moved in with her daughter Vera in the 1960s. This resulted in a curious incident after someone asked Vera for a date. Though Vera was a widow and had undoubtedly gone through menopause, Jenny told her to be back before midnight! ot to stay out after midnight. When Vera returned home late, she found the door locked.
I met Jenny during one of her visits to Maple Ridge. Dell tells me she was only 5' 7," but that is considerably taller than Nina, Vera or my mother. Even though she was in her 90s, Jenny seemed immensely strong and determined.