Agnes Elizabeth d/o John Henry Smith & Ellen Garrard was born in Birmingham on Oct 8 1870. Her identification with the British Empire was such that she referred to the Americans as “rebels.” She was a staunch supporter of the Conservative party. She was also an avid piano player who often spoke in proverbs or poetic sayings. One survived: "Friendship is like a beautiful pot, once broken it can be mended, but is never quite the same."
MANITOBA
She would have been a teenager where the family came west to Winnipeg in 1883 or 84.
Years later she told her granddaughter Dell Cross that she looked out the window one day and saw “Louis Riel passing with all of his Metis”. Assuming this is true, it most likely occurred during the Metis leader’s brief visit to the Red River area during June 1883. Riel proclaimed a provisional republic at Batoche on March 19, 1885. Both Agnes and her father would have seen the troops that stopped at Winnipeg, en route to Saskatchewan. The fighting was over by May 12, 1885. All that remained was Riel's trial and hanging.
Agnes worked with her father after he moved to Morden. The best known story being from the election of 1891. Her father was the local Tory candidate's campaign manager. They seemed to be in danger of losing in because most of their support was in the rural areas and the farmers were hard at work. Then Agnes suggested her father send wagons out to bring them in. As a result the Conservative candidate (Arthur Wellington Ross) won by 97 votes.
MARRIAGE
On May 31st 1893 she married Ben Cross in Morden. He was then a 20 year old “news agent” living in Winnipeg. Like his family, Ben was a Methodist. Agnes was a 22 year old Anglican.
Ben and Agnes had known each other for many years. The Smith family was already established in Winnipeg, when Ben’s family arrived around 1888. Two years later, when he was 16, Ben was a waiter in John Henry Smith’s Winnipeg hotel. By the time of his marriage, he was a “news agent” for his father in law’s paper (“The MORDEN MONITOR”). Such was the influence John Henry Smith had over this couple, that in 1894 they named their firstborn son John Henry (“Jack”) in his honour. The Smiths had by then become rooted in the border settlement of Morden. Ben chose to follow his father’s profession, in Winnipeg.
Dell later said that Ben and Agnes were an especially tender couple. Asked how this manifested itself, her features became whispy, tentative. Then she remembered a single incident from their older age. After Agnes developed arthritis, Ben had taken over washing laundry so that she wouldn’t have to go down the stairs into the basement.
They set up house in Winnipeg, where Ben presumably entered into his father’s profession. They had three children there: John Henry Cross (17 July 1894, NWT – i.e. Manitoba) May Cross (28 Sept 1897, NWT) Bernard Cross (3 Sept 1898, NWT).
MOVE TO VANCOUVER
Ben and Agnes came west from Winnipeg about 1899. Vancouver’s 1901 Directory mentions them residing at 1075 Howe Street, on one of the first residential lots developed by the CPR. The census taken that year mentions their fourth child, Robert, being born in British Columbia on September 3rd 1900.
Prior to the war, Ben was a successful painting contractor. He returned to that profession in 1919.
THE 1920s
Jack Cross' family came to Ben and Agnes's home, on St Catherine’s street, on Sundays. Though not large, Gramma Cross had made the house cosy and hospitable to visitors. She would usually bake a lemon meringue pie. (She also sold her pies, one of her best customers being Mr. Ablivitz who would sometimes eat an entire pie for lunch!) When it snowed, Agnes would make toffee and put it in the snow to cool. With his ready smile and potbelly, Ben was like Santa Claus at these gatherings. He cooked and carved the roast, made sure that everyone had a drink and that no one was feeling neglected. The piano was the centrepiece for after dinner entertainment. Nina would play, and sometimes her husband Jack would sing or else everyone would join in. They also played penny anti-poker or rumoli. Dell remembers her grandparent's house as the "the place to be”.
Ben had died of a heart attack in 1939
FINAL YEARS
Dell says that we visited her once when I was an infant, but Agnes had not known who we were. Betty Hales remembers the sign on Agnes’ door, to remind her where her bedroom was. In 1951, She moved in with her daughter Mae, in the fishing village of Steveston at the mouth of the Fraser River, She died there, of pneumonia, on February 7th 1955.