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William Mackenzie Roberts, the second son of James Mackenzie and Phoebe Roberts, was born on 8 May 1852 – at 30 West Square, Southwark, according to an announcement in the Essex Standard (28 May), and confirmed by the birth registration. The Essex Standard, because the family had just moved to Dedham in northeast Essex.
William was at Heath Cottage, aged nine, when the 1861 census was taken, but does not appear in subsequent UK censuses. There is a good reason for this – William had left the family for good and emigrated to Canada.
The 1901 Ontario census gives the date of his arrival in Canada as 1883. The next census, 1911, also gives it as the 1880s. However he had already appeared on the 1881 Ontario census (which didn’t ask for the date of arrival in the country) and had married, at Hamilton Township, Ontario, on 1 November 1876, so he must have arrived in the country before that.
From an analysis of ships’ passenger lists, the most likely answer is that he landed at the Port of Quebec on 31 May 1869 in the steamship Cleopatra, run by the Temperley Line.
Whatever the circumstances of his emigration, how daunting must have been the prospect of such a journey for a young man (effectively still a minor) from rural Essex.
Cobourg, Ontario
William settled at the town of Cobourg, on the shores of Lake Ontario, where he found work as a carpenter; certainly that was his occupation given on the registration of his children, although on his marriage record he is listed as a miller, and on the registration of Maria’s birth in 1880, it is given as ‘dealer’. In the 1881 census he is simply a ‘labourer’.
Oddly, when he married Jemima Anderson of nearby Gore’s Landing, in 1876 at the age of twenty-four, William was unable or unwilling to provide the registrar with his own mother’s name, so the marriage entry gives just his father’s name where both should appear.
William lived the rest of his life at Cobourg and it is likely he never saw his parents or siblings again. Yet they are remembered in his obituary, so he must have told his own children about his origins.
In Canadian records his middle name is given variously as Mackenzie, MacKenzie, Mackensie and McKenzie.
Obituary for William Mackenzie Roberts from the newspaper Cobourg World, 23 January 1920, page 1.
He fell ill in 1917 and died on 18 January 1920, aged sixty-six, just two weeks after his wife and at the same age his father had died. The cause of death was an enlarged prostate.
Both William and Jemima are buried in Cobourg Union cemetery along with their twin children, Georgina and George.
When he died, William was working as a gardener and living at Henry Street, Cobourg.
It is of note that his birth is given at Heath Cottage, Dedham, Essex in his obituary, indicating his children did not know his place of birth.
He was interred in Cobourg Union Cemetery, along with his wife and young son. His obituary in Coburg World reads that he was genial, of quiet temperament and held in high regard as a man of ‘honor and integrity’.
William was survived by four of his daughters.
The scan is a little difficult to read, but the obituary appears to claim that he was also survived ‘by his brothers and a sister in the Old Country’. His daughters (who would have supplied the information) may not have known their names, but only two brothers were still alive in 1920: Arthur and my great grandfather, Frank. I assume at least one of them was informed by letter of their brother’s death.
In fact William’s two sisters had both predeceased him, one (Mary) only eighteen months previously – something that his children seemed to be unaware of, perhaps indicating a lack of contact between the respective families by this point.
William’s obituary also reported that his nephews (Jemima’s brothers’ or sisters’ children, presumably) were pall bearers at his funeral.
Children
William and Jemima had six children, although one daughter, Georgina, died at birth or shortly afterwards, in 1888 and their only son was killed in 1898.
All the children were born in Cobourg and some were given family names – Mason and Sim[p]son – a link with what no doubt must have seemed a distant and rapidly vanishing past.
In fact so remote were the family’s English (and Scottish) roots by the twentieth century that William’s daughter Eva, apparently uncertain of her father’s parents – who, to be fair, had both died before she was born – gave her paternal grandmother’s name as Jane instead of Phoebe on her father’s death certificate.
The children probably knew little of their father’s family back in England. My grandmother was vaguely aware that there was a branch of the family abroad, although she certainly never knew her Canadian cousins.
Annie Anderson Roberts
Annie was born in Cobourg on 9 August 1877. On 26 June 1901 she married the twenty-four-year-old bachelor Andrew Boyd (or Andrew Byrd) Wood, an Irish baptist, born in Quebec, on 21 March 1876 (and living with his widowed mother at Port Hope, Ontario, when the census was taken earlier in 1901). Annie and Andrew were married at Northumberland, Ontario and lived at Wellington Street, Lindsay, Ontario.
Wood’s skill was as a tinsmith. In 1908 was in charge of the plumbing department of the firm of Boxall & Matthie (stoves, hardware, etc.). They had been married barely seven years when Wood collapsed with a paralytic stroke, whilst measuring for a new heating plant at St Andrew’s church, Lindsay. He died seven weeks later, on 3 May 1908, aged thirty-one. This must have been a terrible blow for Annie.
After her husband’s death Annie moved back to the family home at Cobourg. She was the informant for her mother’s death there in January 1920. She did not remarry and had no children of her own, as far as I can see. In 1921 she appears to be living on her own on King Street, Cobourg, her occupation given as nurse.
Maria Mason Roberts
Maria was born in Cobourg on 22 October 1880 and named presumably after her late grandmother, William’s mother, Phoebe Simson Maria (née) Mason, who had died in the spring of that year, back in England.
She married Samuel Bell Warren (1877–1928), an Irish ‘cutter’ (possibly a glass cutter), on 6 June 1906. Maria’s sister Annie and her husband Andrew were witnesses at the wedding.
When the 1911 census was taken, Samuel was working for a glass company in Toronto and their address was 18 Larch Street, Toronto (curiously Samuel’s wife was given as Ida but unless this was a nickname, this is clearly a mistake, as Maria was certainly still alive). By 1921 they were at 680 Indian Road, Toronto and Samuel was a salesman. When he died in July 1928 he was listed as a traveller in the tile industry. Maria died after 1940.
Samuel and Maria had three sons and one daughter, described in the census as Irish Presbyterians, like their father. They were:
Wilfred Roberts Warren, born 20 August 1908 at York, Ontario, a tile setter in the 1940 electoral register (as head of the household at Indian Road).
[Grace] Audrey Evelyn Warren, born 1910, Northumberland, Ontario.
Ross Warren, born 1914, Ontario and on the Toronto voters list up to 1974.
Reginald John Alexa Warren, born 23 July 1918.
Grace Mae Roberts
Gracie was born in Cobourg on 5 May 1884. She married twenty-seven-year-old William Charles Hugh, or Hough (1883–1935), of Port Hope, Ontario, on 28 June 1910.
Hough was a baker when they married. The following year he was an insurance agent and the couple lived at Bruton Street, Port Hope. By 1921 they were at Hope Street and William was a salesman,
Gracie died on 10 March 1949 and is buried in Cobourg Union Cemetery with her husband and elder daughter.
They had two daughters, both born at Port Hope.
Bernice Roberts Hugh (born 18 August 1911) was by 1985 living at 360 George Street, Cobourg, and was still there the following year, when she was recorded as appealing against various zoning bylaws. She died on 23 May 1988 and was buried at Cobourg Union Cemetery.
Their second daughter was Doris McKenzie Hugh (born 11 March 1914). She died on 11 August 2003 and was buried at Cobourg Union Cemetery. Her obituary reads: ‘Died Golden Plough Lodge, Cobourg; interred Aug. 15, 2003. Daughter of the late William and Grace Hugh; sister of the late Bernice Hugh.’ Golden Plough Lodge is a care home.
Neither daughter appears to have married. Doris was the last child of the Roberts descendants to have McKenzie/Mackenzie as a middle name.
Eva Walker Roberts
Eva was born in Cobourg in 1893. She married (Frederick) John Skitch (1887–1976) on 19 February 1916. The Skitch family arrived in Cobourg from Cornwall in 1898 and seemed to have travelled to England and back several times in the 1900s (for example sailing from Southampton aboard the Adriatic, in February 1908).
John Skitch and his brother Harry worked as photographers and built up a good business and reputation. John established a photographic studio at Cobourg in about 1910. Harry worked at nearby Napanee and during the Second World War was the main portrait photographer there.
Once married, Eva and John lived at a house John had built on Church Street, Cobourg. When the 1921 census was taken, five years after their marriage, they were on their own at Church Street, with no children. Eva Walker Skitch died in 1970, aged seventy-seven. Frederick John Skitch died in March 1976 and is buried with Eva at Cobourg Union Cemetery (section CH plot 102A). I am not sure if they had any children.
A month after their marriage in 1916, Eva inscribed her name on a beam in the basement of the Church Street house. The current owner uncovered it in the 2000s during renovations; a nice echo of the past and of my great grand-uncle’s family.
George Simpson Roberts
William and Jemima’s only son, George Simpson Roberts (born 1888), was one of a twin (his sister, Georgina, died at birth or shortly after). Although there was a slight misspelling of the middle name, perhaps this was also in memory of William’s mother, Phoebe Simson Maria Mason, who had died eight years previously.
George had a tragic end, as he was killed aged ten, on 7 August 1898, when he was hit by a locomotive on the Grand Trunk Railway at Cobourg. At the time of George’s death the family lived at or near the Agricultural Grounds in D’Arcy Street, down by Lake Ontario – the railroad crosses just north of here, so this must be where George died. The notice in a local newspaper of 12 August 1898 read:
His Injuries Proved Fatal – George Roberts, the ten year old son of Mr. Wm. Roberts of the Agricultural Grounds, died on Sunday morning from injuries received the previous Tuesday by being struck by a west bound freight train. The young lad never regained consciousness, and from the first little or no hope of his recovery was entertained by attendant physicians. The family have the sympathy of very many friends on the removal, in so unfortunate a way, of the only boy from the home circle.
George’s death indeed ensured that the Roberts name would not pass onto the next generation: only daughters now remained amongst the Roberts brothers, William, Frank and Arthur.
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