My great-grandfather, Clifford Roy Wilmot was born in Pittsburgh Township, Frontenac County, Ontario in 1898. His father was ALBERT BOWER WILMOT (Bower) and his mother was MARY AGNES GRAVES (Minnie). In 1911 Albert and Mary moved west by rail toLethbridge, Alberta with her brother, HENRY ALFRED GRAVES, his wife and five children. In the 1911 census of Lethbridge, Alberta, Albert & Mary live next door to two of her brothers and one of her sisters.
One thing I wonder about this family is why did they go west? I know they came for land but could there also be other reasons? Albert and Mary would have had a lot of people they could have considered immediate family and therefore a support group in Kingston. On the 1901 Census, they are living with or next door to Albert Bower's brother, JOHN JAMES WILMOT and his family, and cousin, JOHN ALEXANDER WILMOT and family, and cousin PETER GRAHAM WILMOT and family. John James and Albert's mother ANN ROSS DUNLOP WILMOT was living with John James.
Mary's family was living close by as well in 1901. Her mother, CITNEY ANN VANHORN GRAVES was still alive and lived with her brother, GEORGE GRAVES and his family.
As best as I can tell, Albert and Mary's grandparents came to Canada from England and Ireland in the early 1800's. A few of their great-grandparents settled in Pittsburgh County possibly in the late 1700's. On every census I have looked at for these people, they are always farmers and they stayed there for 100 years. No one started leaving until after the 1901 census, and then there seemed to be a mass exodus around 1911. I found out while in Kingston that the railroad west was completed about that time. Up until then, it would have been difficult for anyone to move to the west. Today by car, it would take 35 hours of driving from Kingston to Lethbridge... I don't want to imagine what that would have been like before the railroad was built! Unfortunately the CPR doesn't maintain passenger records.
Before moving to Alberta, Albert and Mary were married in St. Mark's Anglican Church in the village of Barriefield, across the Rideau Canal from Kingston.
Somehow a picture of Albert & Mary has survived time. According to those who know, this is a picture of them on their wedding day in 1897.
I also have a photocopy of Albert & Mary's marriage certificate. Interestingly enough, we did not find their registration in the Anglican Diocese records on Johnson Street in Kingston. I wonder why the record keeper did not record Albert & Mary's wedding... did he forget to do it on the actual day and not remember to do it later? I suppose I'll never know.
Roy and his brother, ROSCOE HARVEY WILMOT were baptized as infants in the same church that their parents were married in. I think that Minnie must have loved her boys. They were four years apart in age. Look at how handsome they were in these pictures.
Baby Roy Baby Ross & big brother, Roy Ross & Roy
As part of our trip to find out more of our ancestors, we wanted to find the house where Roy Wilmot said he was born. In the 1960's, Roy and his wife Rayma drove from Lethbridge to Kingston to see his old friends and relatives and to show his wife where he spent his childhood. Roy and Rayma had their picture taken outside of his birth home. We had a pretty good idea of where the Wilmot land was from an 1878 Atlas, so we thought we could find the house. What a surprise when we got there. The house in the picture was a standard floor plan for the area... a 1 1/2 story stone house with a small pitch in the front roof with a narrow window, a door on the ground floor in the middle, and a window on either side of the door.
As we studied each house that was similar, we could always find small discrepancies with each of them. The keystone over the upstairs window was protruding in the picture, but not on the house we were looking at. The distance between the main floor windows and the roof wasn't proportional. The chimney was on the wrong side. The land in front of the door was sloped on the house, but the land in the picture was flat. The window pattern next to the door in the picture is very distinctive, but the houses that we looked at with that same distinctive pattern did not match the other parts of the house in the picture. It was frustrating that we didn't find the right one but it wasn't for lack of trying. It's possible that the house is no longer there, but there are stone houses in the area from the same time period, so we got a pretty good idea of what the house would have been like from the outside.
After we returned home from Kingston, we found a picture of this house with the following written on the back, "Roy's old home in Kingston where he lived before he came to Lethbridge". Too bad we didn't find this picture before we went to Kingston; we could have looked for this house as well. It's clearly a brick home on a limestone base. The picture was taken before people found it necessary to mow their lawns. There is a woman and a little boy with two dogs sitting in front, but no mention of their names or where in Kingston the house is. Neither my mom or I can remember seeing a house like this along Highway 2. We were told that the Wilmot land used to be along the Abbey Dawn Road, so perhaps this house is along that road, if it's still standing at all.
As for other information about Albert and Mary, we didn't find much out. One thing we didn't know before we went was that Albert had an older brother, also named Albert but his middle name was Edward, who died before Albert Bower was born. I find that it's the death's of the children that always make me wonder the most... what did they die of? What effect did it have on the rest of the family? Would it have turned out differently if they lived today with modern medicine?
Also interesting to me was that we did not find more children for Albert and Mary. Living in the time period they did, I think it was unusual to have only two, and Roy and Ross are four years apart. When I started doing genealogy one thing I was told was to expect a child every two - three years, and if there is a gap larger than that, there was possibly a child who died.
After moving to Alberta, Albert died in 1917 and Mary died in 1950. After Albert's death, only six years after coming to Alberta, Mary stayed in Alberta with her sons. Eventually the three of them were able to purchase land. Roy had to quit school to help his mother build a farm. I imagine it was very hard work in the unforgiving climate that Alberta has.
Minnie Wilmot at her
home near Lethbridge
My grandmother (who married Mary's grandson) told me once that Mary Wilmot (known as the Widow Wilmot) had a beautiful riding habit and when she would ride by on her horse, people would stop and stare. I'm not sure if that means she was very pretty or if it means that she just was a very attractive woman who commanded your attention. In all those years after her husband died, she did not remarry.
Both Roy and Ross married and had children. Roy stayed on the farm near Lethbridge where he settled with his mother and brother.
Rayma (married Roy), Ross, Minnie, Roy & 2 guests
I didn't know my great-grandfather, Roy Wilmot very well; I was a young teenager when he passed away and before that, I remember him only as a very old man. He was in a nursing home for awhile when he passed away, but I don't know how long. The one thing that I remember when I think of him is we called him "Grandpa Great" and I remember my mom giving him a box of chocolates one Christmas with a card that said, "For Grandpa Great, a Great Grandpa".
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