Sitting here with a broken foot during the climax of summer, leaves me no choice but to travel deeper into the roots of my family. There are so many pieces to the puzzles of our family that at every corner there is a supposition and a narrative. With tiny clues such as an address or a name, we finally build on a brief sketch that is our own.
One of the intriguing links in my family would be that of my great aunt, Alice Moors, born in 1879, also in Lambeth, England. Baptized on the same day as her sister, Rose and brother (my great great grandfather), John, on April 22 1883, Alice was yet another relation who traveled to Canada with British Home Children and the Annie Macpherson organization.
Raised in Lambeth by her grocer-father, John Moors, it was evident that there was a degree of privilege and an association with church that provided her cross-ocean passage with some family members, in order to visit young John who had been sent first as the young BHC, apparently to open up opportunity for the family.
1881 Census England
I find her on a manifest for the Dominion in 1899, the final voyage for a family that has found itself back and forth across the Atlantic multiple times. We see John, the Mrs., Rose, Ada, Grace and Alice and all are listed as servants and John, a farmer.
From Bernardo’s records…a very sketchy record of Alice.
The fact that the documents mention sisters, leads me to believe that the oldest sister, Marian Ada, is already in Canada although I’ve never found BHC records or details of immigration that would support that. Of the sisters, Marian Ada is the one I know least about as she left Hamilton, married Chas Wood and moved to Crystal Beach, Muskoka.
Back to Alice.
It has been my sense for quite some time, that at some point in history, Alice was discovered to have a mental/emotional disability of some sort. I find that it is interesting that the ‘previous history’ comments state that she “is to go straight to her relatives”.
And yet, it is on the 1901 census that I find Alice working as a servant for the Gartshore family, another very well-to-do family in Hamilton.
1901 Census Hamilton
On the 1891 census, I find the Gartshore family claiming that the 11 year old, Frederick S. Chapman is their son. This is something that intrigued me along the way.
Son of John Gartshore, Alexander was a prominent figure in engineering in the Toronto Dundas and Hamilton areas. No where in the writings or biographical information, the most detailed being found here, do I find any mention of the domestics of the household in Hamilton. Not surprising…but, our Alice was working in their home, along with others.
Through interviews with my own aunties, it is one who visited Hamilton regularly, as a child, who remembers my great great grandmother, Grace Moors, going to an upstairs bedroom to feed one of her daughters. No one went into the bedroom and there was a great curiosity about her. After my great great grandfather John Moors passed away, according to records, in 1914, Grace and her daughter Alice both headed for the west coast in the United States to live with Alice’s sister, Rose in San Diego, California.
June 27, 1921 is the date that appears on the immigration records.
Alice is a waiter living in Los Angeles and living at 336 Loma Drive. Her mother, widowed, is living on Florida.
336 Loma Drive, Current Appearance
Unfortunately, it is not long and we find Alice in Patton State Hospital in Highland, San Bernardino, California. She is listed as a sewer in this record. This researcher has no idea what circumstances or history lead to this event, but it is an unfortunate one. My cousin has generously written to California State who did release the death certificate for our great aunt and this might lead to further revelation as far as Alice’s medical history.
Patton State Hospital
In the end, Alice is buried along side her sister Rose Clayton, her brother-in-law, Harry Clayton (a house painter in the area…likely moving to California for the grand opportunities it would afford) her mother, Grace Moors and sister, Grace, in Hope Cemetery, San Diego, California. Of the siblings, only John, Rose and Marion Ada married. Cause of death was listed as breast cancer.