I mentioned in my blog on Scottish Stone Masons my paternal grandfather, William R. Dewson. His life was full of more sorrow than I could have imagined. I have recently learned even more about it on Ancestry. I already knew a great deal because when my father died, he left detailed family photo albums of early family history, as well as his own hand-written stories.
As the eldest son, my grandfather, William Dawson, left a life of great family turbulence and poverty to board a ship called the "Sarnia" from the major port of Liverpool, near his home in Lancaster. He was just 11 years old!
He landed in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
He next can be found in Ontario, working as a labourer, a single man in his 20's. He had, by then, changed his family name from Dawson to Dewson. Then, the lure of Western Canada led him to make his way there where free homesteads of 100 acres were being offered by the Crown. He settled near Colgate, Saskatchewan, a young man with no knowledge of farming whatsoever. Here is where my Dad's detailed oral history (which I have in abundance) picks up.
Long story short, William died in a fierce December blizzard when my father was just 7 years old. My father and his 5 siblings were sent to The Oddfellows Home, an orphanage run by the Freemasons, whom I mentioned in my earlier blog about Scottish Stone Masons. The farm was sold to pay for their keep.
My father's mother, Myrtle Rae Reid had died shortly before of "scarlet fever" which we now know as a bacterial infection beginning as strep throat. Her death must have been excruciatingly painful, and both of Dad's parents died in the same year during the icy grip of a prairie winter.
The loss of his wife and the mother of his children must have been deeply painful to William, who had left his own mother at the age of 11.
While researching my father's history I didn't expect to find much, since Dad was an orphan. However, I found that his mother had a long and stable family history. Myrtle's father was an Engineer and the family had strong and early roots in Bay City, Michigan. The Reid family reached back to one small area in north-eastern Scotland, Glenbuchat, Aberdeenshire for generation upon generation.
My brother and Dad's oldest son is named Reid. I named my only son Reid. Reid means "red," or red-haired.
In his will, my grandfather William Dewson left an enormous, leather-bound Bible with gilt-edged pages (which must have cost this poor man a great deal) and his watch to be kept for my father, his oldest son, also named William R. Dewson. My brother Reid is now its keeper. He also specified that his 6 children were to be adopted as one whole family, which of course never happened.
My father's lifetime hobby was collecting and preserving photo albums and family history. It's even more clear to me today that he did this because his own father endured so much sorrow in a lifetime made up of continual loss of family.
As a side-note, the family name Dawson, while seeming to be English, dates back to Normandy and the conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066.
These people from across the channel were also Celts.
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