Jonathan Uttley – 1884-1962

Jonathan Uttley was the third son of Nathan Uttley and Mary Ann Saunburn. He was born on 29 July 1884, according to the 1901 Census.

From the "Deaths" column of the K-W Record, December 19, 1962:

UTTLEY, Johnathan, 247 Franklin St., Dec 18, 78 years.

The accompanying obituary reads:

Jonathan Uttley
Johnathan Uttley, 78, of 247 Franklin St., died Tuesday at St. Mary's Hospital after a brief illness.
He was a son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Uttley of Waterloo and had lived in the Twin Cities all his life. He was employed by Joseph E. Seagram and Sons Ltd. for many years.
One brother, A. S. Uttley of Kitchener, survives. A brother and two sisters predeceased him.
The body is at the Ratz-Bechtel Funeral Home where service will be conducted at 3 p.m. Thursday by Rev. Alvin Schweitzer, pastor of St. Mark's Lutheran Church. Burial will be in Waterloo Mount Hope Cemetery.

Notes:

247 Franklin Avenue is the Sunnyside Home for the Aged.
the dreaded misspellings of Jonathan. The K-W Record got it right only in the obituary title where it counts the most (I guess).
To me as a kid in the fifties, he was Johnny [or is that Jonny?] and his older brother Abe often called him Honnes which I take to be some German equivalent.
Jonathon worked all his life at the Seagram's Distillery in Waterloo. From Douglas Uttley, he worked on the bottling line where all the whisky passed by. A foreman told Doug that he would spot Jonathan tossing back a nip of the final product from time to time, quite a common occurrence in the distillery and brewery in Waterloo from stories I've heard [and at the Olympia Brewery in Washington State, according to Elise]. Jonathan was mentally retarded to a degree. I remember and Doug recalls many more instances of him sitting quietly in a corner for hours and saying nothing. He must have had an encounter with a pony and a cart when he was young as he would comment on seeing a pony and cart, even as an old man. One day Jonathan just decided that he didn't want to go to work, and he never did again. He would have been close to retirement age anyway, but nobody ever knew why.

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Dorothy Gwynn
dgwynn@dns.magtech.ab.ca