Thomas was a small farmer who paid his taxes, was enumerated in the 1891 census, sent his children to school and went into Uxbridge to shop and have his picture taken. He was also a man it seems, who worked hard and wanted to improve his life and those of his children. As a direct descendant, I researched the facts and paid a visit to his birthplace. I also wanted to put his story into a more "alive" format for future generations. Here is his story. The factual data is accurate; the narrative could have been.
Thomas was just 18 when he walked into Plymouth to enlist in the Royal Navy. There was no future for him in Cornwood, Devon. His mother, Mary Ann, had married 10 years before, and moved to Cornwall with her new husband. He was glad that his mother had finally been able to make a new life for herself in another town, away from the gossip and meanness of Cornwood. Of course it was always the woman who was at fault when there was an illegitimate pregnancy. It was rumoured around Cornwood what his father was a Delamoor because his mother had been a servant in their "big house". But Mary Ann never said, and he never asked.
His baptismal record was blank on his father's side; however, he knew that someone had paid for his bastard bond, his christening and to have the record sealed forever. Blank church records did not come cheap, even in St. Michael and All Angels Cornwood. The angels! Oh how he remembered the angels, each playing a different musical instrument so serenely up where the walls of the church joined the roof. Their beautiful feathered wings touched the hems of their gowns. He had looked at them for hours on Sundays when in church. Thomas also remembered the Tudor tombstones made of white and black marble high up on the walls, honouring the dead who were rich.
So with his mother remarrying and moving away, he grew up with his grandparents Walter and Elizabeth in the red granite almshouse built by the Delamoors, in the shadow of red granite St. Michael and All Angels church. And, although he loved the rolling green hills of Devon, divided into irregular patch work pieces by the thick hedgerows, he always knew that there was no future for him in Cornwood. Certainly there could be more to life than being a labourer like his grandfather and ending one's day in the poor house -- no matter how pretty the view of the Devon hills from its windows.
So off we walked to Plymouth. His enlistment day May 13, 1864 was etched forever in his mind. Sergeant Major Jones looked him over from head to toe: hair - black; eyes - hazel; height - 5 feet 1/2 inches; complexion - dark. At first he thought Sergeant Major Jones wouldn't accept him because he was small; but he was strong, wiry and eager and in the end, only the latter mattered.
The voyage to Bermuda was hell. He was sick, tired, cold and overworked. Finally the ship arrived at the Royal Naval Dockyard and Bermuda became his home for the next seven years. The Royal Naval Dockyard on Ireland Island North had been built for the next 50 years when he was in service. It's massive sea walls and gray stone buildings provided the Royal Navy with a winter anchorage and major dockyard for their Atlantic and West Indian fleets after the American War of Independence. The dockyard was always busy repairing ships off the line and re-victualling them.
He met Elizabeth Murray Young while serving in Bermuda. Her family had been in Sandy's Parish for almost 100 years. He had married the bright eyed, dark haired, no nonsense woman of twenty on May 23, 1868 in St. James church. He bought a bible especially for the occasion and noted the event with pride. His sergeant, William Avery, was one of his witnesses. You weren't supposed to marry while in the navy, but a few of them did and their officers turned a blind eye, thank goodness. In his case, his officer even attended. Son Bill was born in Bermuda. The rest of his children, however, were born in Ontario, where he moved after his discharge on May 2, 1891.
Thomas didn't think often of his early years in Ontario when he worked long hours in the winter-cold climate to save money to buy some land. He remembered, with pride, his 1886 purchase of the south west quarter of Lot 20, Concession 8, Uxbridge Township. What a proud man he was owning 50 acres valued $300 at age thirty nine. In addition, he rented another 100 acres from John Weir who owned the saw mill at Brookdale immediately north of his property. He didn't even mind that he was initially assessed a contribution of 2 days labour towards the roads -- it showed that he was a landowner and that made him mighty proud.
He built a one and one half story frame house on a fieldstone foundation for his family of five. Other children soon followed. Like most of the small farmers in the Uxbridge area, he kept a few cows for milk and hogs for winter pork. Later on, as he became a bit more prosperous, he purchased three horses and planted a small orchard, as well as doubling his animals. Elizabeth planted some lilacs and orange lillies in front of the house. His major crops were potatoes and wheat, but with the land stripped of white pine for timber before he bought it, erosion quickly occured on the gravely moraine. His crop yields, like those of his neighbors, were never high in Ontario County, particularly after 1890.
Although he worked hard on his farm, it couldn't really support his growing family and his older boys couldn't get much work in the Uxbridge area. He had been hearing about cheap land in the west for some time and more and more people from Reach, Uxbridge and Pickering Townships were moving to North Dakota. "Why not go?" he said to Elizabeth one day. "I think there will be a better life for us all." So he sold his farm in 1895 to his neighbor Martha Catherwood and Ramsey County, North Dakota became his home until he died.
With the help of Allan McGillivray, the curator and historial guru of the Uxbridge-Scott Museum who found the Uxbridge Township farm site on an 1895 may by Charles Goad, I located the foundations of the farmhouse one bleak November day some months later. The farm land had long been absorbed by its neighbor and the road in front forgotten with traffic moving over the Lake Ridge Road immediately to the east.
Now a Pickering resident, I was disappointed there was nothing more. Yet for a man with early beginning in a Devon almshouse, navel service in Bermuda, and a "missing" 14 years somewhere in the province, it is easy to understand that Thomas's roots in Ontario County were only as deep as the economics of supporting his family on the gravel soil of Uxbridge County. For him, like so many other small farmers who settled in Ontario County, Lot 20, Concession 8, Uxbridge Township, became just another stop along the way.