The Davis Family of Bridewater, Somerset
The following is a story about my grandmother Davis Family Tree from Bridgwater, Somerset, England around the turn of the last century. The excerpts were taken from extensive interviews with Dorothy Alford (Davis) in about 1979. Dorothy spoke of her “mothers sister was one of twins and my sister had twins, girls, Gladys had Joan and Joyce.” Then referring to her family she went on to say, “there was three boys and 13 altogether Charlie, Clair, Rose, Annie, Flor, Elsie, Jese the one that died, (the doctor said if she had lived she would have been in a wheel chair. 17 days old at death) then myself (Dorothy), Fred, Lilly, Harry, Gladys, and Joyce, and mother raised all of us. The work that she did. Washing she did, scrub on the board, no washing machine or anything.” Dorothy said that her mother lived to be 86. “She worked so hard. She taught us how to do things by the way she used to say things. The way we used to scrub floors we would get down on our knees with a pail of water and we always had to kneel on a mat. She used to say “Lets keep your knees dry. Another thing when you go to wash the floor you wash the farthest away place first and gradually come up to where your kneeling. ” She added ” And when you go to dry you start at your knees first and work out.” The things mother taught us, like making the beds properly. We had to help her and she would say “First the foot, then the head, that’s the way to make a bed.” She would turn it into something like that every time, a rhyme. We would listen to her and it was all right with me. She said to me one day, because I loved to look after the baby’s, “You know Dorothy your a better mother than some of the grown women I’ve meet.” I said “Am I mother” and she replied “You sure are your a good little mother,” and I never had any. It seems funny doesn’t it. I would have given anything to have a family of my own.”
“Mother and Father in the war took the younger one’s and moved to Gloucester where they were born, because it was out of London. That was while the First World War was on. My sister Rose, she was the 3rd eldest (there was Charlie, Clair and Rose was the top of the family). Well Rose had a flat and was working at a camera factory during the War. I went and lived with her in the suite or flat we called it. Mother went away to Gloucester where they (the younger children) were born and they all stayed there just before armistice was signed and then they came back. My sister Annie and I were the one’s that got the big house for them to live in and they moved back right away to the place Wathingstow, where we came when we first left the country, (Sommerset) and they came back to where we were living through the War. Rose, Nance and I were all living there, us three, and oh Elsie, she worked at the nursery too. when the War was over they came home again and here this one was married, that one was married and I, I was left all alone because he was the one that was gone. Elsie was married, Rose was married, Nance and I came out to Canada and she was married in a year. But I wasn’t married till years after, I just worked. I was only married 4 years and 8 months when he was hurt at the mill a bundle of lumber swung and hit him here (pointing at her chest/abdomen). My husband Fred and I were married in “1949” and I went to the city to work. The nursery was out on a farm but we didn’t live there. We just went out there in the morning and came back at night.”
Coming to Canada
“I lost the fellow I was going to marry, he was killed in the war you see. That is why I came to Canada otherwise I never would have. It was just twelve days before the armistice when he wrote me. Well it was the 31st of October (1918) I got a letter from him saying ” They were in the Gaza Strip ” and he added ” We are expecting an engagement tonight but if everything goes alright I will be home very shortly, we will be married and the past will be forgotten and the war will be finished “. They didn’t pick up one whole body in the whole place. His cousin was on the team that collected what was left. Everyone of them was bombed to pieces. They didn’t know whose feet and whose legs or anything. So they just made big holes and threw the bits in. So that altered my whole life.” “But when Laurie went, that was the fellow I was going to marry, Laurence Young his name was. He lived right next door to us. I was 21 when the war ended, well Laurie was 28. He was older than I. That is when he went, the 30th of October 1918, the engagement was when they were all bombed. So that was that and that is when our doctor, (when I got over the sickness and the flu) said, why didn’t my sister and I go out to Canada so that is why we came.” “Well then you see I got sick with the flu. Flu was very bad and I got sick. It was our doctor ( I think I had pneumonia ). that said to me when I got over it ” Say you got a relative in Canada haven’t you ?” So Nance was with me and she replied “Yes a sister” and he said “Look it would do you both good to go for a trip out there”. and he added “If I was a young man I would go to, but I am not (and he was older you know). Get away from this country and its memories .” So we decided we would go. My sister here was all for it because she had been trying for years to get some of us to come out and none of us had ever given it a consideration, but however Nance and I came. As I say It was the 24th of June (1924) that we arrived.”
Referring to her arrival when she meets her sister at the Maple Creek, Saskatchewan railway station, Dorothy is referring to my mother Myrtle as a baby in her mothers arms. “Yes, she was in her mothers arms, a tiny baby about 2 or 3 months old. She was born in April. My sister’s birthday is in April. Twenty sixth of April, I think was my sisters birthday, your Grandmother. I don’t know about Myrtles but I just fancy, let me see, we came out in the 24th of June (1924). We sailed the 24th of June or we arrived the 24th of June, that was it, but anyway Myrtle was just a small baby 2 or 3 months old, something like that. Your Grandmother and Grandfather were at the station at Maple Creek. I did not know your Grandmother because the last time I saw her she was slim and here she was around two hundred, fat and puggy.” “I got off the train and I was standing and Nance, my sister Nance, nudged me and she said “There’s Flora” and I said “Where” ? and she said “There she is with the baby in her arms”. I said “Oh no that isn’t her, Flora was slight and slim and everything”. I added “That women?” Nance replied ” Oh yes I would know her any place”. Well you see Nance was three years older than her.” “So I mean Nance recognized her anyway. So when they looked Nance put her hand up like that and so they came towards us, you see, and I hung back because I was sure Nance had made a mistake but ” yes ” she said ” I’m your sister “. Well I thought to myself ” My you’re different, you’re so different “. But Fred her husband, was as thin as she was fat. Oh she got to be quite stout, very stout, too stout for her own good really. But it was her own business not mine. (laughing) I had nothing to say to her for that. “
“I got a job on the farm. I worked like hell if you know what that is. Boy oh boy I cooked for a big bunch of men. Cooked and did chores and gardened and heaven knows what. Far, far more than I ever should do because I was not that strong.” ‘To me it was the back of beyond. I wrote to my mother and said ” I never saw such a deserted place in my life. Where ever you stand and look it was nothing but distance. Its just a few hills far, far away but most of it is level land and you are just looking and looking and looking and nothing.” “And I did call it the back of beyond and mother was very grieved, really over us leaving. But we never saw them again and then Nance died and Father died three years after. I think it was Mother that said ” He (father) never did get over Nance’s death,” and well one thing lead to another. It just seemed like it was from another world, when you think back on it.” “I guess there is a lot of people that don’ t know where they come from or who they belong to. That is very bad and you know for the longest time it just pulled on you, held you down like you couldn’t forget it. It was such a big episode in your life and then of course we were short of food and that. Well I guess it was to get away from the country and possibly the part of having plenty to eat. We were rationed you see over there.”
About Dorothy’s grandparents she said, “I never knew them and Grandmother lived till she was 93, Mothers Mother, but Fathers parents I didn’t know a thing about them and never saw any of them.” “I don’t know because as I say in those days you never heard about them, you just took it for granted you didn’t see them and I never thought about it. It wasn’t the distance, it was just a matter people didn’t travel very much.” “Well I know when Mother’s niece, I think it was, and her husband, he worked on the railway, and someone else or wether it was another sister came. It was the only time I can remember, (we had quite a decent size house and there were a lot of us) that we had to get out of our beds and put mattresses on the floor in the front room for us kids to lie on, while they had our beds upstairs.”
About Her Brothers and Sisters – Davis Family Tree
So to continue the story of the Davis Family Tree from Bridgwater, Somerset, Aunt Dorothy referring to her sister Florence, “I’ll tell you what she said once that made me flaming mad. She was playing ball with a fellow out in the street and she was dressed up to the nine’s. I was quite surprised at her playing ball out there dressed up like she was.(I was about 14 at the time) I went along the street and as I went this fellow that was throwing the ball to her said something about ” Who is that ?” She didn’t want to tell him that I was her sister. So he said “Yes?” and so I replied “I’m her sister” and she said “and I don’t feel flattered.” Oh boy did it upset me so I went home. (laughing) Cause she was 7 years older than me. Oh she was a hum-dinger when she started.”
“I used to go to the barbers with Fred, my brother, he was next to me in years. Mother would say “You tell Mr. Lear” that was the barbers name, “no clippers please, just the scissors on the back of the neck.” (Mother didn’t want any clippers on it.) So I said “Mother why don’t you want them to clip his head?” “Because” she said “It makes it coarse.” (laughing) My mother was very particular.” “When I was in school the teacher said “You got the best memory of any child.” She also said “The way you can remember things that happened.” I wasn’t very old, but I could remember things as though they happened yesterday. Now I can remember things when I was a tiny child but be darned if I can remember things that happened last week.”
Referring to her brother Harry, “He is my youngest brother. He came out here for a holiday in about 1952 or 53. He had one son and daughter. His son was in the Submarine Corp. He came home on leave in the War and Harry said he was jubilant , ready to go back off leave. He said this day Stanley didn’t want to leave home and Harry said to him “Stanley is there anything wrong ? You don’t seem to be in any hurry to leave.” He replied “No I’m not.” In within a week he was dead. They weren’t even in combat, and a submarine bombed them. They were gone all of them. It seems like such a waste. I think that’s what made Harry so sick and the trip was to build him up. But I had to laugh. I like to can fish and he had a store in England. A big grocery store in Surrey. He said he never seen canned fish before and my it looks good. I said “Well I’ve canned a lot of things since I’ve came to Canada that I never did before.” So we were talking and he was quiet brought out of himself. For supper, well I’ll tell you what happened. Fred and he and I went to Horseshoe Bay. They were going fishing. Fred often went with his brother and caught lots of fish and would bring them home and can them. This time we went down, I sat in the car reading. It was a bright summers day when they came back. No fish!! On our way home we passed by, oh what’s the name I can’t remember. So Fred said “Lets go down here.” So he drove the car down and waited for the fisherman to come. Fred bought a big salmon off of him. When we get home here’s, Fred with the big salmon by the head and Harry taking his picture. Then Harry had to have his picture taking holding the salmon. Now he said to me “You could send home telling them about the salmon we caught.” I said “You just write your own lie’s. I’m not going to write home and tell them you caught that salmon, because you didn’t you bought it”. We were all laughing about that. When he came to Canada for that Holidays he had been so sick, the doctor gave him three times the amount of pills to take with him. You know he never took one and eat, I took that salmon, Fred cut it up and I said “Keep out a few cutlets” he did and I fried them. You know I thought Harry would bust, he just ate one after the other. After Harry went home we never heard from him again.(His daughter Lilian married the bankers son).”
Talking about her sister Elsie and Elsie’s daughter Dorothy, “Elsie would write and tell her things about Dorothy, until Dorothy got around to it. She ( Dorothy ) graduated from school and went into her first job and she’s been working ever since. She’s been working and corresponding with me ever since. Her letter’s sometimes are more like books then letters. She not only works as a secretary but she works and goes to different clubs and she’s into everything practically, that’s her life. Dorothy’s parents wedding anniversary was the 21st of February. I remember Will was on a mine sweeper in the war (WW1) and they weren’t married till he came back. I remember the 21st of February there wedding day was. Will died just last summer and her mother was seventy something when she died. Funny thing I never found out what Elsie died of, but I think it was leukaemia or something like that because one day when she was working outside she said she was very tired and she came inside and never worked again. She just kept getting tired and the last letter she wrote me, she was 73, she said ” At last I am going to die in my own bed. I am very, very tired but had to write this letter to you “. She wrote the letter Air mailed, sealed it and Dorothy sent it after she died. Dorothy said she didn’t open it, this is the way she left it. “She wrote to you and sealed it up and I am sending the letter on to you just as Elsie had written it.” In the letter she said ” I am very, very tired “. But no one said what was wrong with her. I asked Dorothy ” what is wrong with your mother ” but she never answered me. I never found out. Elsie was very brilliant. At the big school when we moved to Wathingstow, they had a big honour board down in the hall, black with gold lines, and the first name was Davis, E, my sisters name. She was the first one to pass the scholarship. Will was the station agent and he was pretty well educated to.”
“I would write down everything, even my conversations with anybody. It was just as though I was talking to them and I was looking through them one day and thought to myself, “You know I think I am going to write a book one day.” Then a lady in town asked me, “Somebody that lives quiet a way out of town had a job in a garage.” She wanted to know if he could bring his wife and a couple of kids, two girls, to stay with me, so I said “Alright”. It was for a week and I went and stayed with a lady in town, an elderly lady, she wanted me to go and stay with her for a week. When I came back to the farm, they started to laugh and said “Boy they found my diaries interesting”. Then I looked at them and said “My diaries?” and they replied “Yes.” I said “Don’t you know that diaries are personal ?”and they responded “Oh we had great fun, we read them all. It was just as though you were sitting here talking to us.” Well I was so annoyed over that I just burned them all.”
Speaking about her niece “Margery looks very much like our family. She looks something like,… in fact when I first seen Margery she reminded me very much of my youngest sister but one and she was just about 2 or 3 years old I think, that was what my sister was when I left you see. That is why I’ve been very close to Margery because she reminded me of Gladys so much.” “Marg was just that much older you know. It kind of filled the gap. I watched them grow up and then Marg was married and had Mary when I came out to Vancouver.”
She goes on to conclude, “There’s a TV show that comes on “Another World” and Mr. Corry, every time I see him I say “father”. He looks exactly like him. We always called father “father” and mother “mother” and never mama or papa. Robert Davis I don’t think he had a second, middle name.” Robert Davis died May 30th, 1932 at the age of 69. Dorothy’s mother Annie Davis (Phillips) died February 5th 1950 at the age of 85. Dorothy Victoria Alford (Davis) died September 20th 1980 at the age of 83. This completes my Aunt Dorothy’s story of the Davis Family Tree from Bridgwater, Somerset. Thanks for reading.
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By: Gordon Rebelato
