Deseronto Archives

On this day in 1915 Arthur Howard enlisted in Kingston. He was born in that city on 17 January 1895, the son of Ethel (née Norton) and Herbert Howard and was a student at Queen’s University when he signed up. Herbert Howard was the accountant for the Bank of Montreal in Deseronto and his family were living in the apartment above the bank (now the Town Hall) at the time of the 1911 census.

Sid (as he was known) signed up under the name Albert and he added a year to his age, claiming to have been born in 1894. He joined the 26th Battery of the 7th Canadian Field Artillery Brigade as a driver with the regimental number 89754. When he enlisted, Sid was described as five feet eight inches tall, with a dark complexion, blue eyes and black hair. Howard’s service record shows that he landed in England on August 18th, 1915 and (after being hospitalized with an infection) left for France in January 1916. His service record is mysteriously silent about what he did in 1916, but notes that he joined his unit in the field in March 1917. He was hospitalized again that year with another infection.

Sid Howard’s neice, Cynthia Tappay, tells us that after serving in France he volunteered for service in the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force (this is confirmed in his service record) and served in Russia from October 1918 to July 1919. He was promoted to Bombardier on April 14th, 1919. The family story is that Sid and his friend Dough Jemmett smuggled an orphaned Russian boy back to Canada with them and the boy ended up in Northern Ontario.

Sid was demobilized in Montreal on July 15th, 1919 and returned to Deseronto after leaving the army. He moved to Salt Lake City in Utah in September 1919 to work for his uncle Bill (his father’s brother). He married Ellen [?] of Nisqually, Washington around 1921 and became naturalized as an American on June 21, 1928 in Tacoma, Washington. By the time of the 1930 census the couple had a son called Robert. Sid died of a tetanus infection in Tacoma on November 22, 1934.

Marlene Brant Castellano got our summer series of local history talks off to a great start with her examination of the local history of the Bay of Quinte from a Mohawk perspective.

Marlene used reproductions of two famous wampum belts to tell the story of the Mohawk people’s interactions with Europeans, beginning with the treaty represented by the Two-Row Wampum in 1613 with the Dutch. The two purple rows of the belt were intended to show the parallel courses of a European ship and a Haudenosaunee canoe, bound together by friendship, peace and respect. The other belt, the Friendship Belt, represents the Covenant Chain connecting the two peoples: a chain of silver which needs to be regularly polished by both groups in order to maintain its shine.

Marlene got the audience involved from the beginning, with questions about the importance of family roots and stories and what they mean to us. Until recently, formal education in Canada paid little or no attention to native people’s own histories, while the use of native languages was actively repressed for many years. Marlene noted that this has now changed and Indigenous children are now able to connect to their stories and language in a way that people of British descent may have taken for granted in the more Anglo-centric teaching of the past.

The stories associated with wampum belts have endured within these communities for hundreds of years, and Marlene explained that a thorough knowledge of their meaning and importance is a key part of being a chief. A chief, she noted, is an archivist, as well as a leader!

Tomorrow sees the first in a new series of talks on local history. We are delighted to welcome Marlene Brant Castellano to Deseronto Public Library to talk on the topic of ‘Mohawks and Settlers: neighbours throughout history’.

The talk is free to attend and all are welcome. It starts at 1pm and will be followed by refreshments. We hope to see you there!

Date: May 23rd

Location: Deseronto Public Library

Time: 1pm – 2pm

The next talk in the series, ‘The Development of Deseronto’ will take place on June 20th (same time, same place).

James Edward Clarence Brennan signed up in Kingston on this day in 1915. Brennan was born in Bogart, Ontario on October 9th, 1897, the son of Frank Brennan and Annie (née Hogan). The Brennans were living in Deseronto in the 1901 and 1911 censuses and James Edward Clarence attended the Deseronto High School.

When he signed up, Brennan was five feet, four and three-quarters inches tall, with a medium complexion, blue eyes and dark hair. He had been working as a ‘Timekeeper’. His regimental number was 89751 in the 26th Battalion. His service record shows that he arrived in England on August 18th, 1915 and left for France on January 16th, 1916 to serve with the Canadian Field Artillery. Brennan was with the 5th Brigade at Mill Cott, east of Ypres, when he was injured by a shell on November 16th, 1917. The war diary of his unit noted the injury:

Extract from war diary of the 5th Brigade of the Canadian Field Artillery, courtesy of Library and Archives Canada

Mill Cott Nov 16/17 … 1 O.R. [other rank] wounded …

The previous page of the war diary noted that on November 16th there had been:

Very heavy enemy Barrage laid down between 12.30-2.30 Pm in back country. Heavy intermittent shelling of our batteries.

Clarence had shrapnel wounds to his left thigh, calf and ankle and was temporarily deafened in his left ear by the blast of the shell. He spent the next few months in hospital in England, recovering from his injuries, but was left unable to walk properly, suffering from foot drop. He was discharged back to Canada, arriving in June 1918 on the hospital ship Goorkha. The Intelligencer newspaper reported on June 28th that a reception was held for him in Deseronto by members of St. Vincent de Paul church. Brennan was discharged from the army on August 21st, 1918, classified as medically unfit for further service and eligible for a pension due to his disability.

He married Evelyn May Fairbairn on September 15th, 1921, in Pembroke, Ontario. He was killed just over a year later, on September 19th, 1922, when a tree fell on him in Flanders, Ontario, fracturing his skull. He was buried in the St. Vincent de Paul cemetery in Deseronto.

Norman Charles Armitage signed up on this day in 1915. He was born in Lindsay, Ontario, the son of Elias Armitage and Hattie (née Fryer) on October 25th, 1896. In the 1901 and 1911 censuses the family were living in Deseronto, where Norman attended the High School. The picture above was taken in 1914 when Norman was a member of the Deseronto Fire Team.

On enlisting at Kingston, Armitage was five feet six and a half inches tall, with a fair complexion, blue eyes and light hair. He gave his occupation as ‘Clerk’. His regimental number was 89750 and he joined the 26th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. His service record shows that he arrived in England on August 18th, 1915 and initially was assigned to the 7th Brigade of the Canadian Field Artillery, stationed in Westenhanger, Kent. In May 1916 he went to France and served with the 3rd Divisional Trench Mortar Battery and the 3rd Divisional Ammunition Column.

He had trench fever in December 1917, which left him weakened and suffering from dizziness, chest pain and shortness of breath. In March 1918 he was examined by a medical board which recommended that he be invalided to Canada. He arrived back in Halifax on July 3rd on the RMS Empress of Britain and was discharged in Kingston on August 9th, 1918 as medically unfit for further service.

Norman Armitage married Kathleen Maracle on January 27th, 1923 in Windsor, Ontario. They had four children (their son Robert was killed while serving with the Canadian Navy in the Second World War). Norman died on February 21, 1976 in Napanee Hospital. He was buried in Deseronto Cemetery.

On this day in 1915, John Wesley Lindsay joined up in Belleville. He was born in Deseronto on May 27th, 1894 to James Lindsay and Della (née Howard). He was described as five feet, nine and a half inches tall, with a dark complexion, brown eyes and dark brown hair.

Lindsay joined the 39th Battalion with a regimental number of 413021. His service record shows that he arrived in England in July and was treated for an infection in November 1915. In December he was transferred to the 21st Battalion when he went overseas. In January 1916 he was admitted to hospital with myalgia, returning to duty in February. He received a gun shot wound to the chest in March 1916 and was treated in hospitals in England until June. The bullet remained in his chest and caused pain when standing. He served the rest of the war in England, returning to Canada in June 1919. He was demobilized on July 3rd in Kingston.

John Wesley Lindsay survived the war and married Pansy Grace Maracle in Toronto on April 5th, 1922. Pansy later changed her name to Patricia. The photograph below shows her when she was working for the Metcalfe canning factory in Deseronto in the 1930s.

John Wesley Lindsay died on October 20th, 1949 and is buried in the Deseronto Cemetery.

On this day in 1915 John Culbertson signed up in Belleville. He claimed to have been born in Deseronto on August 21, 1891, but census records suggest that his true year of birth was 1885. He was the son of Alexander Culbertson and Sarah (née Penn), who were both Mohawks. He was a lumberman.

Photo of John Culbertson from Kanhiote Tyendinaga Territory Public Library

On signing up, Culbertson was five feet four and a quarter inches tall, with dark hair, brown eyes and a dark complexion. He joined the 39th Battalion with a regimental number of 413012. His service record shows that he arrived in England on July 3rd, 1915. He was transferred to the 19th Battalion in January 1916 and joined them in France on January 20th. He was wounded by shrapnel on September 15th, 1916 at the Battle of Courcelette and was sent back to England to recover. He rejoined his battalion in France on April 9th, 1917.

On October 30th, 1917 John was admitted to hospital suffering from impetigo. He spent several months in various military hospitals in France and England and rejoined the 19th Battalion in France on May 7th, 1918.

By the end of the war Culbertson held the rank of Lance Sergeant. He left England in May 1919 on the RMS Caronia and was demobilized in Toronto on May 24th. It is not clear what happened to him after the war: please comment if you know!

With last week’s post about Jack Martin, we saw the 100th anniversary of the first death of a Deseronto man in World War I. In total, 40 of the Deseronto and Tyendinaga men who signed up to the Canadian Expeditionary Force had died by the end of 1918. Another (Ross MacTavish) died in 1919 and Ambrose Clause died in 1920 as a result of his service. In total in this project we are following the wartime careers of 302 local people (two women and 300 men).

The death of 42 of these people represents a total fatality rate of 14%, which is higher than the national rate of Canadian casualties (around 10%). There is a statistically significant difference, however, between the fatality rate for the Mohawk men in our sample and the rate for non-Mohawks. In our group, Mohawks make up about one third of the total number who enlisted: 98 of the 300. But they were much more likely to die than their non-Mohawk comrades. Twenty-two of the 42 men from the Deseronto area who died were Mohawks, which represents a fatality rate of 22% of those who enlisted. The equivalent rate for non-Mohawk men from the Deseronto area was 10%.

Volunteers were much more likely to be killed than conscripted men: only one man in our group who was drafted under the 1917 Military Service Act was killed during the war. He was also a Mohawk.

The chart below shows the distribution of deaths of Deseronto-area people over the course of the war, beginning in April 1915:

Ten of the 42 men who died were killed by illnesses or disease of various kinds. The remaining 32 were killed in action or died of injuries received while fighting. In a later blog post, we’ll look at the corresponding figures for the men of the Royal Flying Corps (later the Royal Air Force) who died while they were attached to the Deseronto pilot training camps.