The Search in Brantford, Ontario, Canada

It was Thursday 8^th September, Tim was going to visit the Alexander Graham Bell Museum. He (Tim) worked for BT in his former life and is very knowledgeable on all things connected by wires and cables.

Me? Well, I was going back to the Brantford Library to continue a search we had started the day before on the Parfitt ancestors. Tim’s mum had lived in Brantford as a girl and so we had been on a mission to find out as much as we could on certain relatives. Tim’s older brother Andrew has loads of information on the family and had sent us a couple of names to look into; Samuel Mann and John Henry Mann. Mann was the surname of their maternal grandmother.

Number 12, my grandparents first home in Canada.

Number 13, grandparents second home in Canada, literally across the street

 

Marlborough Street. Number 12 is on the left, number 13 on the right

Tim dropped me at the library and I had two hours to see what I could dig up. I had all I needed, laptop, ipad, mobile phone, emails, notebook, pen and a bottle of water. I was ready to go. I decided to spend an hour on each one of the names Andrew had sent us. John Henry Mann was up first.

I found him! He was the only one that came up with that name. So I started to search the records. I found him on the ship’s record arriving from England on the 16^th May 1911. He had been born around 1891 in Faversham, Kent. He was 20 at the time (not when he was born!) and intended to farm in Canada. I knew he was Church of England and he had been a grocer. I took a photo of the the ships log.

I then came across a John Henry Mann’s details joining the army. I found his regiment number, his mother’s name, Jane, and his birth date, and where he was born.

I was on a roll!

I kept going, taking photos of everything I found. He became a ‘single street car conductor’ when he was 24 years old. He got married to Muriel Ivy Harrison on 8^th Jan 1920 and his parents were Charles Mann and Jane Dowle.

By 1949 he had moved to 33 Britania Ave, Toronto and on the voters list it showed that there was another Mann living there by the name of Lawrence Mann who was a clerk.

Finally, I found that he died in 1951 and was buried in the Prospect Cemetery in Toronto. I have photos of the grave stone, and its number.

I couldn’t believe it! I had whole string of evidence and photos and information that you could only find in the Canadian files. I couldn’t wait to tell Tim!

Samuel Mann, however was really hard! I spent the next hour finding dozens and dozens of people by that name and couldn’t make head nor tail of who was who! But that didn’t matter too much, because I had found something that would delight the Parfitts! I had found John Henry Mann! THE John Henry Mann! This was grandmother’s brother.

When Tim came to pick me up, I first shared what I had found out about Samuel Mann. That didn’t take long! Then onto John Henry Mann. I was dying to share this bit with him. He was amazed at what I had and was looking forward to letting Andrew know what I had. He texted Andrew to let him know John Henry Mann’s birth date and when he died. Only then would he let him know all the other things we’d found.

Andrew texted back…..’no connection.’

No connection! But this was John Henry Mann! THE John Henry Mann. The ONLY John Henry Mann I could find and his story was so great. This HAD to be him!

We laughed so much we nearly cried.

I now have a new mission in life. A new focus. A desire that won’t get crushed. A passion that won’t get quenched. I WILL connect this John Henry Mann with the family somehow, even if it’s only through Adam!

Some better views of Brantford. The rest is pretty average.

TIM's PERSPECTIVE.

After all, it is my mother's family we are talking about.  And after all, we had drawn a bit of a blank yesterday at Brantford Public Library.

So today didn't seem worth calling back to find ourselves on a wild goose-chase.

I was happy to have seen the road where my mother lived, and walk round the town, sensing what it might have been like 100 years ago (yes, she lived there 100 years ago, and if you want to know why, I'll tell you sometime).

But Ruth is more of a drama queen, an arty type, and a dreamer.

I, on the other hand am more practical and down to earth.  I was content to visit the Alexander Graham Bell museum instead of the library.  He had invented the telephone in this very town of Brantford, where my mother lived!!  Awesome.

I was more interested in wires and telephones and things like that.

By the time I got back to my dear wife, 2 hours later, she had dreamt up, - no, - concocted a story of my relatives being born in Faversham Kent, and possibly knowing her grandparents in the same town!

All very plausible but entirely fiction!!

Bless her!  How we laughed!