Happy birthday today to William John Smallman, my great-grandfather. William was born in Toronto on April 18, 1872. That’s right, 1872. That means he’d be 154 years old today. For context, he died in 1950 at age 78. In 2028, just two years, he will have been dead as long as he was alive.
Time is a funny thing.
I returned to my deep interest in William back in February when Melinda and I learned of a change in Canadian law. It automatically made Canadians out of anyone in the world with a Canadian ancestor. Given William was born in Toronto, when the law went into effect last December, I became a Canadian. So did my kids, Chloe and Ella. So did Chloe’s kids, Remy and Leon.
Place is a funny thing.
To be recognized by the Canadian government, you have to submit indisputable evidence. This involves finding documents that prove your ancestor is Canadian (a certified birth certificate is ideal) and additional documents that confirm your lineage, such as birth, death, and marriage certificates.
Since I’ve long been interested in genealogy, and, heck, I’ve had an 8×10 picture of William and his wife, Mary, in my home office as part of my Zoom background for a couple of years, I set about gathering the documents. After hearing from Chloe how much she’d like Canadian citizenship for herself and her kids, I decided to apply for our certificates.
Also in there was a handwritten family tree created by Ralph (see above). His printing was simple and easy to read. Seeing it reminded me that he would send my family cards and letters when my brothers and I were kids. Near the bottom of this tree is the entry for William with these comments: “My Father! Born in Canada. Went to Chicago in 1884.” A very nice piece of family history but penmanship aside, it’s probably not enough to convince the Canadian authorities that William was born in Canada.
I returned to an online family tree I created years ago on FamilySearch and looked for sources linked to William. I was pleased to find the exact record I needed: the official entry in the Ontario birth registry. Interestingly, I was the one who had added it there back in 2018! Each page of the registry includes space for six births (more in a second on how twins were registered). William’s entry is the one on the lower right. Here are images of both the full page and an enlarged version of William’s specific entry.
About twins, you may have already noticed that William was a twin, as noted in the images. I wasn’t aware of this before, something that took me back to Ralph’s family tree. Written in smaller print and outlined by a rectangle, I found this in Ralph’s handwriting: “Unnamed twin of William (died at birth).”
Wow!
Happy birthday today to William’s unnamed twin!
But wait a second. Look at the birth entry again. It appears that the twin WAS given a name: Frank. After some online sleuthing in the Ontario live birth index, brought to my attention by a kind person in the office of Ontario Records who took my call yesterday, I found evidence that Frank was not stillborn, though it soon became clear that he unfortunately died during his first week of life.
Among the treasure trove of documents Ralph had gathered and that my father had kept were photocopies of three handwritten letters Thomas (reminder – Thomas is William’s father) had sent to his mom in Ireland. Here’s a letter dated April 25th, 1872, a week after the birth of William and Frank:
As beautiful as Thomas’s handwriting is, I know it may be hard to read. Here’s a transcription of the parts relevant to a son sending a letter to his overseas mother to tell her she’s a grandmother:
I suppose you will not be surprised to hear that you now have a grandson. There were two of them but the other poor little fellow is dead. Christie has had a pretty hard time of it and is only mending very slowly. It is a very strong healthy child and so far quiet as could be expected.
I find this all kind of heartbreaking, actually, and more than a little touching. I know families were much more accustomed to stillbirths and the death of children than we are (shout-out to modern medicine and vaccines). But it still slows me down to think about how Thomas and his wife, my great-great grandmother Christie, were feeling that week and beyond.
So I share all of this today as a tribute to all of them:
- to William and Frank on the occasion of their births 154 years ago today
- to Thomas who made sure the births were properly recorded, something he did on April 25th, 1872, the same day he wrote a letter to his mother in Ireland
- to Christie who 154 years ago gave birth to two children, one of them my great-grandfather, William, in Toronto
The number of descendants that William has is no small number and it’s only getting larger, what with Remy and Leo, my grandchildren, having been born in the last three years.
And about those certificates for Canadian citizenship I’m applying for (for Leo, Remy, Ella, Chloe and me), having found William’s birth record I now had the anchor I needed. I have since acquired his death certificate which shows his birth place as being in Canada, the birth & death certificates of Ralph which show that his father is William, the birth & death certificates of Al which show that his father is Ralph, my birth certificate which shows my father is Al, the birth certificates of Chloe and Ella which show that I am their father, and the birth certificates of Remy and Leo which show that Chloe is their mother.
I shipped the application package off to Nova Scotia on Tuesday.
POSTSCRIPTS:
“The guy giggled at me when I said, ‘I need a death certificate for my uncle. Wait, but not FOR him. My uncle didn’t die.” Yeah, people are fun.
Andy Smallman 