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| Canadian Expeditionary Force service file for Frederick John Everett Ball, Regimental no 33249 |
French War Bride Marie-Jeanne Mazeau married British-born Canadian Expeditionary Force soldier Frederick J E Ball in Rouen, France in 1917. Marie-Jeanne was born in September 1895 to Louis Mazeau and his wife Appoline Augustine Lebreton in Rouen, France.
Frederick was born in London, England in 1891 to Frederick
Ball and his wife Henrietta Louis Claydon. He came to Canada with his family as
a young man in April 1911, on the ship Victorian, headed to Winnipeg. He enlisted
in September 1914, at Valcartier, Quebec and went overseas with the No. 3 Field
Ambulance as part of the First Contingent in October 1914.
He served with the No 3 Field Ambulance from February 1915 to June 1916 and was later attached to the Canadian Section, 3rd Echelon, General Headquarters, in Rouen, France from June 1916 to February 1919, where he met his future wife.
Frederick returned to Canada on the Adriatic in September
1919, with his French bride and the couple lived in Victoria for a few years.
However, by 1925 Marie-Jeanne had remarried to John Diggle in Bellingham,
Washington and the couple resided in North Vancouver where Marie-Jeanne had an
avid interest in growing African Violets.
(c) Annette Fulford, January 2025
I have often wondered how many French war brides came to Canada after the First World War. Not a lot of information has been located regarding these war brides. Only one source indicated that there was soldiers' dependents living in France and Belgium at the Armistice that needed to be brought to Canada. These dependents were sent to England first to await passage to Canada.
I am currently tracking 65 French war brides who arrived in Canada from April to June 1919 with hopes of learning more about them. Do you have a French war bride in your family or one that came to your community? I'd love to hear from you. Contact me at wwiwarbrides@shaw.ca
(c) Annette Fulford, November 2024
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| Cedric at Liverpool - Annette Fulford collection |
In 2017, I wrote about the birth of Franklin Cedric Orchard, who was born at sea while on the journey to Canada in 1919 with his mother Winifred, a war bride.
I was able to find his birth entry in the passenger list records but often wondered if any additional records were created at the same time for his birth. There was even a note to the left of his entry on the passenger list indicating whom his mother was and what page she could be found on in the manifests (page12, entry 12).
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| Cedric - Library and Archives Canada, T-14797 |
I found an answer to this question a new database for Births, Marriages and Deaths at Sea from Ancestry. I was able to learn exactly what day he was born and also the coordinates of his birth location.
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| UK, Registers and Indexes of Births.., Cedric. The National Archives. |
It was exciting to learn these new details about his birth, which I was able to pass on to his family.
Sources:
Orchard, Frankin Cedric; Passenger Manifest: Cedric, 12 September 1919, Halifax, at Library and Archives Canada. Microfilm: T-14797 (accessed 3 February 2010).
Ancestry.com. UK, Registers and Indexes of Births, Marriages and Deaths of Passengers and Seamen at Sea, 1891-1922, The National Archives, Kew, Surrey, England. (accessed 17 December 2023).
(c) Annette Fulford, January 2024
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| RMS Melita - Annette Fulford Collection |
In August 2023, Ancestry added a new database that solved a decades long question I’ve had about a death of a young child who was buried at sea. While doing research in passenger lists recently, this database was among the search results. Intrigued, I went on a deep dive down the rabbit hole on a quest for answers.
Back in
1992, I inherited the letter my grandmother wrote while on her journey to
Canada as a war bride in 1919. She was traveling on the RMS Melita in
September that year. One event she wrote about that caught my attention was the
burial at sea of an infant who was only three months old. My grandmother never
mentioned the family by name but she explained that the parents were at the
burial and that it was very sad because the father, an officer on board, was
blind.
When
additional passenger lists were released in 1998, I was finally able to view
the passenger list for the September sailing of the Melita and learned that the
couple was the HITCHON family from Brantford, Ontario. Wilton Wallace Hitchon,
his wife Enda Verity, and their infant son John Dunstan Hitchon. The one
question I’ve had for the past 20 years has been, what did their son die from?
The couple
married in July 1916 and Wilton Wallace Hitchon enlisted as an officer in the
204th Battalion in August 1916 at Camp Bordon and later went
overseas to France with the 54th Battalion in September 1917. During
the course of the war, he was injured and left blind. He suffered gunshot
wounds to the legs, hands and face including both eyes.
He was sent
to St. Dunstan's Hostel for Blind Military Personnel to recover and learn new life skills.
His wife Edna requested permission from the Canadian government to travel
overseas and join her husband in England to aid in his recovery. Their son John
D Hitchon was born in London in June 1919
I searched
for the child in the database, but no results were found so I revised the information
to include only the first name of the child and the ship he was travelling on
in 1919. I found his name; it was listed backwards as Hitchon John Dunstan.
I learned
that the cause of death was mucous colitis, a gastrointestinal disorder, with a
secondary cause of marasmus, which is severe undernutrition. He lacked the
necessary fuel to maintain normal body functions. I had been expecting his
death to be from influenza. His death was a sad ending to his very short life.
The database has also helped to learn more about the war brides who gave birth at sea or died from influenza while on the journey and were buried at sea. So, if you
have question about an event that happened on the ship your ancestor travelled
on, the answer might be found in these records.
Sources:
Clark, Grace (Gibson). Letter, written 17 September and 24 September 1919, while on board C.P.R. ship R.M.S. Melita to her parents Mr. and Mrs. F.O. Gibson in Sheffield, England; held since 1992 by the author.
Clark, Grace; Passenger list: RMS Melita, 25 September 1919, Quebec, Library and Archives Canada, Microfilm T14702 (accessed 18 June 1999).
Wilton Wallace Hitchon, Personnel Records of the First World War, Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF), RG 150, Accession 1992-93/166, Box 4392 - 40 (accessed 8 August 2008).
Edith Wakefield (1889-1972) and Albert Dore (1894-1954)
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| Aquitania - Annette Fulford collection |
Edith Rebecca
Wakefield was born in 1889 at Folkestone, Kent, the daughter of William Matthew
Wakefield and his wife Emma Elizabeth Cullen. Edith worked as a domestic
servant before the war. She met British-born Canadian Expeditionary Force
soldier Albert Dore and they were married in June 1916 at Folkestone, only
eight months after he arrived in England.
Albert William Dore
was born in 1894 at Milton, Oxford, England to Wyckliffe Albert Dore and Fanny
Puffet. Albert came to Canada in April 1913 onboard the Ascania,
which travelled from Southampton, England to Portland, Maine. He was headed to
Toronto but ended up in Paris, Ontario working in the knitting mills.
Albert enlisted with
the 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles (Regimental # 109312) on 23
November 1914 at Toronto, went overseas in July 1915 and trained at Dibgate and
Caesar’s Camp in Kent. They left for France from Folkestone in October 1915.
He suffered from
shell shock after the Battle of the Somme in September 1916 and was in the
hospital for three weeks. He complained of nervousness, headaches, shortness of
breath on exertion, and excessive perspiration at night. He was also easily
startled and had a slight tremor.
He was awarded the
Military medal in October 1916 for bravery in the field “for conspicuous
gallantry and devotion to duty.” The website Great War Centenary Association,
Brant County, Ontario gives a full citation for receiving the medal “in
carrying despatches on frequent occasions under rifle and shell fire. He
carried despatches in daylight through places which were considered too
dangerous to allow other ranks to use.”
"In June 1917, a
shell exploded close by and he was thrown into a shell hole." He returned
to England from France and spent the rest of the war in and out of hospitals
suffering from dyspnoea, palpations, vertigo, fatigue and sweating on exertion.
Albert was diagnosed
with Neurasthenia and was no longer fit for service. He was invalided to Canada
on the hospital ship Araguaya in February 1918, landing at
Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Halifax harbour was severely damaged in the explosion
of a supply ship and a munitions ship in December 1917.
Edith Dore came to
North America on the ship Aquitania in October 1918 with their
daughter Minnie Edith, who was born earlier in the year. They were headed to
Paris, Ontario. The ship travelled from Southampton, England to New York
between October 21 - 28th, 1918.
Edith and Albert had
2 sons and 4 daughters while living in Paris.
In June 1940, their
eldest son Thomas enlisted in the Canadian army at Galt, Ontario and he went
overseas to England with the Highland Light Infantry of Canada. Thomas died of
wounds in June 1944 and is buried in Brookwood Military Cemetery in Woking, Surrey,
England.
Edith Dore was the
president of the Silver Cross Mothers in Paris, Ontario in 1958.
Albert died in 1954 and Edith in 1972. They are buried in the local
cemetery in Paris.
Sources:
Bennett, S. G.
The 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles, 1914-1919, Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/mountedrifles00bennuoft/page/4/mode/1up
(accessed October 4, 2020)
Albert William Dore MM, Great War Centenary Association website, Brant County, Ontario http://www.doingourbit.ca/profile/albert-dore-mm?page=4 (accessed October 4, 2020)
Albert William
Dore, 4th CMR website http://www.4cmr.com/dore.htm (accessed August 4, 2020)
Albert William
Dore, Personnel Records of the First World War, Regimental No 109312, RG 150, Accession
1992-93/166, Box 2604 – 2, Library and Archives Canada. https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/military-heritage/first-world-war/personnel-records/Pages/item.aspx?IdNumber=360825
(accessed August 1, 2020)
Thomas William Dore, Service No A/37579, Canadian Virtual War Memorial (CVWM) https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/memorials/canadian-virtual-war-memorial/detail/2762464?Thomas%20William%20Dore (accessed August 1, 2020)
Chilliwack
Progress, August 27, 1958, 20 https://theprogress.newspapers.com/ (accessed August 4, 2020)
London Gazette,
29805, page 10488, 27 October 1916 https://www.thegazette.co.uk/awards-and-accreditation (accessed August 4, 2020)
(c) Annette Fulford, March 2021
