WILLIAM ANDERSON m. Eliza Crawford

William Anderson Sr. was born in Omagh, Co. Tyrone, Ireland in 1817 and died in East Hawkesbury Twp., Prescott Co., Ontario on 15 August 1908. He and his wife, Eliza Crawford, were married in Scotland where their first three children were born. They emigrated to Canada in 1852 and had a family of six sons and three daughters:

1. James b. 1841 in Ireland. Nothing is known of him.
2. Catherine ("Kate") b. 1845 d. 10 Jan. 1893. She married Hugh Mark (1841 - 20 Aug. 1907) and had five children: Albert, Mary, James, Eliza and Howard.
3. William (8 May 1847 - 16 Feb. 1937) married Mary Georgina Ann Cunning (10 Aug. 1859 - 3 June 1935) and had eleven children: Jane, Eliza, Jennie, William, Wallace, Stewart, Samuel, Gordon, Lloyd, Guy and Leslie.
4. John b. 1851 d. 18 Feb. 1876.
5. Jeremiah b. 1852. He went out west and nothing more is known of him.
6. Johnston b. 1856 d. 17 Nov. 1875.
7. Eliza b. 1860 d. 1944 married John Harvey (1954 - 1918) and had five children: Sara, Beatrice, Roy, Daisy and Russell.
8. George b. 1862 d. abt 1895. He married Agnes "Christena" Taylor and had two sons, William and John.
9. Sarah Jane b. 18 Jan. 1867 d. 20 Oct. 1954 married Thomas McCuaig (June 1849 - 5 Dec. 1917) and had a family of nine children: Evelyn Catherine, Eliza, Thomas, Crawford, Evelyn Anna, Malcolm, Lorne, Wilmer and Jean.

1. Jane Anderson b. 25 Nov. 1875 d. 14 Mar. 1879
2. Eliza Crawford Anderson b. 17 Nov. 1878 d. 21 Nov. 1969 m. on 27 June 1900 to Roderick Duncan McCallum (9 Mar. 1870 - 26 Oct. 1957) and had ten children: Myrtle, Margaret, Wilmer, Mary, Douglas, Lillian, Wallace, Guy, Edna, and Lloyd.
3. Jane ("Jennie") Gibson Anderson b. 28 June 1880 d. 24 Sept 1954 m. on 11 Nov. 1903 to Samuel Henderson Rutherford (17 July 1876 - 3 Apr. 1963) and had four children: Jean, Robert, Keith and Melba.
4. William E. Anderson b. 24 July 1882 d. 30 June 1935 m. on 24 July 1907 to Kate "Violet" McLaren (28 Feb. 1883 - 18 May 1980) and had four children: Mildred, Clayton, Winston and William.
5. Wallace Cunning Anderson b. 23 Dec. 1883 d. 19 Aug. 1907.
6. Stewart Herbert Anderson b. 26 Oct. 1886 d. 27 Mar. 1951 m. on 12 June 1912 to Annie Lothian (15 Aug. 1887 - 20 Sept 1968).
7. Samuel Herbert Anderson b. 24 Mar. 1888 d. 23 Mar. 1914.
8. Thomas "Gordon" Anderson b. 18 Jan. 1890 d. 20 Mar. 1966 m 1^st on 6 Sept 1916 to Edna Alice Harvey (26 Apr. 1894 - 25 Jan. 1919 m 2^nd on 7 June 1922 to Avelina Margaret Stephens (27 Aug 1888 - 4 Aug. 1951) by whom he had two children: Ramsay & Ruth.
9. James "Lloyd" Franklin Anderson b. 26 Aug. 1892 d. 10 Aug. 1919.
10. Robert "Guy" Anderson b. 24 Jan. 1894 d. 11 July 1915.
11. Lionel "Leslie" Anderson b. 22 Apr. 1897 d. 25 Apr. 1975 m. on 24 Dec. 1918 to Florence Gertrude Fletcher (29 Jan. 1899 - 12 May 1990) and had seven children: Lloyd, Charles, Keith, Russell, Dorothy (died age 11 days), Eileen and Dorothy.

At that time, boys from rural families were often needed at home to help work the farm, and so they seldom advanced further than public school in their academic training. Such was most likely the case with Willie Anderson and his seven brothers.

He would have been about twenty years of age when he decided to set out on his own and purchased a farm in West Hawkesbury Township, Prescott County, between Vankleek Hill and L'Orignal. He lived on this farm and worked the land for only a few years until in 1904, at the age of 22, he bought the McLaren homestead in Lochiel Township from Norman McLaren. He boarded with the family until 1905 when the McLarens moved to Ottawa. He subsequently became engaged to Violet, the oldest daughter of Norman and Maggie (McNab) McLaren and they were married in Ottawa on July 24, 1907.

Willie brought his new bride back to her childhood home where they continued to live until 1921, when they moved to Vankleek Hill. During this time he kept bees with Violet's brother, Cecil McLaren, and worked at a saw mill. They harvested honey in the shed behind William and Georgina Anderson's house on Main Street. Three years later, Willie decided that he wanted to give up his bee hives and go back to farming. In 1924, he and Violet, together with her brother Cecil, set out for western Ontario to look for a suitable farm. In February, 1925, they settled on Lot 16, Concession 5, Pilkington Township, Wellington County.

He operated the farm for ten years. Willie was never sick a day in his life; he had a strong heart and no problems until he had a run-in with a bull. Violet used to say: "He was never the same after that." He started having problems with high blood pressure from this point onward. The incident with the bull occurred a few months before he died. Somehow, the bull had gotten out and was heading for him. There was a space between the barn and the pig pen. Willie jumped into the pig pen to get away. The bull tried to jump the baricade and perhaps Willie was injured.

In June of 1935, two weeks after his mother's funeral in Vankleek Hill, Willie went out to the barn with the boys to do chores. Violet usually went out to do the milking while Mildred stayed to make breakfast. He must have taken a stroke in the barn but was able to make his way back to the house. He told Voliet that something was wrong but said "don't tell anyone". Mildred called the doctor who came out and prescribed 'bleeding'. Willie was in bed two weeks and suffered several small strokes before he died at the age of 52 on July 24^th.

When Mildred was six years old and it came time for her to start school, she did not attend the little one room schoolhouse that stood next to the Breadalbane church a couple of miles down the road as her mother had. Instead, she was sent to the public school in Vankleek Hill, about ten miles away. This was for two reasons. She was too small to walk the distance to the country school by herself, and there had been a large influx of French families into the area which meant that the predominant language of the playground was becoming French. So, little Mildred stayed with her Grandmother and Grandfather McLaren in town during the week so she could attend the public school there, and would return home to the family farm on the weekends. When her brother Clayton was ready to join her at school two years later, the two of them stayed with their grandparents during the week. They continued to do this until 1921 when Mildred was eleven and her father sold the McLaren homestead and bought a house in town.

During her early years, the customary means of transportation was still by horse and buggy during the good weather, and a sleigh during the winter. Mildred remembers that they followed a set tradition every Christmas. The family would go into town to enjoy a big Christmas dinner with her McLaren grandparents, and then they were return home in the sleigh, do the chores and the milking so they could go to the Anderson farm to have the evening meal with her father's parents. Then on New Year's Day, both sets of grandparents, the Andersons and the McLarens and the aunts and uncles who weren't married would come to their farm for the day.

Mildred's father came from a large family of three sisters and seven brothers. However, not all of them lived to advanced ages. The eldest, Jane, died in 1879 at only four years of age, and four of the boys contracted Tuberculosis and died in their twenties. Wallace died in 1907, three years before Mildred was born, and her Uncle Sam died in 1914 when she was only four. One of her earliest memories, though, is of visiting her Anderson grandparents when Uncle Guy was sick in bed with TB and hearing the doctor tell her mother always to sit between the window and the bed when visiting him so the air would come to her and the children first. Guy died in 1915, four months after Mildred turned five. Mildred remembers her Uncle Lloyd, who died when she was nine, because he would have been one of the Uncles who came to their farm on New Year's Day with his parents. She still has memories of going with her brothers to visit their aunts and Uncles. Her parents would take them over and leave them with Uncle Gordon, and then from there they would walk through the fields and over the creek and over the tracks to Uncle Leslie's and Aunt Florence's farm, and from there they 'd go over to Uncle Stewart and Aunt Annie's. That was as far afield as they could go on their own.

Between 1916 and 1921 Mildred lived in town with her grandparents during the week while she attended the public school there. Her mother's sister Jean and her brother Cecil were living there at the time as well so she had the opportunity to get to know them quite well. Jeanette was a teacher at the public school and, in fact, taught Mildred for two years. The school system was quite different then than it is now. There were two years for each of four grades in public school, a junior and a senior year. She remembers that Muriel McLaren taught her in grade one, Florence Meech (her father's first cousin) taught her grade two, her Aunt Jean taught her junior and senior grade three, and Florence Meech taught her again in four.

Mildred and Clayton continued to live with their grandparents during the week while Mildred was attending public school, but just after she graduated and was ready to start High School, their father sold the McLaren homestead and bought a house in town. From 1921 onward they were able to live at their own home.

Up until this time the family attended the Breadalbane Baptist Church, but after they moved into Vankleek Hill, they attended the Baptist Church in town.

During the next several years her father kept bees with Violet's brother, Cecil McLaren, and worked at a saw mill. They harvested honey in the shed behind Norman and Maggie McLaren's house on Main Street. Three years later, Willie decided that he wanted to give up his bee hives and go back to farming. In 1924, he and Violet, together with her brother Cecil, set out for western Ontario to look for a suitable farm. In February, 1925, they settled on Lot 16, Concession 5, Pilkington Township, Wellington County.

Mildred was in the middle of grade eleven when her father moved the family to Elora so rather than change schools in mid-year, she again stayed with her grandparents so she could finish out the school year at the Vankleek Hill Collegiate. Her parents and her two brothers went on to Elora without her and she joined them the following June.

The next year she fully expected to start her grade twelve at the High School in Elora. At that time, however, the students studied half of the subject in one year and the next year they took the other half. The class that Mildred would have attended was going to cover the half that she had already completed so she went to the high school in Guelph instead and boarded in town during the week with Mr. And Mrs. Mitton, the people from whom her father had bought their new farm. She was only there for a few weeks when she had an attack of appendicitis. She returned home and had her appendix taken out on the dining room table at home by Dr. McQuibban. She remembers, with amusement, that her brothers came into her bedroom to say goodbye to her before going to school on the morning of her operations, and her thinking that they had done so because they were afraid the she was going to die before they got home from school.

By the the time she recovered from her operation, she had missed too much of the school term and so it was decided that she should stay at home until she could start back to school when the next school term began. She graduated from High School in 1927 at the age of seventeen.

The University of Guelph would have been the closest and most convient school for Mildred to attend upon graduation from High School. However, it was primarily an Agricultural College at that time and she wanted to study Mathematics and earn a Bachelor of Arts and teaching certificate, so she chose to attend McMaster University which was, then, still in Toronto. McMaster had been founded as a Baptist College and so it was though an appropriate institution for her to attend.

Mildred and her mother traveled to Toronto by train and stayed in the east end of Toronto at the home of Ella Campbell and her husband, Dr. Irvine. Ella was a distant cousin of Violet's. Violet went with Mildred when she registered at McMaster on the Monday and settled into the women's residence, Wallingford Hall. Mildred would be in Toronto for three of her four years at university. In 1930, McMaster University sold it's buildings to the University of Toronto and opened a new campus in the west end of Hamilton. As her name came first alphabetically, Mildred Anderson was the first girl to receive her B.A. from the Hamilton campus in June of 1931. The following year she was back in Toronto to earn her teaching certificate from the Ontario College of Education.

Mildred was now ready and eager to start her teaching career, but jobs were not so easy to come by. Unable to secure a teaching position, she returned to the family farm in Elora where she remained for the next three years. She was able to do some supply teaching for about five months in Windsor in 1935 while one of the teacher's was on sick leave. That June her Grandmother Anderson died. Her father did not have the money needed to travel home to the Hill for his mother's funeral, and Mildred was very happy to be able to give her father the money from what she had earned teaching in Windsor. Just two weeks after returning from his mother's funeral in Vankleek Hill, Willie went out to the barn with the boys to do chores. Violet usually went out to do the milking while Mildred stayed to make breakfast. He must have taken a stroke in the barn but was able to make his way back to the house. He told Voliet that something was wrong but said "don't tell anyone". Mildred called the doctor who came out and prescribed 'bleeding'. Willie was in bed two weeks and suffered several small strokes before he died at the age of 52 on July 24th.

The following September Mildred secured a teaching position at the Elora High School where she taught a variety of subjects over the next few years. When the Principal, Mr. Gilmour, took sick, Mildred was the most qualified of the three teachers on staff and she finished out the year as principal in his place.

She was visiting a friend in St. Catharines a few years later when she learned that there was a teaching position available at Stamford Collegiate in Niagara Falls. She went for an interview and was told that the job was hers on the condition that the School Board under which she was already on contract would grant her a dismissal. She returned to Elora and, seeing that it would be to her advantage to teach in a larger school, the Board of Education released her from her contract. It was while she was teaching in Niagara Falls that she renewed an earlier friendship with a man who had attended McMaster University with her, Orland Robbins, and they started seeing each other on a fairly regular basis. She remained at Stamford Collegiate until June of 1945 when the teacher, whose position she had filled, returned from the war.

In the latter part of that summer she went out to Ottawa to visit another university friend, Arlowa Ferguson. In the Fall, a short time after the school year had already begun, a position became available at the high school in Carleton Place where Orland Robbins was now teaching and she was hired on as a teacher. She and Orland Robbins were married in Kingston, Ontario, on December 8^th, 1945.

The next year Orland accepted a position as principal at the High School in Elora and they moved back to central Ontario. Mildred did some supply teaching while Orland taught Mathematics and Physics at the High School while at the same time carrying out his duties as principal.

They were only in Elora for one year. In September of 1946 they moved to Richmond Hill where they remained for the next three years.

In the summer of 1950 they planned to take a trip overseas with Mildred's Aunt Jean and to tour several countries in Europe. Jean, who was teaching in New Liskeard at the time, drove down to join them and they motored out to Montreal together to catch the ship on which they would sail for England. During the drive out, Jean took sick near Kingston and had to be hospitalized. She went into a diabetic coma and died on June 28^th. Mildred and Orland had already paid for their trip and couldn't get their money back, so they had no choice but to continue on to Europe.

When they returned home, they moved to Acton where Orland had accepted a job as principal of the High School. Mildred became pregnant the following year and their only child, Douglas, was born in nearby Guelph because Acton did not yet have its own hospital.

In 1954 they made yet another move, this time to Stouffville north of Toronto. Mildred again did some supply teaching and often when she was to teach, her mother-in-law would come up from her home in Niagara Falls and take care of the baby. Douglas attended nursery school for half a day in 1955.

In 1956 Orland accepted a teaching position at Kennedy Collegiate in Windsor, Ontario and the family moved into a house on Lincoln Street. Orland's brother Lawrence, also a teacher, accepted decided to move to Windsor the following year but Orland had already resigned and taken a job in St. Catharines before he learned of his brother's plans. Had he known that his brother was moving to Windsor, he would likely have remained there.

This was to be the last move that the family would make. Orland taught at the St. Catharines Collegiate from 1957 until 1961 after which time he taught first at Thorold High School and then at Westlane Secondary School in Niagara Falls before retiring in 1968. It was not long after their move to St. Catharines that Mildred found a teaching position at the Collegiate as well. When one of the teachers became pregnant and left to have her baby, Mildred finished out the year for her. She was hired on as a full time teacher the following year and it was from that school that she retired in 1975 at the age of 65. She still lives in the same house that they purchased when they moved to St. Catharines in 1957.