great treat. Finally, in 1946, at the age of 52, he married. His bride was May Moore of London, Ontario, who for some years prior to her marriage, had been secretary to our subject, Samuel Edward in London. Samuel Edward, the eastern cousin, was considered a great matchmaker in finally persuading Sandy to marry and in providing a much admired bride, whose city clothes were the sensation of Oxbow. The couple had no children and retired to White Rock, British Columbia where they are buried.
George, 1895-1975, Susannah and Robert’s third child, married Lily Craft and the couple had two sons, James and William. Their next child, Edward Francis, 1897-1985, married and had seven children. He was more interested in horticulture than in farming and was instrumental in the development of rust resistant wheat.
Susannah and Robert’s fifth child, Mary Jean, 1899-1978, married G.B. Street in 1931. She was a registered nurse and it was said she had delivered all the babies and had looked after almost everyone in southern Saskatchewan throughout her career. In 1955 when the couple moved to Shaunavon following Street’s retirement, Mary Jean became matron of the nursing home until she herself retired.
The youngest child of Susannah and Robert Burnett, Agnes Kirkman Burnett, was born in 1901, the only one of their children born in the West. She taught school until her marriage to Jack VanderMeulen in 1925. The couple farmed near Yorkton, where Agnes now lives, the only known first cousin of Samuel Edward still alive. Agnes and Jack had two children, a boy and a girl, both with descendants still in Saskatchewan.
George Sutton Weir, Samuel Edward’s father, born 1859; married 1884; died 1944.
The sixth child of Robert Weir and Martha Sutton Weir was James, born in 1863. James also went west to seek his fortune and became a well known journalist in British Columbia. According to Samuel Edward, he was a friend and crony of western leaders and politicians.
Two more children of Robert and Martha Sutton Weir, Mary, born in 1865 and Margaret, born in 1867, died in infancy. Edward Francis, the last son, born probably in 1869, became a doctor, practising in Meadville, Missouri. A daughter, Huldah, born in 1874, was Martha Sutton Weir’s last baby. Martha died of typhoid and complications shortly afterwards. Huldah, raised by an uncle on her mother’s side, Edward Sutton, married Walter McBain and had seven children, twenty two grandchildren and thirteen great grandchildren, all of whom seemed to have farmed in Saskatchewan and Alberta.
George Sutton was fifteen and Samuel, George’s brother, after whom Samuel Edward was named, was fourteen when their mother died. The two boys remained close all their lives. Before his fifteenth birthday, George Sutton suffered some sort of injury while working on the farm and for the rest of his life had a hole right through his leg. His grandniece, Margaret Markert, the granddaughter of Samuel and Caroline Voss Weir, and the daughter of Helen Irene, remembers seeing it when she was a small child.
Robert Weir remarried shortly after Martha’s death, but it was not a happy choice for him nor for his children. The second wife, recorded only by her surname Neilson, deserted the household and it can be imagined that, in the years when George Sutton and Samuel were adolescents, the home was anything but a joyous, happy place. George’s brothers, as far as is known, all did well in the world, especially Samuel, and despite their Aunt Jane’s mistake, the surviving sisters married well. It is interesting to note that all the children left home as soon as it was practical.
JANE WEIR AND DAVID CHAMBERS, M. –
Robert Weir lent a considerable sum of money to David Chambers, his sister Jane’s husband, mortgaging the Weir farm to do so. Chambers was not particularly well liked in the community. An Englishman, he was known as an accountant and had worked in San Salvador, sometimes as a teacher. It was rumoured by some that he was a remittance man. Whatever his scheme was for making himself and others rich, his latest venture came to nothing and he was sued for embezzlement. Unable to repay Robert the money he had borrowed, his default led to the foreclosure of the original Weir land grant. Fortunately, Robert was able to set himself up on another property where he specialized in dairy farming. Thus Samuel Edward’s grandfather, a Methodist minister and a dairy farmer, became a milkman, delivering milk to homes in what had grown to be the town of London.
As would be expected, family relationships were strained by Chambers’ actions. Numerous letters written between the brothers and sisters and their children reveal that Aunt Jane Chambers was thought of as a rather embittered, elderly, childless widow after Chambers’ death. Her nieces and nephews found her trying, but if she had thought that Chambers had married her solely in order to gain control of money from Robert’s generosity as well as her own legacy of two hundred dollars from the will of her father, her bitterness is understandable.
OTHER DAUGHTERS OF ARCHIBALD AND MARY CURRIE WEIR
Other children included Mary Ann (1825) who married John Stacey and lived in London Township. Jane, of the unfortunate marriage, born in 1827, was followed by two more daughters. Sarah (1830) married James Grant, the founder of the town of Granton, Ontario. Martha (1832) married twice, first to Squire Corless and subsequently to Bernard Stanley, seems to have lived her entire life in London Township. The last child of Archibald and Mary Currie Weir, a daughter, Elizabeth (1837) married a school teacher, James Harrison. She had been willed one hundred dollars by her father. The couple lived in St. Mary’s, had several children and were known far and wide for their hospitality. In their parlour, an organ held pride of place and frequently relatives and friends were drawn to the evenings of music and singing.
THE YOUNGER SONS OF ARCHIBALD AND MARY CURRIE WEIR
Then there was Samuel Weir, the eighth child of Archibald and Mary, who married Hannah O’Brien. The couple had four children, two girls and two boys both of whom seem to have died without issue. Samuel was left five shillings in his father’s will.
John, the last son, born in 1835, married Anne Jane McSully of Strathroy. The couple had three daughters, then a son, about whom nothing is known other than their names: Mary Jane, Martha Ann, Margaret Elizabeth and George. Their fifth child, Robert Currie, was born in 1877 and married Josephine Pearl Johnstone on June 12, 1912. Known as Bert, he and Josephine Pearl had two children: Mary Josephine (1914) who married Duncan Alexander Mackay and John Robert, who married Vera Eugenie Eustace. Two children were born to John and Vera: Barbara Joan who married William George Stiles and Robert Stuart, who married Karen Clothilde Sass.
Robert Currie Weir became a well known physician, practising in Auburn, Ontario. On the fiftieth anniversary of his practice, he was given a celebration by the entire community and a great many of the children he had brought into the world over the course of half a century came to wish him well. John Robert, Samuel Edward’s second cousin, served in the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II. Despite the disparity in age, the two became close friends and remained so. John’s wife, Vera, acted as an ‘honorary’ secretary to Samuel Edward after his retirement. When this work became an almost full time occupation for her, the situation was brought to his attention, and Samuel Edward attended to his oversight in her favour.
Samuel Weir, Samuel Edward’s namesake, born 1860.
So it is that Archibald and Mary Currie Weir, blown off course on their voyage to the New World, inadvertently laid the foundations of a pioneering dynasty from Upper Canada, ultimately to the entire country as well as in the United States, a thoroughly impressive legacy of leaders, founders and pioneering farmers from coast to coast in North America.
2 THE BAWTENHEIMER FAMILY
THE MATERNAL SIDE OF SAMUEL EDWARD’S
