thoughts on worldly matters.
When Sarah was twenty one, she left Eaton’s with a flattering letter of recommendation signed by Timothy Eaton himself, pointing out that she had risen to be second in charge of the millinery department for the past year. She took a position in Armstrong’s General Store, a dry goods emporium in Brigden, a small village on what is now Highway 80 in Lambton County.
It is more than likely that Sarah had a secret reason to want to give up a promising career in the city. Perhaps she had attended a summer Methodist Meeting Ground which gave young people of that faith an excellent opportunity to hear a variety of preachers and also to meet one another. These summer meetings were very popular and, it must be added, well chaperoned. Perhaps Sarah met up with her family at the June Conference of 1881 and was introduced by her father to a young student, George Sutton Weir by name. Perhaps she had met him previously when the family was stationed in Owen Sound and he was teaching school in Georgina Township in Bruce County. At any rate when George Sutton Weir went to Plympton in Lambton County as a teacher and student minister, Sarah found employment nearby. As the saying of those days went, ‘she had set her cap for him.’
Attracted by more than his preaching, Sarah decided to cultivate their friendship and mutual admiration. She no doubt had been given a copy of her father’s tract, published in 1877, Lectures on the Bible and Other Subjects, printed by an unidentified ‘book and job printer’ in Owen Sound and perhaps enjoyed sharing this work with George Sutton. It was while Sarah was living in Brigden that she received the telegram informing her of her father’s death.
After the fire Martha Amanda moved immediately from the Reserve to Owen Sound with what little goods she had saved after the house had burned to the ground. Charles, Sarah’s brother, who is reported as having said that he would like to be a preacher like his father, seems to have left home. Martha Amanda, now on her own, was having great difficulties trying to make ends meet. It was Sarah who wrote to the Conference of Methodist Bishops requesting some sort of pension for her mother and four younger sisters. The reply was to the effect that there would be no pension as the Reverend Brother Henry had failed to remit one year’s payment on his pension. The Bishops’ advice to Sarah was to get a job and support her mother and sisters, a rather tall order for a girl of twenty two who had been helping already and whose family was in exceptional need. Frances was sixteen, Mary was thirteen, Eva Jane was twelve and Laura Alberta an infant. Timothy Eaton wrote to Martha Amanda offering to take the infant and raise her, but the widow refused.
Martha Amanda, now a vivacious and dainty young widow of thirty-nine, once her husband was gone, set about her new responsibilities. It is not recorded exactly how she managed, but in all probability Sarah helped as much as she could. Young Frances was the beauty of the family and one way out of her money troubles would be for Martha Amanda to arrange marriages for her girls. Accordingly, Frances, being ‘polished up’ so as to attain the best possible marriage, was subjected to lessons in painting, singing and horseback riding. It may have been that Martha Amanda was a good hand at needlework and repaid her daughter’s teachers in kind. Timothy Eaton also may have contributed to the family’s needs from time to time.
An opportunity came for a marriage with young Will Marshall, twenty three, and the son of a great lakes shipping owner in Owen Sound. Later in 1882, he and Frances, known in the family as Frankie, were married. From all accounts Will Marshall, who was put in charge of the family interests in Duluth, Minnesota, was a young man of considerable spirit and an overbearing husband. Being employed on a laker in the family company meant he was away from home a great deal and lived what was described as a rough life. Frankie lost a baby in 1883 and died shortly afterward.
Martha Amanda’s eldest daughter, Sarah, twenty-four years of age in 1884 and described by her exceptionally beautiful sisters as being “strikingly beautiful with lovely creamy skin, blue eyes and shining auburn hair,” was next to marry. Undoubtedly she was a lovely bride, but perhaps more simply dressed than Frankie was at her wedding. Sarah would have been an elegant figure nonetheless, probably in a gown of brown silk more than likely with a bustle in the very latest fashion. However, the wedding party must have been an unusual sight, the bride, a statuesque and commanding presence at just under six feet in height, and the groom, a slight man of 136 pounds and five and a half feet tall. As was customary, the bride was described on her marriage certificate as “spinster, resident of Owen Sound,” while George was described as a student, resident of Plympton. The couple was married by the Reverend George Clarke in the Wesley Methodist Church in Welland, Niagara County, with Mary Burgas and John Foss as witnesses. Although Sarah and her siblings wrote to one another with frequency in later life, there is no surviving communication, no card, telegram or greeting of any kind from Martha Amanda to her daughter, nor from the sisters on her marriage. Until the wedding day, the couple was each employed in Lambton County, but it was not an uncommon occurence for a couple to travel together to another settlement for the ceremony.
As a student for the ministry in Canada, George was prohibited from marrying prior to ordination, however, in the United States, he could become a circuit rider before ordination and marriage was permitted. Since Welland borders New York State, the newly wedded pair proceeded directly to George’s first posting at Grayling, in the Alpena District of the Detroit Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church where he was admitted on trial. It would seem that two very lonely young people, each from a home devoid of displays of affection and each raised in a hair shirt philosophy of service before self, as well as in poverty, had found each other. Leaving their country and their relatives was worth the risk. To be with one another was apparently their decision.
By 1885 Martha Amanda now had three unmarried daughters. However, her son-in-law, Will, was a widower and her eldest remaining daughter, Mary, was sixteen. She arranged for a photographer in Owen Sound to take their pictures in the elaborate and detailed high fashion of the 1880’s. The two older girls were great beauties and Laura Alberta was a very pretty child. Soon it was arranged that Mary would marry Will Marshall and take the youngest, a five year old, with her to Duluth. Laura Alberta, known as Bertie in the family, was to become a sort of skivvy for Mary, a pious young woman who took after her father in her ideas of rectitude. In the family it was said that Mary would rather walk through a muddy puddle than step over a playing card lying on the street. The religiously upright Mrs. Will and her rough living husband must have been quite a pair. Mary did produce two daughters over a period of time. In 1903 Sarah would travel to Duluth to be with her and assist with her first childbirth and again for the second child. In 1906 Mary was considered to be in fragile health and the second baby was brought back east by Sarah to be raised for a few months in her home. In the meantime Eva Jane married the lawyer Alexander Thompson of Paris and seems to have had a happy marriage. Later, her son Arthur Thompson would article with his cousin Samuel Edward.
On July 1, 1893, Martha Amanda was married for the second time to a farmer from the Owen Sound area, William Morrison Wilson. He was said by her descendants to have been mean and unkind to her. Martha Amanda did not reclaim her youngest, Bertie, now a child of twelve, once she remarried. Perhaps she felt that Bertie was better off in Duluth. This, however, was not quite the case. Bertie existed in a state of virtual slavery. She was responsible for scrubbing, cleaning and wringing out Will’s work clothing at midnight when he arrived home and had to be up at 3.30 a.m. to prepare his breakfast. Will apparently harassed her. When she was still a schoolgirl he made a serious attempt to assault her sexually, an act which was witnessed by two little friends who had come to call for her on their way to school. The mother of one told Bertie to tell the police, but she was afraid to do so. Later in a long letter to Eva she expressed regret at not having reported him. “I hated, hated, hated Will Marshall,” she wrote. Bertie did try to tell Mary of Will’s behaviour, but Mary lost her temper saying, “Don’t talk to me like that of my man.”
A picture taken of Bertie when she was about sixteen shows a very beautiful girl dressed in the height of fashion, a photograph taken after she had run away from an impossible situation. She went west to Idaho and then to Panama City where she speculated in a gold mine which failed, worked as a journalist, ran
