Category: Young

Our grandmother on our father’s side had an older brother Harry Nixon who was born in 1882.  His mother died when he was a young boy  but his father remarried the next year.  Harry  became a house builder and resided in Brighton England.

Harry married Alice Mary Sumner in 1909.  Together they had five children.  Their eldest son John Nixon joined the RCAF during WW2 and died in Malaysia in 1945. 

Harry sailed to Canada alone in 1922 though he was married with children.  His sister and half sister were living in Canada at the time.  The trip was probably to visit his sisters.  Our grandmother often spoke of him fondly.  Our father was known as Harry Young for most of his life. Our aunts thought that our  grandmother renamed our father after Harry Nixon to eliminate the name of her first husband.

There are records showing that Harry was a successful house builder in Brighton.  Harry died in 1966.  His grave is in Preston Anglican Parrish in Brighton England.

Harry Young enlisted in the Canadian Armed Forces in 1939. He was made a lieutenant in 1941. He was posted overseas on July 30th, 1942 landing in Liverpool. In Septemeber 1942 he joined the First Canadian Army Headquarters in the RCE works section.

He married Jean Cairns at a church in Cuckfield, Sussex, United Kingdom in October 1942.

After extensive training in England, the group crossed over at Normandy about a month after D-day. Harry was a captain then and was decorated during that time in Europe. He recalled building Bailey bridges over the Rhine near Nijmegen Holland to allow the Allied forces to cross over the river to enter Germany.

Anne Jagger was baptized January 20th 1822 at St. Helen’s Church in Yorkshire, England. Her parents were John Jagger, a coal miner and Elizabeth Totty. Anne was the eldest child in the family and her mother died when she was 12. Her father remarried and her step mother was Grace Sefton.

Anne was married in 1847 ar Sanda Magna St Helen’s to James Heath. St Helen’s church was mentioned in the 1086 Domesday book. It was named for the first Christian Roman Emperor Constantine’s mother. Anne’s signature was an X mark which meant she was illiterate. Her husband was a servant as was his father. Her only child Albert Heath was born in 1848.

In the 1851 England census Anne was listed as a cook living in the house of her employer. Albert was living with his grandparents. Her husband had likely died by then. Anne landed in New York in 1851 with her son. By 1861 she was listed in the Canadian census living in Galt Ontario with her Albert. She appeared in the 1871 census as a housekeeper. At age 54 she married Daniel Allen age 75 in Waterloo. It’s hard to confirm her death but the only Ann Allen born 1822 died in York in 1909 in York due to senility.

Anne seems an incredibly resilient person who despite few financial resources raised her son and provided them both new opportunities in Canada.

The Youngs had farmed in Singleborough, Bucks County for generations. They were tenant farmers who rented farmland from a landowner. Singleborough is a Hamlet within the Parish of Great Horwood. Great Horwood is a village and a parish in Winslow district, Bucks (Buckinghamshire). The village stands 2½ miles NE by N of Winslow. Winslow was once a market town. The parish also includes the hamlet of Singleborough and comprises 3,109 acres.

Singleborough was a settlement in the Domesday Book in the hundred of Mursley Singleborough had a recorded population of 12 households in 1086. Mursley was once a more important village and was designated as a market town by virtue of a royal charter granted in 1230. Hundreds (the origin of this name is obscure) were the main administrative subdivisions of a county, with a significant role in financial, military, judicial, and political matters centred upon the Hundred court, which met monthly. Counties were the primary structural element of the Domesday Book. There were 31 counties in Great Domesday. Each county was divided into fiefs, each fief into Hundreds, each Hundred into vills, and each vill into manors.

Edwin Young was a farmer born in Newton-Longville, Buckinghamshire, in 1816. He was one of seven children of Thomas Young and Martha Sears.

By the 1841 census, Edwin had moved to Singleborough, married, and had a son Edwin, age 1. His first child Joseph had died as an infant. The distance from his birthplace to Singleborough was 7 miles.

In 1851 he had five children, 60 acres of land and two labourers to work on the farm.

My great great grandmother Mary Ann Mumford (Viccars) became a widow at the age of 37 in 1850, the year my great-grandmother was born. She had 6 children, according to the 1851 census ranging in age from 12 to one. In 1851 she was listed as both a farmer of 19 acres and a butcher, but by 1871 she was exclusively a butcher. She lived all of her life in Great Horwood Buckinghamshire. She died in 1890, just a few years before her youngest daughter Hannah emigrated to Canada with her husband, George Young and adult children, including my grandfather Richard Augustus Young.

Her estate was 443 pounds. I think Mary Ann lived an unusual life for her time.

George Young was born in Great Horwood, Buckinghamshire, in 1849.  George was the third son of Edwin Young and Elizabeth Ridgway.

Great Horwood is listed in the 1076 Domesday Book.   It remains a rural part of England, and the village has just over 1,000 people.  Roman artifacts have been found on the land.  The name is Anglo-Saxon in origin and means muddy wood.  The area was subject to the Norman conquest.

George married Hannah Mumford in Winslow, Buckinghamshire in 1870.  My grandfather Richard Augustus was the second of four children.  According to the 1891 census, George was a farmer and had one employee. He decided to move with his wife, daughter Annie (18), and three sons, George M.(21), Richard Augustus(19), and Percy (9), 1893 to Canada. 

George first lived in New Westminster, British Columbia.  He tried homesteading in Macleod, Alberta and was enumerated for the 1911 census.  He returned to British Columbia after two years.

George died in 1926 while living in New Westminster.  His wife, Hannah, died in 1920.

Richard Augustus Young was the second child of George Young and Hannah Mumford. He was born June 19, 1873, in Winslow, Buckinghamshire.  He came to Canada in 1893 with his parents and his older Brother George,  his sister Anne, and younger brother Percy.

By 1901 he was living in New Westminster, BC, with his family. He married Margaret May Nixon in 1907.  They had 2 children in British Columbia, then moved to Macleod, Alberta to homestead where Eileen was born.  They returned to BC and had 2 more children, the last born in 1916.  He became a butcher just like his maternal grandmother, Mary Ann Mumford. He was a short man standing 5’3.5 inches, with blue eyes and brown hair. In 1916 Richard Augustus joined the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force.  He joined the 238th Battalion, known as the Forestry Corps.  They produced timber to be used in the war. He was a private, and his unit sailed from Halifax in September to Liverpool.

In 1918 he had a bout of Influenza, and he returned to New Westminster. He was discharged by the Army in 1919. However, by then, his marriage was over.  He often listed himself as single. His wife listed herself as a widow,  There seems to be no divorce on file even though his wife remarried in 1922. According to the family, Richard worked in the lumber industry in British Columbia, mostly logging.  He kept in touch with his two older children and remained single for the rest of his life.  He died in 1957 in Burnaby, British Columbia.

Anne or Annie Young was born in February 1975 in Singleborough, Buckinghamshire, England. She was the third child of George Young and Hannah Mumford.

Her father, George, was a farmer. In the 1881 Census, he is listed as having 50 acres and employing 3 men and one boy on a farm at Great Horwood.

By the 1891 census, the family had moved to Bletchley and lived at the Rectory Farm. There was no longer a mention of 50 acres.

It is unclear if this change of circumstance caused him to move the entire family to New Westminister B.C. in 1893 when Anne was 18. Anne travelled on her own on The Germanic, A White Star Line steamship that travelled from Liverpool to NYC once a month. It carried 359 people. Her occupation is that of a housemaid.

Once she arrived in Canada, she met and married Robert Kerr. Robert and Annie were married on Dec 26, 1895, in B.C. They came to Alberta in 1906 to homestead with their family of three; Edwin, Ian and Iva. A fourth child Ina was born in Alberta but lived only for a few months.

Henry Nixon was born in 1841 in Huxley Lodge Northamptonshire, the youngest and 5th child of Reuben and Ann Nixon.In 1871 he lived with his sister Sarah Hill. He married Matilda Ann Henley in 1881 at Holy  Trinity Church in Wimbledon. They had two children one of whom was our grandmother Margaret May.  His oldest child was His son Harry Burtenshaw born in 1882. His wife died in 1887 and he remarried Amy Lawrence in 1888 at Blean Kent and they had two children, Laura Maud and Cicily Nixon.

Henry had apprenticed as a wheelwright and became a carriage maker.  He died in 1926 and left his estate worth $250,000 in 2021 dollars to his youngest daughter Cicily who was then single and living with her mother. Henry seemed to be an example of upward mobility in England.  His father’s estate was worth less than 20 pounds.  

It was thanks to Henry Nixon that my father was able to get an education.  Public education didn’t go beyond elementary school then and he paid the fees for high school for only my father. 

Margaret May Nixon was born Feb 15, 1884 in Wimbledon, England.  She had an older brother Harry.  Their mother died when they were young children, and their father remarried and had two other daughters.  Although her father was relatively well off the 1901 census listed her as a scullery maid in Kent, England.  As a single woman, she travelled to Canada and landed in Quebec in 1906.  From there, she made her way to New Westminster.  By 1907 she was married to Richard Augustus Young.  They had five children, one of whom drowned as a child.  They split at the time her husband enlisted in the army.  She worked on the BC Ferries and in logging camps.  Her sons lived with other families during this time.  She lived in a logging camp with her daughters, according to the 1921 census.  There she met her second husband, Harry Dingee, who was a foreman in the camp.  They had two children, but Harry Dingee died in 1942.  He left her a house in Duncan, BC.   Margaret worked most of her life, including a stint at the Anglican residential industrial School in Alert Bay, teaching sewing and cooking.  From all accounts, she was strict and stern with her children and grandchildren alike.    Only our father was able to have an education.  Her two daughters by Richard Augustus had to go into service as there were no funds for high school. I’m sure this life was not the one she dreamed of as a child in England.  However, she lived a long life dying just before her 103rd birthday in 1987.

The Early Years; 1908-1939

Richard Henry Young was born in 1908 in New Westminster, B.C. His parents were Richard Augustus Young, a farmer and butcher from England and Margaret Mae Nixon, the child of an English Carriage maker. By 1911, at the age of three, the family lived in a sod hut on a new land claim at Fort McLeod, Alberta, with his parents and his two-year-old brother Syd. While in Alberta, a girl was born in 1912, Eileen May Young. Two years later, that plan did not work out, and they moved back to New Westminster, living at 400 McEwan Ave., Queensborough, New Westminster, B.C.

In 1913 Doreen was born, and in 1916 Kathleen Mabel Young was born. In 1916 Eileen tragically drowned in the waters near the airport.

Harry’s parents separated in 1917, and Harry and Syd stayed with a family in New Westminister to attend school. Harry graduated from high school in 1926 at high school in Duncan, B.C. . Harry was accepted to The University of California, Berkley, to study engineering. While in California, Harry often worked part-time jobs in construction, as a bouncer, and on cable cars. In 1928 he broke his ankle while working and used crutches for a while. After 1930 Harry returned to Vancouver. Worked for a friend in Evertt, Washington and worked on the Lions gate bridge and other engineering projects. He met his future wife, Jean Cairns, in Victoria in 1938 and became engaged in 1939, and then the war started.

Kathleen was the fifth child of Richard Augustus and Margaret May Young. On Jan 8, 1916, in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. Shortly after, her parents separated, and she was living with her mother and sister Doreen as her mother became the cook at a lumber camp on Vancouver Island. Her brothers stayed on the mainland with another family, where Harry attended school. In 1922 Margaret May married Harry Dingee, a foreman at the lumber camp. The family settled in Duncan, B.C., and later in 1922, her half-sister Tootsie was born. Public education was covered to grade 8, and there was no money for high school. Her sister reported that they both went into service.

She married Edwin Bennet in 1938 at the age of twenty-two and subsequently had five children.

I recall seeing her in 1976 when my brother and I drove out west. She lived near Duncan and was always smiling, kind, and generous.

Obituary.

Homesteading

My father spoke of living in a sod hut when he was young and brought the difficulties of this life home to me while I researched his family history. I can imagine the shock for my grandmother ending up in Alberta in a sod house with two young toddlers. They were in the Bow Valley, and their land grant would have been close to Calgary. They appeared in Alberta for the 1911 census but returned to BC soon after. My grandparents split up around 1917.

On 1 April 1946, six months after the end of the Second World War, the American army officially handed over responsibility for the Alaska Highway to Canada. The Canadian Army was now responsible for highway upkeep and improvements and was based in the area known as Camp Takhini. Whitehorse, YT. Whitehorse was the headquarters of the Northwest Highway System of the Royal Canadian Engineers.  In 1949 Harry Young was transferred to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, to become the Maintenance Supervisor of the highway. The NWHS’s responsibility was to bring the highway up to civilian standards and maintain it.

In 1950 a crew noticed an accumulation of water north of the highway near Swift River. Harry came to have a look and advised the crew that it didn’t look too bad. As he stood there, the highway washed out, he almost fell in, and the water flow carried down to the nearby Rancheria River. A large culvert was installed, and the road was rebuilt. The creek was named Young Creek, partially in jest! The creek is still there at Kilometer 1108.2 of the Alaska Highway.