Family Line Founder: Eliza Emma (Essex) Sutton
Family Line Founder Series
With this first ancestor profile featuring my 3rd great-grandmother, I begin a series of posts about relatives who immigrated to Canada and were the first to found their respective family lines - in other words, my family's first Canadians.
Their names and stories, even with only the barest of details known, tell the story of the European settlement of Canada at a human level. Remembering these individuals recognizes their courage in leaving behind all that was familiar - family, friends, their homeland - for the dream of a new and better life in a wild and sometimes harsh new world.
Eliza Emma (Essex) Sutton (1850-1919)
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| Eliza Emma Essex (ca. 1910) |
On this day, the 105th anniversary of her death, I wish to remember my 3rd great-grandmother: family-line founder Eliza Emma Essex.
Born in Stepney, England (a region of East London) on 14 March 1850, Eliza was the only child born to middle-class father William Essex (a manufacturing chemist and widower) and his second wife Eliza Westmore. (Eliza also had an older half-brother, John William Essex, who was born in 1843 to her father's first wife; her name is currently unknown.)
Baptized in the parish of St. Mary Stratford le Bow, Eliza lived with her family in the district of Stepney, also known as "Mile End Old Town," near its border with St. Anne Limehouse parish to the south (see Map 1 below).
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| Map 1: East London Districts, 1870 |
For perspective, the family home was not very far - around 2 km, just over 1 mile - from the infamous Whitechapel district (shown in dark pink) where, in 1888, serial killer Jack the Ripper brutally murdered five women.
During the time period that the Essex family lived there, Stepney was a bustling place. As the city of London expanded steadily eastward, Stepney experienced a building boom and became a middle-class haven of shops and businesses.
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| Henry Charles Sutton (ca. 1890s) |
But the dream was for a new life and new opportunities. On 4 May 1870, Eliza and her family having departed from Liverpool, they arrived in Quebec, Canada on the vessel European. By 1871, Eliza and her growing family were living in northwestern Ontario, supported by Harry's blacksmithing trade.
But by 1891, with the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway and various First Nation treaties opening up land in Canada's new prairie provinces, Eliza and her family settled on farmland in the Rural Municipality (R.M.) of Cornwallis, just south of Brandon, Manitoba (see Map 2 below). The precise location of their farm within the R.M. of Cornwallis is still to be determined.
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| Map 2: R.M. of Cornwallis, Manitoba |
Now prairie pioneers, Eliza and husband Harry raised their family of 8 children (two boys and six girls), including my 2nd great-grandmother Beatrice Jane Sutton (1879-1955), on the family's homestead. However, just a few years after arriving in the region, tragedy touched the family when, in 1895, eldest daughter Eliza Duffin Sutton died at the age of 19 - possibly (although unconfirmed) the result of a horse-riding accident.
Five years later, in 1900, daughter Beatrice married into the Elder family (one of the main branches of my family, see blog page entitled, "The British Side"), which had settled in the R.M. of Cornwallis, Manitoba region about 1882.
After the death of Eliza's husband Harry Sutton in 1902, Eliza was recorded in the 1911 Census as head of the household living in Brandon with two of her daughters; the family home was located at 231-5th Street. Little else is known about her life after this point until her death on 21 January 1919; Eliza was 68 years old.
Eliza Emma (Essex) Sutton is buried in Methven Cemetery (just west of Wawanesa, Manitoba) beside her husband Henry "Harry" Charles Sutton and eldest daughter Eliza Duffin Sutton (1876-1895).
Rest in peace.
[Note: Find-A-Grave provides an alternate death year of 1913, but I prefer the 1919 date provided by Manitoba Vital Statistics' Manitoba Death Index.]
Sources:
Research data and sources in my public tree, Brant-LeComte Family Tree, on Ancestry.ca
Cornwallis Centennial Committee. Municipal Memories: Municipality of Cornwallis Centennial, 1884 to 1984. Brandon, Manitoba. Leech Printing.
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