Family Founder: Jack BRANT (1876-1948)

Introducing the BRANT family.  

In this post, I introduce my father's paternal grandparents, Canadian BRANT family founders Jack BRANT and his spouse Edith Jane BROWETT.

Meet Jack BRANT.

The first ancestor in my BRANT family line to migrate to Canada, Jack BRANT was born on 9 February 1876 at 39 Caroline Street in the industrial city of Leicester, England. Son of a bricklayer, Jack was the youngest of two children born to parents John BRANT and Elizabeth RICHARDSON.

Fig. 1: Snip from Jack's birth registration recording his 9 February 1876 birth in Leicester, England.
 (Photo credit: General Register Office of England, 2008; click to enlarge)

By the time Jack was five years old, the family was living within St. Margaret’s Parish in Leicester, at 25 South Church Gate. By 1891, when Jack was 15 years old, he was already working as a shoe maker. His family still lived in the same parish but had moved to 47 Grafton Place.

When he was 20 years old Jack married Edith Jane BROWETT, daughter of John (a labourer) and Caroline (Rivett) BROWETT; together they had three children. By the time their first child, Ida, was born in 1897, Jack and Edith were living in what was formerly known as St. Margaret’s Parish at 147 Wharf Street. There he was employed for several years in a workshop making shoes, but the dream was for a better life. When the Canadian government began heavily advertising overseas for European immigrants to claim their "free" land in Canada's newly-minted Prairie provinces, Jack and his young family answered the call (see Note 1 below).

A new life in Saskatchewan, Canada.

After saving enough money (as recommended in the advertisements) for outfitting his new life in a remote rural setting, Jack departed from Liverpool, England. He sailed on the vessel Lake Erie and arrived in Canada on 11 March 1905; a few months later Edith followed with their daughter Ida, who was just 8 years old. Once in Canada, it is currently unclear by what methods the family travelled to the (especially at the time) remote location of Fielding, Saskatchewan. But travel they did and just 4 years after their arrival - on 26 June 1909 - the family realized their dream when Jack received title to 160 acres located just south of Fielding village: NW 1/4, Section 32, Township 40, Range 11, Meridian W3.

Fig. 2: The view looking north toward Fielding from
the farm's western edge at Township Road 410. 

There the family worked and thrived. Two more children followed: Marguerite Edith and Horace Austen, both born at the homestead. But after more than two decades of living his dream, Jack - who was known to have a serious lung condition - began to experience a decline in his health. By this time, daughters Ida and Marguerite Edith were married and had moved away to start their own families. So, Jack sold the farm to his only son, Horace Austen, around 1935 and retired to the comparatively warm and semi-arid climate of Penticton in southern British Columbia's Okanagan valley (see Note 2 below).

 Fig. 3: The farm's south-western boundary 
at the intersection of Township Road 410
and Range Road 3115.

Jack and spouse Edith lived in Penticton at 939 Dynes Avenue until Jack’s death in 1948 from a chronic and deteriorating heart condition that was likely complicated by his serious lung disease; he was 72. His spouse Edith followed eight years later, and they are buried next to each other at Lakeview Cemetery in Penticton.

Re-connecting with Jack and Edith's legacy.  

In October 2023, two of Jack and Edith's grandchildren - brothers Bob and Bill BRANT - visited their gravesite at Lakeview Cemetery. 

And after a lengthy search to identify the farm's precise location, in June 2025 my spouse and I (one of Jack's great-grandchildren) visited the original 160-acre BRANT homestead. 

In a testament to my BRANT family founders' legacy and the enduring nature of their pioneering spirit, nearly 120 years later it was an especially warm feeling to see what had once been the secure footing from which my family flourished in Canada - the BRANT farm - was still being worked and the land was still providing for its current stewards.

Fig. 4: Jack and Edith BRANT's
final resting place at Lakeview Cemetery.

Fig. 5: Bill and Bob BRANT visiting the
gravesites of their grandparents, Jack and Edith.

                         

Notes

Note 1: The promise of free land was anything but that. Much of this newly-opened land was on Treaty 1 and Treaty 2 lands, formerly occupied by indigenous peoples who were displaced and further marginalized through this government policy. Additionally, the cost was substantial for a number of stipulations that had to be met before immigrant families occupying a 160-acre section on these treaty lands could receive title to that land.

Note 2: Around the time WWII began (possibly in 1941 when he was inducted into the Canadian armed forces), Jack's son Horace Austen sold the farm, thus ending a three-decade-long chapter in the BRANT family's association with Saskatchewan.

                         

Sources

Research, records and images attached to Jack BRANT and Edith Jane BROWETT's family group located at the public Ancestry.ca tree, Brant-LeComte Family Tree.

Chandler, Graham (2016). Selling the Prairie Good Life. In Canada's History. Retrieved from https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/settlement-immigration/selling-the-prairie-good-life : accessed 13 Dec 2025.

Gagnon, Erica (2022). Settling the West: Immigration to the Prairies from 1867 to 1914. In Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21: Research / Immigration History. Retrieved from https://pier21.ca/research/immigration-history/settling-west-immigration-to-prairies : accessed 13 Dec 2025.

Yarhi, E., & Regehr, T. (2023). Dominion Lands Act. In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/dominion-lands-policy : accessed 13 Dec 2025.