UPDATE: In response to this post, In an e-mail, Donna Davis wrote,
“I was intrigued when the surname Unwin came up in your newsletter discussion of the old photos. My Aunt Louisa Jones was née Unwin, in 1915. Her two brothers were Chesley and Norman Unwin. They grew up I think in Pointe-St.-Charles and/or Verdun. (Norman visited my aunt at the Floralies and so was known by some members of Verdun United.)
“My aunt's father Mr. Unwin would seem to fit in somewhere, but I only recall him being called "Pop" Unwin! I believe he worked at General Foods, where my aunt therefore got my uncle, Bernard Jones, an entry level job during the Depression.”
We can’t be sure if Donna’s Unwins are any relation to Annie Taylor, but the Verdun connection certainly makes it possible. Maybe Donna’s aunt Louisa was a grand-niece or something.
Donna’s e-mail continues,
“As for General Foods, however, my uncle would work there his whole life, rising to an executive position. The company is writ large in the Golden Generation of my family history. I wonder if we really understand how much our values were intimately permeated by such postwar corporate culture.
“My aunt and uncle at one time received substantial company gift boxes from GF and these had an allure our jaded postmodern tastes may not appreciate. Consider the remarkable prevalence and later persistence of Jell-O in church suppers and potlucks. And what congregational status that supply of gift boxes may have conferred upon my aunt and uncle! In Verdun we were not far removed at this time from the (Steinberg's!) Pinky Stamp mentality that infests "Les Belles-Soeurs," even if we fell on the more privileged side of the "Two Solitudes" divide.
“My uncle's lucky break, however, was a winter weekend, emergency job: breaking up and shovelling a massive spill of chocolate that had frozen all over the factory floors. He often retold the story with some bafflement over how a supposed mechanical failure could have produced such results. I wonder now if sabotage had been afoot, especially if the company called in naive labourers (scabs, even?) over a weekend and presumably offered some of these men permanent jobs.”
So we have to ask, has anyone else ever heard of this Willy Wonka-esque episode at the General Foods plant in Lasalle??
ORIGINAL POST:
I have shared both of these photos before, in a post titled “In Search of Mrs. Clement King”.
At the time I remarked that, apart from Mary Jane Porter (aka Mrs. King), one other lady appeared in both of these pictures, taken some 40 years apart: Mrs. W. Taylor. I then wondered what her first name might be. Well last week, the original supplier of the Ladies Aid photo from 1910, Dianne Nolin, offered a potential answer.
Dianne is the great-granddaughter of Mrs. King (middle row at the right in 1910, and front row at far left in the 1950 shot), and granddaughter of Sarah (called Sadie) King, (front row far left in 1910 photo). Clement and Mary Jane were among the founding members of Verdun Methodist in 1899. You can read more about them in another post titled “Young Man With a Horn”.
Dianne wrote, “My grandmother [Sadie]’s best friend and neighbour in Verdun was Mabel Perrotte, and Mabel’s parents were William and Annie (neé Unwin) Taylor. Mrs W Taylor (Annie Unwin) would have been the same age as Mary Jane Porter King, my grandmother’s mom.”
Mother’s Day, 1950.
Back row: Mrs. C. Dawe (76); Mrs H. Salmela (73); Mrs. A. Parker (74); Mrs. E. Ritchie (74); Mrs. R. Norman (80); Unidentified; Mrs. A. Timms (78); Mrs. E. Grey (73); Mrs. E. Cain (75)
Front row: Mrs. C. King (84); Mrs. W. Taylor (89); Mrs. L. Hobbs (98); Mrs. E. Retallack (93)
Ladies Aid Society of Verdun Methodist Church, 1910
Back row, left to right: Mrs. Evely; Mrs. Taylor; Mrs. Mavor; Mrs. Dawson, Unidentified.
Middle: Mrs. Bradbury; Mrs. Hayden; Flo Bradbury; Mrs. C. King (Mary Jane Porter).
Front: Sarah Myrtle (Sadie) King; Jessie Bradbury; Mrs. Brown
Actually, the captioning on the Mother’s Day photo from 1950 suggests that Mrs. Taylor was about five years older than Mrs. King. They are listed as being 89 and 84 respectively. Regardless, they apparently had daughters the same age in Sadie and Mabel. What would make this discovery absolutely perfect would be if Mabel Taylor turned out to be seated next to Sadie in the Ladies Aid photos. Alas, there is no Mabel. If anyone out there is descended from the Taylor, Unwin or Perrotte families, we’d love to hear from you.
~~~
Since Dennis Brown scanned all of the glass slides from Verdun United, I have spent a lot of time looking at faces in old photos. There’s a photo dated 1915 taken at Verdun Methodist that appears to be a youth group of some kind. The more I looked at it the more I thought one of the young ladies in it might be Sadie King, five years older than she was in the Ladies Aid picture. I sent it off to Dianne and she confirmed that, yup, that was her grandmother at about 21 years of age! I wonder if one of the other girls in the group is Mabel Taylor. Sadie went on to marry Herbert Mavor. He is probably not in the 1915 picture since he enlisted that year and may have already been overseas.
Dianne Nolin ended her latest e-mail to me by saying, “I came across it [the mention of Mrs. Taylor] because Annie Unwin’s sister Lilian married Mary Jane’s brother Richard. Such a small world!”
We have to agree.
The young lady standing 5th from left is Sarah Myrtle (called Sadie) King (later Mavor).