In Search of Mrs. Clement King
She just kept turning up. Usually as an elderly lady in a hat: Mrs. Clement King. Well, I thought, we know who her husband was, but who was she?
You’ll recall she was present at the Verdun United mortgage burning in 1947, identified as the church’s oldest living member*. She appears in a group of ladies in hats identified as Mother’s Day, 1950, and her age at that time is given as 84.
Her name appears on a brass cross on a wooden base from VUC. The dedication reads:
In loving memory of
Mrs. Clement King
A member from the inception of this church
An elder 1925-1957
Presented by her Family
Well that makes sense. If she was 84 in 1950, she was born around 1866, so would have been a young wife and mother by 1899 when Verdun Methodist Church came into being. It also means she was an elder of the church until she was around 90.
The name Clement King appears on one of our Verdun United stained glass windows, but it is dedicated to him and to his mother, Mrs. E. King, by the family. Perhaps Clement’s wife had a hand in making that happen. But the question continued to nag: what was her first name?
Then one day it dawned on me: I already had the answer. I had had an e-mail conversation two years back with Dianne Nolin, who was looking for a baptism record from VUC. She mentioned that she was descended from “Clement King of the stained-glass window”. I ended up sending her the Mother’s Day 1950 picture and she recognized her great-grandmother, Mary Jane Porter King. Yes, you guessed it: Mary Jane Porter married Clement King!
Dianne replied to my photo with one of her own. It shows the Ladies Aid Society of Verdun Methodist Church, circa 1910. Among those pictured are her grandmother, Sadie King, who was a girl of 16 at the time, and, yes, her great-grandmother, Mary Jane, is shown, four decades younger than in the photo I had sent.
A follow-up e-mail to Dianne this week produced the biographical information below.
Dianne is quite the geneologist, it turns out. She has a blog called The Days of Their Lives, which is worth checking out, especially if you have a connection to the King, Mavor, Porter or other old Verdun families.
My great grandmother, Mary Jane Porter was born oldest of 11 kids on 7 Oct 1867 in Ulverton, QC. to Susanna Johnston and John Porter, a carpenter of Ulverton. Mary Jane was a meticulous dressmaker and she married 1 May 1893 in Ulverton to Clement King, youngest of 7 kids of Elizabeth Nichols and George King, Miller of Montreal. They lived in Verdun where Clement King had properties.
They had five children: Sarah (Sadie, my grandmother, married Herbert Mavor), Melvin Clement who died at 2 months), Stella (never married), Elizabeth (Bessie, married Harry Gay) and Robert.
Mary Jane’s brother Horace lived in Montreal and was a streetcar motorman. During the strike of Feb 1903 Horace was hit in the head with a Brick and spent the rest of his life (45 years) in the Verdun Insane Asylum. Mary Jane went to visit him every week until he died in 1948 then had him buried with their parents in Ulverton.
Mary Jane’s husband Clement King was a carpenter. In July 1922 he was making repairs to the Verdun Methodist Church when he fell off the roof and subsequently died of his injuries. She then lived with her unmarried daughter Stella.
My grandmother Sadie King was a life long member of the Verdun Methodist, and the United church all her life. She married Herbert Mavor, son of Alexander Mavor and Rebecca Campbell.
I don’t know when, but sometime after the First World War the Mavors and Kings sponsored the stained glass windows that were later moved to SouthWest. One was in memory of Clement King and his mother Elizabeth (Nichols) King. The other window was in memory of Alexander Mavor (Herbert’s father who died at age 60 in 1924) and Alexander George (Herbert’s brother who was killed in action in Belgium in 1916).
In Oct 1942 Mary Jane’s children from Verdun and brothers and sisters from New Hampshire and Calgary all came to Verdun to celebrate Mary Jane’s 75th birthday.
Blog:the-day-granny-king-turned-75
Mary Jane died 5 March 1957 at the age of 89. I was 7 years old when she died and I missed her terribly.
Dianne
Apart from Mrs. King, at least one other lady appears both in this 1910 photo and the Mother’s Day one from 40 years later: Mrs. W. Taylor. Now if only we knew her first name! [See this blog post for a small update on Mrs. Taylor]
The ladies are identified on the back of the photo with their ages at the time:
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.
Middle: Mrs. Bradbury; Mrs. Hayden; Flo Bradbury; Mrs. C. King (Mary Jane Porter)
Front: Sarah Myrtle (Sadie) King, daughter of Mrs. C. King; Jessie Bradbury; Mrs. Brown
According to the original inscription, the photographer was Reg Cummings, and the photo was taken at the “corner of Wellington and Gordon, Verdun”. The second, larger Verdun Methodist church building was built by then, and the original one was still standing, so this could have been taken in either of them.
* This is incorrect. Mrs. King may have been the oldest founding member in 1947 but, as the 1950 photo indicates, she was nowhere near the oldest living member.
See also this post about Clement King.