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Why did the Herseys leave Canada in 1883?

2/26/2016

Colour postcard of a "laker" in the Soo canal at Sault Saint Marie coated in ice from a passage, probably on Lake Superior, circa 1920

Perhaps it was...
The Weather…

Although Ontario weather is not exactly Mediterranean, this little shocker of a snapshot is actually misleading. The locale is Far to the Northwest from Kingston. Extreme weather did not hit the eastern and mid areas of North America until after 1885, leading to the phantasmal Children's Blizzard of 1887 a, b.

Why did Thomas Albert and Elizabeth Hersey choose to leave beatific southern Ontario in the mid 1880's? The list of reasons to stay were long:

• The scenery was breathtaking.
• Their relatives lived within a day's train or steamboat ride.
• Nationalism and Canadian pride was on the rise. Canada was heading toward unification and it is doubtful that this had any negative affect on the family.
• They had access to the best doctors and highest state-of-the-art health care of the time.
• Economically, things were looking good. Take a peek at the Canadian Sessional Papers of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Ontario, Canada, 1882-1883, Volume 15, Part 3. The 1881 Canadian census shows that even the two teenage boys in the Hersey family had work (William as a clerk, Thomas Jr. as a baker). Most likely the reasons for leaving were not economic. Predictions for work in carpentry (Thomas's employment) were positive.
• Records indicate that their extended families were close, living next to each other, working next to each other, attending the same churches, participating in the same community fraternities.
• It appears that Thomas Albert Sr. may have been somewhat well-off; they owned more than one property.
• There are no records of trouble in their Primitive Methodist Church; there were alternative places of worship if this were true.
• As mentioned above, the weather was not particularly extreme for the area. Actual records for each day of the year can be found in the Canadian Temperature Archives.

Well, then, why leave?

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Mary Elthea Eva Hersey, October 18, 1877 - ?

2/21/2016

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Fanny towered over her twin; fussing over the alignment of the quilts, making sure they did not catch in the wheels of the chair. Carefully she arranged the three shawls that propped up Mary's head, allowing the patient to breathe in the cold breeze, just as Dr. Lavell had ordered.

Fanny then looked up to see the stranger gawking at her attempts. Fanny's eyes blackened with determination. "Don't mess with my sister. Don't mess with me," those eyes spoke.

The above intriguing clip from the 2015 documentary "The Forgotten Plague" by Chana Gazit represents how I envision Fanny; an angry, protective young girl, ready to pick a fight. Her twin sister was dying. Undoubtedly when the twin died, so did part of Fanny.

There is no record of Mary Elthea Eva Hersey's death. Did she die in Canada before the family immigrated to California, leaving an inexplicably lost record? Perhaps in an accident while visiting extended family in New York or Wisconsin? Did she succumb on the train ride across the continent; Toronto, Sarnia, Chicago, Omaha, Ogden, or Sacramento? The lack of a Canadian death record suggests that Mary Althea Eva Hersey made it to Los Angeles with the family, only to die before the 1900 census.

Fanny maintained the vigil of caring for Mary by remaining a nurse until her marriage sometime after 1910 at the age of about thirty-three.

But what illness stopped for Mary?

Because she could not stop for Death,
She kindly took Mary;
The carriage held but just the two
And Immortality...

After Emily Dickinson

Notes:

The images above show Fannie Emily Ethel Hersey (1877 - 1975) working as a nurse and her father Thomas Albert Hersey Senior (1839 - 1910) working as a carpenter in California.
Columns ten and eleven of the census images show that Elizabeth Evans Hersey (1842-1933) birthed twelve children, with only nine of them living by 1910.
Ontario, Canada kept meticulous records beginning in about 1869.
Regrettably, there is no 1890 United States census (it was destroyed in a fire).

California did not keep vital records until about 1905.

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Mary and Fanny

2/19/2016

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Mary and Fanny, and Mary and Fanny;
A twin pair as close as a flower and fairy.

"I'm Fanny!" "I'm Mary!" "No, no, Ma, I'm Mary!"
"Oh Ma, I'm teasing. I'm Fanny, not Mary!"

They run up and down twenty steps to the basement
And splash in mud puddles with girlish amazement.
They grasp hands and jump. They roll in the heather.
They look and they laugh so alike, so together.

Mary and Fanny, and Fanny and Mary.
But gradually Mary paled; paled pallid pallor.

"Come Mary! Sand castles! Come play by the shore!
Oh Ma, I'm begging! She'll smile no more?

Fanny jumps stairs to their bright yellow nursery.
"Come Mary, come play! 'Tis our birth anniversary!"
But Mary no longer has running or laughter,
Nor will twins be alike and a-stride ever-after.

Fanny and Fanny, and Fanny and Fanny;
Just Fanny and memories of 'Mary and Fanny'.

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The Hula-Hoe at pine street

2/13/2016

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Hunched Kokopelli-style over my new Hula-Hoe, I scraped away at the brick path Walter and I had laid some four, five years earlier. My yard at 99 Pine Street in Willits was an enormous, scrubby corner lot positioned directly across from the Methodist Church and the Rangy Community Grange. A moldy moss infection was eating the decaying bricks; an unwanted lichen infestation.

Scritch—scrape, scritch—scrape. I paused, sweating, and stretched my aged spine upwards. It popped loudly. I gave my neck two stiff, sideways jerks, cracking it resoundingly. Upkeep at 99 Pine was a travail for a plump old wife and a Parkinson's ravaged husband.

Gazing up at the church steeple for several reflective moments, I joyously re-lived my fortuitous Hula-Hoe find. I had discovered it two weeks prior, while shopping at the Spare-Time Nursery on San Francisco Street and had nabbed it for thirty-two-bucks. I gulped a cold, February snort of air and resumed my lichen attack.

The Hula-Hoe was, and always has been, my yard tool of choice. A swiveling stirrup-on-a-stick contraption, it had been invented by my Papa Johnston in Ojai, (well, actually Oak View) California in the 1950's. Papa had cleverly named his device after the recently invented Hula-Hoop. I once had one of the prototypes, with which I hacked away until it broke. The shards probably lay hidden somewhere in my garage.

Of course, Papa Johnston was not my real grandfather. He was my mother's preferred stand-in for Thomas Albert Hersey the Third. And no, Papa never patented his inventions, even when begged.

Scritch—scrape, scritch—scrape; my Hula-Hoe vibrated with a hollow, empty tune. Directly over-head hung an intense, yellow sun. Looking south, the windless sky was spooky-dry; not normal. It was bright blue; a purple-blue; a dough-boy-pool blue. Some would have called it earthquake blue. However, turning north, the sky looked a normal brown-aqua, iced with billowy grey clouds. The contrast was creepily eerie.

Suddenly the dirt shifted on its own. The ground jerked east and west, north and south, with snarly, giant groans. Lightning streaked through the sky. Vertigo encased me. A furiously spinning orange-red vortex slashed through the air above the church.

In amazement I beheld a Divine Messenger. Down and down through the swirl he plunged, a great heavenly creature, circling, rodeo-style, on a wildly flaming steed. Was he Gabriel? God? Thor?

"Yea-ah Haaaah," he hollered as he descended and hovered above the steeple. His voice was a booming blast; his whipping hair locks were lashes of flame. Thunder exploded with each buck of the animal he rode. Was it a buffalo? A mighty mammoth? A flaming Thestral? (I have witnessed death first-hand.)

No, not Gabriel, not Jesus. It was Thomas Albert the Third's Great-Grandfather, Daniel Hersey; wild, furious, and tall as a redwood. His eyes were the blue of the south sky. His red hair flamed around his massive head. He spoke, he yelled, he shrieked with a bullhorn blast.

“I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL DANIEL!” his words howled over the roaring storm. Then he added in a more polite tone, “I just love Frank Baum, don't you? Would this be a Primitive Methodist Church?" Daniel (1797–1879), had been an ardent Primitive Methodist.

Too stunned for fear and too petrified to think, I rocked for an eternity of two minutes, able only to bob up and down with mute, awed curtsies.

"God-A-Mighty,” I finally managed to cry out in abject fear, and crumbled to my knees. I felt it only respectful to add “Ah, no, it’s just um … a plain ... United ... Methodist Church.”

Daniel was silent for a few seconds, perusing this info. Muttering mainly to himself he mumbled, “Jehovah and I must have a little 'one-on-one'. Looks as if He'd better hurry up that Return of his.”

He turned his attention back to me and indignantly screeched, “THEY’VE UNITED? NEVER!”

With horror, I beheld Daniel's next movements. His long-left arm stretched out. His huge granite fist swung. I feared an Almighty Smite. Then I realized he was merely attempting to pass me a smoking parchment scroll.

"Well, never-mind the Methodists for now,” Daniel said excitedly. “I have come with The Plan! The Plan to build The Three Pyramids of Giza! Right here! In your corner lot!"

I responded with a dubious, fat silence.

Mindful of my humble position, I stood, obediently, with violently shaking hands to relieve Daniel of the scroll. His after-worldly massive paw jolted and sparked. I cowered to avoid the burn. The parchment, a mammoth, billowing streamer, threw me off-balance, lifting me, kite-like, from the ground. With arms a-flail I wrestled the unwieldy roll.

The scroll gave a great, shuddering spasm and erupted into a gigantic, three-dimensional scene. It hovered in the air; filling a space twelve yards across from the picket fence to my wrought-iron cow, and twenty feet from the moldy lichen up beyond the top of the electrical wires.

In wide-eyed amazement I beheld The Plan: it was indeed a magnificent design to construct The Three Pyramids of Giza right there; right in my scrubby corner lot. Without warning, a torrential hot wind re-invigorated the swirling maelstrom. My head reeled, a-buzz in an ecstatic vertigo of gestalt and comprehension. I fell again to my knees, arms outstretched against the squall, as if to touch the phantasm.

With three enormous whips, Daniel conjured a blazing parting lasso. Pulling at the tether of his beastly ride, and with a ground shaking "Yea-ah-haaah", he prepared for Ascension.

"Wait, wait! How do I do this?" I yelled, pleading to Daniel through the whirlwind and thunder.

"Oh yes, I almost forgot,” he said coyly, and tossed me a walnut-sized granite chip.

“You have The Plan. Here is your pebble. YOU GO GIRL!!!"

In an explosion he was gone.

Yah. Yard work. That’s how I feel tackling my scrubby corner lot with a Hula-Hoe.

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Why did the Herseys leave Canada in 1883?

Mary Elthea Eva Hersey, October 18, 1877 - ?

Mary and Fanny

The Hula-Hoe at pine street

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