McCormick's Biscuit Company – The Cowkeeper's Wish

“A sudden death,” and mourning ribbons revisited…

*George and Emily with Jack, Bill and George Jr, early 1910s*. *According to the London Advertiser, the 1912 picnic was at Port Stanley, and the 1913 picnic at Springbank Park.*

Back in Part 1 of this tale, I posted a picture of the three eldest Cartwright sons with their parents, George and Emily, at the annual picnic for McCormick’s, the biscuit and candy company where George worked. An observant reader pointed out that the family appeared to be wearing mourning ribbons, and in Part 2, I explored that topic. I was hoping to find clues by establishing when the picture was taken and comparing that to events in the family. Who was the group mourning? I guessed at the date of the picture, thinking the youngest boy, our grandfather Bill, was either three or four years old, which meant that the year was either 1912 or 1913. If the picture had been taken in 1912, some time after baby Edna’s July death, then perhaps the ribbons were for her. If the picture was taken in 1913, why wasn’t baby Stuart, born that January, among his brothers? And who were the ribbons for?

I’ve made a couple of discoveries since then — as usual, somewhat by accident. I had already visited the London Advertiser at Canadiana Online to search for mentions of family members, but the search mechanism is a bit clunky, and if you get a “hit,” you have to read the whole page to find the word you searched for. “Cartwright” often proved disappointing, since there is a Cartwright Street in London that was frequently mentioned. Instead I decided to browse through the Monday, July 22, edition of the paper in the year baby Edna died, thinking it would be interesting to know what was happening in the city that day, and in the Cartwrights’ wider world. To my surprise, I stumbled on an article about the annual McCormick’s picnic, which had been held two days earlier.

Below the article was a list of winners in various races, with a “Mrs. Cartwright” included among three names for the “Married Ladies’ Race.” Was it Emily, flying along in her hat and long skirts, hoping to trounce Mrs. McCabe and Mrs. McInnes, George and her little boys cheering her on? Likely yes, since there weren’t that many Cartwrights in London at the time, let alone Cartwrights with a McCormick’s connection. The old family albums contain a number of pictures from games played at these annual outings over the years, so I think it’s safe, in this case, to surmise that the Cartwrights attended the picnic in 1912, just two days before Edna’s death, and that Emily, a few months pregnant with Stuart, took part in the festivities.

Curious to know if the paper would offer any more clues, I scrolled through the next day’s edition, and soon came upon a little notice:

So the Cartwrights must have attended the picnic on Saturday, and then shortly after that, baby Edna fell ill. The same edition that features her death notice carries a cheerful photograph of the winners of the baby show being held aloft by their parents and the judges, the picnic crowd behind them.

What a great sadness this death must have been for Emily, George and their three little boys. When the 1913 picnic rolled around, with pillow fights, three-legged races, and a tug of war between the biscuit and candy departments, surely the family was reminded of the previous year, of Emily taking part in the Married Ladies’ Race, and then Edna’s death soon after. Is this why they wore the previously discussed mourning ribbons? Or were they mourning ribbons at all?

Searching through the photographs we scanned years ago for The Cowkeeper’s Wish, I came upon a McCormick’s picnic image dated 1922. This one shows George and Emily with two of their younger children, Gordon and Mary, the great aunt who’d been the keeper of Stuart’s baptism certificate until her death earlier this year at age 100. If you look closely, you’ll see that George and Gordon are wearing ribbons; perhaps Mary and Emily are wearing them too, but it’s hard to see in the old photo. Clear enough, though, is the lettering “McCormick’s” on the other two. So more than likely, the darker ribbons in the photo taken a decade earlier were also to do with the picnic.

*George and Emily with children Gordon and Mary at McCormick’s annual picnic, 1922*

*Gordon, age 3, sporting a McCormick’s picnic ribbon, 1922.*

That same year, 1922, the London Advertiser carried a mention of “G. Cartwright” having the largest family in attendance — seven children in all. In the family tree as we knew it, that’s all the Cartwright kids accounted for: George, Jack, our grandfather Bill, Earl, Florence, Gordon, and Mary. Do, the youngest, was not yet born.

It’s very satisfying to solve these little mysteries, but of course the big one still lurks. What happened to baby Stuart, for whom we have a baptismal certificate but no birth or death record? Can we assume that, because baby Edna is not in the earlier picnic photo, it was taken in 1913, a year after her death? But if that is the case, Stuart was born in January of that year. Why is he not in the photo?

As we’ve seen, assuming can be problematic. When this whole tale first began, I assumed my great aunt Mary had tucked the certificate away in her bedside table, knowing it would be found after her death. Perhaps she knew something about baby Stuart that she’d never told anyone, and she didn’t want him to be forgotten. But there’s a danger in reading too much into the fragments that come our way in family research. And much can be learned by sharing information with other family members who might hold missing pieces. My mom’s cousin Susan Butlin, also an author and a lover of historical research (The Practice of Her Profession, McGill-Queen’s University Press), was the one who found Stuart’s baptism card after Mary’s death, and she describes the discovery this way:

“The Baptismal certificates, along with several Confirmation certificates, were found in the right top drawer of Aunt Mary and Dorraine’s long, low bureau of drawers in the bedroom, not the bedside table, I don’t know where that came from. They were neatly placed together in a small book, it might have been a New Testament, from which they stuck out. Also in the drawer were things like new gloves, small boxes with pieces of jewelry, small personal things that were valued. After I looked at them, I saw Stuart’s certificate and, according to my sister, I said ‘Oh my goodness, look at this!'”

Susan agrees that it’s highly likely that Jack, Bill, Stuart and Earl (Susan’s father, and the baby born after Stuart, in January 1914) were baptized at home, together, in September 1914. But why, and what became of Stuart after that, remains unknown. I still hope to find out that he was buried at Mount Pleasant Cemetery, where Emily and Edna lie, but Covid, quite understandably, means that cemetery staff is slower than usual in replying to these sorts of requests. The history section of the website shows pictures of the old burial registers, dating back to the 1870s, so if Stuart was buried there, the details will be hiding somewhere in those pages. Finding Stuart’s grave won’t tell us how he died, but it will be one more piece of the puzzle, and might lead to still more clues as to what happened to him.

The Cartwright family in 1933. What could they tell us now? Had Stuart survived — and if he existed! — he would have been 20 years old in this picture. Bottom, left to right: Mary, Dorraine, Emily, and Gordon. Top, left to right: Earl, George, George senior, Jack, Florence, and Bill.

Mourning ribbons, picnics and a gap in the family tree…

After posting Part 1 of the recently discovered mystery baby’s story, a number of comments came in, both here on the website and also on social media. We’re very grateful when people share their thoughts, especially in a case like this, because it helps us see things we may not have noticed on our own. For instance, I included a picture at the end of the last post — just on a whim, really, because I thought it was a nice photo and it was of the era I was writing about. It shows our great grandparents, George and Emily, with their three eldest sons, George, Jack and Bill.

*George and Emily Cartwright at Springbank Park, London, with their sons Jack, Bill and George*, *standing*

Someone wrote in to say that she noticed the family members were all wearing mourning ribbons, and wondered if the picture had been taken after baby Stuart’s death. Tracy and I were stunned to realize we hadn’t noticed the ribbons before. Or perhaps we had just assumed they had something to do with the McCormick Biscuit Company’s annual picnic, from which there are many family pictures over the years. If you’ve read The Cowkeeper’s Wish, you’ll know that we are lovers of detail, and that we’ve gone down many rabbit holes in search of even the tiniest fragment of rich content for our story. I guess sometimes it’s true: you can’t see for looking.

Needless to say, I’ve spent the last while looking up mourning ribbons!

After Queen Victoria’s husband died, she wore black for the rest of her life. When she died in 1901, newspapers reported the event “has given a remarkable impetus to the ribbon trade,” and that £200,000 of mourning ribbon had been sold.

Among the well-to-do, mourning attire could be quite elaborate through the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Following Queen Victoria’s lead during her decades of mourning for her beloved Prince Albert, widows draped themselves in black frills and flounces and ruffles. There were lacy mourning parasols, long delicate veils, fur-trimmed capes, and hats laden with velvet and feathers.

But there were subtler expressions of grief as well: brooches with braided hair inside; lockets that held an image of the lost loved one. Perhaps the simplest and most affordable form of mourning attire was a black ribbon pinned to the clothing, just as our Cartwrights are wearing. This post about mourning ribbons says they were also known as “love ribbons,” and were frequently worn by children and the less-well-to-do, who could not afford head-to-toe black garb for the family. But even these could be fancied up. A 1901 British columnist writing as “The Bohemian Girl” reported that “Some of the new mourning ribbons are exceedingly pretty–white edged with black, and black edged with silver, or white with black chenille spots.”

From all the descriptions I’ve read, it makes sense to me that the Cartwrights are wearing mourning ribbons in the Springbank Park photo. But who are they mourning? A little timeline will help put the players in context:

On December 31, 1904, George Cartwright and Emily Ingram married in England.
Their eldest son George was born in June 1905.
The next child was Emily, born about a year after her brother, in the summer of 1906.
On June 22, 1906, Emily was caught stealing from her uncle. Newspaper accounts say she was “approaching her confinement,” and took the money out of desperation. She appeared in court at the end of August, carrying “an infant a few months old,” so baby Emily must have been born very soon after the theft.
In March 1907, George sailed for Canada, and in July, Emily and the children followed. By this time, Emily was pregnant with the couple’s third child, John, who’d be known as Jack.
In August 1907, at 14 months old, baby Emily died of pneumonia in London. The family residence was on Pall Mall Street. The death registration doesn’t tell us where she was buried.
In October 1907, baby Jack was born at the home on Pall Mall Street.
In May 1909, a third son, Bill (our grandfather), was born. By now the family had moved to Horton Street.
On July 22, 1911, at 3:30 in the morning, Emily gave birth to Edna, who died on her birthday, at Horton Street, in 1912. Like her sister Emily, she had pneumonia.
On January 4, 1913, Stuart was born, according to the baptism certificate tucked away by Auntie Mary. Given the birthdate, Emily must have been pregnant with Stuart when Edna died, just as she’d been pregnant with Jack when her first daughter died. What is it like to lose a child while another one is growing inside you?
On January 4, 1914, exactly a year later, Emily gave birth to another son, Earl Richard Ingram Cartwright. And in September, Stuart was baptized.

There were more children to come, but I’ll stop there for now so we can return to the photo with the ribbons. My guess is that the youngest child, our grandfather Bill, is three or four years old in this picture. If he’s three, it’s the summer of 1912. And if they are indeed wearing mourning ribbons, they must be mourning baby Edna, who died on July 22. So if the photo was taken later that same summer, Emily would have been at least four months pregnant with Stuart. Emily’s father also died in March 1912, so I suppose it’s possible they were mourning him — but you’d think Edna would be in the picture if it was taken before she died. If Bill is four in the photo, it’s the summer of 1913, and Emily is pregnant with Earl. But there is nobody to mourn in this scenario, since Edna and Emily’s father are long gone and Stuart is born but yet to be baptized. I’ve tried to find out what month McCormick’s annual picnics happened, but so far I have not succeeded.

*Springbank Park in the 1910s, from the Toronto Public Library’s collection of park postcards*

The other thing I’ve considered is the possibility of Earl and Stuart being the same person. They were both born on January 4th. They were both given the middle name Ingram. But why would George and Emily register Earl’s birth under the name Earl Richard Ingram Cartwright just days after he was born, and then baptize him as Stuart Ingram Cartwright months later, only to go on calling him Earl? So I’ve discounted that possibility, and chalked up the January 4 birthdates as coincidence, just like Edna coming and going from this world on July 22.

The fact that Ingram was given as a middle name to two sons, one after the other, is an intriguing detail. Emily had fallen out with her family, as I mentioned before, probably because she got pregnant before marrying George. The theft may have caused a further rift. No one knows for sure what the real story was, but the break may have added appeal to the move to Canada, and it appears it was never mended. Whatever caused it, it must have been painful for Emily. Perhaps the death of her father in 1912 spurred her to use Ingram as Stuart’s middle name in 1913. But why also use it for Earl in 1914? Stuart was obviously still alive at that point, because he wasn’t baptized for another nine months. And why was Earl given two middle names? (The birth record clearly says Earl Richardson Ingram Cartwright, though my understanding is that he was always known in the family as Earl Richard Ingram Cartwright.) The only other Cartwright child who had more than one middle name was the very last daughter, Do, and this was only because Emily (perhaps weary of the task!) let her kids choose the names. So why did the pattern break with Earl? Was there some reason that Stuart might not be able to carry the Ingram name forward, so it was given to Earl, too, just in case?

It might be crazy to speculate about all this, and perhaps many of the questions are unanswerable. Some, on the other hand, might be easier to unlock. For instance, when were the annual McCormick’s picnics held? Where were baby Emily and baby Edna buried? Is Stuart there too? When were the other Cartwright children baptized in relation to their births? Where have those certificates gone?

The biggest question, of course, is: What happened to baby Stuart?

I’ll close with a few more photos.