Читать книгу The Consummate Canadian - Mary Willan Mason - Страница 9
Оглавление2 THE BAWTENHEIMER FAMILY
THE MATERNAL SIDE OF SAMUEL EDWARD’S FAMILY WERE THE Badenheimers. It was from a small village in Baden in the German Palatinate that four young men, probably brothers, left their home to try their luck in the New World at regular two year intervals. Of one brother, there is no trace of his having landed. He may have been under the age of sixteen and hence too young to take the oath of allegiance to the King of England upon arrival, or his ship may have been lost at sea. The two elder brothers, Johann Christian and Johann Wilhem Badenheimer, arrived in September of 1749 and September of 1751 respectively, aboard the brig, Two Brothers, in two separate crossings out of Rotterdam bound for Philadelphia. Two years later, the third brother, Johann Peter Badenheimer, arrived in Philadelphia in September of 1753 aboard the snow Rowand. A snow is defined as a sailing vessel rigged in manner similar to a brig but with a trysail mast just abaft the mainmast and considerably smaller than a brig, more manoeuvreable and sometimes used in warfare. Each of the brothers, upon arrival, disembarked in Philadelphia and had to take an oath of allegiance to the British Crown as well as an oath of abjuration and fidelity to William Penn and the proprietors of Pennsylvania. The two elder brothers appear to have left Pennsylvania subsequently and to have settled in North Carolina. Johann Peter travelled north to New Jersey.
That each son left the Palatinate as soon as he approached sixteen years of age would indicate that the land around Baden, known for the quality of its vineyards and its wine, where the family had farmed for generations, was now of insufficient harvest potential to support five sons for division among them. The first born, as was the custom, remained at home.
Political unrest in Europe also may have contributed to the departure of the younger four. The War of the Austrian Succession broke out in 1740 when Johann Peter was three years of age. Charles VI, the last Holy Roman Emperor died in 1740 and left no male heirs. He had exacted promises of fealty to his daughter and heiress, Maria Theresa, from his various vassals, kings and electors. The emperor was no sooner entombed than Maria Theresa, who had succeeded to the thrones of Austria, Bohemia and Hungary, was faced with Frederick II, the Great, King of Prussia, marching into Austria. Charles Albert, Elector of Bavaria, Philip V of Spain and August III, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, also made their claims to the Palatinate and the war was on. Maria Theresa was supported by Hungary, Britain and the Netherlands. Bavaria, France, Poland, Sardinia, Saxony and Spain supported Frederick and the other insurgents. For five years battles and skirmishes made the farmers’ lives difficult and precarious, although the Badenheimers’ produce no doubt was in high demand. At last the Treaty-of-Aix-la-Chapelle was signed in 1748, but it was an uneasy peace. In 1756 the war known as The Seven Years War broke out, three years after Johann Peter had left his home. He was nineteen years of age and must have been relieved to have left the constant uncertainty that frequently led to open warfare. Emigration may well have been an attractive alternative to providing cannon fodder for the Electors of Saxony and Bavaria.
After he made his way north, young Johann Peter was registered as a member of the German Reformed Church in Mount Pleasant, New Jersey. He eventually married and his wife bore him three children, one of whom a boy, born in 1773, was named Peter after his father. By this time the original spelling of Badenheimer had become more phonetically pronounced as Bawtenheimer, and so it was spelled.
Young Peter Bawtenheimer married a woman identifiable only as Grace and the first two of their ten children were born in New Jersey. In 1800 Peter and Grace Bawtenheimer made their way to Upper Canada along with Peter’s brother, John. Although nothing is known of their activities, if any, in the Revolutionary War, many families who had not actively supported the revolution, finding themselves socially and commercially ostracized over a period of time, came north to what remained of British North America. They were not given land grants as United Empire Loyalists had been, but were able to bring whatever fortune they possessed and to buy land. A descendant recorded the brothers’ account of the journey, in part, “coming with horses and on foot, there being no vehicles, by way of Niagara crossing the river on a ferry boat following Indian trails and deer tracks westward till they arrived in what is now the city of Hamilton which was only a few huts at the time. Peter took 200 acres at the Cold Springs, lot 36, 1st Concession, township of Ancaster. John settled on a bush lot of 200 acres south of what is now Copetown.”
Those who had supported the British in the War of Independence which ended in 1776, or who had remained obviously neutral, were made to feel less and less welcome in the new United States and were still arriving as loyalists. Peter and Grace settled down on their lot and their third child, Daniel, Samuel Edward’s great grandfather, was born in 1803, to be followed by seven more children. In time the Ancaster and Blenheim townships of Wentworth and Oxford counties respectively were well populated by Bawtenheimers. So much was this the case and so popular was the name of Peter, that one Peter Bawtenheimer changed his name to Beheimer so that his mail and his real estate dealings should not be confused with those of a same named cousin and their transactions end up in considerable confusion.
Good farmers all, the Bawtenheimers prospered and in the early years of the 1800’s Peter went back to New Jersey to buy a wagon and horses. When war broke out between British North America and the United States in 1812, Peter put his Yankee bought wagon and his teams of horses to work hauling supplies for the British troops. It was known that his wartime activities had brought him “a good deal of wealth.”
In time young Daniel married (Catherine) Katy Chrysler, whose father, Henry, had died in the war of 1812. The couple settled on a farm given to Daniel by his father Peter, on lot 4, Concession 6 in Blenheim Township. Daniel, William, Peter, John, James and David, all sons of Peter, farmed near to one another. On Sundays the brothers took turns visiting one another back and forth making their roundabout way by boat on the Nith River. Daniel’s younger brother, Peter, married Rachel Chrysler, Katy’s sister. As in the Weir family, there were double cousins aplenty.
Daniel’s second son, Henry, the grandfather of Samuel Edward, apparently felt the call to preach from his childhood. Born in 1826, he studied for the Wesleyan Methodist Ministry, became an itinerant preacher in his early twenties and was given his first charge at the age of thirty. He began his career in Wellesley, a village west of Kitchener in 1856. The following year he was based in Kincardine. In 1858 he began the year at Bayfield and later was moved to Stratford. After his ordination in 1859, while he held the charge of Morris Township in Huron County, Henry established himself in Blyth. In the year of his ordination, he married Martha Amanda Barber, whose parents had come to settle in Upper Canada from the United States. A petite and high spirited young beauty of sixteen, Martha Amanda was born in 1842. Henry, who was thirty-seven at the time, is reported to have remarked that he deliberately chose a young wife that he might mold her into the proper attitude and behaviour of a minister’s wife. Henry, it would appear, took his responsibilities and himself with great seriousness as a god fearing minister of the gospel.
According to family lore, while still in Blyth in 1860 the Bawtenheimers’ first child, Sarah, Samuel Edward’s mother, was born over the blacksmith’s shop. Then, in 1861, it was on to Teeswater where in the following year the Reverend Henry was declared supervisory minister. From 1863 until the year of Confederation in 1867 the family was quartered in Clinton where Charles was born in 1864, followed two years later by another daughter, Frances, known as Frankie. By 1868 the family was on the move again, this time to Oil Springs and Petrolia, about twelve kilometres apart, where Henry’s health “failed.” The poor roads, mud and winter weather which made travel between the two charges daunting undoubtedly contributed to symptoms brought on by exhaustion. In 1869, another daughter, Mary, was born in the new charge at Paris where the family remained until 1873. Eva Jane, who later married Alexander Thompson, a lawyer, was born in Paris in 1872.
In 1874 the family was sent to Toronto for one year and, in 1875, the Reverend Henry received a call to take charge of the Cape Croker Indian Reserve near Wiarton. There to “convert the heathen” he took great pride in being the first Methodist minister to be so appointed. After two years of preaching and ministering to the Ojibway on the Reserve and establishing a thriving religious community, the Reverend Henry and his family were moved again. This time it was to Kilsyth, not far from the Reserve and close to Owen Sound, a charge that would last for three years until 1879. In 1881 the Reverend Henry was moved back again to minister to Cape Croker, where he preached to his growing flock until his death in 1882. The last child, Laura Alberta, known as Bertie, was born in 1881, the year before Henry’s death.
Upon their arrival at Cape Croker, the Bawtenheimers found their home, the manse, [which,] according to one account written for the Methodist Conference of 1875, was, “…an old Indian house, damaged furniture, loss of garden, an old dirty Indian house which was being repaired…Mrs. Bawtenheimer’s health was so very poor. Rev. Henry built a small barn and kitchen, put up out-houses and fenced fifteen acres, planted trees, levelled and cleared the yard. He built a church with contractors from Owen Sound with a spire.” A dismaying experience it must have been for Martha Amanda and the children.
Henry Bawtenheimer born 1822; married 1859; died 1882, Samuel Edward’s maternal grandfather.
Nevertheless it was all part of the custom of the Methodist Church of the time that each minister must present himself, his wife, his family and all their belongings to the Methodist Conference in Toronto, held each year in June at which time assignments were decided and announced for the following year. Thus a preacher, his wife, pregnant or not, did not know from year to year where they would be located for the following twelve months. Sarah was fourteen when the Reverend Henry arrived at the newly created charge of Cape Croker. Even before they could clear out the debris and filth from the ‘manse,’ a highly inappropriate word for their shelter, the garden had to be dug and prepared for the seeds to be planted to ensure that the family would, hopefully, have sufficient food to keep them alive over the winter.
To profess the word of God under such circumstances demanded strong commitment from both minister and wife. Henry, a strict taskmaster with himself as well as with his family, was described as being very pious and very narrow in his views. Descendants of Henry and Amanda tell family tales of the children having to stand behind their chairs at mealtimes while the Reverend Henry ate his meal first. Then the children would be allowed to seat themselves after their father had finished his meal. Martha Amanda waited on Henry and ate with the children. The Reverend Henry took himself and his position with great seriousness. In 1881, he ended a letter to his daughter, “Yours very truly, Father,” hardly the outpouring of a loving parent.
Martha Amanda (Barber) Bawtenheimer born 1842; married 1859; died 1930, Samuel Edward’s maternal grandmother.
Sarah is reported to have told her children that as a young girl, she played with the Indian children of the Reserve, but she was at least fourteen when she arrived and as the eldest would have had a great deal of responsibility for her brother and sisters. Frances was about nine, Mary was six and Eva Jane three, so it may well have been that it was the three little girls who had Indian playmates and their brother Charles, a ten year old, would have had Indian friends as well. Since Martha Amanda’s health was not robust, especially with another baby on the way, Sarah would have had a great many tasks thrust upon her. A big girl, she grew to be very tall and square jawed like her father. The other girls were petite like their mother.
Henry’s poor and ‘failed’ health finally gave way on April 15, 1882.
In the Minutes of the Toronto Methodist Conference of 1882, it was noted that:
“Bro. Bawtenheimer was born in the Township of Blenheim in the year 1828 (sic). God blessed him with pious parents, they being among the pioneer Methodists of that part of Canada. He seems, like Samuel, to have loved the Lord from his early childhood, for his sorrowing wife now says, “I cannot tell the exact date of his conversion, but I have often heard him say he could not remember the time when he did not pray and earnestly wish to be good.” He, having become convinced of his call to preach, entered the Ministry of the Primitive Methodist Church in 1855, and after one year of acceptable service in that connection, offered himself to the Wesley Methodist Church by whom the offer was accepted.”
The obituary then lists his various callings, noting that he preached with great acceptance to the Indians. An assessment of his character follows, which gives an insight into the home life of the Bawtenheimers and Sarah’s early experiences.
“Bro. Bawtenheimer possessed great intellectual ability — was of a generous, sympathetic, sensitive nature, and had a warm loving heart. He was a devoted Christian, a faithful pastor and loved to preach Christ. In forming an estimate of his character, however, we should, in loving sympathy, remember his long years of sickness — the last twenty years of his life having been, with a few intervals of rest, one long agony of excruciating pain, which shattered his constitution, blighted his prospects, and what, to a highly nervous and sensitive nature like his, was exquisite torture, involved those whom he loved with him in a common misfortune; this threw a sombre shade of gloom over his whole nature, and would, had it not been for the sustaining grace of God, have overwhelmed him in an awful despair. But God did sustain him, for even when his lips were quivering with anguish, he recognized the source of this agony and knew it came with a divine purpose…
During his last illness he was singularly patient and submissive and constantly raised his heart to God in prayer for his blessing to rest upon himself and his family. His undying devotion to his work was strikingly manifested a few Sabbaths previous to his death, for when the hour of divine service had come, he requested his attendants to carry him to the ‘house of god,’ that he might once more proclaim to his flock the story of redeeming love, and point them to that home whose delights he was so soon to experience.”
Sarah Bawtenheimer, Samuel Edward’s mother born 1860; married 1884; died 1935. Photograph taken while she worked at Eaton’s, c. 1880.
Reverend Henry Bawtenheimer died, “in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life,” and was buried on the Cape Croker Reserve. Shortly afterward the house burned to the ground and all Rev. Henry’s books, furniture and other possessions were lost. Martha Amanda took her family back to the site of her husband’s last charge in Owen Sound.
When the Bawtenheimers had been moved to Toronto in 1874, Sarah was fourteen and so was given a slight taste of life in a city. She must have found the Reserve a distinct culture shock. Earlier, in 1856, her father had met Timothy Eaton of the department store at Stratford and the two staunch Methodists had struck up a close friendship that was to endure until Reverend Henry’s death. At age sixteen, Sarah left the manse and family life for the city, applying to her father’s friend for employment in his store, now located on Queen Street in Toronto. Timothy Eaton, who made it his policy to employ ‘daughters of the manse’ in his store had housing arranged for Sarah in a boarding house on Adelaide Street, just west of York Street. This establishment, suitable for young ladies, was run by a Mrs. Lee who had come to Toronto from Kirkton, Perth County, where Timothy Eaton had started his merchandising. Another of Mrs. Lee’s boarders was a young art student, Homer Watson from Doon near Kitchener, who later was to have so great an influence on Samuel Edward’s early art collection.
Sarah started off in the ribbons department. Her hours were from 8 am until 6 pm, five days a week, and 8 am until noon on Saturdays. Her wages were $2.50 per week. Church attendance on Sundays was not only expected of all Eaton employees, but was insisted upon. Timothy frequently took Sarah to church himself, along with his family, and kept an eye on her for the sake of his old friend. By the time Sarah was eighteen she was permitted to attend a few parties, most decorous affairs they would have been, always escorted by a suitable relative. In Sarah’s case, this was Sam Bitts, a second cousin and a young law student. In those days heavy curtains were drawn across the Eaton store windows on Saturday closing time, so that there could be no desecration of the Sabbath by possibly enticing passersby to covet merchandise on display and thus centre their thoughts on worldly matters.
When Sarah was twenty one, she left Eaton’s with a flattering letter of recommendation signed by Timothy Eaton himself, pointing out that she had risen to be second in charge of the millinery department for the past year. She took a position in Armstrong’s General Store, a dry goods emporium in Brigden, a small village on what is now Highway 80 in Lambton County.
It is more than likely that Sarah had a secret reason to want to give up a promising career in the city. Perhaps she had attended a summer Methodist Meeting Ground which gave young people of that faith an excellent opportunity to hear a variety of preachers and also to meet one another. These summer meetings were very popular and, it must be added, well chaperoned. Perhaps Sarah met up with her family at the June Conference of 1881 and was introduced by her father to a young student, George Sutton Weir by name. Perhaps she had met him previously when the family was stationed in Owen Sound and he was teaching school in Georgina Township in Bruce County. At any rate when George Sutton Weir went to Plympton in Lambton County as a teacher and student minister, Sarah found employment nearby. As the saying of those days went, ‘she had set her cap for him.’
Attracted by more than his preaching, Sarah decided to cultivate their friendship and mutual admiration. She no doubt had been given a copy of her father’s tract, published in 1877, Lectures on the Bible and Other Subjects, printed by an unidentified ‘book and job printer’ in Owen Sound and perhaps enjoyed sharing this work with George Sutton. It was while Sarah was living in Brigden that she received the telegram informing her of her father’s death.
After the fire Martha Amanda moved immediately from the Reserve to Owen Sound with what little goods she had saved after the house had burned to the ground. Charles, Sarah’s brother, who is reported as having said that he would like to be a preacher like his father, seems to have left home. Martha Amanda, now on her own, was having great difficulties trying to make ends meet. It was Sarah who wrote to the Conference of Methodist Bishops requesting some sort of pension for her mother and four younger sisters. The reply was to the effect that there would be no pension as the Reverend Brother Henry had failed to remit one year’s payment on his pension. The Bishops’ advice to Sarah was to get a job and support her mother and sisters, a rather tall order for a girl of twenty two who had been helping already and whose family was in exceptional need. Frances was sixteen, Mary was thirteen, Eva Jane was twelve and Laura Alberta an infant. Timothy Eaton wrote to Martha Amanda offering to take the infant and raise her, but the widow refused.
Martha Amanda, now a vivacious and dainty young widow of thirty-nine, once her husband was gone, set about her new responsibilities. It is not recorded exactly how she managed, but in all probability Sarah helped as much as she could. Young Frances was the beauty of the family and one way out of her money troubles would be for Martha Amanda to arrange marriages for her girls. Accordingly, Frances, being ‘polished up’ so as to attain the best possible marriage, was subjected to lessons in painting, singing and horseback riding. It may have been that Martha Amanda was a good hand at needlework and repaid her daughter’s teachers in kind. Timothy Eaton also may have contributed to the family’s needs from time to time.
An opportunity came for a marriage with young Will Marshall, twenty three, and the son of a great lakes shipping owner in Owen Sound. Later in 1882, he and Frances, known in the family as Frankie, were married. From all accounts Will Marshall, who was put in charge of the family interests in Duluth, Minnesota, was a young man of considerable spirit and an overbearing husband. Being employed on a laker in the family company meant he was away from home a great deal and lived what was described as a rough life. Frankie lost a baby in 1883 and died shortly afterward.
Martha Amanda’s eldest daughter, Sarah, twenty-four years of age in 1884 and described by her exceptionally beautiful sisters as being “strikingly beautiful with lovely creamy skin, blue eyes and shining auburn hair,” was next to marry. Undoubtedly she was a lovely bride, but perhaps more simply dressed than Frankie was at her wedding. Sarah would have been an elegant figure nonetheless, probably in a gown of brown silk more than likely with a bustle in the very latest fashion. However, the wedding party must have been an unusual sight, the bride, a statuesque and commanding presence at just under six feet in height, and the groom, a slight man of 136 pounds and five and a half feet tall. As was customary, the bride was described on her marriage certificate as “spinster, resident of Owen Sound,” while George was described as a student, resident of Plympton. The couple was married by the Reverend George Clarke in the Wesley Methodist Church in Welland, Niagara County, with Mary Burgas and John Foss as witnesses. Although Sarah and her siblings wrote to one another with frequency in later life, there is no surviving communication, no card, telegram or greeting of any kind from Martha Amanda to her daughter, nor from the sisters on her marriage. Until the wedding day, the couple was each employed in Lambton County, but it was not an uncommon occurence for a couple to travel together to another settlement for the ceremony.
As a student for the ministry in Canada, George was prohibited from marrying prior to ordination, however, in the United States, he could become a circuit rider before ordination and marriage was permitted. Since Welland borders New York State, the newly wedded pair proceeded directly to George’s first posting at Grayling, in the Alpena District of the Detroit Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church where he was admitted on trial. It would seem that two very lonely young people, each from a home devoid of displays of affection and each raised in a hair shirt philosophy of service before self, as well as in poverty, had found each other. Leaving their country and their relatives was worth the risk. To be with one another was apparently their decision.
By 1885 Martha Amanda now had three unmarried daughters. However, her son-in-law, Will, was a widower and her eldest remaining daughter, Mary, was sixteen. She arranged for a photographer in Owen Sound to take their pictures in the elaborate and detailed high fashion of the 1880’s. The two older girls were great beauties and Laura Alberta was a very pretty child. Soon it was arranged that Mary would marry Will Marshall and take the youngest, a five year old, with her to Duluth. Laura Alberta, known as Bertie in the family, was to become a sort of skivvy for Mary, a pious young woman who took after her father in her ideas of rectitude. In the family it was said that Mary would rather walk through a muddy puddle than step over a playing card lying on the street. The religiously upright Mrs. Will and her rough living husband must have been quite a pair. Mary did produce two daughters over a period of time. In 1903 Sarah would travel to Duluth to be with her and assist with her first childbirth and again for the second child. In 1906 Mary was considered to be in fragile health and the second baby was brought back east by Sarah to be raised for a few months in her home. In the meantime Eva Jane married the lawyer Alexander Thompson of Paris and seems to have had a happy marriage. Later, her son Arthur Thompson would article with his cousin Samuel Edward.
On July 1, 1893, Martha Amanda was married for the second time to a farmer from the Owen Sound area, William Morrison Wilson. He was said by her descendants to have been mean and unkind to her. Martha Amanda did not reclaim her youngest, Bertie, now a child of twelve, once she remarried. Perhaps she felt that Bertie was better off in Duluth. This, however, was not quite the case. Bertie existed in a state of virtual slavery. She was responsible for scrubbing, cleaning and wringing out Will’s work clothing at midnight when he arrived home and had to be up at 3.30 a.m. to prepare his breakfast. Will apparently harassed her. When she was still a schoolgirl he made a serious attempt to assault her sexually, an act which was witnessed by two little friends who had come to call for her on their way to school. The mother of one told Bertie to tell the police, but she was afraid to do so. Later in a long letter to Eva she expressed regret at not having reported him. “I hated, hated, hated Will Marshall,” she wrote. Bertie did try to tell Mary of Will’s behaviour, but Mary lost her temper saying, “Don’t talk to me like that of my man.”
A picture taken of Bertie when she was about sixteen shows a very beautiful girl dressed in the height of fashion, a photograph taken after she had run away from an impossible situation. She went west to Idaho and then to Panama City where she speculated in a gold mine which failed, worked as a journalist, ran a picture show and a rooming house. She took the name of Mrs. Jesse Saunders, although there is no account of a marriage to a Saunders, thought to be a travelling salesman. Rumour had it that she ran a bordello. Eventually she turned up in Tampico, Mexico, where she died in poverty in 1925. Her sister, Eva Jane, visited her in 1917 and members of the family mailed money to her from time to time. Unfortunately, it seems she never received any of it as the envelopes had been slit open and the cash removed.
Near the turn of the century, Martha Amanda’s second husband died and she was once again a widow without an income. She wrote to a man she had met on the train during her honeymoon trip with Wilson, a G.A. Bayne from Victoria, British Columbia. They married in Calgary on May 12, 1909, when the bride was sixty-seven. Martha Amanda went west with him, but would soon return to Ontario. Later Bayne came east, but Martha Amanda declined to follow him out west again. After he died in 1921, Martha Amanda travelled from one daughter’s establishment to another until her death in 1930. The frail Martha Amanda, thrice widowed, lived to be 87 years of age.
Sarah and George Sutton Weir with Ethel Ruth, born 1886. The photograph taken in Tawas City in 1888.
The year following his marriage, George Sutton Weir, still on trial by the church fathers, was assigned to Alcona and Black River in the Alpena District. In 1884 he had been classed as a travelling second class deacon and assigned to Tawas City in the Alpena District. Two years later, he became the Reverend George Sutton Weir, admitted to full connection, elected and ordained deacon, and remained in the same charge. Sarah and George’s first child, Ethel Ruth, was born in their home in Black River that same year.
A riding circuit was an exhausting business as Sarah well knew from her father’s experiences. The average extent of a circuit had a preacher travelling for two weeks at a time, home on Saturday to prepare for the Sabbath and then out on his circuit again, relying on the faithful to feed and house him overnight. This was a lonely time for Sarah, far from her relatives and home, and with a little baby to care for as well.
In 1888 George was elected and ordained elder at the Conference held in Detroit from September 12 to 18. His Tawas City appointment was renewed, which must have come as a happy relief to Sarah, for her son, George Harrison, was born there that same year. The following year the little family was uprooted and sent to Laingsburg in the Saginaw District.
It was while he was stationed in Tawas City, now a resort area on Lake Huron, and ministering to the communities on his circuit situated on water courses emptying into the lake, that George contracted malaria and became very ill. Many struggling hamlets were subjected to epidemics of malaria from the mosquitoes in the swampy surroundings and some were completely depopulated. While Sarah and her babies seem to have escaped, George’s health was seriously impaired. Desperate to try anything to restore his well being, he took courses in popular new alternatives to traditional medicine, appealing, if not widely understood or researched. He obtained an M.E. Diploma as Master of Electro Therapeutics from the National College of Electro Therapeutics in Lima, Ohio, and a Ph.G degree from the Ohio Institute of Pharmacy in Columbus, Ohio, the latter institution being on the Homeopathic Register. There is no record of George travelling to Ohio, so it must be assumed that these were mail order degrees. Apparently these studies did not help to improve his health.
One of George’s last duties in Tawas City was on June 20, 1889, when he gave the Benediction at the First Annual Commencement Exercise of the Tawas City Public Schools, in the Opera House at 7:30 pm, a source of pride and gratification to the young minister. After having served the Alpena District of the Detroit Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, George, still suffering from his malaria bout, was sent south to Laingsburg in the Saginaw District in the fall of 1889. The little family was no doubt thankful to be uprooted this time and to leave the mosquito infested shores of Lake Huron. On Christmas Day 1889, George was the officiating clergyman at the wedding of his brother, Samuel Weir, to Caroline Voss in Oswego, Illinois. The following year, George was assigned on a supernumerary preacher status, which means temporarily without employment, usually due to illness or family problems.
Later George would write of his early experiences as a minister:
The Presiding Elder did not think they paid me properly. He refused to return me for another year and sent me to Alcona and Black River. I had no conveyance and had to do my work on foot. I walked eight miles to preach and had to walk the eight miles back to preach and look after the Sunday School. I finally moved to Black River, where my daughter was born. I was moved to Tawas City because the preacher, W.J. Balmer, claimed he had been unfairly dealt with and the church was torn to pieces. The members were divided and unfriendly to each other. Mr. Balmer did not try to bring about peace and helped the trouble to become worse. Another trouble arose. The town was supported by a saw-mill which depended on Canadian logs. When the supply of logs was cut off there was no work for the mill to do and the people had no means of support except a little work they picked up on the shore loading and unloading boats on shore. My family had but little to support them. Here I was taken sick with a most malignant type of malaria. I never recovered entirely from the malaria and still feel bad effects from it at times. I still trust and love my dear Saviour and my prayer is,
‘More love to thee, oh Christ, more love to thee,
E’en tho it be a cross that raises me.’
George and Sarah took stock and decided to pack up and come back home to London. Their hopes for George’s career as a rising young minister were dashed. “He never fully recovered,” according to Sarah many years later. As he had not been an outstanding success at teaching before he entered the ministry, he did not resume that choice of career. George had a low level of tolerance when it came to high spirited young people and had left London early in his teaching career, probably while he was still in his teens. Insistent on obedience, he set strict rules of behaviour. A story was told of him that when a young lad behaved in a manner that George considered to be obstreporous, he punished the boy and the parents considered the punishment too severe. In the nineteenth century this would have been the strap or caning. The parents complained to the principal. George Sutton’s reply to the parents was a couplet:
“You are all ass but ears, So don’t you meddle with the Weirs.”
His country school teaching first in Bruce, and later Lambton counties, began shortly after the undiplomatic rebuke.
The little family arrived back home in London in 1890, but George Sutton’s careers in education and the ministry were both in tatters and the family breadwinner’s health was permanently undermined by malaria. The future looked uncertain.
