Reunion

My paternal grandmother’s sister, Mary Hay Clark, was born in Peterhead on 25 July 1878 and was just 12 years old when their mother, Barbara McDonald, died in 1891. 

In an earlier post [see Migration] I hinted that a cousin, Christina Hardy, had an important role to play in the life of one of my grandmother’s siblings, and a series of records show that Mary Hay was sent to live with her in Grantham, Ontario not long after the death of her mother. 

Christina was the daughter of my great grandmother’s sister, Elizabeth McDonald. She was born in Ontario in 1861, and became a High School teacher before marrying a farmer, George Keyes, in 1891. They had two daughters: Laura Keyes (1894) and Kathleen Keyes (1896). Although they were related, the Hardy and Keyes families would have been strangers to Mary Hay as Elizabeth McDonald had emigrated to Canada long before she was born.

The 1901 Canadian census lists Mary Hay living in Grantham with Christina, her husband George and their daughters, noting that she arrived in the country in 1893. This is confirmed by a passenger list for the SS Vancouver which shows that, aged 14 and unaccompanied, she sailed from Liverpool on 28 September 1893 and arrived in Montreal on 8 October. 

Grantham is close to the American border at Niagara Falls, and immigration records reveal that Mary Hay crossed between the two countries regularly. These documents also provide some personal details and, from a 1911 record of entry to the US, we learn that she was a dressmaker who was 5’ 4” tall, had brown hair, a fair complexion and grey eyes. 

This record also states that she lived in Detroit from 1903 – 1910 and gives an address there as her destination in the US. Strangely, I cannot find any trace of her in either Canadian or US census records after 1901 but, in an unsuccessful application for US naturalisation dated 1961, she claims that she had lived in Buffalo, New York since 1930.  

The most interesting document in relation to this week’s theme dates from 1924 as it records Mary Hay’s return to Canada after a holiday visiting relatives, sailing aboard the SS Athena which had departed from Glasgow on 15 August:

The big question is: which relatives did she meet on her return visit to Scotland ? Her eldest sister, Barbara Jane Clark (born 1863), had died earlier that year, and her brother, Thomas William Clark (born 1869), a few months earlier in December 1923. Three of her remaining siblings had emigrated from Scotland many years before, but her sister, Helen Ann Clark (born 1873), was still living in Maryhill with her husband and family. There would also have been nieces and nephews in and around Glasgow, a brother in Fraserburgh (John Clark, born 1867) and McDonald cousins elsewhere in Aberdeenshire.

The most tantalising question of all is, of course, whether Mary Hay was reunited with my grandmother, Flora Clark, who would have been 3 years old when her sister left for Canada. As Flora was living in Portsmouth, 470 miles from Glasgow, with a small child and a new baby (my father) it seems unlikely, but not impossible as the train journey would have taken Mary Hay around 10 hours and it seems her visit lasted several weeks. 

Mary Hay Clark never married and she died in Buffalo, New York on 13 August 1962 at the age of 84. An obituary published the following day in the St Catherine’s Standard reads: “Mary Hay Clark, 82, died in Meyer Mem Hosp, Buffalo, Monday. Lived at 110 Laurel Buffalo. Born in Scotland, Came to St Catharines as a small child & lived there until she moved to Buffalo 30 yrs ago. Nephew in New Jersey & several cousins here.”

She is buried in the Christ Church Anglican Cemetery, McNab, Ontario alongside several members of the Keyes family, including her cousin Christina.