A to Z Challenge 2020 - U

The Blogging from A to Z Challenge is to post everyday (except Sunday) in the month of April 2020 starting with the letter A and going all the way to Z. My theme is...
Ancestor Occupations 

ULVERTON WOOLEN MILL BUILDER & WORKER

In 1849 William Reed Dunkerley bought Lot 10 with 200 acres of land in Ulverton, a village in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. My 2x great grandfather John Porter built the mill there in 1850. The mill was later turned into a woolen mill.

After a couple of other owners, in 1895 the mill and all buildings were purchased by Albert Harry Hepworth, a woolen manufacturer from Vaudreuil. In 1900 the town paid John Porter $5 for a design, then had him build the covered bridge that went over the river to the mill. 

Original Mill bridge 1952

Farmers brought their wool to the mill for carding, spinning and colouring. Albert's brother George Hepworth worked at the mill as a spinner and was earning about $300 a year. In 1903 George Hepworth married Salome Margaret Porter, my great grand aunt and one of the daughters of my 2x great grandfather John Porter.

The mill employed 10-15 workers who laboured ten hours a day, six days a week. A carder was making about $175-200 /year 

In 1906 Albert sold the mill to neighbour Joseph Blanchette and moved his family to Red Deer, Alberta. George still worked for the new owner for a few years, then in 1918 George, Aunt Salome and their children moved to Red Deer. 


The mill shut down in 1944, was used as a mink farm for a brief period then abandoned.

In 1982 the mill was recognized as a heritage property and was restored. It is now open as a very unique interpretive center, with working antique machinery. Visitors can see all the steps in the process of cleaning, sorting, carding and spinning the wool, and the making of woolen socks, which they sell in their store.

You can see in the video the socks being made into the basket lower left.

This is how they come out of the machine. Just snip and sew.

A to Z Challenge 2020 - T

The Blogging from A to Z Challenge is to post everyday (except Sunday) in the month of April 2020 starting with the letter A and going all the way to Z. My theme is...
Ancestor Occupations 

TAILOR

I have written some about my 2x great grandfather Andrew Smith Tait, who was a tailor in Bath, Somerset. In 1878 while still in Liverpool Andrew took out a patent (Patent No 1168) for his secret pocket in pants and a better fit.  The family moved to Bath about 1887. Andrew had his shop on Broad Street. His children all learned the tailoring business and some worked with him part time to help out. Here are some stories of his children.


In 1891 Andrew set up Tait Bros, a tailoring shop on Green Street, for two of his sons, William and Andrew Eli. 

FMP - This ad was in most papers around Bath

William is in court in 1897, as the plaintiff asking for payment.

William Tait, tailor of Green Street, sought to recover £1 10s for the making of a jacket, bodice, and skirt for the wife of the defendant, Charles Rich, 34 Belvedere, Bath, sanitary engineer. There was a counter-claim to the amount of £1 5s for the material of which the coat and skirt was made, which it was alleged had been damaged through plaintiff's unskilfulness. His Honour found for the plaintiff on the claim and dismissed the counter-claim with costs. 

In 1899 William got in trouble for "allowing" two of his seamstresses to work overtime.

"William Tait, of 4 Belvedere, was summoned for allowing two of his employees, Nellie Rice and Lily Jones, to work after four o'clock in the afternoon on Saturday, the 13th of may. Mr J S Maitland, Inspector of Factories and Workshops, prosecuted. Harold Shorland, Inspector's assistant, said he visited Mr Tait's tailoring workshop at about 4:55 pm on the 13th of May and found two girls working there. He said he had warned Mr Tait some months ago. The defendant pleaded guilty and he was fined £1 or 14 day's in each case."

(Update: The Factory Act permitted women and children to work only these hours: 
Week days 6 am to 6 pm and Saturdays 6 am to 2 pm. From what I can tell with a bit of research these two were young girls)


William died in October 1900.

In 1901 there was a terrible boating accident in which Andrew Eli lost his fiancé and he almost drowned. A few days later their father died suddenly. 


Andrew Eli kept the shop on Green Street for a few years, then in the 1920s it was run by his daughter, Dora Constance Tait. She kept the old W. Tait sign. 

Green Street c1920s - from Bath in Time

Andrew Eli opened Tait & Son, Ladies' & Gentlemen's Tailors, with his son Bernard Tait, at No.1 Northumberland Buildings on Wood Street. 

Northumberland Buildings - from Bath in Time

According to the 1925 Bath Directory their sister Elizabeth Reid Tait was a tailoress with Reid & Collins, costumiers at No.5 Wood Street, Queen Square, across the street from the Northumberland Bldgs. 

Google street view, reimagined

In September of 1935 two strangers to the city of Bath were seen stealing a car by Andrew Eli Tait, who was looking out his shop window. 

FMP - Bath Chronicle 7 Sept 1935

After a bit of a search the men were found and taken to the police station where they were put in an identification parade, and identified by Mr Tait and a witness to the chase.
The prisoners were charged with taking from Queen Street, Bath, a Standard Twelve motor car, value £235, without the consent of the owner or other lawful authority. 
Both pleaded guilty and were sent to prison, one for three months and the other for one month. 

My father visited his great uncle Andrew Eli Tait when he was in England in 1943 

Elizabeth Reid Tait died unmarried September 1945 and left a small sum of money to her brother Andrew Eli. 

Andrew Eli Tait died January 1951 at the age of 72. 


These Tait's had an ancestor William Tait (son of my 5x great grandfather George Tait) that was a tailor in 1798 in Edinburgh. 

A to Z Challenge 2020 - S

The Blogging from A to Z Challenge is to post everyday (except Sunday) in the month of April 2020 starting with the letter A and going all the way to Z. My theme is...
Ancestor Occupations 

SEAMSTRESS

My great Aunt Bessie (Elizabeth Susanna Gay, née King) was an accomplished seamstress. Her stitches were so small, so straight, so precisely placed that today you would think they were made by machine.  She made beautiful smocked dresses for me when I was little.

During the Second World War jobs were rationed. Bessie's husband was too ill to work and to be able to get a job Bessie had to prove to the government that she was the only adult working in the household. Bessie was able to get work as the resident seamstress at the Montreal Children's Hospital on Guy Street. 

Bessie's seamstress talents were used mostly for fashioning garments for burn victims. She would measure the child then design and sew by hand special garments for them. Many of the children she sewed for got burned by sticking a bobby pin into an electrical socket. That made her very vigilant at home when children were around. 

I would imagine it is not a job you can do for many years without it affecting you. When she left the hospital after the war Bessie went to work as buyer and decorator for the Ritz Carlton Hotel in downtown Montreal.