Help with birthplace, please

[GallowayLass]

Here's an 1870's map of the railway system around Collingwood that eventually joined up with C.P.R. further to the north.

[Janet in Yorkshire]

Well done, and thank you GallowayLass. Your googling skills are obviously far superior to mine :D - I've been trying on and off all day to find something like that, but to no avail.

Jay

[Blewin]

Hi Jay...,

The amount of information you and the others on this thread have found on WCL is amazing. I'm impressed by your skills.

My father (Noel James) had mentioned that he had cousins in Collingwood. So it is likely that when my grandfather WCL went there, he was encouraged to come by his relatives already living there. I imagine that the Greys, the ones who adopted Alice Lewin were related. Alice's married name was Mills.


I see that Maurice and Dan Lewin were mentioned in the 1921 Census. Their house was on Hume Street in Collingwood.


My grandfather WCL came from Cardiff Wales. My father said that his grandfather was a farmer in Wales.
WCL was in the British Army as you have found. He was in South Africa for the Boer War and in India. He said that he marched across the Sahara and that his foot froze and they had to amputate one of his toes. The artifacts of his that I have are: G.W. Bacon & Co Ltd London Siege of Ladysmith - South African Battle Pictures No. 6. poster. WCL had other posters in his house in Collingwood, but I don't know what happened to them. Possibly some of my cousins took them.

I have a book titled "Glimpses of India' with over 500 pages of pictures and text of the history of India at that time. The editors preface is from Bombay October 1895. My grandfather's signature is in the book and it matches the ones that you have found. Also, while in India he had a signature stamp made by what he said was an Indian Fakir. He gave the stamp to me because I'm named after him. While the stamp uses initials instead of William Charles, the "Lewin" part and the "W" and "C" match what you have found. I have taken pictures of all these artifacts and will send them to you as soon as I have found a way to do that.

If I speculate, I would say that Anna Maria went home because her father was ill. My father Noel was born Aug 13 1910. Possibly WCL waited for that before he went home in Nov 1910. After Anna Maria's father died she returned from the UK. If there's a picture of her leaving, I can match that to the other photo of her that I'm trying to send.

Thank you so much for spending time on WCL. I can now see how genealogy can become addictive, like trying to solve a mystery.

Regards,

Bill.

Regards,

Bill.

[Janet in Yorkshire]

For everyone who has shown an interest in the thread, Bill and I have managed to make e-mail contact. He has confirmed the second marriage to Frances, a lady whom he knew. I am so pleased that what has been found dovetails very nicely with his personal knowledge of the family.
I think there may be one or two tiny anomalies between the actual and what has been passed down through the family, but I think many of us have been in this situation ourselves!
Thank you all for your interest and input. Like Arnie, I could very well be back .....

Jay

[jonmce]

Good Day
I happened to have come across your posts. Charles (Charlie) Lewin was my grandfather. I can probably answer quite a few of your questions. I have for instance his discharge papers from the army and some photos.
Just a few points Grandad came to Collingwood because one of his half brothers, a Bryant was living there. Grandad also fought in the Battle of Omdurman, Atbara and in the Boer War. He was stationed in Malta, Egypt, Sudan, near Hyderabad India, South Africa and then returned to England.
Regards
John

[jonmce]

Just a few further thoughts. Grandad always claimed he didn't have a second name which was untrue. He said lower class people didn't have second names. At one point I traced his family back to 1800 but didn't keep a record. For the most part, they stayed in the same general area and were rather poor. The first family from his first wife consisted of Alice who was distant from the family probably because of granddad, Steve who according to my mother was an American coast guard captain( his daughter still lives in Collingwood and knows quite a bit about that part of the family history), Noel again according to mother worked in the Ontario parliament buildings, Morse who was a town cop in Collingwood, Dan who died before he was 20 from a brain tumor. The second family with my grandmother Frances( she was originally hired to look after the kids when the first wife died and was considerably younger born 1900), was Ruth my mother and John.

[jonmce]

lots of comments. The rail line to Collingwood was the Northern or some such. It was the first line connecting the lower lakes to the upper lakes and further West and is the reason Collingwood came into being in 1850. It was actually superseded by CP which pushed through to BC in 1885. The Collingwood line became part of Canadian National. Both these railroads exist today.

[margaretmarch]

Good Day
I happened to have come across your posts. Charles (Charlie) Lewin was my grandfather. I can probably answer quite a few of your questions. I have for instance his discharge papers from the army and some photos.
Just a few points Grandad came to Collingwood because one of his half brothers, a Bryant was living there. Grandad also fought in the Battle of Omdurman, Atbara and in the Boer War. He was stationed in Malta, Egypt, Sudan, near Hyderabad India, South Africa and then returned to England.
Regards
John

Hi John, Welcome to the forum. You may find it quicker to gain Janet's attention by sending her a private message (PM) - click on her name by one of her posts and the drop down menu gives you the option to send a PM. Not sure if you need to have made more posts yourself in order to do that.

Margaret

[Chrissie Smiff]

Hi John, Welcome to the forum. You may find it quicker to gain Janet's attention by sending her a private message (PM) - click on her name by one of her posts and the drop down menu gives you the option to send a PM. Not sure if you need to have made more posts yourself in order to do that.

Margaret

From 'Site News and Support'
New members can send and receive messages (PMs) but:
They can only send each PM to a single recipient. They need to wait for 60 seconds between each message.
New members have an Inbox limit of 10 messages, this includes messages sent and received.
Once they have been a registered member for 10 days AND have made 10 posts the limit rises to 1000 messages and 5 recipients per PM.

and welcome to FTF Jon

[Janet in Yorkshire]

Hi John,
I couldn't get into the forum last night, so have only just come across your response - welcome to the forum, by the way
I've got a few commitments to deal with today, so won't be around much until this evening.
I'm going to have to read through this thread (and the other one) to reacquaint myself with the personalities. My original motive was to find out what happened to Anna Maria (a twig on the periphery of my tree, although we do share a common ancestor further back.)
As so often happens, a whole new, interesting story began to emerge, but I'm sorry to say I never fully followed it through. I'm afraid I'm a bit of a dilettante with a grasshopper mind and I think I got distracted and engrossed with a few other projects - as well as family history, I'm also into local history research and am involved in a war memorial & roll of honour project.
Anyway, thank you for posting and I'll be back on the board this evening.

Jay

[Janet in Yorkshire]

Thanks very much for your input, John, both on the family and on the area.
So were we right in our thinking that Mr Bryan, WCL's half brother, helped with getting settled and finding a job?
What still intrigues me is how did William, in Canada, and Anna, in Norfolk, get together? Was it the result of correspondence through the church, or had they met in Norfolk before William decided to emigrate? Can you throw any light on this, please?

Jay