Category / The Davids

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Richard John Perring

Richard John Perring, my 3rd Great Uncle, was born 122 years ago today. His parents, Annie Bester and Walter Perring, were my 3rd Great Grandparents.  Another way to look at this was that he was my Great-Grandfather’s uncle.  In fact, it is likely that my Great-Grandfather, James Charles Mungham, and his uncle knew each other, as there was only an 8 year age difference between them.  My Great-Grandfather emigrated from Britain to Canada with his family, including his parents Harry Mungham and Ellen Perring in 1908, arriving when he was three and a half years old. Ellen Perring was the eldest child of Annie Bester and Walter Perring, and though I can’t be sure, it is very possible that her and her family’s decision to move to northern Ontario was in part due to her parents’ decision to do the same thing the previous year. So when My 2nd Great Grandparents and their children arrived in Orillia, Ontario in 1908, Ellen’s parents, and her younger siblings, including Richard, who would have then been 11 years old, were there to greet her.

Three years later, in the 1911 census, Richard was listed as working as a labourer at a “wheel works.” Sometime between then and late 1914, he had moved south to Winchester, Ontario, slightly south-east of Ottawa, and began to pursue a career as a baker. It was also in Winchester that he married Mary Elizabeth Lambert in December of 1914 when they were both 19 years old.  Almost exactly a year later, in December of 1915, Richard attested to the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the 87th Battalion (Canadian Grenadier Guards) of the Canadian Expeditionary Force.

His unit sailed for Britain on the 23rd of April, 1916, one day after his 20th birthday. He spent the rest of the spring and the early part of the summer in training, and then on August 10, 1916, the unit sailed for France. By the fall of 1916, the 87th was fully involved on the 1916 Somme offensive. At some point during the more than month-long battle of the Ancre Heights, Richard went missing.  It was later declared that he had been killed on or before October 22, 1916, exactly 6 months after his birthday.  His remains were never found.

Back in Orillia, Ontario, my 2nd Great Grandmother had lost a brother.  She also had 2 sons of her own “in khaki” at the same time.

My birthday is April 22. I have now had 21 more birthdays that Richard ever experienced. Had he not been killed in France, there is even a possibility that he would have lived to celebrate his 81st birthday on the day I was born. The what-if’s of so many young lives resonate a lot more somehow when one can connect these kinds of clear timelines to them.

Richard is memorialized at the Vimy memorial in France.  I am honoured to post the Commonwealth War Graves Commission commemorative certificate for my uncle here.

 

 

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Percy Wilfred Dash

Percy Wilfred Dash is the third Dash brother I am writing about in this series.  His older brothers Herbert and John have already been covered earlier this year.  Yesterday marked 123 years since he was born in Orwell, Cambridgeshire on April 14, 1895.

Dash

Abbreviated family tree of the Dash brothers.

Like his brother Herbert, he was also in the Royal Navy.  Where his brother joined as a 15-year old boy, Percy joined the Navy after the outset of the war when he was 20 years old, offering his services as a blacksmith. Most of this time was aboard HMS Cyclops which was a repair ship for the Grand Fleet.  She spent the majority of the war stationed at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, and was also used during the Second World War as a submarine repair ship.

HMS Cyclops

Percy was with the Royal Navy until July of 1919.  He married Ellen Imogen Hooten in 1921.  He lived to the age of 62, passing away in 1957 in Bury St. Edmonds in Suffolk.

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Ernest Stephen Moody

Ernest Moody, like his younger brother Bertram, was my 2nd cousin 4 times removed.  He was born in 1890 in Edmonton, UK.  He was married to Elizabeth Fitzer in 1909, at the age of 19.

Like his brother, his service record is not available, so I am left to piece together his service between his medal records as well as through some information from his granddaughter.  He served with the Hertfordshire and Lincolnshire Regiments, and his granddaughter was told that he had been injured by gas and had been sent back to England to recuperate in hospital.

James Moody

Ernest Stephen Moody is in the back row on the left.

Both the Hertfordshire and Lincolnshire regiments had been overseas as early as November 1914, so as the above picture is from approximately 1917, it is possible that by the time this was taken, Stephen had already been to France, had been injured, and had recuperated. He and Elizabeth had 4 children together.  Ernest passed away in 1976 in Hertfordshire, at the age of 85.

 

 

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Bertram George Moody

Bertram George Moody was my 2nd cousin four times removed.  We are both descended from John Gill and Elizabeth Munns, my 5th Great Grandparents and his Great Grandparents.  While I am descended from John and Elizabeth’s daughter Sarah, Bertram is descended from her sister Alice.  Bertram and his brother Ernest were 2 of four grandchildren of Alice Gill  who served in the war. Stanley and Herbert Gill, who I have already profiled, were sons of Alice’s son William Gill who was born before she was married, and the Moody brothers were the children of her daughter with her husband Stephen Farrington, Harriet Amelia Farrington.

Harriet was born in 1870 in Edmonton, and married James John Moody, house decorator, when she was 19. Together, they had six children.  In the 1911 census, fifteen-year old Bertram was recorded as being in training to be a house decorator like his father and his brother Ernest who was a paper hanger.

James Moody

James Moody and Family circa 1917.  
Enfield, Middlesex, England
back row -L/R Ernest Stephen Moody snr., James Moody, Bertram Moody. seated – Elizabeth Mary Moody (nee Fitzer), Harriet Amelia Moody (nee Farrington), Elsie Alice Moody. seated front – Ernest Stephen Moody jnr, Gladys Jessie Moody. Lillian Evelyn Moody

I do not have his service record, but I know from the national roll of honour as well as from correspondence with his great-niece that he served in the 4th Leicester Battalion  as a signaller. According to the National Roll of Honour, he served at battles of Lens in 1917 and Bethune in 1918.

Honor Roll

Excerpt from National Roll of Honour on Bertram’s service.

I would like to thank Bertram’s great niece for giving me permission to use the amazing photo of her family, above.

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Joseph Perring

Joseph Perring was my fourth great-uncle and the father of Edmund Alfred Perring and Alfred Charles Perring. One hundred and three years ago today, he attested to the British Expeditionary force in the Army Service Corps.

Attestation Papers

Excerpt from attestation papers of Joseph Perring.

By the time he attested, his son Alfred had already been overseas with the 1st Welch Regiment for over two months.  He claimed on his attestation papers to be 45 years of age.

Age claim

Excerpt from attestation papers of Joseph Perring.

This, it would become clear before too long, was a lie.  Joseph was born in Rickling, Essex in 1862, the second youngest child of  James Perring and Emma Law, who were also my 4th Great Grandparents.  By the time he was 21, he had moved to Edmonton (London), and he married Sarah Elizabeth Oliphant, a domestic servant. Together, they would go onto have thirteen children, Edmund and Alfred being the 5th and 6th respectively.  What possessed him to volunteer is difficult to say.  He was under no obligation.  Even once conscription arrived in Britain, it only applied to men under 41 years old.

Regardless, join he did, as part of the Army Service Corps which provided provisions and supplies to the troops at the front. It is unclear what part of the corps he served in, but he was in France from April to October of 1915 which included the timeframe when his son, Alfred, was wounded and eventually died of his wounds.

In October of 1915, Joseph’s lie about his age began to unravel.  He ended up in hospital in France that month due to “muscular rheumatism,” and was invalided back to England.  For the following several weeks he was able to perform occasional light duty, but by January of 1916, his medical status was being evaluated by the medical board.  He then revealed that his true age was in fact 55, and that he had suffered from rheumatic symptoms off and on since 1902.  He was discharged in February of 1916 as being no longer physically fit for war service.

He went on to live a long life, even living through the entirety of yet another world war, before passing away in Edmonton, UK in late 1949 at the age of 87.

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John Edward Hewlett

One more brief post to get us back on schedule:  John Edward Hewlett was the son of Joseph Hewlett from his first marriage.  Although not related to me, he was half brother to Herbert Hewlett, and step son to Elizabeth Mungham.

John was five years old when his father married my cousin. His father was a rail engine driver, and as the family grew from three to seven children between 1890 and 1896, he followed in his father’s footsteps.  It is clear that he was a Sapper with the Royal Engineers, but beyond that, his service record is nearly illegible, so I cannot tell where he served or even with what units.

He was married before the war, and he and his wife had seven children between 1910 and 1921.  I do not have a date of death for John.

 

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Herbert George Hewlett

Herbert George Hewlett was my 2nd cousin three times removed.  We are both descended from Thomas Mungham, an agricultural labourer, and Elizabeth Sarah Wood who were my 4th Great Grandparents, and Herbert’s Great Grandparents.  They were born in Kent, England in 1809 and 1921 respectively.  They were married in June of 1841, but their son, William Mungham was already 7 years old at the time, which would have made his mother 13 at the time of his birth.  Whether this was indeed the case or William was a child from another union, he was certainly claimed by both as their son.  Herbert was descended from William, while I am descended from Thomas and Elizabeth’s third son, Henry.  In all the census data, William is listed as a labourer, sometimes agricultural and sometimes industrial such as on the railway.  He married Sarah Elizabeth Johnson in 1858, and they had six children together, including Herbert’s mother, Elizabeth Ann who was born in Kent in 1861.  In 1889, she married widower Joseph Hewlett who had three children from his first marriage, aged 8, 5 and 4.  Joseph and Elizabeth went on to have four more children together, the youngest of whom, Herbert, was born in 1896.

Hewlett

Abbreviated family tree of Herbert Hewlett

In the 1911 census, Herbert is listed as 15 years old, living with his parents and three of his older siblings, and working as a newspaper boy in Dover, Kent.  He joined the Royal Navy in May of 1915 when he was 19 years old as a stoker, being trained at Pembroke II in Chatham. He then served aboard the HMS Jupiter and HMS Blenheim.

He was aboard HMS Jupiter at a time where she was assigned to the Medeterranean sea to the Suez Canal Patrol, then to the Red Sea, then back to the Suez Canal with a home port in Port Said, Egypt.  This must have been an extraordinary experience for a newspaper boy from Dover. HMS Jupiter returned to England in November 1916, at which time Herbert spent some more time at Pembroke II, close to his family in Kent, before being assigned to HMS Blenheim in February of 1917.  This ship was a depot ship to the destroyer fleet throughout the rest of the war.

Herbert married three times in his life, and I found no indication that he ever had children.  He died in 1985 at the age of 89.

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Wilfrid Lacasse

As happens with us all, life happened to me last week, and I did not get my post on Wilfrid Lacasse, my 2nd cousin 3x removed, completed.  Apologies for any confusion that the blank post may have created! This will mean you’ll see two posts from me this weekend, one on Wilfrid today, and another tomorrow on Herbert Hewlett.

Wilfrid Lacasse is one of only two members of my maternal grandfather’s family I am profiling over the course of this year.  I have a few theories about why that is, but most notably is the fact that my grandfather came from a French Canadian family in an isolated part of Northern Ontario.  French Canada was less likely to subscribe to the British imperial rhetoric driving recruitment, so the likelihood of enlistment was lower.  Also, being in a community where the main industry were mines and mills, men’s incomes were important to the survival of families, and the products of the work was considered important to the war effort.  Wilfrid is not only one of the only two members of this side of my family I will be profiling, he is also the only member of the American war effort I have as part of this project.

Wilfrid and I are both descended from Laurent Lacasse and Emelie Bergeron who were my 4th Great Grandparents, and Wilfrid’s Great Grandparents.  Both families extend back generations in Canada, with traces back to the settlement of “New France” around the St. Lawrence River. Both were born just south of Montreal, and, sometime after their marriage, settled in the Ontario community of Clarence Creek, just south of the Quebec/Ontario border.

Lacasse

Abbreviated family tree of Wilfrid Lacasse

While I am descended from their son Jean Baptiste, Wilfrid is descended from their oldest son, Laurent, and then his son, also named Laurent.  Wilfrid’s father and his mother, Josephine Bergeron, were both born in Clarence Creek, where they married and where their children were born.  In the 1901 census, completed early in the year, Laurent and Josephine are listed as living in Clarence Creek with with their four daughters and one son: Wilfrid.  In July of that year, Josephine died, leaving Laurent with five children ranging from one to twelve years.  By the end of the year, the family had moved to Michigan, potentially to be closer to his brother Felix, who already lived there.

Wilfrid was living in Alger, Michigan when the American forces joined the war in 1917. He was twenty four.  As I’ve written before, American service records were destroyed in a massive fire at the National Personnel Records Centre in St. Louis which destroyed 80% of service records of men discharged from American military forces between 1912 and 1960.  As such, there is no military file for Wilfrid, but there is a record of a request his wife made for him to have a military headstone upon his death.  This record states that he served as a cook at Camp Mills in Long Island, New York. This was a camp that was established in the autumn of 1917 as an embarkation point for troops leaving for Europe.  His period of service was less than a year, ranging from September 2, 1918 to July 1919.  Since the war ended in November of 1918, it is very unlikely that he served overseas.

He returned to Michigan after his discharge where he married Ruth McMaster in 1924 and began his family.  They later moved to Wisconsin where he lived until his death in 1952 at 59 years of age.

 

 

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John Brady

This is an interesting post for me as this is the first entry where I have memories of people who had direct connections to the subject of the post. This makes it feel both more personal and more difficult to write.

John Brady was my 2nd Great Uncle.  He and his siblings, my Great Grandmother Elizabeth Brady, my second great uncle Thomas, and my second great aunts Emily (who my father remembers fondly) and Charlotte (who I met several times as a child), were all born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to John Brady and Emily Topping.  The family emigrated to Canada in 1904 when my Great Grandmother was 14, Thomas was 12, Aunt Em was 11, John was 8, and Aunt Charlotte was 3. The family settled in Toronto on Salem Avenue where John was a carpenter, as was his son Thomas according to the 1911 census.  In April 1911, John contracted Influenza and died soon after of pneumonia.  His eldest child, Elizabeth, had already married John Russell Miller in 1910, and had delivered her first child, Samuel, just ten days before her father’s death.  John’s other four children were still at home at the time of his death, the oldest of whom, Thomas, was 19.  In October of 1913, Thomas died of “phthisis pulmonalis,” otherwise known as Tuberculosis. Less than a year later, Canada was at war.

On February 5th, 1915, at the age of 19, John Brady enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, in the 7th Canadian Mounted Rifles. He arrived in England in June of 1915 where he was transferred to the 2nd Canadian Divisional Ammunition Column. It was with the 2nd CDAC that he first arrived in France in September of 1915.  From arrival in France until April 2, 1916, the John was was stationed near Berthen, about 20 kilometres south-west of Ypres, where the Divisional Ammunition Column functioned as the railhead where divisional ammunition was stored before being shipped to the front.  On April 2, John and 21 other ordinary ranks were transferred to the 6th Brigade of the Canadian Field Artillery.  Just over a month later, he was transferred to the 5th Brigade stationed in Dikesbusch, Belgium due to a reorganization of the brigades.

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John Brady, Age 19

It is in May 1916 that there is a first mention in his record of an issue with his hearing as he was admitted to hospital for an infection in his ear.  This became a chronic problem for him, and was attributed to his exposure to gunfire. He spent the duration of the war alternately serving in artillery units and in hospital for his painful ear.

He finally returned to Toronto in May 1919 at the age of 23.  In March of 1920, he married Gladys Louisa Moat, and together they started their family. His first three children were born in Toronto, and at some point between 1922 and 1926, he and his family moved to the United States, first to Iowa, then eventually to Illinois, settling in Chicago. In total, he and Gladys had 8 children. In an email exchange with his Granddaughter, she told me that he worked at the Chicago Tribune, and was beloved by his coworkers; so much so that when he suffered a stroke at work in 1964, a group of them carried him to a nearby hospital, where sadly, he passed away at the age of 68.

I would like to thank John’s Granddaughter for sharing her memories and family stories with me as well as for permission to use the above photograph of John in uniform.

 

 

 

 

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John Dash

John Dash, older brother of Herbert Dash, was born in 1887. Unlike his brother, was not part of the war from the beginning. In the 1911 census, he is listed as a boarder with a horsekeeper on a farm in Hertfordshire, with his trade or calling listed as a blacksmith.  On April 5, 1915, John married Charlotte Lilian Randall in Cobham, Surrey after which he returned to Cambridgeshire with his bride to the same cottages near Meldreth where his family lived.  Just over a month later, on May 14, 1915, he signed his attestation papers to the Royal Field Artillery and Royal Horse Artillery as a shoeing smith.

After training throughout the summer in England and undergoing journeyman testing and certification, his unit, the 100th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery in the 22nd Division, embarked for France in September of 1915.  After a brief two months, the unit was one of many that was assigned to the Mediterranean theatre of war in the fall of 1915 to provide military assistance to the Serbs who had recently been attacked by combined German, Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian armies.

The Macedonian Campaign, also called the Salonika Campaign (about which the Salonika Campaign Society has collected a great deal of information), was established through the fall of 1915 and winter of 1916 at Salonika (now Thessaloniki), in Northern Greece. It was marked by several battles, and saw thousands of soldiers participate between 1915 and 1918, but receives much less attention than the Western Front.  It is perhaps best known for the thousands of cases of malaria that came from the ravages of mosquitos in the mucky conditions.

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Christmas postcard from Salonika in 1916.

John was among those who spent some time in hospital due to his time in this theatre.  First, he was kicked in the mouth by a mule, an occupational hazard for a farrier, in June of 1916.  He spent nearly two months away from his unit before being discharged back to active duty on August 1, 1916.  His stint back with his unit was brief, as he was once again hospitalized on August 31, 1916, this time for malaria, one of over 162,000 cases of the disease that struck British forces in Northern Greece.  He was evacuated to Malta, where he remained in hospital for almost two months before being invalided back to Britain in late October 1916. By early 1917 he had been posted to the 19th Reserve Battery of the RFA, and served the remainder of the war in Britain.

Being back in England also allowed him time with his family, and in October 1917, his son, John Cornelius Aubrey Dash was born.  Sadly, being on the home front did not shield John from further tragedy. On March 6, 1919, one month after John had been discharged from his unit, his 16-month old son died due to complications from the influenza virus that had ravaged the western world throughout 1918 and 1919. I haven no record of John and Charlotte having any more children. John passed away in Cambridge in 1951 at the age of 63.