Origins - The Old Dixon Family Tree

 Genealogy has been described as beginning as an interest, later becoming a hobby, then growing into a passion, and finally developing into an obsession. Once one is addicted, there is no known cure.

For many, an awareness of family history serves, apart from general curiosity, the need to understand the forces that have shaped you. It provides a sense of personal identity, an understanding of who you are and where you came from.

My own obsession with genealogy started about 1960 as an adolescent after hearing family stories from a great uncle Andrew Dixon (1907-2002), the de facto historian for my mother’s Dixon family. Among his photographs of and brief accounts about later generations of Dixons, there was as well a rather rudimentary family tree listing various Dixon ancestors going back to 1745. 

The Old Dixon Family Tree (ODFT), as it came to be known, had been found towards the end of World War I by my uncle and his brothers in an abandoned McGillivray Township farmhouse formerly occupied by an aunt and uncle of the boys. Deciding to explore what was left of the house and rummage about inside, the family tree was discovered amongst various apparently discarded papers.

The family tree is believed to have been drawn up sometime around 1900 by brothers Andrew Orr Dixon (1880-1912) and William John Dixon (1883-Aft.1943) Dixon, the sons of John Dixon (1848-1883) and Margaret Orr (1859-1889). Orphaned at a young age when both their parents died of tuberculosis, the boys for the most part were raised by William Dixon (1833-1909), oldest brother of their father and paternal grandfather to my previously referenced great uncle Andrew and his brothers.

John Dixon, father of the orphaned Dixon brothers was born in Weston, Ontario where all members of the family eventually settled after their 1818 arrival in Canada from England. John ended up in McGillivray Township after his recently widowed mother Margaret Dixon (1810-1894) moved there from Weston with her seven children in 1849. The belief that the brothers compiled the family tree is because as young men they are known to have kept in touch and even visited with the many Weston members of the family.  The marriages and issue of those Weston relatives have been documented as well as those of the McGillivray Township Dixons. No other member of the McGillivray Township branch of the family, it is believed, would likely have had such extensive knowledge.

Andrew Orr and John Thomas Dixon, lifelong bachelors, around 1901 eventually settled in the United States, Andrew Orr dying in California of tuberculosis while in his early thirties and William John, eventually dropping out of sight, likely dying somewhere in the United States sometime after 1943 when he was last heard from. Although it is impossible to know for certain now well over a century later if one or both brothers had a hand in compiling the family tree, they seem to be the most likely authors. That is both on account of their previously mentioned Weston connection and on account of no other member of the tightly knit McGillivray Township Dixons ever having come forward to take credit after the discarded family tree was discovered.     

Although not completely accurate, the ODFT for the most part has been proven to be generally so, many entries having been confirmed in searches of various archival records.  It also has served as a useful road map in narrowing geographic areas in which archival research should be concentrated. Without it, it is unlikely, for example, that the precise location of the Dixon family’s roots in England would ever be known.

Apart from the usefulness of names and places mentioned, intriguing notations such as “fought at Battle of Waterloo”, “married four times”, “got whole of large fortune”, and “Captain South African War” clearly suggested there were many interesting Dixon lives that were worth exploring further. In the years that followed, extensive research managed to flesh out the stories of many of these ancestors and their descendants—their accomplishments and their challenges.  

But for the ODFT pointing the way, I would have never learned that one Dixon was in the first class to graduate Canada’s Royal Military College. Another, an Inspector of Customs in Belleville involved in a gunfight with a smuggler who was shot and killed, for a time faced a charge of murder. Another, a recently impoverished widow, walked with her seven children in tow over 100 miles from Toronto to begin a new life in another county. Yet another was transported as a teenager to Australia from England for theft. Even the brothers who are thought to have compiled the ODFT have a story worth telling—Andrew Orr as a California fruit farmer who died quite young and William John as a feckless delusional wanderer who eventually dropped out of sight.   

Discovering the identity of ancestors often seems to give people an added sense of self-identity after learning of past lives that, for better or worse, are part of them. At the very least it provides a context to life beyond the present. Memoirist Maya Angelou once wrote: "I have great respect for the past. If you don't know where you've come from, you don't know where you're going." It seems there are a lot of people today who want to know where they've come from. Following a genealogy craze that started with Alex Haley's best seller Roots, genealogy is said to be the second most popular hobby after gardening and second most visited website category after pornography. Brothers Andrew Orr and William John Dixon were well clearly  decades ahead of it all with their invaluable circa 1900  Old Dixon Family Tree.

                                                                                                                                    David Arntfield

   

A Pious Descendant Of Convicts

Her grandfather was a religiously intolerant Irishman known for his bullying, violence, and intense hatred of Catholics. Her father was a failed law student.  Apart from both men bearing the stigma of having been convicts, her father had the additional shame of having been transported to Australia for his crime.  Despite that family background, Isabel Grant Gray (1855-1933) was able to rise above it all as an intensely passionate Christian who lived a life of fervent piety.  

The stories of Sam Gray (1782-1848) and his son James Gray (1820-1899) are more fully detailed in Bodies Under The Tavern and Convicted And Banished From Ireland.  Family redemption began when James, finally obtaining his freedom, went on to become a respected member of the Tasmanian Parliament.  Isabel took it to the next level with her fervent embrace of Christianity and eventually, the family coming full circle, joining the Catholic Church which her grandfather had so despised. 

James had only one surviving child, Isabel Grant Gray, to whom he left his entire estate.  This daughter who never married died December 7. 1933 in Hobart.  Her religiously intolerant paternal grandfather would have been aghast to know that his granddaughter, for a time having served as an Anglican nun, eventually converted to Catholicism and left her entire estate to Catholic causes.   

Isabel Grant Gray was born in Hobart, Tasmania May 5, 1859 to James and his wife Mary Newton.  About 1877, after her mother’s death the year previous, Isabel accompanied her father for an extended trip to Ireland to stay with relatives.  Although her father remained for about three years before then returning to Hobart, Isabel stayed on longer, eventually settling for a time in London, England as part of her life-long religious journey.  It is there she can be found on the 1881 census in Clerkenwell in Islington as a nun, a member of the Sisters of Bethany, a High Anglican religious order, albeit one not officially constituted by the Church.  Founded in Clerkenwell in only 1866, it was an Augustinian order for pious Anglican women who took the traditional vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience while living in a closed religious community.  Amongst those living in the mother house with Isabel was Yorkshire born Esther Eliza Carter who was destined to be Isabel’s life-long companion on her religious quest.  

In due course, Isabel, accompanied by Esther, returned to Tasmania on the SS Arawa in 1888 a few months before her father’s 1889 death.  Although James’s obituary implies her return may have been prompted by her father’s poor health, an article in the Launceston makes it clear her return was also to be the next step in Isabel’s religious journey.  Both she and Esther were planning, according to the newspaper, to use their English sisterhood experience and personal funds for “ministrations to the work of visiting the afflicted, reclaiming the strayed, and engagement in other offices of disciplined philanthropy”. Their eventual goal, it was stated was to found their own Anglican sisterhood in Hobart which others might join.  

Although there is no evidence that Isabel and Esther were ever able to establish the sisterhood which they had envisioned, they continued with their religious odyssey.  Known for visiting the sick and needy and their works of charity, they regularly attended Hobart’s St. David’s Anglican Cathedral.  Later, however, troubled by aspects of certain Anglican Church positions and its ability to give them certainty in areas of faith and practice, they “crossed the Tiber” and made the momentous decision to convert to Catholicism. This defection of two of its most faithful was said to have caused great local upheaval amongst Anglican clergy.  After the two were officially received into the Catholic Church and baptised at Hobart’s St. Mary’s Cathedral on May 10, 1899, they marked the occasion by presenting a pair of brass candlesticks which now are part of the heritage collection of the Church.  

Said to be well educated and widely read in history, the two were instantly recognizable when in public, always dressing  in the nuns’ habits from their sisterhood days in England.  Although perhaps a bit over the top, this was tolerated by both Anglican and Catholic authorities since the Sisters of Bethany had never enjoyed any official status.  

Although both women always seemed to have been of some means, it is believed this may have been a result of perhaps from family inheritances since Isobel had Tasmanian and Irish assets and Esther Tasmanian and English assets at the time of their deaths. Isabel was the first of the inseparable two to die, death coming in 1933.  Her good works in a sense outlived her since the bulk of her estate went to a Benedictine Abbey in Gloucestershire.  Esther lived on until 1953 when she died at the age of 94, leaving the bulk of her estate to an English cousin.    

In the course of three generations this branch of the Gray family transformed itself from one defined by religious intolerance and criminal behaviour to one defined instead by religious devotion and good works.  Progenitor Sam Gray would never have understood how it all went so wrong.   

 

David Arntfield

 

The Sister Bibles

The custom of giving Bibles to young people as gifts on special occasions, though perhaps now on the wane, was once a common practice.  Its teachings made it an ideal present to guide and equip those youngsters in their faith.  Sisters Lillian and Beatrice Clarke were two such young people.  Well over a century later, their Bibles, now rather worn, survive along with their personalized inscriptions. 

Beatrice Maude Clarke (1896-1987) and her sister Lillian Clarke (1888-1910) were the only daughters
among the five children born to Albert and Sarah Clarke Luton, England.  Lillian was third born and Beatrice last born of this family engaged in England’s straw hatting industry for which Luton was the centre at the time.  The Bible presentations occurred on two separate dates in 1906; the significance of the first date is lost to time while date of the second marked a turning point in the life of the family.

Lillian’s Bible was presented to her on March 19, 1906 by her first cousin Rose Clarke.  As an only child born in 1885 to Joseph and Jane Clarke (Joseph was one of her father Albert’s many brothers), Rose, one might speculate, was perhaps a close girlhood companion to her cousin Lillian, three years her junior.   For whatever reason, 20-year-old Rose decided on that date in March of 1906 to present her 17-year-old cousin with a Bible.  The inscription reads “To Lily with love From Rose”, followed by a Bible passage before the handwritten date “March 19.3.1906.”  The Bible passage from Psalm 37.5 reads “Commit thy way unto the Lord, trust also in him and he shall bring it to pass.

As it turns out, Lillian would have limited time to commit herself to the Lord.  She was to die unmarried and childless just over four years later in London, Ontario, Canada.  Having been operated on for a burst appendix, she never recovered.  Family lore is that she died of peritonitis because of a surgical sponge mistakenly left in her by the operating surgeon.  Her childhood Bible from Cousin Rose had, however, been brought with her when she immigrated to Canada.  Passed on to her sister Beatrice after Lillian’s death, the Bible has now been passed down several more generations. 

The second Bible, that given to Beatrice Clarke while still living in England, was from her uncle William Phillip Clarke, yet another one of father Albert’s many siblings.  Known always as Uncle Phillip, he may have considered Beatrice a favourite niece, given that she bore the same name as Phillip’s own first daughter born in 1889 and after whom his niece may have been named.    Whatever the affection between the two, Uncle Phillip no doubt considered that a Bible would be both a suitable gift and likely also a remembrance of him on the eve of a momentous time in the life of Beatrice and her family.  The inscription reads “A Farewell Present to Beaty From Uncle Phillip.”  The use of the affectionate diminutive Beaty is yet another indication that Beatrice may have been considered a special niece. 

Although no date is provided with the inscription, it most certainly was September of 1906, likely September 13^th.  Beatrice and her family would sail September 14^th, 1906 on the RMS Virginian to begin a new life in Canada across the Atlantic.  Uncle Phil’s gift would come with her. The original nicely penned inscription was added to over 24 years later when Beatrice penned her own inscription reading “and to my Son Jack Jr Arntfield Xmas 1930”.  Just as with Lillian’s Bible, this Bible too has now been passed  down through subsequent generations.

The reality of the emigration of the Clarkes in 1906 was that, as with most such departures in those

days, such a decision meant saying good bye forever to loved ones.  In both Lillian and Beatrice’s case this meant their many aunts, uncles, and cousins as well as a still living maternal grandmother.  Cousin Rose’s and Uncle Phil’s gifts, apart from being something any decent young lady of the day would value, would also serve as one of the few tangible links to the past that both sisters would retain for the rest of their lives --- in Lillian’s case a short life ending four years later and in Beatrice’s case a long one ending eighty-one years later.  Now time worn and fragile, the Bibles and the stories behind them provide future generations with linkage to these more than a century old moments in time of their family history.

                                                                                                                              David Arntfield

                                                                                                                                    

 

William Dixon's Bear Escapade

Had the term then existed, it no doubt would have qualified as William Dixon’s proverbial “fifteen minutes of fame”.  More than a century and a half later, it reads like a combination of derring-do and plain foolhardiness.

My mother having been born a Dixon, William Dixon (1833 – 1909) was my great great grandfather. William, a farmer in McGillivray Township near Lucan, Ontario, gained some notoriety as a young man when he chased and confronted the last bear ever killed in the Township.

This story, passed down in the family over the years, is also recounted in pioneer reminiscences published during the early 1900s in the Ailsa Craig Banner.  William’s encounter with the bear had occurred about forty-five years earlier, putting him in his late twenties or early thirties at the time.

Even though a great deal of McGillivray Township would still have been heavily timbered in the 1850s, the tone of the article suggests that bears so far south in Ontario were already considered a rarity.  The bear pursued during William Dixon’s brush with local fame is only described as a “large bear”, possibly a black bear of the type usually found further north.

The newspaper article recounts some boys, after sighting the bear near Brinsley, briefly chasing it with two dogs before losing track of it.  The dogs, however, were able to continue the chase, apparently barking noisily as they did so.  It is at this stage that William appeared on the scene. The newspaper article recounts:

“William Dixon, who lived nearby, ran to see what all the fuss was about and came singled handed upon the bruin.  With the dogs he followed closely. The bear ran to the north, the dogs and Mr. Dixon in hot pursuit.  The bear got into a dam of water … swimming around and casting ugly glances at Dixon finally deciding to put him out of business by coming out of the water to attack him.  Mr. Dixon raised a large stone and struck him on the head.  The bear turned in the other direction.”

The chase then continued with the bear for a time sheltering between some logs and injuring one of the barking snapping dogs.  William and the other dog (how is not explained) succeeded in ousting the bear from his shelter and the chase continued to the north.

“A number of brush fences were met in the way and, in climbing these, the bear was only a few feet in advance of Dixon who, with a good hand spike or club, might have killed the bear.  However, he had nothing in his hand and although he could get nothing as a useful weapon, he made sufficient noise to be heard from both concessions to the east and west.”

William passed a shanty whose owner was known to possess a gun.  Quickly advised of the situation, this man fired a futile shot when the bear was at long range.  By now, another neighbour made aware of the situation, rode up and, as the bear again turned on his pursuers, the neighbour fired a fatal shot to the bear’s head. 

“Mr. Dixon was much admired and praised for his daring and courage following the animal so closely without even a stick in his hand.  The carcass was skinned, the meat divided among the crowd that soon gathered, and one of the most exciting episodes that took place in the community for some time was over.”  The carcass was skinned, the meat divided among the crowd that soon gathered, and one of the most exciting episodes that took place in the community for some time was over.”

Present day environmentalists would be no doubt horrified by the actions of William and his neighbours.  It is likely, however, that a wild bear was seen as no friend of farmers and their livestock.  It also seems, as evidenced by the last sentence in the story, that the bear may also have been viewed as a potential food source.  Whatever the reason, the tale left William with some modest fame in his farming community.

The tale in the retelling no doubt lacks some of the excitement of so long ago.  Be that as it may, William Dixon, his status as a local hero long forgotten, can at least still be remembered by his family as the man who, whether courageously or recklessly, tracked and pursued the last bear killed in McGillivray Township.

 

David Arntfield