Author: Janice H.

Fairmount Villa

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Fairmount Villa

In September 1948, a letter appeared in The Montreal Gazette noting the demolition of Fairmount Villa, a house that had stood on Sherbrooke Street near Saint Urbain for over 100 years.1 Today, that house has been gone for 70 years, but it is still not entirely forgotten: in 1892, Fairmount Avenue, in Montreal’s Mile End neighbourhood, was named to commemorate the house.2

Fairmount Villa was the home of my great-great-grandparents, Montreal notary and landowner Stanley Clark Bagg (1820-1873,) or SCB, and his wife, Catharine Mitcheson Bagg (1822-1914). SCB died of typhoid at age 53, but Catharine continued to live in the house with her son and four daughters until they married, and she remained there until her death at age 92.

After Catharine’s death, the house was sold to the Asch advertising company, which eventually became known as Claude Neon. The City of Montreal expropriated the property in 1948 in order to widen Saint-Urbain Street.

The property records go back 300 years. In 1701, the land on which the house later stood was owned by a religious community known as the Charon Brothers, and the Grey Nuns (Soeurs grises) inherited it in the mid-1700s. Around 1780, the sisters sold three lots at the crest of the hill where Sherbrooke Street was later to become a major artery, and those lots were subdivided and resold several times.3 In 1837, merchant Stanley Bagg purchased lot number 58A at a sheriff’s auction.4 (When a land owner was unable to make his payments, the sheriff seized the property and auctioned it off, often at a bargain price for the new buyer.)  

Fairmount Villa, NW corner St. Urbain and Sherbrooke, 1881

When SCB and Catharine were married in 1844,5 Stanley sold the property to his only son. It was a long, narrow lot at the north-west corner of Sherbrooke Street, running 2½ arpents north along Upper Saint–Urbain Street to the property line of Durham House, where SCB was born and grew up.

The notarial act in which the transfer was recorded described the Fairmount property as having “a two-storey stone house and other buildings thereon erected.”6 The house was probably still under construction in 1844, and SCB and Catharine lived at Durham House with Stanley for a few years. Their first child, who died at age two, was born at Durham House, but the others were all born at Fairmount Villa.

Some years later, an addition was added to the west side of Fairmount Villa. It included SCB’s office and a second front door so that farmers coming to pay the rent they owed to SCB did not have to walk through the house to get to the office.7

In his letter to The Montreal Gazette, SCB and Catharine’s grandson Rev. Sydenham Bagg Lindsay explained that the name Fairmount Villa was reminiscent of Philadelphia. Catharine Mitcheson grew up in a rural area just north of Philadelphia called Spring Garden.8 (It is part of the city today.) Philadelphia’s famous Fairmount Park was located nearby. The naming of Fairmount Villa after a place associated with Catharine’s early life was something of a family tradition: the house in which Catharine grew up was called Menteith House, after Catharine’s mother’s birthplace, Menteith, Perthshire, Scotland.

Sydenham also noted there was a family chapel at Fairmount Villa, called the Oratory of the Holy Cross. “The stained glass window in this chapel depicted Christ as the Savior of the World; it was given in recent years to the Anglican Church at Lake Echo….” 9

Sydenham’s younger brother, Stanley Bagg Lindsay, also recalled visiting Granny Bagg: “We can remember her well sitting at the front drawing room window at Fairmount with her white lace cap on, looking out at the people passing.”10

He continued, “We used to play in Granny’s garden. There were apple trees, especially one which was easy to climb and play house in. There was an iron bench under it, painted blue green…. There was a chestnut tree which we loved, the summer house, the white statutes of Adam and Eve with no arms, … the bleeding hearts, snowballs and lilacs … Nora the housemaid and Jessie the cook, who made good ladies fingers and sponge cakes and who we could always see through large sunken window which gave light to the kitchen.

“There were the stables, the horses, the rockaway and the brougham and Willis the coachman with white mutton chop whiskers whom we liked and who afterwards drove a wagon for Joyce the confectioner. We were very fond of Odell Comtois who did sewing…. She was practically one of the family.

“The garden became very shabby,” he concluded. “It seemed a large garden to us. It went as far as our house which was at the corner of Milton Street. The west side adjoined the Wilson-Smith property. Long before our house was built, a large house called Tara Hall stood just north of Milton Street. Mother [Mary Heloise (Bagg) Lindsay] remembers it burning down one night when she was a child. Where the house used to stand is a street called Tara Hall.”10

Clarifications added Jan. 16, 2020

See also:

Janice Hamilton, “Fanny in Philly” Writing Up the Ancestors, March 29, 2014,  https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/?p=171 

Janice Hamilton, “A Home Well Lived In,” Writing Up the Ancestors, Jan. 21, 2014, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/?p=181

Photo credits:

Studio of Inglis, “Residence of Stanley Clark Bagg,” 1875, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec http://numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52327/1956159 (accessed Dec 6 2019)

Chas. E. Goad, Atlas of the City of Montreal from special survey and official plans, showing all buildings and names of owners, 1881, plate VII; detail of digital image, digital image 10, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec,http://numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52327/2246915?docref=MtCYGy_XY512L82RM1ifMA (accessed Dec. 16, 2019)

Photographer unknown. Catharine Mitcheson Bagg in her 90thyear, 1912. Photo glued into the Bagg Family Bible, Bagg Family Fonds, McCord Museum, Montreal.

Sources:

  1. Sydenham Bagg Lindsay, “Montreal Landmark Destroyed,” Letters From Our Readers, The Montreal Gazette, Sept 1, 1948, p. 6.
  2. Justin Bur, Yves Desjardins, Jean-Claude Robert, Bernard Vallée et Joshua Wolfe, Dictionnaire Historique du Plateau Mont-Royal, Montréal: Les Éditions Écosociété, 2017, p. 149.
  3. Justin Bur, email to the author, Dec. 9, 2019.
  4. J.A. Labadie, Inventory of Stanley Clark Bagg’s Estate, notarial act #16732, 7 June 1875, item no. 236;  Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.
    Stanley Bagg only bought about half of lot 58A, but he also purchased two neighbouring lots, greatly expanding the grounds. Later, SCB sold off a part of the property that he didn’t want, creating a long narrow piece of land along Upper Saint Urbain Street that he divided into lots.
  5. The wedding took place on Sept. 9, 1844 at Grace Church, Philadelphia. Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Historic Pennsylvania Church and Town Records; Reel: 1078; database and images; Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.ca, accessed Dec. 16, 2019) entry for Catharine Mitcheson; Citation Year 1844, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Church and Town Records, 1669-2013, citing Historic Pennsylvania Church and Town Records. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
  6. Henry Griffin, notarial act # 20645 (approximate page number;) June 1, 1844; also mentioned as items 235 and 237 in the inventory of SCB’s estate, prepared by J.A. Labadie, notarial act #16732; Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.  
  7. Stanley Bagg Lindsay, handwritten notes on Stanley Clark Bagg; Lindsay family collection.
  8. 1840 United States Federal Census, database; Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.ca, accessed Dec. 16, 2019), entry for Robert Mitcheson; Citation Year:1840; Census Place: Spring Garden Ward 1, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Roll: 487; Page: 259; Family History Library Film: 0020555; citing Sixth Census of the United States, 1840. (NARA microfilm publication M704, 580 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C.
  9. Sydenham Bagg Lindsay, Ibid.
  10. Stanley Bagg Lindsay, handwritten notes on Catharine Mitcheson; Lindsay family collection.

The Wedding Trip

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The itinerary of my grandparents’ 1906 honeymoon reads more like a business trip than a romantic vacation, nevertheless, they both seemed to enjoy their trip to Chicago, Toronto and Montreal.

My future grandfather was planning on running for election to the school board, so he wanted to research schools, and my grandmother wanted to shop for things she couldn’t find in stores at home. Meanwhile, both were interested in medicine, so several hospital tours were on the agenda.

The bride and groom were Dr. Thomas Glendinning Hamilton, 33, a Winnipeg physician, and Lillian May Forrester, 26, a nurse. Lillian had trained at the Winnipeg General Hospital and graduated in May, 1905 with the class prize for highest general proficiency. They met at the hospital and she resigned when they became engaged.

This photo, taken around 1932, is the only one I have of the couple alone together.

According to a newspaper account, the wedding took place at the Winnipeg home of the bride’s uncle, lawyer Donald Forrester, at 4:30 p.m. on Nov. 26, 1906: “The bride, who wore a pretty gown of white net over taffeta and carried bride’s roses, was given away by her father, Mr. John Forrester, of Emerson…. There were no attendants, only the immediate relatives of the happy couple being present.” Following the brief Presbyterian service, the bride quickly changed into a red and grey travelling outfit and they left for their honeymoon on the 5:20 train.

Lillian kept a diary of the wedding trip, leaving out any romantic details, which is probably why that account is available for all to read at the archives of the University of Manitoba.

They spent their wedding night on the train to St. Paul and reached Chicago late the following evening.  Staying at the 16-story Great Northern Hotel, they visited the Marshall Field’s department store, viewed the impressive tower of the Montgomery Ward Building and attended a play. They also visited the 1,400-bed Cook County Hospital which, Lillian noted, treated 25,000 patients a year and did an average of 10 operations per day. They then headed by train to Detroit for a brief stopover, and to Toronto, where they began exploring the neighbourhood around Queen’s Park and the University of Toronto.

Niagara Falls was on their honeymoon bucket list. T.G. and Lillian spent a snowy day there, seeing both the Canadian and American falls. Dressed in waterproof clothing, they viewed the back of the falls, and they took a cable elevator car to see the Whirlpool Rapids and have photos taken. Back in Toronto, they stayed two nights with T.G.’s Aunt Lizzie Morgan, then boarded a train for Montreal.

Lillian noted some of the towns they passed on that leg of the journey, including Belleville and Shannonville. She did not add in her note book that her family lived in this region before moving to Manitoba in the early 1880s, and that she had been born near Belleville. It was now early December, and there was a heavy snowfall in Montreal, nevertheless they walked down St. Catherine Street and took the street car to Notre Dame Cathedral, which they found to be “as grand and beautiful as we anticipated.” Lillian ordered 50 visiting cards – she would need them in her new social role as the wife of a busy physician – and she visited several stores “and spent her first pin money.”  She described Morgan’s department store as “the most beautiful store we have ever seen. The art gallery, glass room, electrical room and furniture department are all exceedingly fine.” Meanwhile, T.G. interviewed the Superintendent of Schools in Montreal.

No visit to Montreal is complete without a trip up Mount Royal, and T.G. and Lillian went to the top “in a warm red sleigh, had a splendid view of city, canal, river and Victoria Bridge.” On the way back downtown, they visited the Royal Victoria Hospital, ”a beautiful, well equipped building” with 300 beds.  The next day they explored the Redpath Museum, had dinner at the Windsor Hotel (one of the city’s best) and took the overnight train back to Toronto. Again they stayed with Aunt Lizzie. It was a Sunday so, after church, T.G.’s cousin accompanied them to visit more relatives. The following day, T.G. met with the Superintendent of School Buildings in Toronto and with a former principal of Wellesley Public School, said to be the most handsome and modern school building in Toronto.

Over the next few days they visited more extended family members and went to see St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Scarborough, where T.G.’s father and grandparents were buried. They also visited the Scarborough farmhouse where T.G. had spent his childhood. They stayed downtown on their last two days in the city, and attended a lecture on new developments in vaccines. Finally, they headed west on the night train to Chicago and Minneapolis. When they arrived back in Winnipeg, Lillian’s brother picked them up at the station and they went to buy furniture.

The last entry of the wedding trip diary was dated three days before Christmas 1906, and almost one month had passed since their wedding: “Dec. 22. Had tea at 8 a.m. in our own house.”

Sources: 

Lillian Hamilton, “Wedding Trip,” University of Manitoba Archives and Special Collections, Hamilton Family Fonds, Hamilton Family – Personal; Box 1, Folder 1.

Note: a slightly shorter version of this story is posted on the collaborative blog, https://genealogyensemble.com