Tag: Helen Frances Bagg

Stanley Clark Bagg’s Four Forgotten Daughters

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According to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, my great-great-grandfather Stanley Clark Bagg had one son, Robert Stanley.1 That is a true statement, but I suspect his four daughters would take issue with their omission from the article.

In fact, Stanley Clark Bagg and his wife Catharine Mitcheson had one son and five daughters, although their first-born died at age two. Their children were: Mary Ann Frances (1845-1847), Robert Stanley (1848-1912), Katharine Sophia (1850-1938), Amelia Josephine (1852-1943), Mary Heloise (1854-1938) and Helen Frances (1861-1935.) All four of the girls appear to have been independent, intelligent and strong-willed.

Stanley Clark Bagg (1820-1873) inherited a vast expanse of property in Montreal from his maternal grandfather and he seems to have supported the family primarily on rental income. The land consisted of several adjoined farms on the east side of Mount Royal, north of the city limits. The family lived in a big house called Fairmount Villa near what is today the corner of Sherbrooke Street and Saint-Urbain.

Stanley had worked as a notary for about 10 years, then devoted himself to managing his properties. He also had time to follow his many intellectual interests, including numismatics (the study of coins) and archaeology, and to write about them. He became well known in Montreal, not only because of his extensive landholdings, but also as an author and a philanthropist. 

Amelia, Katharine and Mary Bagg, 1865

Stanley and Catharine placed great importance on the children’s education, and the whole family took a grand tour of Europe in 1868-69, visiting museums, cathedrals and ancient sites in Pompeii, Paris and other locations. This interest in travel, history and the arts must have rubbed off on the girls because Katharine and Helen were both writers and Amelia was an amateur artist.

Stanley’s sudden death from typhoid at age 53 came as a shock to all, and a colleague at the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Montreal wrote an obituary that was published in the society’s journal. Other local historians also wrote about Stanley Clark Bagg’s life and family history, but these accounts contained several inaccuracies and completely omitted mention of his daughters. 

As part of my effort to correct the historical record, here is a brief outline of the lives of the forgotten Bagg girls:  

In 1886, Katharine married Rev. William Lennox Mills (1846-1917), an Anglican clergyman who served as Bishop of Ontario from 1901 to 1917. The couple lived in Kingston and had one son, Arthur Lennox Stanley Mills. Around the turn of the century, Katharine and her husband visited Europe and the Holy Land and she wrote a small book about their travels.3

Amelia married twice. In 1890, she married Joseph Mulholland (1840-1897), a real estate agent with the Bagg family business. Five years after Joseph died, she married John George Norton, a widower who was Anglican Archdeacon and Rector of Montreal. Amelia had no children of her own, but my mother remembered her fondly and she seems to have been the go-to member of the family in troubled times. 

Amelia was also involved in the family real estate business, selling and leasing properties, but her most important legacy was a ledger she kept from 1891 to 1927, in which she recorded land sales and other accounts related to the Estate. She is buried with her first husband in the Workman family plot in Montreal’s Mount Royal Cemetery.

Mary Heloise married Montreal stock broker Robert Lindsay (1855-1931). They lived in downtown Montreal and had five children: Ada, Lionel, Marjorie, Stanley and Marguerite.5 Lionel, a gentle pediatrician, was the only member of the family I knew. Mary Heloise is buried in the Lindsay family plot in Mount Royal Cemetery. 

Helen Frances was considerably younger than her brother and sisters and was only twelve when her father died. Educated in Canada, England and Europe, she led an adventurous life.When her first husband, Edward Albert Lewis (1860-1908), an agent in the Bagg family real estate company, disappeared in 1898 owing large sums to his brother-in-law, Helen tracked him down in the Far East. The couple started over in Vancouver, where Albert became a successful real estate agent and Helen a pillar of society. After Albert died, Helen married Herbert Drummond (1864-1938) and the pair travelled the world.6

According to a 1930 article about Helen published in Women of Canada, she wrote magazine articles about her travels, but it was probably under a pseudonym and I have yet to find any of them. She had no children and is buried in Vancouver. 

Photo Credit:

Misses Bagg, Montreal, QC, 1865, William Notman (1826-1891), 1865, I-18254.1
© McCord Museum
<a href=”http://collections.musee-mccord.qc.ca/en/collection/artifacts/I-18254.1/” title=”More information about this image”><img src=”/largeimages/I-18254.1.jpg” width=”576″ height=”768″ alt=”Photograph | Misses Bagg, Montreal, QC, 1865 | I-18254.1″ /></a>

Notes:

  1. Pierre Landry, “Bagg, Stanley Clark,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 10, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed September 29, 2017, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/bagg_stanley_clark_10E.html Janice Hamilton, “Don’t Believe Everything You Read,” Writing Up the Ancestors, Dec. 2, 2015, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2015/12/dont-believe-everything-you-read_2.html
  2. These births, marriages and deaths can be searched in the Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968, available on www.Ancestry.ca. These events are also recorded in the Bagg family bible, which is part of the Bagg Family Fonds at the McCord Museum in Montreal.
  3. Mrs. W. Lennox Mills, Reminiscences of a Cruise in the Mediterranean and a Visit to the Holy Land and Egypt,1910. 
  4. Amelia Josephine Bagg Mulholland, Ledger, 1891-1927, McCord Museum, Bagg Family Fonds, P070/B07.
  5. Lucy Anglin, “Great Granny Bagg,” Genealogy Ensemble, Feb. 10, 2016, https://genealogyensemble.com/2016/02/10/mary-heloise-bagg-lindsay-1854-1938/  
  6. Janice Hamilton “Helen Frances Bagg: A Happy Exile,” Writing Up the Ancestors, Jan. 6, 2016, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2016/01/helen-frances-bagg-happy-exile.html.

The Mysterious Disappearance of Albert Edward Lewis

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My great-grandparents were quiet, respectable people so when their brother-in-law landed on the front pages of Montreal newspapers for all the wrong reasons, they must have been horrified.

The newsmaker was real estate developer Albert Edward Lewis,1 husband of Helen Frances Bagg. On November 22, 1897, a headline in The Gazette ran, “A PECULIAR CASE. Mysterious Disappearance of A.E. Lewis. …. LARGE REWARD IS OFFERED. Suspicious Characters Seen Loitering Near his Residence on Saturday Evening Shortly Before His Disappearance.”  

 For several days, both English and French-language newspapers reported on the mystery. Evidence of a struggle was spotted near the last place he had been seen, and the police dragged nearby quarries for his body. His wife was afraid he had been murdered. Brother-in-law R. Stanley Bagg (my great-grandfather), who was also a business associate, described Lewis as a gentle man who had no enemies — and an excellent fighter who could take care of himself. 

Two days later, the tone of the articles changed. La Minerve reported that Lewis had frequently been seen in the company of a pretty young woman. The newspapers now said he had left Montreal of his own accord and was in New York, en route for southern Africa. It became clear that Lewis had staged the mysterious circumstances surrounding his flight.

On November 27, a brief item in The Gazette reported that R. Stanley Bagg had taken out a seizure before judgement against Lewis for $10,000. In 1895, Bagg had sold property to Lewis for $10,000, and Lewis was due to pay $300 in interest a few days after his disappearance. In the intervening two years, the property Lewis had purchased with the intention of selling as building lots had lost value, partly because the privately owned tramway that provided transportation to the area was in serious financial trouble and unable to offer reliable service. Eventually Bagg recovered some of the money that Lewis owed when 50 building lots that Lewis owned were seized and sold at a sheriff’s auction.2 

Six years earlier, Lewis’s Montreal real estate business had promised to be very successful, partly because of his links to the Bagg family. They had inherited several adjoining farm properties along what is now Saint Laurent Boulevard. R. Stanley Bagg was selling the lots nearest the city center and, a little further afield, the Montreal Freehold Company had purchased a large piece of land from the Baggs with the intention of developing it. Lewis was the sole real estate agent for both parties for the best lots: those facing St. Lawrence Street.3

R. Stanley Bagg must have trusted his brother-in-law to give him this advantage, so what was Albert Edward Lewis’s background?  The Lewis family had deep roots in Flintshire, Wales. John Lewis (1820-1891) immigrated to Montreal in the mid-1800s and worked as a bureaucrat at the city’s busy port. He married Matilda Snowdon (1827-1902) and the couple had four children: Lansing, Eleanor Ida, Albert Edward and Lily.4

Lewis’s business promotional material5 says he left home at age 17 and “spent four years trading in the South Sea Islands. The cattle boom of 1880 found him on the Texas Trail with cattle bound for northern pastures. Locating in Oregon, he engaged in ranching most successfully and returned to Montreal a few years since.” He went into the general real estate and loan business and married Helen in 1891.6 His disappearance six years later must have devastated her, and she set out to look for him, eventually tracking him down in the Orient. They returned to Canada together, but not to Montreal. Instead, they settled in Vancouver where nobody knew about the scandal.7 There, he became one of Vancouver’s largest property owners, owning some of the best locations in the city’s business district, and the couple also had a busy social life.

Around 1907, Lewis developed health problems and, when he improved, the couple travelled to France. He was never able to return to Canada.

Lewis died in Paris on 28 June, 1908,8 his wife at his side. He is buried in Caerwys, Flintshire, Wales.9 Helen had a crucifixion window installed in his memory at St. Michael’s Church in Caerwys, and she had a similar window placed in Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver.10

See also:

Janice Hamilton, “Helen Bagg: A Happy Exile,” Writing Up the Ancestors, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2016/01/helen-frances-bagg-happy-exile.html

Photo credits: The Gazette, Montreal, 22 November, 1897, 1.

Albert E. Lewis [image fixe], 1894, 0002733571, Albums Massicotte, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, http://collections.banq.qc.ca/bitstream/52327/2083577/1/2733571.jpg. Gravesite in Caerwys, Flintshire, Wales courtesy Nelson Oliver; photo by Sylvia Harris.

Thank you to Nelson Oliver and Yves Desjardins for their assistance with this article.

Notes:

  1. According to a descendant of the extended Lewis family, family members called him Albert and other people called him Edward. In various documents he appeared as A.E. Lewis, Albert E. Lewis and Edward Lewis. 
  2. Several notices appeared in the Gazette officielle du Québec (the official publication of the government of Quebec) announcing that a sheriff’s sale would be held to sell off Lewis’s properties. See http://www.banq.qc.ca/collections/collection_numerique/index.html?language_id=1&categorie=20   Type Albert E. Lewis and click on chercher (search). Two different notices appeared: page 31 on 12 February 1898, and page 29 on 23 April 1898.
  3. To learn more about the development of Mile End, the Montreal neighbourhood in which Lewis was selling property, see Mile End Memories, http://memoire.mile-end.qc.ca/en/category/histoire-du-mile-end/.
  4. According to the Quebec, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967 online database on Ancestry.com,Albert Edward Lewis, son of John Lewis Esquire Controller of Her Majesty’s Customs at the Port of Montreal and of Matilda Caroline Snowdon, was born 27 May, 1860.  
  5. Lewis took out a half-page ad for his Real Estate and Insurance business in a book that promoted Montreal commercial, manufacturing and financial businesses. His ad was on page 120 of Montreal Illustrated 1894, published by The Consolidated Illustrating Co. Montreal. http://archive.org/stream/cihm_11153#page/n89/mode/2up
  6. Albert Edward Lewis wed Helen Frances Mitcheson Bagg at Christ Church Cathedral in Montreal on 16 April, 1891. The source can be viewed in the Quebec, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967 database on Ancestry.com. The signatures of witnesses make me wonder whether members of Helen’s family were pleased with the match. The only signature from the Bagg family was her mother’s. 
  7. There was an article about Lewis’s 1897 disappearance in a Victoria B.C. newspaper a few days after his death, and a similar story appeared in the Vancouver World. “Recalls Old Mystery: Late A.E. Lewis, of Vancouver, was Central Figure of a Montreal Drama Several Years Ago”, Victoria Daily Colonist, July 1, 1908, 1, http://archive.org/stream/dailycolonist19080701uvic/19080701#page/n0/mode/1up  
  8. “Lewis, Albert Edward (1860-1908)”, WestEndVancouver, https://westendvancouver.wordpress.com/biographies-a-m/biographies-l/lewis-albert-edward-1860-1908/  This article describes Lewis’s life and quotes his death notice in the Vancouver World, June 30, 1908, 16. 
  9. The record of Lewis’s burial in Wales can be found on FamilySearch.org.
  10. Stained glass window dedicated to Albert Edward Lewis at Christ Church Cathedral, CVA 371-2818, City of Vancouver Archives, http://searcharchives.vancouver.ca/stained-glass-window-dedicated-to-albert-edward-lewis-at-christ-church-cathedral