Rose McGee's Journey

I'm not sure how I got all this stuff, but it sure tells an interesting story about one woman's course through life. In this case, my mother's mother's mother, Rose McGee.

The one thing I do know where I got it from is this blue communication from the UK's Ministry of Defence. My grandmother sent it to me from Montreal in the early 80s. She'd written away to Britain for information about her father, William Ilett, who died in the Battle of the Somme, and she thought I, as his only great-grandson, would be interested in having it. I remember I had it on the cork bulletin board in my room for several years.

Edit: I found this mention of him on a Wordpress site. Apparently he was 30 when he died.

Rose McGee, by then Rose Ilett, had three daughters by William. My grandmother, Eileen, was the eldest. My Auntie Vi, who was born in England, was the youngest. Between them was a little girl named Gertrude, I think, who died when she was four. Back in those days, women were very much dependent on men for support and getting through life, and so a couple of years after she was widowed, she married another British soldier, a Scotsman named George Hill. He was the man I knew as my great-grandfather in Montreal when I was a child when we would go back to visit my mother's hometown.

They were married in Colchester in 1918 in the Catholic St. James Church, which still stands today. You can see it on Google Maps's street view. Isn't all the information here, from a century ago, kind of fascinating? All these people, with their particular lives, brought together by this event commemorated by this old piece of paper I still have.

Once Poppy Hill was out of the service, they apparently moved back to his hometown of Glasgow, where my great-grandmother received the following note.

At some point, Poppy and Nana Hill got on the boat and emigrated to Canada, where one or the other or both of them (not too clear on the point) already had family. They settled in Montreal. My grandmother had already been sent over into the care of an aunt over here some years before and had very few memories of life in the British Isles (despite being born over there, she had no accent to my ears). She told my mother that she had long been haunted by the notion that her mother hadn't wanted her and had sent her away. Later on she came to realize that this was simply the way of things back then. Resources were scarce for British families, and you did what you could, including depending on better-heeled relatives abroad.

I also have my great-grandparents' passports from the early 1940s. They're fascinating all on their own.

For one thing, they're massive compared to the modern passports you see. They're half again as big as the Canadian and Irish passports I have today. They're also sturdy hardcovers. You could practically pound in a nail with these things.

Inside, they're even more interesting. The nigh-illegible fancy script addresses the reader in the name of the Earl of Athlone, a British nobleman who was the Governor-General of Canada at the time. Governor-General around the Empire were typically British nobles back then. Canada didn't appoint a Canadian-born Governor-General until sometime in the late 1950s. Imperial ties were still pretty strong back in the days these documents were issued.

For instance... It's interesting, and a little strange, to see "British subject" listed as the nationality status on the interior page here. Canadian citizenship, as distinct from the all-inclusive status of British subject, didn't come into existence until January 1, 1947, so this was the effectively the legal status of everyone in Canada until then, regardless of whether they were born in Canada, Britain, or elsewhere in the Empire... or beyond, if they nationalized.

Nana Hill's birthplace is given as Enniskillen, Ireland, which was true at the time. Enniskillen is part of what's now Northern Ireland and is still part of the United Kingdom, but when she was born, all of Ireland was still part of the UK. She must have been still been living there when she met my great-grandfather, William Ilett, because their first daughter, my grandmother, was also born there, which is the reason I was able to register as an Irish citizen. William was already in the army at that time, and must have been stationed in Ulster for some reason. My grandmother was born in June of 1909, so Nana Hill would have been not quite 17 when she gave birth. They sure did marry young in those days.

Isn't it interesting that the passport appears to be valid only for one country? In this case, the United States. Poppy Hill worked for one of the Canadian railways back then, and they had then, and still have now, extensive property down in the US. He was stationed for a time across the border over in Maine. My mother remembers visiting her grandparents there when she was very young. Eventually they moved back to Montreal.

Nana Hill's passport includes this interesting resident alien card from the US Dept. of Justice.

Poppy Hill's passport is worth a look as well.

And coming back to that question I asked in my previous post... Here's the photo of the man from the locket side-by-side with the photo of the man I knew as Poppy Hill. Do these look like the same man to you? I don't think they are. Poppy's eyes are very intense, and he's wearing glasses. The man in the locket has a softer looking aspect and he's not wearing glasses. I have a feeling, on balance, that the man in the locket is in fact William Ilett, my biological great-grandather; the man who died in the Somme.

Nevertheless, George Hill was the man I knew as my great-grandather, my mother knew as her grandfather, and was essentially the only father my grandmother ever knew, since she was barely five when her biological father left for France, never to return. I'm proud of both of these men.