THIS IS A START OF THE LONG AWAITED HISTORY

LINKS TO COUSINS  to get back to this page just hit Back in your browser                                                                                                                                                                                              

JUST AN ORDINARY FAMILY

This very informal sketch is undoubtedly full of factual errors for which correction is urgently solicited. However, it is more of a reflection on a group of human beings who probably considered themselves fairly ordinary, and yet demonstrated some extraordinarily fine characteristics, Family loyalty, discipline, courage, generosity, patience, and, for some, true piety:- enterprise, integrity, sportsmanship,, and good humor.

The outstanding contributions of the Gooderham and Worts families to the fabric of Canadian society: business, banking, real estate,. sporting, health, education, church, the arts, social movements;- are well documented. The names are nearly all those of men. Surely mothers wives, daughters and women associates deserve more credit!

This piece attempts to elicit some of the domestic drama which, when the events were occurring, were so heart felt -.land yet, now remain to us as mere dates and lists of names. We must use our imaginations, and put ourselves in their places. If we can do this, the 19th Century will have more meaning for us and we will appreciate more keenly the heritage which lies around the austere facts.

Our story begins on the flat, rural stretches of land, dotted with, huge windmills, where the Waveney River separates Norfolk from Suffolk, two thirds of the way between Cambridge University and the North Sea coast of England. Sarah Rodwell was baptised in the Scole Anglican Church on the 15th of November 1766. About 22 years later we can suppose that she married James Gooderham, (9 years older than herself because their first child was baptised in the church on the 17 of February 1789). James and Sarah’s eight recorded living children arrived every two years, and one can only surmise that Sarah died while giving birth to the youngest, Horace, since the year of his birth and the year of her death coincide. This death in childbirth is the first of a sad and recurring event of which we note evidence in the Gooderham and Worts family story until well into the 20th century, along with the brief 11 died in infancy 11 notation in the genealogies. Speaking of genealogies,’ Ontarian Families’ makes it very clear that men were considered to be definitely of more importance than women. Even if he were born the last-born, any boy in the family was listed first, and often only the sons’ dates were considered worthy of mention. We can only arrive at the others, by a series of educated guesses. By 1820, James had also died at age 63. William the 2nd oldest child was thirty years old, and with his wife Harriet .’ne Herring, was farming his father’s land, with his six brothers. He had an adventurous and dangerous youth, going to work at the age of 12, after is mother’s death. As a Royal York Ranger he had been involved in the capture of the islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, during the Napoleonic wars, contracted yellow fever, and barely escaped a watery grave when his home-bound ship was burnt to the waterline. Eighty-four invalid soldiers drowned. His neighbour and later brother-in-law, James Worts  was with William for these military adventures.

The ambitious young Gooderham's heard that there was no flour mill in the Upper Canadian town of York, lying between the Don and Timber Rivers, on the North shore of Lake Ontario. They were convinced that they could make a much better life for their growing families in the new World’ and laid their plans. There was land and equipment to dispose of (perhaps to the five brothers who remained, and presumably were the antecedent of the many Gooderham's whose names appear in today’s Bungay-Scole telephone directory.) Why didn’t they all come? Did they regret their decision to stay? Apparently, the three emigrants had no regrets! With their young families, William (aged 41), Ezekiel (37), and Elizabeth (35), the second, fourth and fifth of Sarah and James’ Gooderham’s eight children made their plans for an adventure which was to profoundly affect the development of their new country, Canada.

It was sensible to send a scout on ahead. So, in 1831, Eliza, Beth’s husband, James Worts then aged (?37) accompanied by his old-est child, James Gooderham Worts aged (13) arrived in York, took lodging in a house on Ontario Street and built a stone grist-mill near the mouth of the Don River. As a miller in Bungay, near Scole, he had routinely used wind power, and this seemed a logical step for their plans to serve the pressing needs for milling in York, with its population of 3,500. Spring of 1832 brought news of the departure of the ship ‘Anne’, from England.

As the expected date of arrival of all the rest of the families drew near, James Worts rented a house for them. First Ezekiel and his wife Harriet arrived, (they eventually had 11 children) with the news that the rest of the party delayed in Quebec, (for quarantine?) would soon be at York. James and his son must have been taken aback to find, as they anxiously strained to recognize the faces of their loved ones at the wharf, that William and Harriet had assumed responsibility for an additional eleven children, whose parents had both died on board ship. This brought the party, including servants to 54. Cholera was a constant threat on these long sea voyages, and it must have been with grateful hearts that the families were reunited, with no loss of life. (One mystery: who were those eleven children, “adopted in all but name” and where are their descendants today? Can anyone help to solve this mystery?)

The firm of Worts and Gooderham made history by depositing in the Bank of Upper Canada the largest sum ever placed at one time by an immigrant on the day after arrival in York. The partnership became official the next day. As the more experienced in milling, James Worts was the logical senior partner, even although it was Wm. Gooderham who appears to have had the most money to invest, partly from sale of his valuable farmland in Norfolk and partly from his previous stint of recruiting for the British army, in which capacity  he made a considerable amount of money.”

However, in less than 2 years (February 1834) Elizabeth Worts, aged 39, died in child birth, and James Worts, suffering from grief and depression, drowned-himself in the well of the mill he had just finished building. At about this time, the 2nd Worts child, William, drowned in Toronto Harbour. This left, as the ‘man of the family’, James Gooderham Worts, aged 15, with a younger brother, George, (who later married Martha-Jane Green and became a merchant in Hills burgh, Co. Wellington) and young sisters Mildred, Sarah and Elizabeth.  One conjectures that William and Harriet Gooderham ,then both aged 44, must have spread themselves still more thinly, to care  for the grieving orphaned nieces and nephews, their own young and growing family, and the orphaned eleven children.

1834 may have been a year of celebration for the citizens of the new city of Toronto, but it held much domestic drama for these two families. Wm. and Harriet Gooderham’s seventh child, Edward, had been in February 1832, shortly before their departure for Canada. Two months after sister Elizabeth Worts’ death, and her husband ,James Worts’ suicide, on April 4th 1834, Harriet gave birth to Henry her 8th child. Nineteen days later, little Edward died, age two.

By this time the two oldest Gooderham's, daughters Saran, (b 1816) and Louisa(b.1822)) Were sixteen and twelve respectively, and must been shouldering considerable responsibility for house keeping and child care. Hard  work was the order of the day. James Gooderham Worts did not go to the University of Toronto- as other  young men might, but was quickly worked into the Firm, which was now Gooderham and Worts, reversing the original order.  By 1845 he was a partner. In 1846 they built their own wharf, and within another 10 years were operating a small fleet of lake schooners. They moved into distilling in 1837, simply to make use of second-grade grain left surplus from milling. They switched from wind power to steam, and the wind mill built by James Worts allowed to become derelict. All that now remains is one stone.  

A Second Bond  

James Gooderham Worts grew up, to marry Sarah Bright, and have three sons

(I)  James - Gordon (1843-1846) (2) James Gooderham 1853-1884( died age 31, leaving 3 children, including a year-olds on, named (what else?) James-Gooderham Worts (3) Thomas Frederick-b. 1857-and six daughters, including CharlotteT - Louisa, who married on 26 April 1865 to William Henry Beatty, and gave birth to five children, including Charles William Beatty (1871- 1958) who married in 1896, Lillian May Gooderham(1874-1967),eleventh of George Gooderham’s twelve children.

Thus the  two families, first joined in Scole, Norfolk in 1816 when Elizabeth Gooderham married James Worts, were once again joined, eight years later, in the bustling city of Toronto.” and Lily May Beatty lived the rest of there lives at 121 St. George Street , Toronto. The Ezekiel Gooderham's apparently preferred to continue farming, rather than become involved in the milling, with its rather significant venture into distilling . Ezekiel’s farmland in the Toronto area must have become of increasing value as the city grew. It is hoped that as a result of the interest in the 3 immigrant families, that Ezekiel’s side of the history will become better known.  

My Lineage

My Grandfather Gordon Stewart Gooderham first came to Lake Temagami in 1901 from Port Credit/Oakville where he owned a large farm ( the site of the present St.  Lawrence Cement CO). He Traveled extensively in the area with his professor from U. of T.,  A.L.Cochrane. In 1926 he established Camp Chimo, a fishing camp at the mouth of the South Arm of Lake Temagami. My parents helped with the camp and later ran it on their own. With  my 4 younger sisters,  Patricia, Susan, Jane, Mary and myself, we eventually all helped run the camp until it was sold in the 1970's ,as a result I have been coming to Lake Temagami all my life. I moved there permanently in 1975 and made it my home. In 1978 I meet my present wife and 3 years later we were married, I have 2 children, Krista 20 and Nicholas 16. We presently live and work in Temagami. Since 1976 I have been in construction and for 23 years I have run my own business. 

From my cousin Gordon (Tim) Gooderham;

"Regarding the history, I am told that the earliest ancestors have somewhere been traced back to the time of William the Conqueror and immigration from Scandinavia to the UK at that time,  but I can't prove it.

Regarding the early days in Muddy York,  you might mention that infant mortality and the death of women in childbirth was pretty common in those days, hence the large number of children as insurance for the continuance of a family.  The mortality rate only began to drop with the arrival of "modern medicine" with the 20th century.  You can see that in the family tree about three generations back."