Editor's note: The following is the third instalment in this series. To read Part 1, click here. Part 2 can be found here.
Ed Pye’s mother-in-law, Emma Trunkfield, was born in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, England in 1864.
Emma’s father, James Trunkfield, had been a comb maker and later a market gardener. At the time of her birth, three generations of Emma’s family all shared a narrow row house on Albion Row in the village.
Kenilworth, since the 1700s, had been the epicentre of a now forgotten trade – horn comb making.
Using raw material primarily sourced from surrounding farms, combs were made in a laborious process of many steps which could take months to complete. When Emma Trunkfield was born, the main industry in her hometown was in sharp decline. Several of her family members chose to immigrate.
One of the few employment options available to working class females at the time was domestic service and this where Emma Trunkfield found a job for herself. She was eventually designated as head domestic for a furniture upholsterer, Mr. George Lawrence, and his family. At the same time, she also worked as housemaid for the Robinson family, neighbours of the Lawrences.
Domestic service wasn’t glamorous in any way. Along with the hard work and drudgery, lurked another unpleasantness – the vulnerability of young women when it came to their male co-workers or even the gentlemen of the household.
When Emma found herself expecting a child in 1893, she would have had few options. Just being pregnant alone was grounds enough for immediate dismissal from a domestic service position. With no social safety net, women like Emma were forced to return home in disgrace or take up some very unsavoury occupation to support their child.
Fortunately for Emma, she did have another option: Canada. Her mother had some rather successful relatives there and you will recognize their surname. These were the Andertons of beer brewing fame in Barrie. Emma’s eldest brother, George Trunkfield, had immigrated and joined the family business years earlier.
Emma’s uncles, James and Joseph Anderton, had become highly successful in the years since their departure from England. Barrie had been kind to them. In addition to producing quality ale and porter at their brewery, they had become involved town council, invested in the hotel business, served on numerous committees, and joined local fraternal organizations.
James Anderton had passed away in 1892 under the most unusual of circumstances. After camping alone one night at his east-end apple orchard, he was found dead in the middle of an extinct fire the next morning.
The coroner’s jury concluded that his death was accidental and was caused by a lightning strike on a barn, although some continued to believe that there was more to the story.
Emma sailed for Canada in 1898, bringing her then-four-year-old daughter, Gladys Emma, along with her.
Ultra-conservative values weren’t limited to England, so Emma and Gladys were forced to construct acceptable back stories for themselves even as they settled in Barrie.
Her long experience as a cook and housekeeper would have made Emma an ideal companion for her widowed uncle, Joseph Anderton.
On the census of 1901, Joseph Anderton is listed as a 71-year-old married man with a 34-year-old wife named Emma Anderton and a daughter, Gladys Anderton, who was seven years old at the time.
It is unlikely that Emma married her uncle, but she may have been very concerned with appearances, being new in town and a single woman with a child, hence the bending of the truth.
Ten years later, Emma’s daughter, Gladys Trunkfield, wed Edward Albert Pye. They were married by Rev. E.R.J. Biggs of Trinity Anglican Church. Afterwards, they shared a house on Sanford Street with Gladys’s mother, Emma.
For a while, Gladys and Ed, and their children resided in Toronto. Eventually, most made their way back to Simcoe County.
Sometime after 1921, the Pye marriage seems to have ended as Gladys later remarried.
Separation and divorce are not unusual. What is unusual about this case is that Gladys did not have to make any changes to her surname as her new husband was none other than Sylvanus Pye, Ed’s younger brother.
Each week, the Barrie Historical Archive provides BarrieToday readers with a glimpse of the city’s past. This unique column features photos and stories from years gone by and is sure to appeal to the historian in each of us.
