My name is Brittney Hendriks, and I’m a third generation granddaughter of John and Margaret Britton, the first Britton’s to come to Canada. Thanks to the wonders of technology, my cousin Dan Britton from England was able to track me down through his own family research and I’m so thrilled that I was able to connect with relatives who have now spread all over the globe. This is so exciting for me!
I’d like to share a little bit about my Great Grandparents, Herb and Olive, and Great-Great Grandparents, John and Helah, from the memories of my Grandma Gwen O’Rourke (nee Britton), as unfortunately I was too young when they passed away to have any memories of them.
My grandma, Gwendolyn Hannah Britton, is the eldest child of Herbert and Olive Britton. She was also the last Britton to be born on the Home Farm at lot 8, concession 2 in Hibbert Township, Ontario. Her siblings Joan, Marg and Ken were all born at Stratford General Hospital. She recalls, “My mother was having me on October 31st, and we had an earthquake that night about 11 o’clock and it scared her so much the labour stopped. So I was born the next morning which was November 1st. So I’m a saint and not a spook.”
When I asked her if there was a midwife or doctor present to help her mother, she said, “No, they called the doctor but he couldn’t get there very fast because of the earthquake and he didn’t get there in time; he got there the next morning. Aunt Bertie [Herb’s sister] was in the bedroom across the hall and grandma and grandpa [John and Helah] were in the bedroom beside Mum and Dad’s bedroom and they were all waiting for this baby and everything stopped!”
I didn’t get to meet my Great-Grandma Olive as she passed away in 1972, at the age of 64, so I asked my Grandma to describe her for me. “She was 5’6 and looked a lot like me or I look a lot like her. Oh I’ll tell you something! When she read a newspaper, you could take every cookie out of the cookie jar and everything out of the cupboard because she really concentrated on that newspaper. You could say, ‘Mum, can I have a cookie? Can I have a cookie?’ and she’d never answer and you’d say, ‘Okay that’s fine’. Then 2 hours later, she’d say, ‘Who was into my cookie jar!’ She bit her nails and chewed all her nails down and did that while she read the newspaper. She always loved to garden and loved flowers; she had the nicest flower beds – out on our front lawn she had a long row of flower beds with peonies, hostas, iris, everything and never a weed in them! All around the house she had beautiful spirea and in the back, between the house and the shed, was always garden. She loved chickens, always had to have hens that laid eggs. That was her thing. She looked after them. Her hair was always cut…permed at the front and tapered in the back. Always curled. She always wore glasses. Horrible old, black rimmed ones when she was first married. I can’t remember that; she had ones with no rim around them, just black on the top of the lenses for a lot of years.”
My Great-Grandpa Herb, or Herbie, passed away in 1993, at the age of 92. Grandma says, “He was 5’10-11. Not very tall either. He was always good with us kids. Always teased us and my mother and always called her Ollie. And she would grin and say ‘Oh Herb’ and her nose would wrinkle. And he was a tease. He was just the best dad in the world, you couldn’t have asked for a better dad. He taught us a lot; he taught me how to do everything. He taught me how to do carpentry work, fork manure, stoke sheaves in the field, load hay, drive a car. Between him and grandpa. My Grandpa [John] taught me a lot too. Dad was very, very kind and never raised his voice. I only heard him once and that was at an old cow and he didn’t know I was listening. The cow kicked him, knocked the pail over and he got a tail of manure in the face, and he said ‘you old beggar’. That’s the only time I remember him raising his voice.”
My grandma remembers that her mother loved art. “She loved painting. She loved painting furniture and she loved taking old furniture and making it modern. She played the piano and taught me to play piano. She sang and was in the church choir. Dad loved to dance but Mum didn’t so they hardly ever went to a dance after they were married. Yeah, Dad loved to dance and he loved music. He bought a violin, tried to play it and played it for a while and then his fingers got too stiff and he couldn’t play it anymore.”
Herbert John Britton and Hannah Olive Workman were married on December 25, 1934 in Hensall, Ontario. They met after Olive took a job as a school teacher just down the road from the Britton Home Farm. My grandma says, “She went over to teach at the corner school and she stayed with Bob and Velma Burchell who lived right next door. The Burchell’s never had any children so all the teachers who would come to teach at the school would board at their house. And it just so happened that Bob Burchell and my Dad were the best of buddies; they always did things together. Mum taught there for so many years and then went back to Hensall and taught outside there. Dad would have to go over there [to Hensall] to see her. I think 5 or 6 years they went together before they got married because it was the Great Depression and they couldn’t afford to get married. And my great-grandmother [Margaret] was still living in the house [on the Home Farm] with my grandparents [John and Helah] and my dad and the younger children so there was no room for them to live.”
At nearly 17 miles from the Britton farm to Hensall, Herb had quite the trek to see his gal. “Dad used to have to take Old Jimmy the horse and the buggy to go over to see my mother. And he’d get over there fine, but when he came home he always fell asleep and Jimmy’d take him right home. He nearly went into the river one night, he said Jimmy hit the bridge and that woke him right up.”
And my Great-Grandma Olive was a great cook, my Grandma says. When I asked her what her favourite meal, she was quick to answer. “Radio pudding. It was a pudding that you cooked brown sugar and water or something in a double boiler, had to be a double boiler and then just when it got nice and hot and sugared, you made dough, something like dumplings only it had raisins and sugar in it. You’d drop that into it and put the lid on it and you kept the lid on it. If you took the lid off they went gooey, but if you left it they were nice and puffy. And dad would come in the back door and he’d say ‘Oh! Oh Ollie! You got radio pudding! Oh!’ and he’d go over and lift the lid! She could’ve killed him! ‘Herb, Herb! Don’t you do that!’ she’d say. He’d love to have them chewy and gooey and she liked them nice and fluffy.” Radio pudding was just made as a treat for them. But, “every Saturday she’d bake 2 pies and a cake and bran muffins. She did the baking. We were taught how to make cakes and bran muffins but she always did the pies. I never even knew how to bake a pie when I was married because that was Mum’s.”
My own Mum [Patti] has a memory of her Grandpa Herb’s cooking, which he did more of after his wife Olive died. Grandma says, “Yes the kids always wanted, when they went to stay with grandpa, rice pudding. Grandpa always made the grandkids rice pudding.”
For a lot of years, my grandma’s family shared the house with her grandparents, John and Helah Britton. I asked my grandma to describe her Grandma Helah Britton (nee Harris) to me. “She was a little old lady, old 5’2 maybe. And she taught me a lot of songs. She’d sing me a lot of songs. She always read me stories, bible stories. She always took me into her half of the house when mum was having the kids; I was probably a real pest. I stayed with grandma a lot in her half of the house because Mum had Joan right after me and then came Marg. And then Marg and Ken were really close. They were only a year apart so she had a lot of work to do. I ate a lot of my meals with grandpa and grandma.” Her Grandma Helah was also an amazing cook. “Biscuits and oatmeal cookies! She made biscuits like you wouldn’t believe! And oatmeal cookies with the centres cut out, one part was of the cookie was flat and then she’d put strawberry jam on it and she’d take another half with the centre cut out of it and she’d put it on top and that was what she baked all the time. Ginger snaps was another thing.”
I’m told that my Great-Great Grandpa John Britton had a polar opposite temperament than his son Herb. Grandma says, “Well, he was not as calm a person as my dad or my grandma Helah. He would explode quite easily and he was an impatient man. He was not as calm and nice as my dad was, like his son. And his father, my great grandfather [John] was a very meek, calm man but my great-grandmother [Margaret] was not. I think that’s where my grandfather got it, from his mother. And I liked him, but he talked very slow and he always had to tell you a story. And it took forever to get the story out! And every Friday night, it wouldn’t matter if I was going out or something, he’d say, ‘Send Gwen in to see me, I want to see her before she goes.’ So I’d go in there and he’d start telling me a story about something and I’d say, ‘Grandpa, I have to go, I have to go. They’re waiting for me.’ And he’d say, ‘Just a minute, just a minute. Sit down. I’ll only be a minute.’ And he’d sit there and start his story, speaking slowly and I’d say ‘Okay Grandpa, you can tell me the rest later’ and by jeeze if you came back to him on the Sunday, he’d start the story at the very same sentence that he left off at. He could come back to the same spot! Everybody said that; they couldn’t believe it!”
Grandma says that although her grandfather was a little rougher around the edges, he and her Grandma Helah never argued. “If Grandpa would get upset about something she’d say, ‘John, John. Now, John. Now, John.’ I never heard him raise his voice at my Grandmother. I never heard her raise her voice at him. I heard him get upset about things and he’d start talking about things, and she’d say, ‘Now, John, calm down. It’s alright, John. It’s alright, John.” She balanced him very well. She was a wonderful woman.”
John Britton took a more back-seat role on the farm after his son married, as he was already a fairly good age. “And he’d fallen and broke his leg in the barn, and it was very, very bad. In fact, his one leg was about 4 inches shorter than the other leg and he had to wear a boot with a built-up bottom on it. It didn’t get set right after he’d broken it. He had been out in the hay loft and slipped on the hay and came down on the floor and broke his leg. And Dad also broke his leg picking apples. We had these beautiful, beautiful big apples. Twice the size of apples I’ve ever seen round here anymore. There was a great big one on the top of this big tree; he’d picked, I don’t know how many bushels off the tree and he said ‘Oh, I’ve got to go and get that one at the very top’. And the stupid ladder slipped on the branch and came down on top of him and broke his leg. Actually smashed his heel; he was 45 and he ended up with a limp. I don’t know how he was still alive after all the things that happened to him.”
Grandma also remembers a story about how John was told about his wife’s last pregnancy. “I guess before he went out west they conceived Aunt Bertie, but they didn’t know this. So my grandpa went out west and when he came back he was so happy to see grandma. When he came off the train he grabbed her and put his arms around her and he swung her around and she said, ‘Be careful John you’re swinging two.’ She told me that years ago! And he said ‘yeah I know’ but she still said, ‘No! I mean you’re swinging TWO’. And that’s how he found out about Aunt Bertie. He couldn’t believe it. All those years between the last two kids!”
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little glimpse of some of the branches of the Britton Family Tree. I know there are so many more memories and stories to tell, and hopefully I’ll be able to get them all written down for future generations with the ‘ancestry bug’ just like me!
