Category: Stanley Clark Bagg

Don’t Believe Everything You Read About Stanley Clark Bagg

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As a well-known Montreal land-owner, writer and philanthropist, my great-great grandfather Stanley Clark Bagg (1820-1873) was profiled in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography (DCB). Unfortunately, several errors appeared in that article and, when researchers look to the DCB as a reliable source of information, these mistakes are perpetuated. 

Stanley Clark Bagg

The DBC is correct in saying that SCB, as I like to call him, was the only son of Stanley Bagg, a Montreal merchant, and his wife, Mary Ann Clark. The entry adds that SCB was a notary, large landowner and president of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Montreal and of the English Workingmen’s Benefit Society.

Then it states, “The Bagg family claimed to be of Norman descent. At the end of the 18th century Stanley Clark’s grandfather emigrated from England to America. At his death he left large estates in Durham County, England to his son Stanley.” This paragraph seems to refer to SCB’s grandfather Bagg.  In fact, it was SCB’s maternal grandfather, John Clark, who emigrated from Durham, England. A butcher by trade, Clark owned property in Durham and he purchased a number of farm properties in Montreal that his grandson inherited. 

Far from being wealthy, SCB’s paternal grandfather, Phineas Bagg, brought his family to Canada after he lost his farm in Pittsfield, Massachusetts to pay off his debts. On this side of the family, SCB’s immigrant ancestor was John Bagg, possibly from Plymouth, England, whose marriage in Springfield, Massachusetts was recorded in 1657.

The DCB was correct in saying that Stanley Clark Bagg married Catharine, eldest daughter of Robert Mitcheson and Frances MacGregor of Philadelphia in 1844, however, it went too far in adding that Frances was descended from the chiefs of the MacGregor clan and the old Scottish kings. This is a family story that may or may not be true. My research on Mary Frances MacGregor’s ancestry has come up against a brick wall. 

The Dictionary says that SCB and Catharine “had one son, Robert Stanley.” True, Robert Stanley Clark Bagg was their only son, but they also had four daughters: Katharine Sophia, Amelia Josephine, Mary Heloise and Helen Frances. 

The final inaccuracy in the DCB article was the statement that “his family was one of the oldest English families on Montreal Island .…”  Both the Bagg and Clark families arrived in Montreal in the late 1790s, three decades after the British conquered New France and at least a decade after many English, Scottish and Loyalist families had made their way here. 

These errors may be minor (although the descendants of SCB’s daughters might consider them quite important), but the online version of the DCB should be corrected quickly when issues are brought to their attention. The home page of the DCB invites readers to suggest corrections or additions, so I assume SCB’s biography will eventually be fixed. Meanwhile, in 2013, I wrote them and included extensive footnotes so they could verify my sources. Not long after that, without changing a word, they highlighted Stanley Clark Bagg as the Biography of the Day. (note: The article was finally revised in 2018.)

The takeaway from this article: even if you read about your ancestor in a source you consider reliable, check as many details as possible and be skeptical about sweeping or grandiose claims. 

Photo: portrait by William Raphael; private collection.

Related articles:

This article is also posted on the collaborative blog https://genealogyensemble.com.

Janice Hamilton, “John Clark of Durham, England,” Writing Up the Ancestors, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2014/05/john-clark-of-durham-england.html

Janice Hamilton, “An Economic Emigrant,” Writing Up the Ancestors, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2013/10/an-economic-emigrant.html

Janice Hamilton, “The MacGregors: Family Legend or True Story?” Writing Up the Ancestors, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2014/03/the-macgregors-family-legend-or-true.html

Notes:

The wording I have quoted here is from the online version of SCB’s biography:

Pierre Landry, “Bagg, Stanley Clark” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 10, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/bagg_stanley_clark_10E.html, accessed November 29, 2015.

This is a rewrite of the original print version of SCB’s biography, published in Volume X of the DCB in 1972, which had even more errors.

I decided to blog about this after a friend showed me an article about Robert Stanley Bagg and Stanley Clark Bagg in a book edited by Col. William Wood, William Henry Atherton and Edwin P. Conklin, The Storied Province of Quebec, Past and Present, vol. IV, Toronto: Dominion Publishing Company Ltd., 1931, 435; http://www.ourroots.ca/page.aspx?id=3660140&qryID=7ac7b13a-a7be-4ef4-9eb9-ab5b20789894, accessed Nov. 29, 2015. That article not only invented a military career for SCB, it also erroneously stated that Stanley Bagg was born in England. 

The most extensive biography of SCB was written shortly after his death and appeared in the journal to which he had been a regular contributor. The article is “In Memoriam, Stanley Clark Bagg, Esq, J.P., F.N.S.”, The Canadian Antiquarian and Numismatic Journal, vol. II, no. 2 (Montreal, Oct. 1873), p. 73, accessed through Google Books, Nov. 29, 2015.

Reflections on a Great-Great-Grandmother

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Catharine Mitcheson Bagg

It was 3 a.m. and I was squinting at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, but it wasn’t just myself I saw. Without my glasses on, I recognized my mother’s eyes looking back at me, and the eyes of my great-great grandmother, Catharine Mitcheson Bagg.

As my mother aged, she had increasingly resembled the large portrait of Catharine that used to hang in my grandmother’s dining room; still, it was a shock to realize that Catharine’s features lived on in me too.

My mother told me she always felt that Catharine, dressed in mid-19th-century finery, stared down disapprovingly from her spot on the wall. Mother’s older cousin Clare had described Catharine as “terrifying.” Clare remembered visiting her in a dark and musty house on Sherbrooke Street, but at the time of the visit, Clare was about three years old and her great-grandmother was over 90, so it is no wonder she felt intimidated.

Catharine was born in 1822 and grew up on the outskirts of Philadelphia with her four siblings. Her English-born father was a merchant, her mother was from Scotland. Catharine’s education included sewing an intricate sampler when she was 10 and painting landscapes. In 1844, she married Stanley Clark Bagg, the grandson of her father’s oldest sister, and she moved to Montreal, where her new husband was a notary.

Stanley owned large tracts of land in Montreal that he had inherited from his grandfather, and, although the area was still primarily agricultural, he was starting to sell lots to would-be homeowners and developers. When he died of typhoid fever in 1873, at age 53, the eldest child and only son, Robert Stanley Bagg, a recent law graduate from McGill, took over management of the family real estate business. Over the years, his four sisters expressed opinions about when and what to sell and for how much, but he relied most on his mother’s advice.

When I came across some letters Catharine had written to her son, R. Stanley Bagg. I was thrilled. Suddenly this woman whose image I was so familiar with had a voice! They revealed her as a mother who worried about her son’s health, believed in the benefits of sea air and trusted that “all things work together for good in those who love God”.

She described her husband’s death as a calamity for the family, especially for Stanley who was “so young and inexperienced in the ways of the world.” And when Stanley retired after 27 years, she commended him for the “able, honourable and efficient manner” in which he had performed his arduous duties.

Another letter, dated 1889, was written on stationery from a hotel in Kennebunkport, Maine, an area I know well. Stanley and his young family were in Georgeville, Quebec. Catharine wrote, “You and Clara should have gone to some seaside place for several weeks this summer. Georgeville is not a sufficient change in air and scene.” Those words could just as easily have been written by my mother, or by me. 

photo credit: McCord Museum

Research Remarks.  Catharine Mitcheson was born on Jan. 12, 1822, according to her baptismal record. She was baptized at St. John’s Church, Northern Liberties, Philadelphia, and a copy of the church registers is available in the library of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia. The record of her marriage to Stanley Clark Bagg, at Grace Church, Philadelphia on Sept. 9, 1844 can be found on Ancestry.com. Catharine’s brother, Rev. Robert Mitcheson, officiated at the wedding.

Catharine died on Oct. 29, 1914 in Montreal, and the record of her funeral at Christ Church Cathedral is included in the Drouin Collection of church and vital records on Ancestry. She is buried in Mount Royal Cemetery.

A few letters she wrote to her son are in the Abner and Stanley Bagg fonds at the McCord Museum, Montreal.

The portrait of Catharine Mitcheson Bagg, painted in 1865 by artist William Sawyer (1820-1889), now belongs to the National Gallery of Canada. http://www.gallery.ca/en/see/collections/artwork.php?mkey=16157