Tag: Catharine Mitcheson Bagg

Mrs Mitcheson Came

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My three-times great-grandfather was a merchant, not known for being overly emotional. His personal notebook was filled with financial sums, with only one page of personal comments. Those notes included the date his two-year-old grand-daughter died, the dates of birth of two other grandchildren and a short sentence, “Mrs. Mitcheson Came, June 8, 1850.”1 For Stanley Bagg to make a note of that visit, it must have been a special day indeed.

“Mrs. Mitcheson” was Stanley’s son’s mother-in-law, Mary Frances (or Fanny) Mitcheson, from Philadelphia. She had probably come to Montreal to be present at the birth of another grandchild, Katharine Sophia Bagg, born a month later.

Stanley wrote nothing more about this visit, but I like to imagine what might have taken place. He had been a widower since his wife’s death 15 years earlier, but he probably he had a servant to keep the house tidy and cook for the occasion. In addition, son Stanley Clark Bagg and daughter-in-law Catharine Mitcheson Bagg lived nearby, so they probably helped with the arrangements. 

By 1850, Stanley had retired from a long career as a timber merchant and general merchant, and his health was failing. He lived in a two-storey home, called Durham House, on Saint Lawrence Street in what was then the outskirts of Montreal. Perhaps he entertained his guests in the drawing room, where they could have sat on the sofa or the mahogany chairs, and perhaps he told Fanny about the portraits (probably of himself, his deceased wife and his father) that hung on the walls.2

Fanny (MacGregor) Mitcheson

Perhaps he and his visitor discussed the weather, or the recent birth of Queen Victoria’s seventh child. Fanny was an American by choice (born Mary Frances MacGregor, she had immigrated to the United States from Scotland as a young woman) and Stanley was an American by birth (born in Massachusetts, he came to Canada as a child,) so maybe they talked about the recent California Gold Rush.

Stanley’s son and daughter-in-law probably attended this gathering. Another possible guest was Mary (Mitcheson) Clark, Stanley’s deceased wife’s mother. She also lived nearby, in a house called Clark Cottage. Mary, a widow, would have been age 74 at the time.

Mary Clark and Fanny Mitcheson were also related by marriage: Mary’s brother was Fanny’s husband, Robert Mitcheson.

I do not know whether Robert accompanied his wife to Durham House, or even if he came to Montreal. If he didn’t, someone else must have travelled with her. She certainly would not have come from Philadelphia to Montreal by herself.

Durham House

Long-distance travel in 19th-century North America was time-consuming, complicated and uncomfortable. Thankfully, transportation was improving, especially after the first North American railroad started operating in 1826.

In 1836, people travelled between Philadelphia and Montreal via a combination of railroad, stagecoach and steamboat, with the longest leg by boat. In 1849, about the time Fanny made the journey, it was still by steamboat and railroad with a 38-mile stretch by stagecoach. A dozen years later, the whole trip could be done by rail, although the journey still involved several connections.3

Perhaps Stanley saw fit to note Fanny’s 1850 visit because he realized what an effort she had made to get there from Philadelphia. 

All Photos, Bagg family collection

Notes:

Mary Mitcheson (1776-1856) and her brother Robert Mitcheson (1779-1859) were born in County Durham, in northeast England, and immigrated separately to North America. Mary, her husband John Clark (1767-1827) and daughter Mary Ann (1795-1835), settled in Montreal around 1795. Mary Ann married Stanley Bagg (1788-1853) in Montreal in 1819.

Robert Mitcheson arrived in the United States from Antigua in 1817. I do not know when or where he married Fanny MacGregor (c. 1792-1862). They lived in what was then the outskirts of Philadelphia.

All these relationships boiled down to one central fact: Stanley Clark Bagg (1820-1873) married his first cousin once-removed, Catharine Mitcheson (1821-1914). They were wed at Grace Church, Philadelphia on Sept 9, 1844 by Reverend Robert Mitcheson, the bride’s brother. If the family was upset about the blood relationship between them, no hint of that has survived.

                                                                                             Joseph Mitcheson m. Margaret Phillipson                                                                                                 /                              |                                           John Clark m. Mary Mitcheson                                   |                                                       |                                                                        |           Stanley Bagg m. Mary Ann Clark            Robert Mitcheson m. Mary Frances MacGregor                                                       |                                                                        |                                                    Stanley Clark Bagg              m.             Catherine Mitcheson

See also:

Janice Hamilton, “Mary Frances MacGregor” Writing Up the Ancestors, March 14, 2014, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2014/03/mary-frances-macgregor.html

Janice Hamilton, “Fanny in Philly,” Writing Up the Ancestors, March 29, 2014, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2014/03/fanny-in-philly.html

Janice Hamilton, “A Home well Lived In,” Writing Up the Ancestors, Jan. 21, 2014, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2014/01/a-home-well-lived-in.html

Janice Hamilton, “The Life and Times of Stanley Bagg, 1788-1853,” Writing Up the Ancestors, Oct. 5, 2016, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2016/10/the-life-and-times-of-stanley-bagg-1788.html

Sources: 

  1. Personal notebook of Stanley Bagg, Bagg Family Fonds, McCord Museum, Montreal
  2. An inventory of the contents of Durham House is included in Act No. 3556, dated 2 Nov, 1842, of notary Joseph-Hilarion Jobin, accessed at the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) in Montreal.
  3. Gary Gorton, ”Ante Bellum Transportation Indices”, Philadelphia, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 1989;  http://faculty.som.yale.edu/garygorton/documents/AnteBellumTransportationIndices.pdf, accessed Dec. 31, 2017

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.