Tag: Mary Ann Clark

Mary Mitcheson Clark

Mary Mitcheson Clark (1776-1856)

A portrait of my four-times great-grandmother Mary Mitcheson shows a plain but pleasant looking woman with dark eyes, rosy cheeks and a frilly cap. The wife of Montreal butcher and landowner John Clark, she held a book in her hand and had rings on her fingers that suggest a certain level of refinement. 

Mary was born at Stowe House, in the tiny village of Cornsay, County Durham, in northeast England, to Joseph Mitchinson (an earlier spelling of the family name) and his wife, Margaret Phillipson. She was baptized in 1776 at Whickham parish church, her mother’s parish. Mary had five younger siblings: Robert (born in 1779), Margaret (1781), William (1783), Elizabeth (1785) and Jane (1793).

On June 10, 1794, Mary Mitchinson, age 21 (or so she said,) of Lanchester, married John Clark at St Giles parish church, on the outskirts of the city of Durham. The following year, she gave birth to a daughter. Mary Ann Clark was baptized in Lanchester, the rural parish in which Mary’s father had grown up. 

At some point over the next few years, Mary, John and their little girl left England. The first evidence I have found of their presence in Montreal is a deed showing they had purchased a property on de La Gauchetière Street in 1799. A few years later, Mary gave birth to a son, John F. Clark. He died in June 1806, aged eight months. 

Mary may have enjoyed a level of financial independence unusual for a woman at that time. When she turned 21, she inherited 50 pounds from her grandfather. When her father died in 1821, he left her 100 pounds, specifying in his will that it was for her use alone; usually a woman’s property automatically became her husband’s. And when they sold the de La Gauchetière property in 1810, both John Clark and Mary Mitcheson signed the deed of sale, so perhaps they were co-owners of the property. 

In 1819, daughter Mary Ann married Stanley Bagg, an American-born merchant who had rented an inn known as the Mile End Tavern from John Clark. The following year, the Clarks’ only grandchild, Stanley Clark Bagg, was born. By this time, the young Bagg family was living at Durham House, on St. Lawrence Street, while the Clark couple lived up the road at Mile End Lodge. 

John Clark died in 1827, at age 60. He left Mile End Lodge and another property, the Clark Cottage Farm, which was further north on St. Lawrence Street, to Mary. He willed his other properties to his daughter and to his young grandson. A clause in his will ensured that Mary Ann would give her mother 1,000 bundles of good timothy hay every year. Perhaps Mary continued to raise some cattle and needed the hay to feed them over the winter.

Mile End Lodge

But Mary must have found Mile End Lodge too big, so about a year after John’s death, she moved to a smaller house known as Clark Cottage or Mitcheson Cottage. It can still be identified today at the northwest corner of Bagg Street and Clark Street in Montreal’s Plateau district.

As a widow for almost 30 years, Mary seems to have been active in running her properties. In 1844, Stanley Clark Bagg, by then a notary, looked after a lease for his grandmother and, on at least one occasion, she placed a rental notice in the local newspaper for Mile End Lodge. 

Mary Ann died in 1835, Stanley in 1853. Mary outlived them both, dying on January 15, 1856, age 80. She is buried with her husband, daughter, son-in-law, grandson and other family members in the Bagg family mausoleum at Mount Royal Cemetery. 

Edited May 29, 2014 to correct Mary’s place of residence at the time of her marriage.

Photo credits: Mary Mitcheson Clark, private collection                                                       
Mile End Lodge, painting by John Hugh Ross, copyright Stewart Museum.

Edited June 3, 2014 to correct date of marriage.

Research remarks: Regular readers of this blog may find the name Mitcheson rings a bell. That is because Mary’s brother Robert immigrated to Philadelphia around 1817. His daughter Catharine Mitcheson married her first cousin once removed, Stanley Clark Bagg, in 1844. 

I did a lot of research on the Mitcheson family when I first started doing genealogy five years ago. I found most of the baptism and marriage records on www.familysearch.org, but I had help getting started: a cousin had done some research in the 1970s, and another descendant contacted the vicar of Lanchester parish in 1914. The vicar sent him records for the Mitcheson family going back to the early 1700s, but Mary’s name was not included since she was baptized at Whickham.

There is a note in the Bagg family Bible indicating that Mary was born at Stowe House. I had no idea where that was, but when I hired a local retired genealogist to take us to Lanchester, Whickham and some other parish churches around Durham a few years ago, he took us to Cornsay. We were not sure which house it was, but now I see online that Stow House has been renovated and made into vacation rental cottages. 

The following newspaper clipping can be found in the Bagg Fonds at the McCord Museum in Montreal: “Mile End Lodge: two-storey stone house near St. Lawrence Toll Gate, with stable, garden, use of well; within half an hour’s walk of post office; rent moderate. Apply to Mrs. Clark, Mitche­son Cottage, near the premises, or to S.C. Bagg, Fairmount Villa. Feb. 3, 1853.” 

Notarial records of deeds, wills, leases and so on can be found at the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, https://www.banq.qc.ca. The deed of sale I mentioned in the article was #2876 in the records of notary J.A. Gray, dated 18 October, 1810.

Most Durham wills are kept at the archives of the University of Durham, but I ordered Joseph Mitcheson’s will online from the National Archives in London.

A Home Well Lived In

This drawing of Durham House was done by artist John Hugh Ross, year unknown. Courtesy McCord Museum.

Like the expression “a life well lived,” Durham House was a home well lived in: people were born there, they married there, and they died there. But like many people, the house slowly declined as it neared 100 years of age. The home of Montreal merchant Stanley Bagg for most of his adult life, it was located on St. Lawrence Street (now St. Laurent Boulevard), just north of Sherbrooke Street. When it was built 200 years ago, the surrounding area was entirely farmland.

Butcher John Clark, who probably built the house around 1818, named it after his native city, Durham, England. When his daughter, Mary Ann, married Stanley Bagg a year later, Clark gave her the house as a wedding present. Stanley and Mary Ann’s only child, Stanley Clark Bagg, was born there. After Mary Ann died in 1835, Stanley and his son continued to live there.

For a brief time in 1837, the house played a military role. Stanley, a Major in the 1stBatallion of the Montreal militia, used it as a headquarters for the men under his command in 1837, when an armed insurrection broke out after the British governor and his unelected advisors rejected demands for responsible government.

A few years later, Stanley found himself in debt, so he gave the house to his son and sold him the furnishings. Stanley paid the servants’ badly overdue wages with the proceeds. An inventory of the contents showed that the drawing room had a sofa, a dozen mahogany chairs, an equestrian statue of Napoleon and three framed portraits (probably Stanley, his wife, Mary Ann, and his father, Phineas.) The dining room walls featured a framed portrait of George Washington and a view of Scottish mountains. There were four bedrooms and a sitting room. In addition to the kitchen, there was a dairy room, a pantry, and a laundry room. Farm and garden tools, three carpet bags and some stove pipes were found in the store room. There was a coach house, a bee house, a dovecot, a root house and a barn. The animals included four horses, five cows, two calves and a dozen pigs. In 1845, Stanley Clark Bagg’s wife, Catherine Mitcheson Bagg, gave birth to Stanley’s first grandchild, Mary Frances, at Durham House. Soon the young family’s new home, Fairmount Villa, was completed nearby, and Stanley was on his own.

Stanley does not seem to have been a man who was easily impressed, so when he mentioned a few events in his notebook (which was otherwise full of numbers and calculations), they must have been pretty exciting. On June 14, 1848 he wrote, “the house burnt,” although he did not say what caused the fire or how much damage occurred. And on June 8, 1850 he noted, “Mrs. Mitcheson came.” He was most likely referring to Catherine Mitcheson Bagg’s mother from Philadelphia.

After Stanley’s death in 1853, Durham House went through many changes. At first it was rented. In the mid-1860s, it was the home of the Proprietary College, run by Rev. Mr. Stone. In 1872, according to a newspaper report of a fire in the stable roof, Durham House was the residence of a Mr. Lesser. By this time, the neighbourhood was no longer rural, and tradesmen, including shoemakers, masons and carriage makers, had opened businesses across the street. Their shops occupied the main floors, while their families lived on the second.

Durham House was on the southwest corner of Saint Lawrence Street and Bagg Street (now Prince Arthur). Map courtesy BAnQ

In 1876, the piece of land on which Durham House was located had been subdivided, and Chalmers Presbyterian Church opened its doors next door. Lot 110, on which the house was located, was sold in 1889 to J.S. Vipond. Later, the property belonged to fruit seller Joseph Brown, although it is unclear whether Brown or Vipond, a coal and wood dealer, occupied the house.

St. Lawrence Street — or The Main, as it is often nicknamed – was always one of Montreal’s main arteries but, at the turn of the century, the city decided to make the former country road into an elegant boulevard. To make room for a wider street, many buildings along the west side were torn down. The front door of Durham House faced south and there was an extension on the east side of the building, probably a chapel. The extension was demolished, but the main building survived for the time being.

In 1908, The Montreal Gazette reported that the fruit seller’s estate had sold Durham House for $15,000. In February 1910, a newly constructed branch of the Dominion Bank opened for business on the corner. A 1915 map showed the house still standing right next to the bank, but there was junk stored in the former front yard. Durham House was probably demolished, unnoticed, around 1928.

Today, a historic plaque on the bank at the busy corner of St. Laurent Boulevard and Prince Arthur Street reveals the history of the house that stood there for so long.

Notes and Sources:

The source of the painting is: http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/en/collection/artifacts/M980.184.1.34
The source of the map is: http://images.banq.qc.ca/images1518/06M/CA601/S53/SS1/P2000/06M_CA601S53SS1P2041.jpg

Research Remarks: Les Amis de Boulevard Saint-Laurent (http://amisboulevardstlaurent.com/) organizes walking tours of St. Laurent Boulevard every summer. This community group has also erected a series of bilingual panels that recount the area’s history at various spots along the street. You can see the texts and illustrations from the panels online at http://amisboulevardstlaurent.com/panels/sherbrooke-mont-royal/?lang=en. Click on the information for 3590 Blvd Saint-Laurent to read about Durham House. There is an error here, however: it says Stanley Bagg was from Durham, England. In fact, his wife’s family was from Durham; he was born in the United States.

Justin Bur, president of Les Amis de Boulevard Saint-Laurent and a key member of the local history group Mile End Memories (http://mile-end.qc.ca/), was helpful and generous, as always. A Montreal Herald newspaper article dated June 4, 1904 provided key information. Stanley’s personal notebook is part of the Stanley and Abner Bagg collection at the McCord Museum in Montreal.

The microfilmed document that includes an inventory of the contents of the house is Act No. 3556, dated 2 Nov, 1842, of notary Joseph-Hilarion Jobin, accessed at the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) in Montreal.

I did additional research in the Lovells street directory of Montreal, which you can browse online at www.banq.qc.ca, specifically http://bibnum2.banq.qc.ca/bna/lovell/. I also searched the archives’ extensive online map collection, http://services.banq.qc.ca/sdx/cep/accueil.xsp. The map site is in French only, but is easy to navigate. You can search by place (lieu), author (auteur), subject (sujet) and date.