HANTHORPE GIRL BECAME NEW WORLD PIONEER

PHOTO CAPTION: The redoubtable Frances with six of her daughters, Nellie, who was born in England on 16th December 1869, Kate Alice (born 19th October 1873), Elizabeth Arnold (born 11th December 1875), Annie Maud (born 24th February 1879), Ella Constance (born 20th March 1883) and Josephine (born 20th March 1885) whose granddaughter, Ethel Guertin is still alive, aged 87. (2005)

This article is extracted from “A Portrait of Bourne” on CD-ROM, the definite history of Bourne and the locality, © REX NEEDLE 2005.

The colonies during the 19th century offered the chance for young people to better themselves in a new country and tales of such successes that were brought back to Bourne spurred on more to make this drastic change in their circumstances and to seek their fortunes in faraway places. Many from this area made the perilous sea voyage across the Atlantic and among them was Frances Harriet Hester, then aged 21, of Hanthorpe village.

She was married to a Bourne man, Joseph Tye Flatters, who was seeking a fresh start, and in the summer of 1871 they sailed for Canada with their three young children, sons John and William and daughter Nellie. Twins had also been born to them in England but both had died before they emigrated although they were to have eight more children in Canada, but one, a baby girl called Fannie Lewella, died soon after Christmas in 1882, six weeks before her second birthday.

The couple settled at Aylmer, Quebec, six miles up the Outaouais or Ottawa River from Ottawa, the Canadian capital, a river that played an important role in the country's fur trade and lumber industry and in opening up the Canadian west. Joseph became a sheriff and court bailiff, travelling the district on horseback and by horse and buggy, switching to a horse and sleigh when the snows came during the winter months, but soon discovered that his new job could be a very dangerous one indeed.

In June 1885 he stopped a young lad, Daniel Ardell, aged 14, for questioning in the matter of a stolen watch. The boy had a gun, panicked and shot Joseph in the hip. The bullet lodged deep in the flesh and doctors were unable to extract it and he died two weeks later on 1st July 1885. He was 43 years old and had been in Canada for only 14 years. Ardell was tried and sentenced to 14 years in prison but served only seven and when released and reputedly reformed, he became a preacher and spent the rest of his life in the western provinces of Canada.

The killing left Joseph's widow Frances in difficult circumstances and although the two eldest boys, John and William, were already working, she had her other eight children still to support, among them three-months-old Josephine, the latest addition to the family who had arrived on 20th March 1885. But Joseph had been a careful man and he wrote in his diary for the year 1879 that he had taken out an insurance policy on his life for $1,000 and so his family would not have been left penniless and the town council also voted to pay Joseph's widow his entire year's salary of $400 that he would have received had he lived.

If there are any relatives of Frances Hester still living in the Hanthorpe and Morton areas, please email Rex Needle (rex@which.net).