A (Back)Story of a Drowning: John Mortimer, St. Vincent, & the Red River

John Thomas Mortimer – Portrait of a Radical

by Isabel Watson

When we were children, my Mother often talked about her childhood: her parents, her brothers, their home life. She had a fund of stories too about aunts and uncles, many of whom we had never met but whom we came to know through the many retellings. This is often the starting point for family history exploration. One detail frequently mentioned was that her father had farmed in Canada at one point in his life and one of his sons from his first marriage had died tragically by going through the ice on the Red River "near Winnipeg" (read: St. Vincent, Minnesota) and his body had not been recovered until the spring. We knew nothing more than that bare outline of a story. It was not until I began to research my Grandfather's life that I came to discover the full extent of the story of John Thomas Mortimer.

My Grandfather, James Mortimer, was born at the Home Farm, Kirkton of Tealing, in the rural hinterland of Dundee in 1841. He came from generations of farm workers, many of whom had had small-scale tenancies on the Glamis estate, especially at Upper Arniefoul. Although James's father Alexander had moved to nearby Tealing, then to Balbeuchley at Auchterhouse, James returned to Glamis to serve his apprenticeship as a blacksmith with Peter Anderson at the smiddy there. Perhaps looking for more lucrative employment after his time was served, he moved to Dundee to one of its many jute mills, Ladybank Mill, and in 1864 married Ann Russell, a steam loom weaver, in Lochee. They were to have six children before Ann's untimely death from cerebro-spinal meningitis in 1876.

John was the fourth of the children, born on 3 March 1871 at 3 Laing Street, Dundee, becoming the eldest son, as the first-born boy, Samuel, had died aged two in 1867. After Ann's death, James was married for a second time in 1880 to Helen Innes (nee Watson), widow of a blacksmith journeyman. Their marriage certificate provided a surprising piece of new information: James's occupation was given as 'Insurance Agent'. From blacksmith to insurance agent – how had this transformation occurred? My Mother had always favoured the Prudential Assurance Agency because of her father's connection to that company. So I felt it would be worthwhile to approach their Head Office in the hope that they might have some archive material about former employees. Their Archivist was able to provide me with a full account of my Grandfather's career with them – treasure trove indeed!

The  history of the company, A Sense of Security: 150 Years of Prudential, gives an idea of how field staff were recruited, being 'only capable men of thorough respectability, and of favourable appearance and address'. In his latter years, my Grandfather continued to demonstrate a lively mind and interest in a wide variety of subjects. It is likely that he had pursued evening class studies as a young man and was eager for self-improvement, thus fulfilling the requirement of being seen as capable.

In the Census of 1881, the family was living at 13 North Wellington Street, Dundee, with father working as an Insurance Agent and Helen established as wife and mother to the five children, all still at home, Maggie (13), Annie (11), John (10), Alexander (8) and William (6), all scholars. Between his initial appointment to the Prudential in 1876 and 1884, James held contracts of employment in Dundee and Forfar, then in February 1884 he was appointed to a position in Airdrie, Lanarkshire, where he was to remain for most of the rest of his life.

By the 1891 Census, James and Helen were living at 13 High Street in Airdrie and had only two of the family still living at home, Alexander aged 18, a schoolmaster, and William aged 16, a letter carrier. The daughters had moved out, perhaps into employment, and John was in lodgings in Glasgow at 113 McAslin Street (St. Rollox) and working as a tailor. His fellow-lodger in the home of John and Mary Mitchell was Peter McPherson, who would become his brother-in-law by marrying his sister Maggie.

A moment of serendipity

I need to digress at this point to explain how it was I came to learn of the Canadian part of the story. What follows is a moment of serendipity. I had joined the Tay Valley Family History Society and being distant from the Research Centre in Dundee, was delighted when an e-mailing group, Tay Valley Bridges, was set up to bring into contact the many members worldwide who were not able to visit Dundee regularly. On one memorable occasion, an online conversation was taking place which involved Winnipeg. On a whim, I posted a request to see if anyone could tell me how to go about tracing the death of a young man named Mortimer by drowning in the Red River, on some unknown date. Back came the reply from fellow-member Susan Bethune, who happened to have in her possession a copy of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, with an entry about John Thomas Mortimer, tailor and Trade Union activist. And so his story unfolded.

It is by no means clear when John first went to Canada. He was registered as an American citizen in St. Vincent, Kittson County, Minnesota, on 11 June 1906, having 'landed at the port of St. Vincent on or about the month of November in the year eighteen hundred and ninety'. This information seems at least debatable.¹ His entry in the 1891 Census in Glasgow is quite clear and credible. There would not be any obvious reason why, having made the journey to the USA or Canada, he should immediately return to employment in Glasgow. His connection with St. Vincent came about through his wife, Lena Cameron, of whom more later. The first mention of him living in Winnipeg is in 1895, when we find him listed as a tailor in the Henderson's Directory and resident at 326 McDermot Avenue, Winnipeg. along with Wm. Mortimer, described as an engineer. The brothers remained at that address for each year until 1898.

The year 1895 certainly does seem significant. My Grandfather James and  his wife Helen also travelled to Canada in that year. James resigned from his employment with the Prudential in April 1895 and was awarded a gratuity of £30. He and Helen sailed from Glasgow on 25 April, occupying a second-class cabin on the SS Samaritan, and arrived in Montreal on 8 May. They would then have made their way overland to Winnipeg. Little is known of their time there. James had a farm near Brandon, north-west of Winnipeg, which he eventually sold to a James Fraser in 1897 before returning to Scotland. It was always related within the family that Helen was unwell and yearned to go back home to Scotland. Indeed she died in Airdrie in 1898 and is buried in the New Monkland Cemetery. Grandfather James subsequently married for a third time, to Isabella Ann Power, my Grandmother, and had a new young family of which my Mother was the only daughter.

John's involvement with the Trade Union movement in Winnipeg is well documented. John Hample, in his entry about John Thomas Mortimer in the Dictionary Of Canadian Biography, states: After September 1896 he began a rise to prominence in Winnipeg's working-class movement by helping to rebuild Local 70 of the Journeymen Tailors' Union of America (JTUA), affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).

Local 70 had originally been formed in 1892 to give the tailors of Winnipeg protection from the sweatshop practices of the men's custom-made tailoring workshops. After a fruitless strike over an attempt by the merchant tailors to cut wages, Local 70 had been adrift. In 1897, JTM was elected its President and promptly set about galvanising the union, urging the City Council to impose conditions in their contracts for the manufacture of clothing and intervening on behalf of factory seamstresses during a strike which led to the establishment of one of the first unions of women workers in Canada.

By 1899-1900, he was President of the Trades and Labor Council of Winnipeg, representing that organisation at meetings of the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada. During this period at the turn of the 20th century, he developed a close association with Arthur W. Puttee, acting as his election agent in a Winnipeg by-election which made Puttee Canada's first independent Labour MP in 1900. Puttee acted as John's best man at his marriage to Lena Cameron on 2 September 1901, immediately after the Labor Day Parade through Winnipeg.

Lena was the daughter of Edmund Cameron and Allis Clow, who had settled in St. Vincent, Minnesota, just south of the Canadian border on the east side of the Red River, having moved out west from Prince Edward Island, and like John she was a labour activist. John had begun to make a name for himself as an uncompromising militant, considered 'impossibilist' by some in his demands for workers' rights and justice, but was highly regarded within trade union circles. He had reputedly been saving money to enable a visit home to Scotland, but a major national strike of the JTUA saw him invest his money into the strike funds, only to be fired from his job, reviled in the press and ultimately blackballed from employment in the tailoring trade in Winnipeg.

Union Family

Lena Cameron Mortimer was born into a farming family in St. Vincent, Minnesota.  She became a Socialist Party activist and married the Journeyman Tailors Union of America (JTUA) union leader, John Mortimer in Winnipeg in 1901.  They had several children before he drowned crossing the Red River near Emerson, Manitoba in an accident, in 1908.


LENA MORTIMER:  One Woman's Way of Thinking

As I passed out through the crowd as it was dispersing on Sunday evening after the meeting at which Comrades Pettipiece and Fitzgerald were speaking on the Woman question, I chanced to hear a few remarks from some of the men that had been present at the meeting which struck me as rather amusing.  One of the worthy bunch said in a rather sneering way:  "What!  Give the women a vote?  Not much, their place is stay at home and minding their business, let us men do all the voting." 

To me, of course, it was the same old yarn.  I have heard it so often that I cannot keep silent any longer.  Some of the men do not stop long enough to think just what a very important part a woman does fill in this life.  If we women are fit to be mothers of their children; fit to teach those same children in the schools, and fit to fill most every position in life, then by all that's good and holy we are able to stand shoulder to shoulder with our noble brothers and cast our vote along with them for the one great cause for which we are both fighting, the only cause that will benefit the working men and women of today. 

"Men say that we women do not have sense enough to vote the right way.  Ditto, my brother!  Could we possibly make it any worse than you have made it by your way of voting?"

Men say that we women do not have sense enough to vote the right way.  Ditto, my brother!  Could we possibly make it any worse than you have made it by your way of voting?  Give the woman a chance.  Let her once grasp the situation and see if she won't vote right.  Treat her as an equal and try to help her get hold of a few socialistic ideals.  Help her to see what it all means.  Give her as fair a chance as you would give a man and you will find out that she can grasp the truth just as quick as any man. 

I believe it is up to every woman in...any place on top of this old earth, to get busy, and dig down and find out for herself just where she is at and if some of the men turn up their noses at our feeble efforts, go to it with more heart than ever.  Prove to them that if given a chance we can at least use our vote to as good advantage as they have in the past.  We cannot make matters any worse than they are making them right now.  So go to it, my sisters.  Show them if we are fit to be mothers of the coming generation of Socialists we are fit to march to the ballot-box and vote the right way just as soon as you men give us a chance.  And fit to share equally with you all the comforts that Socialism will bring when the men as well as the women get into their heads sense enough to vote the right way to hasten its coming. 

[Source:  Lena Mortimer, "One Woman's Way of Thinking," Western Clarion (Vancouver, BC), 27 May 1911.]