by Anita Mae Draper
Posting the
1911 Courtship Letters on my Author Memories blog involves hours of research, yet it's one of the most enjoyable aspects of genealogy. I'm always surprised though when I'm reading a newspaper from decades ago and find items of interest relevant to me. One of those items was this snippet in the
Newmarket Era where I find most of the information to corroborate what is happening in the Courtship Letters:
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Newmarket Era
(Newmarket, ON), 14 Jul 1922
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I recognized the name Mazo de la Roche like a smack to my head. That was quickly followed by the thought of a TV series,
The Whiteoaks of Jalna, which was based on Mazo's 16 book series. And then I remembered that a few months earlier I'd read in the Social column of the
Era that Mazo de la Roche had spent her summer(s) at one of the many beaches along Lake Simcoe. This was exciting because my husband, Nelson, was born in Newmarket, and then lived at Willow Beach on the southern shore of Lake Simcoe as a youngster. It's also within a few minutes drive of Keswick, the location of my
Christmas Cheer story, as well as being a stone's throw from Belhaven, the family home of Ethel Nelson, author of half of the 1911 Courtship Letters.
That got me wondering if I could find the census records of this famous Canadian author on the huge Ancestry website (which by the way, was free again last weekend). So I did a simple search for Mazo de la Roche, and the location as York County which took in Newmarket, and most of the South shore of Lake Simcoe, and all the way down to include Toronto. Here`s what I found:
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| 1881 Canada census for Newmarket, Ontario - Lundy and Roche |
I`ve enlarged and cropped the census for clarity, but I draw your attention to the highlighted line in the transcription for Alberta Roche who has a husband, William, a salesman, and a daughter, Maryo who was born about 1879 in Ontario. At least the transcriber thought it says
Maryo, but it showed up on my search because the Ancestry computers believe it is
Mazo. The census also shows the Roche family living with the Lundy family.
My initial questions were: Is this really her? Who is the Lundy family?
The first thing I did was check her birth year against known records and found the following sources:
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Wikipedia: January
15, 1879 – July 12, 1961
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SFU Biography: de la Roch, Mazo: 15
January 1879 - 12 July 1961
- Find-A-Grave:
St.
George's Anglican Church & Cemetery, Sutton, Ontario: Jan.
15, 1888 - Jul. 12, 1961
All the dates matched except for being 9 years out on her headstone. Nine years is a big difference. But if she wasn't born until 1888, then it wouldn't be her on the 1881 census. I looked back at it and saw that Ancestry hinted there was a possible birth record, so I pulled that up.
Although I've cropped this single record from the six listed on the full page, it clearly shows that Mazo Louise, female, was born on 15 January 1879 to W. Richmond Roche, merchant, and Alberta Louise Lundy. It further shows that W. R. Roche, merchant, of Newmarket, was the one who informed Dr. Patterson on 14 February 1879 that his wife had delivered a baby at home.
So not only has it confirmed Mazo's birth, but it shows her mother's maiden name was Lundy which explains why they were living with the Lundy family on the census.
A few weeks ago when I decided to write this post, I happened to be perusing a local used book store and the author's name of Mazo de la Roche jumped out at me from the spine. I snatched it up thinking it was a
Jalna book, and was pleasantly surprised to find it entitled,
Ringing the Changes: An Autobiography by Mazo de la Roche.
And right there on page 2, Mazo wrote,
...My father's father I never saw. Whereas my mother's father, 'Grandpa Lundy', was very near and dear to me.
Proof positive that the census record above is Mazo de la Roche, author of the
Jalna series.
I find that each time I pick up
Ringing the Changes, I am drawn in to her life. Much speculation has been made on her private life, especially as it pertains to her relationship with her life-long companion, Caroline, who was her cousin in real life, but whom she felt was her sister. Actually, as I read her autobiography, I keep thinking of Anne Shirley of
Anne of Green Gables and how she and Diana were kindred spirits.
I skipped portions of the book however, as I searched for evidence that Mazo had indeed lived near Lake Simcoe, and when I found the passage, I was simply riveted. Yet, I don't have room to tell you all that happened, but I came to the part where it's like one of those jokes where you go home to find your parents have moved while you've been away. Except this was no joke. Neither was it quite as severe, for she wrote,
...four days later I arrived in Toronto, the manuscript of my story safely under my arm. It was Exhibition time. The windows of the greengrocers were blazing with ripe peaches - the streets seething with visitors from out of town. I telephoned the Studio. Mrs. Reid's voice answered. She told me that at the end of August my family had moved to a cottage they had taken for the remainder of the season at Lake Simcoe...
She goes on to explain how their message must have been lost and how she had to stay that night in a hotel room without a lock. She improvised with a washstand and two chairs which sounds so flat, but the way she tells it is quite humorous. The next morning she...
caught an early train to Lake Simcoe and found the cottage, standing among apple trees.
Mazo's autobiography is written sequentially, with her writing experiences part of her daily life. There is not one without the other. However, I am so impressed with her attitude as a writer that I'm going to write another post specifically on this topic. Although her autobiography doesn't give actual dates, she wrote that she began writing when she was 12 yrs old and sent in her first story shortly after. She follows this with a statement that she didn't know what she was or wasn't supposed to do until later, so she did what came naturally at the time.
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| Jalna by Mazo de la Roche |
Here's where I admit that I've never read any of Mazo's books, nor have I watched her 1972 CBC TV mini-series,
The Whiteoaks of Jalna. Apparently, the books have been re-published, but CBC has not released the series in any form.
While researching for this post however, I found a free download:
One thing to note about the printed book series is that she has written them out of order. I never realized until I discovered
NLS Minibibliographies: The Jalna Series; or, The WhiteoakChronicles by Mazo de la Roche which states that Mazo's first book, Jalna, is actually the seventh book in the storyline, however, the website lists them in order as well as explaining how she imagined the complete series in her head before any words were written.
To finish this first post on Mazo de la Roche, I'll leave you with this Historical marker which I found, along with directions and a map to its location, at Ontario's Historical Plaques.
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| Mazo de la Roche 1879-1961 Ontario Historical Plaque. Courtesy of ontarioplaques.com |
As for the actual writing of the millions of books de la Roche has sold around the world, I'll leave that for the next post.
Have you read a Mazo de la Roche novel? What did you think?
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Anita Mae Draper is retired from the
Canadian Armed Forces and lives on the prairie of southeast Saskatchewan,
Canada with her hubby of 30 plus years and the youngest of their 4 kids. She
writes cowboy stories set in the Old West, and Edwardian stories set in the
East. Anita Mae semi-finaled in the ACFW's 2011 Genesis
contest, and finaled in the Daphne du Maurier, Fool for Love, Duel on the Delta
and the Linda Howard Award of Excellence contests. Anita Mae's short
story, Riding on a Christmas Wish is published in A Christmas Cup of Cheer, Guideposts Books, October
2013. Anita Mae is represented by Mary Keeley of Books & Such
Literary Agency. You can find Anita at http://www.anitamaedraper.com/
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my latest book, actually began as a joke. I was at a book signing and another author and I made a joke about we should write an Amish/vampire story because those were the two genres that were selling so well. Well, it really was a joke. I didn’t rush home and start writing the book. But I suppose some seed was planted in my warped little brain and took root. Soon a character was speaking to me about her story and wanting me to write it. I resisted. But there was a very intriguing element that I couldn’t seem to ignore.
