Georg Friedrich "Frederick" Beck

Other Events:

• House: Beck St., Doon, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
• Name: Frederick Beck
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-34518

Georg married Barbara Mourloch 8 Aug 1813, Weiler, Baden, , Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Barbara was born 10 Oct 1791, Sloan, Baden, Germany; died 1 May 1870, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; was buried , Preston Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• FindAGrave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/120782383
• Interesting: invention, story, pioneer, mill, foundry
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-34982
• Residence: 1845, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
• Occupation: 1852, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Iron Foundry
• Occupation: 1861, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Mill & Foundry
• Residence: 1861, Baden, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
• Residence: 1861, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Residence: 1870, Baden, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
• Occupation: 1871, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Foundry Man
• Residence: 1871, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Residence: 1875, Baden, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
• Business: 1878, Baden, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Baden Foundry and Engine Works
• Hall of Fame - Waterloo Region: Bef 2012, , Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada

Notes:

Jacob Beck was born May 10, 1816 in Weiler, Baden, Germany son of Frederick Beck. His father brought the family to Buffalo about 1825. When about 12 years old began a seven year apprenticeship with a doctor in Troy, New York. In 1835 he followed his family to Doon and in 1839 moved to Preston. He developed a type of water wheel, also an iron works at the foot of Shantz Hill. He later moved to Baden, Ontario producing stoves and furnaces also was the postmaster there.

Cambridge Mosiac, Jim Quantrell, 1998, City of Cambridge [snippet from original text in book]

_____________________________

An enterprising young German came here [Preston] about 1838 by name of Mr. Jacob Beck. He had invented a peculiar kind of waterwheel, small in size but of great power, and its use in several small water powers gave young Mr. Beck quite a reputation. He commenced a small foundry near a saw-mill in the village of New Hope, and finding considerable encouragement came to Preston, where he erected a foundry upon the premises now owned by Peter E. Shantz in Fountain Street. Business increased rapidly, but unfortunately a fire broke out which completely destroyed his flourishing foundry and Mr. Beck, no insurance having been effected, stood once more poor and penniless; but, thanks to the liberality of his neighbors in and around Preston, a subscription was raised, men turned out to help with work and material and in a short time after the fire, Mr. Beck was again in possession of a foundry of considerably larger dimensions than the one destroyed by fire. He did an excellent business, and had men selling his stoves and other wares over a large part of Western Ontario. His means increased at a rapid rate, and he enlarged his premises according to the wants of his business. Some years later he took in as partners two of the young men in his employ, viz: John Clare and Valentine Wahn, and the foundry business continued to prosper for several years. Mr. Beck had in the meantime arranged with Mr. Robert Hunt of the Woolen Mills to improve his water power by heightening the dam and digging a canal from the dam alongside the (Speed River. This canal is still in existence except a small portion of its terminus which has recently been closed. Mr. Beck for the construction of the said canal obtained the privilege of erecting a saw-mill upon Mr. Hunt's premises. This saw-mill Mr. Beck carried on for some time but seeing that a grand scheme that he had in mind could not be carried out, he sold his sawmill to Messrs. Hunt & Elliott. This grand scheme was nothing less than extending the said canal, crossing King Street and Queen Street and erecting along the canal a number of factories and mills. The proprietor of the land positively refused to grant permission to construct such a canal and Mr. Beck was forced to abandon his cherished plan of making Preston a great manufacturing place, such as the Town of Galt is at the present day. Mr. Beck, notwithstanding the good business done in his foundry, became displeased with Preston. The partnership of Beck, Clare & Wahn was abruptly dissolved, the business closed and the affairs of the firm wound up. Each partner obtained his proper share of the assets, which were largely in excess of the liabilities, Mr. Clare a store and other property and Jacob Beck a large sum of money. He went in search of a mill property which he found in Wilmot. There he erected mills, foundry and other industries, and founded a village which he named Baden. The grist-mill built by him was the third grist-mill built with money earned in Preston.

Fifth Annual Report Of The Waterloo Historical Society, 1917 pg 29

___________________________


A master mechanical genius, Jacob Beck, born in Baden, Germany, came to Waterloo Township in 1837. He opened a smelting furnace at New Hope (Hespeler), and later established an iron works on Spring Creek, Preston. He invented a turbine water wheel and in partnership with John Clare and Valentine Wahn manufactured stoves at Preston.

In 1854 Beck located a good source of water power on Spring Creek in Wilmot Township and purchased 200 acres. He erected a gristmill and foundry. He subdivided his farm in 1856, sold lots and developed Baden.

Beck was a member of the first board for the 1839 school in Preston, village councillor, councillor Wilmot Township from 1860 to 1864 and Baden postmaster from 1854 to1879. In 1863 he gave the community the deed for land with the courthouse on it for one dollar. This building served as Wilmot Township Hall until 1867 and is now at Black Creek Pioneer Village, Toronto.

Waterloo Hall of Fame

_______________

Jacob Beck (born Grand Duchy of Baden, 1816), an enterprising young German, came to Waterloo Township in 1837 from Schenectady, N. Y., having come from Germany the year before. He had invented a peculiar water wheel, described as of small size and large power, which soon gave him an enviable reputation. Starting a small foundry in the Village of New Hope he soon transferred to Preston and built a foundry on the premises later owned by Peter E. Shantz, where he did a rapidly increasing business. Unfortunately, a fire completely destroyed his foundry and rendered the proprietor penniless, as he had no insurance. Thanks to the liberality of neighbors a sufficient sum was raised by subscription to enable Mr. Beck to start anew and to have a larger plant than that destroyed by the fire. He soon had a large staff selling his stoves, etc., in Western Canada. With increasing success he enlarged his premises and took into partnership two of his assistants, John Clare and Valentine Wahn. For improving the water power of Robert Hunt, proprietor of the woolen mills in the village, Mr. Beck obtained the privilege to build a saw mill on Hunt's property, which he carried on for some time. Beck evolved a project for a water power canal leading from the Speed River dam and supplying power to mills and factories along it, such was the confidence in those days in the plentiful flow of the river. The scheme for the power canal did not find support. Beck became displeased with Preston, dissolved partnership with Clare and Wahn, Wahn continuing the foundry. He located a good water supply in Wilmot Township, at a place he called Baden, where, beginning in 1856, he soon established a foundry and a grist mill and did a flourishing business. Lovell's Canada Directory of 1857 gives Beck as postmaster at Baden, miller, founder and machinist. Mr. Beck died in 1906. One of his sons is the Hon. Adam Beck, Chairman 'Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, born in Baden, 1857.

First Annual Report Of The Waterloo Historical Society, 1912 pg 12

________________________________

A Mechanic named Jacob Beck (Father of Sir Adam) who was married to Jacob Hespeler's sister had invented a waterwheel of revolutionary design, entirely different from the ones then commonly in use which had the merit of developing more power from less flow and head than the ordinary type. He found his new wheel was getting considerable public acceptance and he was looking for a place to make it himself instead of having them made for him by others.

In some way he and Bergey got together and Bergey built this foundry (It may have been built earlier) and rented it to Beck. Historians of the past say that Beck went from New Hope to Preston which statement I hesitate to question. However, one day when Mr. George A. Clare and I were driving along one of the Waterloo Township roads near Strasburg he stopped and tied the horse to a telegraph pole while he and I walked down through a field to the ruins of the old building, where he told me his father first worked when he came to Canada.

While on the spot, Mr. Clare told me how his father, John Clare, happened to come here. It seems that Mr. Beck was making plough shares in his moulding shop and they were not coming out very good and the farmers who bought them were complaining; More or less in desperation, Mr. Beck went to Buffalo and there called on a friend, a Mr. Jewett, I believe, who ran a foundry. He told him his trouble and asked for the loan of a moulder who could make good shares and plow points, for three or four months, till he could get a stock made up ahead.

The Buffalo friend recommended a young German named John Clare who accompanied Mr. Beck back to Canada and he was able to turn out articles that suited the farmers.

Beck, I think, probably went from New Hope to Strasburg (or nearby Aberdeen) and from there later to Preston. My reasoning is that had he gone first to Preston and later to Strasburg, the Clare Bros. Plant would have been at Strasburg instead of at Preston. At the expiration of the arranged period, when there was a big enough pile of shares and points made up ahead, Mr. Clare did not return to Buffalo as originally intended; and for a very good reason. He had fallen in love with a daughter of Mr. Beck and in due course led her to the Altar; and they remained in Preston.

That is the story Mr. George A. Clare told me that day. I have since learned that Mr. John Clare came to this country in 1844 and married Miss Beck in 1845.

Le Rue De Commerce, Other Times Other Customs Other Days Other Ways, Winfield Brewster 1954

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DEATH OF JACOB BECK

Mr. Jacob Beck who died in Detroit Iast week after a long and honorable life, was for nearly two generations the mainstay of the village of Baden, in this county, where he conducted a foundry and milling business. He was born in Germany about 92 years ago. When twelve years of age his family removed to the United Stated. At twenty Mr. Beck went to Preston and engaged in the stove and foundry business. Twenty-five years later Mr. Beck founded the present town of Baden, Ont., where he went into the milling business. Under the administration of Sir John A. McDonald, Mr. Beck was entrusted with many Important political issues. He went to Detroit in 1877, still following the milling business. He was successful and became rich. He retired from active business only six years ago. Of his children, Hon. Adam Beck, of London, a member of the Ontario Cabinet, is one; Jacob L. lives in London: Charles in Buffalo; George has been his father's business partner; and a daughter is the wife of Rev. Dickie, pastor in the American Church in Berlin, Germany. Interment was at Preston, where his wife is buried^.

Wellesley Maple Leaf, March 29, 1906

Obituary is supplied by the Wellesley Township Heritage and Historical Society Click here to go to their website.

Jacob married Charlotte Josephine Hespeler 19 Oct 1845, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. Charlotte (daughter of Johann Georg "George" Hespeler and Anna Barbara Wick) was born 6 May 1822, Gernsbach, Gernsbach, , Baden-Württemberg, Germany; died 26 Jun 1895, Detroit, Wayne, Michigan, United States; was buried , Preston Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Jacob — . Unknown [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-91866
• Immigration: 1820, , Ontario, Canada
• Occupation: 1852, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; farmer
• Occupation: 1861, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Farmer
• Residence: 1861, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Occupation: 1871, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Farmer
• Residence: 1871, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; C. Presbyterian
• Occupation: 1881, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Farmer
• Residence: 1881, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Presbyterian Canada
• Occupation: 1891, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Farmer
• Residence: 1891, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Residence: 1901, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada

Notes:

VILLAGE OF DOON

The Old Graveyard-A Startling Revelation-The Ferry Bros., Estate-Fred Beck, the Father of Doon.


In my notes on the old Kinsey graveyard, last week, I neglected to mention a thrilling episode connected with it some forty years ago. A grave, which had contained the remains of one, Abraham Stauffer, for many years, was found to have sunk down several inches. The discovery caused quite a sensation throughout the neighborhood, and the supposition at once gained currency that graveyard ghouls had been at work. A number of neighbors assembled at the graveyard and proceeded to open the grave for the purpose of ascertaining for certain whether the abode of the dead had actually been invaded by body-snatchers, and the diabolical theft committed. As the exhumers reached bottom the horrible fact was revealed. Nothing remained but a few locks of hair and particles of the burial garments. The theft of the skeleton was evidently the ghastly work of some ambitious doctor, who sought to adorn his office closet with the necessary material for anatomical demonstration. Another incident connected with this burying ground that formed an exciting topic of neighborhood gossip, was the interment of several victims of the cholera, which visited this section in 1828. The deadly epidemic was brought in by a circus. that pitched its tents in Galt some time during that year.

FERRY BROS.' BIG ESTATE.

It is probably not generally known in this section that the Ferry Bros.' land estate was about five hundred acres in extent. It included the farms of Aaron Good, John Slee, Frederick Beck and the site of the village of Doon. At that time Robt. Ferry was a prominent figure in Canadian politics. He represented the South Riding in the Legislature of United Canada in the Parliament which first convened in 1854. His brother Adam was also prominent, being a moving spirit in financial circles. It was his duty to superintend the farms, and it was his custom to frequently drive over the estate in a two-wheeled cart, drawn by a yoke of oxen. The firm dealt extensively in livestock, and during the summer season large herds of Devonshire cattle could be seen grazing upon the bills and in the meadows of the estate.

The vicinity of Doon was known as a paradise for tillers of the soil by the Indians, long before the advent of the white man. In the case of Samuel Betzner, and Joseph Sherk we have convincing evidence of this fact. When they arrived at what is now the site of Ancaster, they were informed by the red men that there was a locality a day or two's journey distant toward the setting sun, where the soil was surpassingly rich and water pure and abundant. They moved on, and in the time mentioned reached the banks of a beautiful river, a section teeming with animal life, and its waters alive with schools of the finny tribe. They were on the banks of the GRAND RIVER. This was in the spring of 1800. Mr. Betzner located on what is now the site of Blair, and Mr. Sherk settled on the north side of the river, directly opposite Doon. The latter farm was occupied until a few years ago by Mr. Benjamin Sherk, when it was purchased by Jacob Gingerich, Betzner and and Sherk were soon followed by Dilman Kinsey and John Bean, Sr., and others, who settled a short distance further west. The advent of Betzner and Sherk proves that this was a particularly inviting region, as their settlement, if not the first, was among the first in Waterloo County.

THE FATHER OF DOON.

Positively the most unique and picturesque figure of western Ontario, and the Father of Doon, is the venerable Fred Beck, the well known oatmeal vendor. His name is a household word from Waterloo to Hamilton. For more than an average life time, almost daily, through sunshine and through rain, often facing the blinding storms of winter, he has travelled some portion of this route. He has on many an occasion driven through the dismal Beverly Swamp in early days at a time when an attempt to penetrate that dreary barrier to settlers bound for the west, was equivalent to suicidal intent. When a mere lad, Frederick came from Germany to this vicinity in company with his parents. They lived for many years in a small frame house which stood a short distance east of the waste gate, the site being now entirely submerged by the waters of the dam. At that time the embankment of the dam was some distance further back, in the vicinity of the rear of the Red Lion Inn. A tail race, conveying the water to the old saw mill, passed near the house. The father engaged as sawyer was in this mill, and many of the old frame buildings throughout this section were constructed of lumber and heavy timbers he sawed out.

The subject of this sketch was an active and ambitious lad from the time he was old enough to discard dresses in the land of his birth, always avoiding to be entirely dependent upon parental support. He was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1817, being now in the 81st year of his age. From the time he reached manhood's estate he frequently nursed schemes of gigantic proportions, and often they proved to be "castles in the air." During his earlier years he managed to accumulate valuable property in Doon and Blair, and at one time owned a fine farm in Norfolk county, and a share in the Clare foundry at Preston. But through unfortunate speculations and endorsing other people's paper, he has been reduced to a bumble position.

In his younger days Mr. Beck was a great horse fancier, and has produced some of the finest teams that ever came down the pike. He is also an admirer of the opposite sex and even in his old age he has a keen eye for fine- looking women.

Some are inclined to charge the old gentleman of being eccentric at times, and that he has been known to be interested in dog breeding, having had as many as a dozen on hand at one time. The same authority also states that he has been known to give his home the appearance of a goat farm by keeping many goats, and then take a sudden turn from that industry to dealing in watches, clocks, spectacles and music boxes, and that he has had as many as thirty or forty time-keepers on hand at one time in his residence, where his neighbors and friends would frequently congregate to make a deal, in which case they were invariably made welcome

One night recently the writer had the pleasure of visiting his home which is to-day one of the oldest and most conspicuous landmarks of the village. Here I found a rare and valuable collection of match boxes, tobacco boxes, spectacle cases, etc., of exquisite workmanship, which he brought over from Germany. A music box, a minutely perfect figure of a bear carved out by hard from ebony is a novelty that would be priceless in the collection of one who admires the curious and rare. But the most interesting figure for study that I noticed on this visit was the venerable owner himself who is yet hale and hearty in the evening of life. On this occasion he was in a talkative mood and the plans then whirling with- in his brain caused us to imagine that if they could be brought into effect Doon would again be a busy hive of industry.

Once upon a time Mr. Beck had one of his characteristic plans suddenly nipped in the bud. He had decided to build a large store in Doon, the style of the building to be entirely different from any other structure of the kind in the country. In 1876 he visited the Centennial at Philadelphia for the purpose of procuring plans and specifications for the proposed building. After walking in his shirt-sleeves through the streets of the Quaker City and examining the numerous costly buildings therein he came across a building which suited his fancy precisely. Upon inquiry be was stunned to learn that the front alone cost $20,000. This so dampened his ardor that he immediately returned home and disposed of all the building material he had already procured for the purpose. Mr. Beck is especially partial to light grey cloth, most invariably some part of his wearing material, if not all, being composed of that color. Even the male members of his family are often attired in the same material, and he even experiences delight in holding the ribbons behind a span of light grey, many fine specimens of which he has owned and driven in his time.

The old gentleman is at times inclined to think that he will soon be a candidate to pass "over the hills to the poor house," and thus end his struggle in old age to keep the wolf from the door. But it is very unlikely that his children, or other well-to-do relatives, would ever to permit him to take this humble step in the declining years of his long and active career. Despite the fact, however, of his being now over eighty years of age, he is still in the ring, and makes his usual daily trips to Galt and Berlin supplying his patrons with oatmeal or pot barley. On these trips he is usually accompanied by his son John. The fiercest, blizzard of winter has no terrors for him, and if he thinks there is fifty cents or a dollar in an oatmeal deal in Berlin or Waterloo, he will make the trip, when John has flatly refused to face the storm to accompany him.

Mr. Beck has been a widower for a number of years, but his daughter Lizzie is keeping house for him. Of his two daughters he is fond, and once when he had matured plans for building a fine mansion his idea was to lay out a room for each, and to be sumptuously furnished. In his barn are now two handsome parlor stoves which he had already purchased for the purpose. I designate him as the Father of Doon, he being the oldest and about the only one left who was identified with the early development of the village.

H. N.

Waterloo County Chronicle 17 Mar 1898, p. 8

Frederick — Emma Charlotte Lawson. Emma was born 3 Jul 1816, Delhi, Norfolk Co., Ontario, Canada; died 6 Aug 1889, , Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; was buried , Doon Presbyterian Cemetery, Doon (Kitchener), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• FindAGrave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/182840510
• Name: Margaret Clare
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-40734
• Immigration: 1830, , Canada
• Immigration: 1830, , Canada
• Residence: 1845, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
• Residence: 1861, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

Margaret married Reeve John Clare 28 Sep 1845, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. John (son of Clare and Barbara) was born CALC 15 Oct 1823, Odenbach, , Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany; died 9 Mar 1888, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; was buried , Preston Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• FindAGrave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/243318504
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-39674
• Residence: 1858, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
• Occupation: 1861, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Manufacturer
• Residence: 1861, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Residence: 1870, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
• Occupation: 1871, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Moulder
• Occupation: 1881, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Moulder
• Occupation: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Stove Moulder
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Occupation: 1901, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Moulder

John married Sophia Israel 14 Feb 1858, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. Sophia (daughter of Carl "Charles" Israel and Anna Catharina Rebscher) was born 25 Apr 1840, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; died 8 Mar 1865, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; was buried , Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

John married Rosina Bernhardt 9 Apr 1867, Doon (Kitchener), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. Rosina (daughter of Philip Jacob "Jacob" Bernhardt and Barbara Rupp) was born 6 Dec 1831, Buffalo, Erie, New York, United States; died 28 Dec 1922, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; was buried 31 Dec 1922, Preston Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-34984
• Residence: 1861, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Residence: 1866, Baden, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
• Occupation: 1871, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Finisher
• Residence: 1871, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Occupation: 1881, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Mechanic

Charles married Auguste Eberhardt 11 Dec 1866, , Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. Auguste (daughter of John Eberhardt and S. Attenburg) was born 1848, , Schwerin, Germany; died Yes, date unknown. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Name: Louisa Beck
• Name: Louise Dickie
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-34985P
• Residence: 1861, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Residence: 1871, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Residence: 1875, Baden, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada

Louise married Rev. James Francis Dickie 23 Jun 1875, Baden, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. James was born 13 Nov 1845, Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, Scotland; died 28 May 1933, Marine City, St. Clair, Michigan, United States; was buried , Hillside Cemetery, St. Clair, St. Clair, Michigan, United States. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-34986
• Birth: 9 Aug 1854, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
• Residence: 1861, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Residence: 1871, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

Notes:

GEORGE BECK, president of Beck Cereal Co. Born Preston, Ont. 9 Aug 1854 son of Jacob and Charlotte (Hespeler) Beck. Educated in public schools of Preston. Married at Ingersoll, Ont 1884 Louisa M. Bland; one daughter, Charlotte. Began business career with father, who founded the Beck Cereal Co., became member of the firm 1880 and since death of his father, Mar 21 1906 has been president of the company. Republican, Episcopalian; Residence 1033 Cass Ave


The Book of Detroiters, Albert Nelson Marquis 1914

George — Lavinia Mary Bland. Lavinia (daughter of Francis Lawrence Bland and Agatha Elizabeth Chapman) was born Abt 1850; died Yes, date unknown. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Name: Wilhelm Beck
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-121006
• Residence: 1861, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Residence: 1871, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Residence: 1876, Baden, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
• Occupation: 1881, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Cigar Box Manufacturer

William married Maggie Dobbins 3 Jul 1876, Guelph City, Wellington Co., Ontario, Canada. Maggie was born 1856, Palmyra, Missouri, USA.; died Yes, date unknown. [Group Sheet]

William married Maggie Dobbin 3 Jul 1876, Guelph City, Wellington Co., Ontario, Canada. Maggie was born Abt 1856, Of, Baden, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; died Yes, date unknown. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Famous: Industrialist
• Interesting: business, honoured, story, electricity
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-42684
• Residence: 1861, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Residence: 1871, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Hall of Fame - Waterloo Region: Bef 2012, , Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada

Notes:

BECK, Sir ADAM,

manufacturer, horseman, politician, office holder, and philanthropist; b. 20 June 1857 in Baden, Upper Canada, son of Jacob Friedrich Beck and Charlotte Josephine Hespeler; m. 7 Sept. 1898 Lillian Ottaway in Hamilton, Ont., and they had a daughter; d. 15 Aug. 1925 in London, Ont.

The Prometheus of Canadian politics during the first quarter of the 20th century, Sir Adam Beck brought the inestimable benefit of cheap electric light and power to the citizens of Ontario through a publicly owned utility, the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario. He had to fight continuously to build Hydro, as it came to be called, but supported by municipal allies he succeeded in creating one of the largest publicly owned integrated electric systems in the world. Brusque and overbearing, he made many enemies in the process, even amongst his friends, as he rammed his projects forward, frequently over the objections of the governments he notionally served. His ruthless determination to expand Hydro, with little regard to the cost, led eventually to a movement to rein him in. He spent his last years pinned down before three public inquiries as lawyers, accountants, and political adversaries picked over every Hydro expenditure. These public humiliations broke his spirit but failed to diminish his enormous popularity. Adam Beck more than any other public figure in Ontario reshaped the institutional life of the province by making electricity a public utility and legitimizing, through his accomplishments, public ownership as an effective instrument of policy throughout Canada.

Beck came from an enterprising immigrant family of builders and makers. In 1829 Frederick and Barbara Beck had emigrated from the Grand Duchy of Baden (Germany) to upstate New York, and then had moved to the Pennsylvania Dutch community of Doon (Kitchener) in Upper Canada, where they settled on a farm and built a sawmill. Their son Jacob, who had stayed behind to work first as a doctor's apprentice and later in the mills and locomotive works of Schenectady, joined them in 1837. A few miles from his parents, in Preston (Cambridge), he opened a foundry. When fire destroyed it, his friends rallied and he was able to rebuild bigger than before. His first wife, Caroline Logus, whom he married in January 1843, died soon after the birth of a son, Charles. In 1843 Beck had recruited a skilled iron moulder from Buffalo, John Clare (Klarr), to join him; Clare would cement the alliance by marrying his sister in September 1845. With Clare and another partner (Valentine Wahn) running the business, Beck returned to tour his homeland, where he met Charlotte Hespeler, the sister of his Preston neighbour, merchant-manufacturer Jacob Hespeler. When Charlotte came out to Canada, she and Beck were wed, in October 1845; a daughter, Louisa, was born in 1847, followed by two sons, George and William. In a move typical of his venturing spirit, Jacob suggested relocating his company closer to the projected line of the Grand Trunk Railway, but Clare refused. So in 1854 Beck dissolved the partnership and bought 190 acres on the route of the railway ten miles west of Berlin (Kitchener). There he laid out a town-site, which he named Baden, and built a foundry, a grist mill, and a large brick house. Beck's businesses flourished on the strength of iron orders from the railway, and a brickyard and machine shop were eventually added. It was in this thriving hamlet that Adam Beck was born in 1857.

____________________


Sir ADAM, manufacturer, horseman, politician, office holder, and philanthropist; b. 20 June 1857 in Baden, Upper Canada, son of Jacob Friedrich Beck and Charlotte Josephine Hespeler; m. 7 Sept. 1898 Lillian Ottaway in Hamilton, Ont., and they had a daughter; d. 15 Aug. 1925 in London, Ont.

The Prometheus of Canadian politics during the first quarter of the 20th century, Sir Adam Beck brought the inestimable benefit of cheap electric light and power to the citizens of Ontario through a publicly owned utility, the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario. He had to fight continuously to build Hydro, as it came to be called, but supported by municipal allies he succeeded in creating one of the largest publicly owned integrated electric systems in the world. Brusque and overbearing, he made many enemies in the process, even amongst his friends, as he rammed his projects forward, frequently over the objections of the governments he notionally served. His ruthless determination to expand Hydro, with little regard to the cost, led eventually to a movement to rein him in. He spent his last years pinned down before three public inquiries as lawyers, accountants, and political adversaries picked over every Hydro expenditure. These public humiliations broke his spirit but failed to diminish his enormous popularity. Adam Beck more than any other public figure in Ontario reshaped the institutional life of the province by making electricity a public utility and legitimizing, through his accomplishments, public ownership as an effective instrument of policy throughout Canada.

Beck came from an enterprising immigrant family of builders and makers. In 1829 Frederick and Barbara Beck had emigrated from the Grand Duchy of Baden (Germany) to upstate New York, and then had moved to the Pennsylvania Dutch community of Doon (Kitchener) in Upper Canada, where they settled on a farm and built a sawmill. Their son Jacob, who had stayed behind to work first as a doctor's apprentice and later in the mills and locomotive works of Schenectady, joined them in 1837. A few miles from his parents, in Preston (Cambridge), he opened a foundry. When fire destroyed it, his friends rallied and he was able to rebuild bigger than before. His first wife, Caroline Logus, whom he married in January 1843, died soon after the birth of a son, Charles. In 1843 Beck had recruited a skilled iron moulder from Buffalo, John Clare (Klarr), to join him; Clare would cement the alliance by marrying his sister in September 1845. With Clare and another partner (Valentine Wahn) running the business, Beck returned to tour his homeland, where he met Charlotte Hespeler, the sister of his Preston neighbour, merchant-manufacturer Jacob Hespeler. When Charlotte came out to Canada, she and Beck were wed, in October 1845; a daughter, Louisa, was born in 1847, followed by two sons, George and William. In a move typical of his venturing spirit, Jacob suggested relocating his company closer to the projected line of the Grand Trunk Railway, but Clare refused. So in 1854 Beck dissolved the partnership and bought 190 acres on the route of the railway ten miles west of Berlin (Kitchener). There he laid out a town-site, which he named Baden, and built a foundry, a grist mill, and a large brick house. Beck's businesses flourished on the strength of iron orders from the railway, and a brickyard and machine shop were eventually added. It was in this thriving hamlet that Adam Beck was born in 1857.

Adam passed a bucolic childhood exploring the edges of the millpond with his brothers, poking about the sooty recesses of the foundry with the workmen, and horseback-riding with his sister. He was sent off to attend William Tassie*'s boarding school in Galt (Cambridge), where he showed no particular distinction; a slow and indifferent student, he preferred riding to reading. His formal education ended at Rockwood Academy, near Guelph. On his return to Baden, his father, who abhorred idleness, set him to work as a groundhog (a moulder's apprentice) in the foundry. It was said by those who knew Adam that he inherited his enterprising spirit, his determination and visionary ability, and some of his sternness from his father, and a love of public service from his mother. Adam's career as a moulder came to an end with the failure of his father's businesses in 1879. At age 63 Jacob Beck, unbowed, started afresh once again, this time as a grain merchant in Detroit. Louisa and the youngest members of the family, Jacob Fritz and Adam, accompanied their parents; one of the older boys, William, stayed in Baden to run the cigar-box manufactory he had started in 1878. Adam returned to work briefly in Toronto as a clerk in a foundry and then as an employee in a cigar factory. With $500 in borrowed money, he joined William and their cousin William Hespeler in a cigar-box factory in Galt in 1881. Hespeler eventually left the partnership, but the two Becks persisted and built a modestly successful business. In 1884, with the inducement of a five-year tax exemption and free water, they moved their works to London, Ont., to be closer to the centre of the province's cigar-making industry. William left soon afterwards to open a branch in Montreal and for a time Adam worked in partnership with his brother George; from 1 Jan. 1888 Adam was the sole proprietor of William Beck and Company, which later became the Beck Manufacturing Company Limited.

Cigar boxes would appear to be a fragile basis on which to build a fortune or a political career. The smoking of cigars, however, was a major rite of male sociability during the Victorian era. Earlier in the century cigars consumed in Canada had originated in Germany and later they came from the United States. The imposition of the National Policy tariff of 25 per cent on rolled cigars but not on tobacco leaf led to the migration of the industry to Canada. London was one of the first major centres where the leaf grown in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin entered the dominion, and it was there and in Montreal [see Samuel Davis*] that the domestic cigar-making business took root. In London the industry would reach its peak around 1912, when 22 companies, employing 1,980 workers, produced more than 20 million cigars. Situated on Albert Street, the Beck factory was essentially a veneer plant. Cedar logs and specialty woods from Spain and Mexico arrived by rail, were stored in the yard for seasoning, and then were peeled into strips to make not only cigar boxes but also cheese boxes and veneer for furniture and pianos. Toiling side by side with his workers (25 in 1889, rising to 125 in 1919), Beck built a thriving business, taking orders, setting up equipment, manhandling logs, and wheeling the finished boxes to customers. (He himself was a non-smoker, an enduring fatherly influence.) Eventually the company supplied all of the main cigar makers with the boxes, labels, and bands in which their products were shipped. Until he was 40, business was Adam Beck's main preoccupation.

In the years after 1897 he emerged much more prominently in public life. He got out more, married, offered himself for public office, and turned the management of his firm over to his brother Jacob. An avid sportsman, he had played baseball as a boy; in London he played tennis and lacrosse and, with a group of bachelors, organized a toboggan club. On the advice of his doctor he took up riding again for relaxation. But nothing with Adam Beck could ever be just a recreation - he quickly became a breeder of racehorses and a competitive jumper. His social life revolved around the London Hunt Club where, in 1897, he became master of the hounds, a post he would hold until 1922. A mutual love of horses and riding brought the muscular Beck and the slim, strikingly beautiful Lillian Ottaway together at a jumping meet; she was 23 years his junior. After a whirlwind courtship they were married in 1898 at Christ's Church Anglican Cathedral in Hamilton. Lillian, who had been raised in Britain, spoke with a slight English accent, had a lovely soprano voice, rode with gusto, and carried herself regally. Her mother, Marion Elizabeth Stinson*, from a wealthy Hamilton family, had married an English barrister, who died before Lillian was born. At 18 Lillian returned to Canada when her mother married a prominent Hamilton lawyer. After a honeymoon tour of Europe, Beck triumphantly brought his bride to London, Ont., where they promptly acquired the most ostentatious house in the city, Elliston, the estate of Ellis Walton Hyman*, and proceeded to make it even grander, with his and hers stables, under a new name, Headley. From being a sporting, business-possessed bachelor, Beck, with his young wife on his arm, moved effortlessly into the very centre of London society. She sang in the cathedral choir, their house and grounds were the envy of the city, and they made a romantic and devoted couple at dinners and hunt club affairs. Winston Churchill stayed with them on his lecture tour of 1900-1, as did Governor General Lord Minto [Elliot*] and Lady Minto in 1903.

As Adam Beck came out into society, he developed an interest in public life. In provincial politics London had long been a Conservative fief - William Ralph Meredith held the seat from 1872 to 1894. The Liberals captured it in a by-election when Meredith was appointed to the bench. At the next general election, in March 1898, Beck entered the lists for the Conservatives, ultimately falling 301 votes short of beating the Liberal Francis Baxter Leys. Although he perhaps should not have expected a better result, having no previous political experience or strong organization, he left the field feeling slightly wounded. Nevertheless, his political energies were channelled into the Victoria Hospital Trust, to which he was appointed by the city in 1901. Here he scandalized supporters with his aggressive approach towards patients' rights, his attacks on hospital inefficiency, and his hands-on way of managing repairs economically. It is said that Beck, realizing that he was not likely to be reappointed, ran for mayor to outflank his opposition. In any case, he offered himself and was elected in January 1902. Making few promises, preferring instead to be judged by his works, he plunged into the first of what would be three one-year terms. His administration was marked by a vigorous, reforming tone that discomfited the aldermanic coterie. He promoted civic beautification by offering a prize from his own purse for a garden competition. He persuaded the city to take over the operation of the London and Port Stanley Railway when the private operator's lease expired. He cleaned out the fire department, promoted public health, and became involved in the leadership of the Union of Canadian Municipalities, whose annual convention he brought to London in 1904. Beck thus learned the political craft at the top of local politics, as a mayor without a long apprenticeship. He entered public life as an oppositionist, a critic who used his personal popularity to drive his reluctant colleagues forward and to cleanse the municipal stables. Despite his class position as a manufacturer, in politics he developed the style of a populist champion of the ordinary citizen against the establishment. Although one might have glimpsed intimations of his future in these London years, it would have required an extremely vivid imagination to see in this maverick local politician the system-building Napoleon of provincial politics that history would know as Sir Adam Beck.

In the election of May 1902 the leader of the Conservative party, James Pliny Whitney*, encouraged Beck to run again, with the offer of a cabinet post. Although the party as a whole was unsuccessful, the popular Beck beat Francis Leys by 131 votes and thus, for the next two and a half years, he would serve as both mayor and mpp of London. It was in his capacity as mayor of a southwestern Ontario industrial city that he came in contact with a group of activists from his home district of Waterloo County who had become agitated by the hydroelectric power question. Led by the manufacturer Elias Weber Bingeman Snider and the enthusiast Daniel Bechtel Detweiler, the anxious businessmen and municipal politicians of the industrial centres of the Grand River valley had begun to organize themselves to obtain Niagara power that they believed would otherwise go to Toronto and Buffalo. They had met in 1902 to study the situation, and then formed common cause with the politicians of Toronto concerned about private monopoly. At first they hoped the provincial government could be persuaded to undertake the distribution of cheap power to the municipalities. Talks with the Liberal premier, George William Ross*, who refused to take on the inevitable debt, convinced them that if they wanted control over electrical distribution they would have to do the job themselves. Beck went as an observer to the first meeting of this group, the Berlin Convention of February 1903, a gathering of 67 delegates representing all of the main towns and cities in southwestern Ontario; he came away an active convert to municipal intervention. In response to this public pressure, in June the Ross government passed legislation (drafted by Snider) authorizing a commission of investigation to explore the possibilities of cooperative municipal action and a statutory framework within which the municipalities could create a permanent commission to operate a distribution system. Snider was the obvious choice as chair of this Ontario Power Commission, which more frequently went by his name. Beck along with Philip William Ellis, a Toronto jewellery manufacturer and wholesaler, and William Foster Cockshutt, a Brantford farm-implements manufacturer, were chosen by the municipal delegates to serve with Snider as commissioners. Thus, in the fall of 1903, Beck began a crash course on the power question. It was a subject ideally suited to his developing temperament, and he could readily identify with the professed goals: economic electrical light and power, equity between the different manufacturing regions, and the welfare of the common people. The vision of sensible, non-partisan, and public-spirited businessmen and municipal leaders (such as himself) appealed to Beck. He could also subscribe to the implicit attack on monopoly, social privilege, and finance capitalism. This was a moral universe in which he felt right at home.

As the Snider commission began working out the details of a municipally owned hydroelectric distribution system in 1904, Beck sensed the weakness of the voluntary, cooperative structure. It lacked the authority to order the power companies to surrender sensitive information vital to the enterprise, and the municipalities could not agree on much for long. Financing a collective municipal enterprise without provincial backing would be fraught with difficulties. The more he studied the question the more he became convinced that the province would have to play a major role, not just facilitate municipal activity. This growing conviction coincided with a major shift in the political landscape. The Liberal party was losing its hold over the electorate. Rooted in rural Ontario, it had trouble coming to grips with issues important to the rapidly growing urban constituencies. The Conservatives had crept to within three seats of upsetting the Liberals in 1902. In January 1905 Whitney's Conservatives swept to a landslide victory, capturing 69 of the 98 seats. In London, the increasingly popular Adam Beck won with a plurality of 566 votes.

The hydroelectric question had not figured prominently in the campaign. The change in government, however, catapulted Beck into a position of some influence provincially. On 8 February he was made a minister without portfolio in the new administration. After the election, Whitney grandly promised that the water-power of Niagara "should be as free as air" and be developed for the public good. "It is the duty of the Government," Beck insisted in his populist fashion, "to see that development is not hindered by permitting a handful of people to enrich themselves out of these treasures at the expense of the general public." To that end Whitney cancelled an eleventh-hour water-power concession granted by the Ross government and on 5 July he appointed Beck to head a hydroelectric commission of inquiry. It was empowered to take an inventory of available water-power sites, gather information on existing companies in terms of their capital costs, their operating expenses, and the prices they charged, and recommend an appropriate provincial policy with respect to the generation and distribution of hydroelectricity. Beck continued to be a member of the Snider commission but clearly he had moved on to a broader conception of the power question; he now wielded a much more powerful regulatory and investigative instrument and could act with the authority of the province. Henceforth he would be the undisputed leader of the hydro movement.

The Snider commission, which reported first, in March 1906, recommended the construction of a cooperatively owned hydroelectric system linking the major municipal utilities to generating facilities at Niagara under the control of a permanent power commission financed and managed by the subscribing municipalities. In the weeks that followed, the Beck commission, in the first of its five regional reports, and more particularly the activities of Beck himself, superseded the Snider notion of a municipal cooperative. Beck's initial report, on Niagara and southwest Ontario, prepared the way instead for provincial action by pointing out the excessive rates charged by private power companies, and the inherent difficulties of government regulation. He gave an important speech in Guelph urging direct provincial intervention. He inspired a mass meeting of municipal representatives at Toronto city hall and, on 11 April, a demonstration on the lawn of the legislature demanding that the province empower a commission to generate, transmit, and sell power to the municipalities at the lowest possible cost, and regulate the prices charged by the private providers. Beck also orchestrated a deluge of petitions from the municipal councils. All of this effort was intended to soften up his colleagues in cabinet, most of whom harboured deep suspicions about public ownership in general and Beck's movement in particular. The strategy worked. The Whitney government hesitantly introduced legislation on 7 May (Act to provide for the transmission of electrical power to municipalities) which, in effect, created a three-member provincial crown corporation (though it was not called that), the Hydro-Electric Power Commission. Operating outside the usual civil service constraints and with extensive powers of expropriation, this body would have full powers to purchase, lease, or build transmission facilities financed by provincial bonds. Local utilities could buy power from the commission only after municipal voters had approved the contract and the enabling financial by-law. Astonishingly, Beck's extraparliamentary organization cowed even the opposition: the bill passed unanimously in less than a week.

In organizational terms Beck had pushed on beyond an unwieldy municipal cooperative to a provincial crown agency. In doing so he had alienated some of his friends, especially in the way he had shoved Snider aside and unilaterally appropriated studies done by the Snider commission for his own investigation. Nonetheless he had created a broad coalition of municipal activists behind his determination to build a publicly owned, provincial system. But there were many possible forms, involving different degrees of state intervention, that the organization might take. The government remained ambivalent, guarded, and internally divided. What eventually emerged as Ontario Hydro, however, was Beck's creation over the opposition of his cabinet colleagues. On 7 June 1906 Whitney appointed Beck chairman of the new commission, as expected. Needed engineering expertise would come from Cecil Brunswick Smith. And to balance Beck's populism and rein in his enthusiasms, Whitney also persuaded a reluctant John Strathearn Hendrie of Hamilton to serve, Beck's peer as a horseman, a man of his wife's class, and a known supporter of the private power companies, among them the Hamilton Electric Light and Cataract Power Company Limited [see John Patterson*].

The private interests, especially the group promoting the only Canadian firm at Niagara, the Electrical Development Company of Ontario Limited from Toronto, having failed in their first attempts to derail Beck, now bent their minds to seeking some reasonable accommodation with the government. There were many in the cabinet, the premier included, who were sympathetic to this point of view. The Electrical Development Company was in a precarious financial position; a collapse would be a costly blot on the province. Whitney insisted that every consideration be given the company in negotiating the contract for power in early 1907 with the winning bidder, the American-based Ontario Power Company, and then with respect to the construction of the transmission line. In each case negotiations failed. The premier did not conceive of his policy as a guerre à outrance against the private interests. He believed in talking tough, but in the end was willing to come to terms. Unlike Beck, Whitney was a practitioner of brokerage politics. Beck, a newly formed ideologue, was not prepared to bargain away what had formed in his mind as a just alternative to private control. It was possible that neither of them knew the truth about themselves, though in time they came to a realization of their honest differences. For his part Beck had to manoeuvre against the wishes of his premier and colleagues in cabinet. From their point of view he could be unpleasant, ruthless, even unprincipled. He would change his mind without notice, withhold information, go back on deals, and alternately retreat in a sulk or play the rude bully.

Beck proved a formidable champion. The Toronto market was a key element in his grand scheme. Without access, which the city wanted, he could not deliver cheap electricity to southwestern towns, but Toronto's system was controlled by the Electrical Development Company. In the resulting contest over a proposed by-law to fund a municipal network powered by Hydro, Beck's emotional, simplistic rhetoric was a telling factor. He also profited from the ineptitude and arrogance of his corporate opponents in Electrical Development, Frederic Nicholls, Sir Henry Mill Pellatt*, and William Mackenzie, whose financial reputations had already taken a beating from the royal commission on life insurance in 1906. During the winter of 1907-8 by-laws endorsing the contracts with Ontario Hydro were approved by municipal ratepayers with huge majorities in Toronto and elsewhere. Hydro policy also proved extremely popular in the election of June 1908, in which the government increased both its popular vote and its number of seats. Beck now had a dual mandate from the municipal and provincial electorates. When a desperate Mackenzie amalgamated several enterprises into one utility in 1908 and then belatedly attempted to forestall provincial ownership with a counterproposal to build the system and distribute power under government regulation, the offer came too late. The government had gone so far it could not safely turn back; a publicly owned transmission company would have to be created. Mackenzie and his colleagues had played the game badly and when they lost, after having been given every possible consideration, they turned viciously on Beck and the government. Their quixotic campaign to undermine provincial credit in British financial circles, and then to seek disallowance in Ottawa of key Hydro legislation, served only to bring Whitney and Beck closer together and solidify the political foundations of Ontario Hydro.

Using electricity generated by the Ontario Power Company, the Hydro-Electric Power Commission became an operating entity in a series of theatrical turning-on ceremonies that began in the fall of 1910 and continued into 1911 as successive towns and cities were wired into the grid. Each of these civic festivals became an opportunity for Beck to recount the triumph of public power over private greed. His hostility towards the private power companies, who were now his competitors, and his shameless self-promotion as the champion of "The People's Power," deeply troubled his colleagues. Moreover, his independent conduct raised awkward questions about the precise relationship between the management of Hydro and the government. Before the election of December 1911 Whitney floated a trial balloon, suggesting that the time had come to make Hydro a department of government, under the full control of the cabinet. Beck did not openly attack the proposal, but once he was acclaimed in his own seat and the government was re-elected, his municipal allies, acting through the Ontario Municipal Electric Association, formed in early 1912, launched an aggressive campaign on his behalf; it not only supported Beck as chairman of a quasi-independent commission, but also (in February) brought him a handsome $6,000 salary, without requiring his resignation from the legislature.

With this vote of confidence from the people and somewhat more reluctantly from the premier, Beck struggled within a competitive environment to build Hydro through dramatic price cutting and political showmanship. In his campaign to expand consumption Beck became an electrical Messiah: in speeches and publicity he extolled the power of abundant cheap light to brighten the homes of working people; cheap electricity would create more jobs in the factories of the province; hydro would lighten the drudgery of the barn and the household; and electric railways radiating out from the cities into the countryside would create more prosperous, progressive farms even as light and power made brighter, cleaner cities. With his famous travelling exhibits of the latest electrical appliances (popularly called circuses), rural tests, and local Hydro stores (where household appliances were on display), and in parade floats, newspaper and magazine advertisements, and a host of speeches, Beck presented public hydro as an elixir, but he was no snake-oil salesman. He understood the economics of the electric industry better than his competitors or his critics. Along with utilities magnate Samuel Insull of Chicago, Beck realized that the more electricity he could sell, the cheaper it would cost to acquire. It was a difficult lesson to teach. He even had to browbeat some of the more fiscally conservative municipal utilities, most notably the Toronto Hydro-Electric Power Commission, to pass the lower rates on to consumers. In the process he continued to expand his publicly owned system at the expense of his private competitors.

In Toronto and across the province, Beck acquired a more ardent following than the government itself. At home he and his family continued to rise in public esteem. London's municipal electric utility, which received its first hydro from Niagara in 1910, became a model for progressive business promotion and Beck loyalism. Personally Beck maintained an active interest in civic politics. When the water commissioners proposed a treatment facility to take more water from the tainted Thames River, he boldly promised to find enough clean fresh water in artesian wells. The city took him up on this offer, voting $10,000 for the purpose. In 1910 Beck drilled the wells, installed electrical pumps, and brought the project in on time and on budget, or rather, he absorbed the excess costs himself. In two grand gestures Beck brought light and water to the growing city in the same year.

However, it was in the field of public health that the Becks made their greatest contribution. Sometime in l907 or 1908 the Becks' young daughter, Marion Auria, contracted tuberculosis. Her worried parents sought out the best specialists in America and in Europe. Mercifully her case responded to treatment. But the Becks became concerned for those families in their community who lacked the means to provide their children with medical care. Everyone, they believed, ought to have close access to first-class tuberculosis facilities. Accordingly, in 1909 Adam and Lillian Beck organized the London Health Association to provide a sanatorium. From local individuals and organizations they raised $10,000 (led by their own donation of $1,200), the city contributed $5,000, and the province added $4,000. On 5 April 1910 Governor General Lord Grey* opened the Queen Alexandra Sanatorium in the village of Byron, west of the city. For the rest of their lives the Becks remained deeply attached to this sanatorium and made its maintenance and expansion their passion. As president from its inception to his death in 1925 and a sometimes overbearing physical presence on the weekends, Adam Beck personally oversaw all major and even many minor renovations.

A society beauty, Lillian Beck also continued to be a fiercely competitive horsewoman. The Beck stables produced a string of outstanding hunter-class horses that won Adam and Lillian international recognition. In 1907 they competed in the Olympia Horse Show in London, England, where Lillian's horse My Fellow won its class. To remain competitive, the Becks leased an estate in England in 1913 to maintain their equestrian operation at the highest international standards. From that time onward Lillian and Marion lived about half the year in England; Adam paid extended visits when his schedule permitted. In 1914 their prize-winning horses Melrose, Sir Edward, and Sir James were counted among the finest middleweight and heavyweight hunters in the world. The Becks also competed regularly at the National Horse Show in New York City where, in 1915, Lillian was named a judge over chauvinist protests, famously breaking down the barriers of this once exclusively male domain.

Adam Beck's contribution to London had been publicly recognized in an unprecedented dinner given in his honour on 25 Nov. 1913. At this glittering affair, attended by 500 in the Masonic Temple, Anglican bishop David Williams* proclaimed him "incorrupt and incorruptible"; Roman Catholic bishop Michael Francis Fallon* eulogized his vision, character, and charitable works; and the mayor and city council gave him a silver candelabra and tray. While the ladies looked on from the galleries, the head-table guests were served their dinners from a small electric railway. According to the London Free Press, this banquet was "the most remarkable and spontaneous demonstration of affection and regard ever tendered a public man in London." Visibly moved, Beck spoke briefly of his satisfaction at lightening the load of the poor, the housewife, the farmer, the merchant, and afflicted children, and pledged to carry on the fight to create a renewed citizenship based upon "service, progress and righteousness." These local honours were crowned the following year when he received a knighthood in the king's June honours list. He was now Sir Adam, the Power Knight, and Lillian formally became what she had long been in style, Lady Beck. Charging at fences on horseback, or driving the rapidly growing Hydro system forward, Sir Adam Beck was at the height of his power in 1914.

Re-elected by a large majority in the general election of 29 June 1914, Beck directed a major structural transformation of Hydro during his next term with fewer constraints than in the past. Whitney, who died in September, was replaced by a less adept premier, William Howard Hearst*. Beck's nemesis, John Hendrie, resigned from the Hydro-Electric Power Commission to become lieutenant governor. Beck thus had a much freer rein, though Hearst did not include him in his cabinet. Hydro's head set about expanding his organization with a powerful lobby, the Ontario Municipal Electric Association, zealously behind him. Beck and the regional municipalities fixed upon electric radial railways as a major force for modernization and rural reconstruction. In 1913 the Hydro Electric Railway Act and amendments to the Ontario Railway Act had prepared the way legislatively. A web of light lines that connected farms, towns, and cities and delivered transportation at cost under a public authority had enormous appeal and Beck became its most ardent hot gospeller. He managed to have the abject London and Port Stanley Railway electrified as a glowing prototype. Coincidentally the baseload of the proposed railways would greatly increase electric consumption and drive Hydro to a new stage of development as a fully integrated regional monopoly that provided hydroelectric generation, transmission, and distribution services as well as high-speed transportation. This grandiose vision of electrical modernization had commensurate costs, which Beck somewhat disingenuously managed to minimize.

In 1914 Hydro and the municipalities received legislative permission, subject to ratepayer approval, to enter into the inter-city electric railway business. By stages Hydro acquired the legal authority to generate power as well as distribute it through the purchase of a utility (Big Chute) on the Severn River and the construction of regional power stations in 1914-15 at Wasdell Falls, also on the Severn, and Eugenia Falls, near Flesherton. These were sideshows, however; the centrepiece of the proposed integrated system remained Niagara. In 1914 Hydro quietly began planning for a massive hydroelectric station there, but there was precious little water left at Niagara to turn the turbines. A treaty negotiated with the United States in 1908 limited the amount that might be diverted for power purposes; the three existing private companies at Niagara had already acquired, between them, the rights to most of the Canadian quota. Beck had made the development of the hydroelectric system into the central issue on the Ontario political agenda when conflict broke out in Europe in August 1914.

The Becks threw themselves wholeheartedly into the war effort. In 1912 the military authorities had cleverly put Adam's organizing talents and his knowledge of horses together by naming him to a remount committee. At the outset of the war he took charge of acquiring horses for the Canadian army in the territory from Halifax to the Lakehead. In June 1915 he assumed this responsibility for the British army as well, an appointment that brought him an honorary colonelcy. Inevitably, allegations arose that his agency either paid too much for horses or acquired unsuitable remounts, but the claims were not substantiated upon investigation. Together Adam and Lillian Beck also made personal contributions to the war effort, donating all of their champion horses to the cause. General Edwin Alfred Hervey Alderson, for example, rode Sir James, Adam's most famous horse. Lady Beck, in England for most of the war, working with the Canadian Red Cross Society, devoted herself particularly to ensuring that wounded veterans were welcomed into British country homes for their convalescence. The Queen Alexandra Sanatorium in Ontario was expanded in 1917-18 to accommodate the rehabilitation of wounded returnees. The arrangement worked well, but in the later stages of the war battle-hardened veterans began to complain about the hospital's stern regimen, much of which was attributed to Sir Adam's "Germanic" direction. In 1916, for his local and patriotic help, Beck had received an lld from the Western University of London, which he served as a director and later as chancellor.

At first the war had relatively little impact on Beck's plans for Hydro. The municipal elections of January 1917, for example, revolved around the approval of by-laws for Hydro radials and vague authorization for the future generation of power at Niagara. Then the rapidly increasing power demands of wartime industrialization provided the overriding urgency, later in 1917, to overcome opposition to the purchase of one of the power companies at Niagara (Ontario Power) and forge ahead with the construction of a large diversion canal and a world-scale plant at Queenston, which would make much more efficient use of the available water. Shamelessly using the moral purpose of the war, Beck hemmed in his private competitors even more, setting the stage for their eventual acquisition, though the negotiations would be unduly drawn out, litigious, and embittered. However, war, inflation, railway nationalization, and the demands of automotive technology for better roads combined to damp enthusiasm for the radial railway project. Moreover, the problem for the Hydro-Electric Commission now was not finding ways of selling surplus power, but rather keeping up with galloping industrial, commercial, municipal, and domestic demand. When the war ended, Hydro's transformation into an integrated utility producing as well as transmitting its own power was much closer to realization. Its corresponding administrative growth had been grandly marked by the ornate office building begun on University Avenue in Toronto in 1914 and occupied in 1916. Sir Adam had a good war, but he emerged from it a wounded politician.

From the very beginning there had been critics of the Hydro project and Beck's management of it. Canadian private producers and British investors placed obstacles in the way during the early stages. As Hydro advanced, it attracted new critics: private power advocates from the United States, who viewed the progress of public ownership in Ontario with alarm. In 1912 a New York State committee of investigation, the Ferris committee, issued a sharply critical report. A year later a prominent American hydroelectric expert, Reginald Pelham Bolton, denounced the unorthodox financing of Hydro in An expensive experiment . . . (New York). Between 15 July and 23 Dec. 1916 James Mavor, a professor of political economy at the University of Toronto, published a devastating critique of Hydro's lack of accountability, dictatorial methods, and tendency to subvert democracy in a series of articles in the Financial Post (Toronto), later reprinted as Niagara in politics . . . (New York, 1925).

In the final analysis Beck was his own worst enemy. His authoritarian management style invited criticism. In 1916 the provincial auditor, James Clancy, threw up his hands at Hydro's accounting practices. Beck embarrassed his premier and government with surprises. He was not one to compromise, even with his friends. A scrapper and sometimes a bully, he intimidated his staff and his municipal allies, and regarded the government and the legislature with disdain. He was more popular and more powerful than the premier, and he acted as if he knew it. Hydro, in his mind, was bigger than any government and he was the personal embodiment of Hydro. Cautious people who wanted to know in advance how much projects would cost were battered into submission and put on his list of enemies; when the bills added up to two or three times the initial estimates, there were always convoluted exculpatory explanations. Dismissing his censors, Beck stormed ahead, fuming with rage at the conspiracies mounted against him and bristling with indignation at the slightest criticism. Even Beck's defenders tired of his haughty, domineering ways. A frustrated Hearst, when accused by Beck of hindering Hydro's development in the spring of 1919, rebuked Sir Adam for never taking him into his confidence, for his presumptuous attitude towards parliament, and for saddling others with responsibility for Hydro's mounting debt. Beck responded by withdrawing his support from the government and by announcing his intention to run independently in the upcoming election.

The election of October 1919 came as a devastating blow to Beck and, potentially, to his project. As an independent in London, he was defeated by his sole opponent, Dr Hugh Allan Stevenson, the Labour candidate, who benefited from disaffected Tory votes, some nastiness about Beck's ethnic background, and a vocal uprising amongst the returned soldiers in the Queen Alexandra Sanatorium. The timing could not have been worse. Beck's massive Queenston hydroelectric station lay only half completed and the radial railway scheme had stalled; however, Beck's enormous popularity, which transcended party lines, saved him. The victorious but leaderless United Farmers of Ontario initially sounded him out as a possible premier, but both sides quickly thought better of it. Although Labour strongly supported Hydro, the UFO were much more reserved, especially about Beck's radial-railway enthusiasms; they preferred improved roads. As chairman of the Hydro-Electric Power Commission, Beck had also been an mpp and, for much of the time, a minister without portfolio. The election broke that political connection with the government in power. The eventual premier, Ernest Charles Drury*, had little choice but to keep Beck on as chairman, but he appointed a tough ex-soldier, Lieutenant-Colonel Dougall Carmichael, to the commission to keep him in line.

Over the next four years the new government and the tempestuous Power Knight remained locked in combat. For much of the time William Rothwell Plewman, a reporter for the Toronto Daily Star, acted as unofficial mediator between Hydro and the premier, who was determined that Hydro do the government's bidding and not the other way around. On 6 July 1920 the government announced a royal commission to reconsider Beck's radial program in light of the rising costs, disappointing experience in other jurisdictions, and technological change. Beck immediately orchestrated a campaign of resistance. In emergency meetings on the 8th at Toronto city hall and the Hydro building, for instance, the Hydro-Electric Radial Association registered its "strong disapproval" of the commission. Provincial treasurer Peter Smith responded for the government that it would not be stampeded. In July 1921 the commission, chaired by Robert Franklin Sutherland, produced a report that was highly critical of radials and recommended construction of only a much reduced system. Meanwhile, Beck had wasted valuable political capital in an acrimonious takeover of Sir William Mackenzie's Toronto Power Company Limited and its related electric and radial companies and in fighting the City of Toronto over an eight-track entry corridor for a mammoth radial system. Characteristically, he condemned the Sutherland report in an intemperate pamphlet and urged the municipalities not to let up in their campaign. The adverse report, a hostile provincial government, and defeats for radial by-laws (particularly in Toronto) in the municipal elections of January 1922 effectively put an end to Beck's radial dream.

Drury, concerned at the spiralling costs of the Queenston hydroelectric plant, wanted an inquiry into this project as well. At first Beck agreed. However, when his hand-picked expert, Hugh L. Cooper, questioned the design, recalculated the costs upward, and insisted upon changes in the power canal to enhance capacity, Beck rejected his advice and appointed another consulting engineer. The turbines had begun to turn on the first phase of this huge project on 29 Dec. 1921, but there seemed to be no relation between the estimates Beck presented and the mounting bills; in one year the difference amounted to $20 million. Unable to explain the situation, Colonel Carmichael offered his resignation, which the premier refused. The cost of the undertaking, now much larger, had ballooned from the initial $20 million to $84 million and counting. Drury, who had to guarantee the bonds for the over-budget project and take political responsibility for it, insisted upon a commission of inquiry with a sweeping mandate to examine the overall operations of Hydro, not just Queenston. This commission, appointed in April 1922 and chaired by Liberal lawyer Walter Dymond Gregory, became in effect an adversarial audit of Beck's management that involved scores of witnesses, produced thousands of pages of testimony, and ran into the middle of 1923.

These political setbacks were, in some respects, the least of his problems. On 17 Oct. 1921 his beloved wife had died from complications following surgery for pancreatitis. Sir Adam and Lady Beck had been a deeply devoted couple despite their often long absences from one another. Living in the Alexandra apartments next to the Hydro building, they had only just begun to settle into life together in Toronto society. Moreover, she had been the one mellowing influence in his life. He was devastated by the loss. A widower, he was now also the single parent of a fiercely independent teenager. With the check upon his temper in a Hamilton grave, he became more difficult and erratic in the face of his daughter's defiance and the ascendancy of those he considered to be his political enemies. These were the years of Beck's towering, black rages.

Beck had run Hydro as a private corporation. Honest and incorruptible personally, he nevertheless paid scant attention to the niceties of accounting. He would routinely spend funds authorized for one purpose on any project he deemed in the interests of Hydro, including local by-law campaigns. For Beck the ends justified the means. Meanwhile, his vision of a provincial, publicly owned hydroelectric monopoly that served the municipal utilities and provided power at the lowest possible cost had been largely realized. In 1923 Hydro served 393 municipalities and distributed 685,000 horsepower using facilities in which over $170 million had been invested. Beck was a magnificent builder. There could be no denying his accomplishments, though, as the hearings of the Gregory commission showed, his management style, planning, political methods, and accountability to the legislature could be questioned.

The vexations suffered at the hands of the UFO government eventually drew Beck back to the bosom of the Conservative party in self-defence. In the election of June 1923 he stood as a Conservative in his old London riding. The irony of a civil servant running as a candidate in opposition to the government was not lost on Drury or the Farmers' Sun (Toronto), but Beck managed to get away with it. This time he won with a plurality of more than 7,000 votes - a wonderful personal vindication. George Howard Ferguson*'s Conservatives swept the province, and Beck returned to cabinet in July as a minister without portfolio. Ferguson brought the Gregory inquiry to an abrupt conclusion and made much of the fact that Sir Adam's general stewardship of Hydro had been supported in the commission's voluminous evidence and summary reports. Beck's probity could be stressed while quietly the government used the critical aspects of Gregory's reports to bring Hydro more fully within the framework of financial and political accountability.

Then, just when it seemed these clouds had passed over, Beck's personal integrity came under attack from an unexpected source. Hydro secretary E. Clarence Settell absconded with $30,000 in Hydro funds and left a blackmailing letter itemizing Sir Adam's alleged misdeeds. When he was apprehended in October 1924 heading for the border with his mistress, he added further charges to the indictment. Wounded by Settell's treachery, and by now a very sick man, Beck had to endure yet another inquiry as judge Colin George Snider conducted an investigation of more than 40 specific allegations having to do with the private use of automobiles, misappropriation of public money, unauthorized expenditures, conflicts of interest in tendering, and irregularities in expense records. Issued in December, Snider's report condemned Isaac Benson Lucas's management of Hydro's legal department and Frederick Arthur Gaby's conflict of interest in a dredging contract within the engineering department, but it found no evidence of serious wrongdoing by Beck. Save for a few petty mistakes in his expense accounts, the commission exonerated him. Settell went to jail for three years. Although another attempt "to get" Sir Adam, in the words of the Toronto Globe, had failed, the critics continued the battle of the books against Hydro. Beck thundered back with vigorous refutations in pamphlets that put his fighting spirit on full display. Returning to London one night by train, he gestured in some excitement to his travelling companion and long-time ally Edward Victor Buchanan, head of London's utilities: "Look out there! The lights in the farms. That's what I've been fighting for."

The political struggle and quarrels with his daughter over her determination to marry Strathearn Hay, whom he deemed unsuitable in part because he was related to the Hendrie family, exhausted Beck, whose health and mental outlook deteriorated. It took Howard Ferguson's intervention to persuade him to attend Marion's wedding in January 1925. Ordered to rest by his doctors, who had diagnosed his illness as pernicious anaemia, Beck went to South Carolina for a holiday in February, and then he underwent transfusion treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. There he brooded about his beloved Hydro, strategies for the hydroelectric development of the St Lawrence River, and the continuing machinations of the private power interests, and he grumbled that the premier and his colleagues in government were neglecting him. He was a broken man by his own admission.

In May, Beck quietly slipped back to his home in London, where he attempted to conduct Hydro business by telephone from his bedroom. He weakened rapidly over the summer and died on 15 Aug. 1925 in his 69th year. Beck's passing shocked the province; the seriousness of his condition had not been widely understood. The death announcement occasioned a spontaneous outpouring of grief, with eulogies pouring in from every quarter. His obituaries filled pages in the newspapers. "Canada has not produced a greater man than the late Sir Adam Beck," declared Saturday Night (Toronto) as it enshrined him in the national pantheon along with Sir John A. Macdonald*, Lord Mount Stephen [Stephen], and Sir William Cornelius Van Horne*. Ontario city halls were draped in black, the Hydro shops and offices closed in tribute, and in London business ceased for an hour. Thousands lined the streets for his funeral cortège. The ceremony at St Paul's Anglican Cathedral, attended by all the major political figures of the province, was also broadcast over the radio. As his funeral train mournfully passed from London across Beck's political heartland to Hamilton, where he was to be interred in Greenwood Cemetery under a granite cross beside his wife, farmers and their families paused from their toil and men swept their hats from their heads. The entire Toronto City Council attended his burial. It is a small irony that Beck lies in what he would have considered enemy ground, Hamilton, the last bastion of private power. But for once his wish to be beside his wife overcame his prejudices.

Sir Adam Beck's death marked the end of an unusual period in Ontario politics, one in which the chairman of Hydro had exercised greater power and influence than the premier and commanded a broad-based, populist political following much stronger than any political party. In building Hydro, Beck almost succeeded in creating an institution that was a law unto itself and for a long time it would continue to demonstrate some of the characteristics of independence. He died a wealthy man with an estate valued at more than $627,000, although his manufacturing business had been in decline for some years. His salary from his chairmanship of Hydro over 20 years totalled $197,000. Some of his wealth may have come to him from his wife. After making numerous small bequests to relatives and charities, he left a trust fund of approximately half a million dollars to his daughter and her heirs.

Beck's memory was kept alive by the Ontario Municipal Electric Association, Hydro, and the citizens of London. In 1934 Toronto and the Hydro municipalities raised a splendid monument to him that still commands University Avenue. This brooding statue, by Emanuel Otto Hahn*, and Beck's grave in Hamilton became sites of regular pilgrimages and wreath-laying ceremonies by the heirs and successors to the OMEA as they struggled to perpetuate the notion of Hydro as a municipal cooperative. Hydro publications regularly stressed the vision and legacy of Beck during the era of growth after World War I; eventually the much enlarged power stations at Queenston were renamed Beck No.1 and Beck No.2 in his honour. In London a new collegiate was named after him and a nearby public school was named after Lady Beck. The Women's Sanatorium Aid Society of London built a charming chapel, St Luke's in the Garden, across from the Queen Alexandra Sanatorium in memory of the Becks in 1932. The sanatorium itself became the Beck Memorial Sanatorium in 1948. In print, W. R. Plewman's vivid 1947 biography captured the greatness of Beck and the tempestuous nature of his personality. Merrill Denison*'s commissioned history of Hydro in 1960 established continuity between the transcendent hero figure at the beginning and the transforming, province-girdling corporation Hydro had become in the postwar era.

As the obituaries noted, Hydro itself was Beck's greatest monument. He worried on his deathbed that political partisanship would overcome it and that Hydro as an independent entity would not survive. But in his absence it continued to flourish, firmly rooted in the towns and cities, along the back concessions, and amongst the merchants, workers, farmers, and homemakers of the province. Hydroelectricity generated and delivered by a crown corporation to municipally owned utilities at the lowest cost had become an Ontario institution that would outlive changing governments and passing ideologies. That had largely been Sir Adam Beck's doing.

H. V. Nelles

Sir Adam Beck's publications include Report of the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario (1906) and The genesis of the power movement (Report no.ORR'96101.'9612, 1907), both of which are held at the Hydro One Inc. Corporate Arch. (Toronto). Beck also published The conservation of the water-powers of Ontario: an address delivered by Honourable Adam Beck before the first annual meeting of the Commission of Conservation ([Ottawa, 1910?]; repr. from the first Annual report of the Commission of Conservation, 1910); Hydro-electric power for the farm: special interview with Sir Adam Beck on uses and development of electricity in rural districts ([n.p., 1919?]; repr. from Farm and Dairy (Peterborough, Ont.) 18 Dec. 1919); Re "Murray report" on electric utilities: refutation of unjust statements contained in a report published by the National Electric Light Association entitled, "Government owned and controlled compared with privately owned and regulated electric utilities in Canada and the United States" respecting the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario (Toronto, 1922); Re "Sutherland commission" majority report; statement respecting findings and other statements contained in majority report of the commission (known as the "Sutherland commission") appointed to inquire into the subject of hydro-electric railways (Toronto, 1922); Errors and misrepresentations made by the hydroelectric inquiry commission (known as the Gregory commission) respecting the publicly owned and operated hydro-electric power undertaking of municipalities in the province of Ontario (Toronto, 1925); Misstatements and misrepresentations derogatory to the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario contained in a report published by the Smithsonian Institution entitled "Niagara Falls: its power possibilities and preservation", under the authorship of Samuel S. Wyer, examined and refuted by Sir Adam Beck (Toronto, 1925); A statement by Sir Adam Beck protesting against the exportation of electric power, with special reference to the proposed lease of the Carillon power site (Toronto, 1925); and Unjust and harmful proposals published by authority of an organization known as the Canadian Deep Waterways and Power Association under the chairmanship of Mr. O. E. Fleming, examined and exposed by Sir Adam Beck (Toronto, 1925).

AO, F 5; F 6; F 8; RG 35; RG 55-17-33, 5, 15 May 1885; 1 Jan., 21 May 1888; RG 55-17-57-5, nos.408, 433, 615.
Hydro One Inc. Corporate Arch., Acc. no.90.001 (Report of the commission appointed to inquire into hydro-electric radials), 1921; Acc. no.90.007 (Gregory commission final report), 1924; Report no.ORR'96104.11'9611 (E. W. B. Snider, chairman, Report of the Ontario Power Commission to the mayors and municipal councils of Toronto, London, Brantford, Stratford, Woodstock, Ingersoll, and Guelph), 28 March 1906.
London Public Library and Art Museum (London, Ont.), London obituaries scrapbook, 1: 7'968.
Univ. of Western Ont. Library, Regional Coll. (London), B4691'9694 (legal papers of John William Godfrey Winnett, London, c. 1900'9640); B4919'9628, X1936'96 (Arthur and Edmund Carty papers, 1838'961974 . . . ), "Notes for a biography of Sir Adam Beck"; VF116 (corr. between Sir Adam Beck and J. W. G. Winnett, 1915, 1918'9619, 1921, 1923'9625); Will copybook (Middlesex County Surrogate Court), 1922, 1, p.120, no.15529; 1925, 2, p.423, no.17469.
Evening Telegram (Toronto), 17 Oct. 1921, 17 Aug. 1925.
Hamilton Spectator, 8 Sept. 1898, 17 Aug. 1925.
London Advertiser, 8 Sept. 1898, 17'9618 Oct. 1919.
London Free Press, 8 Sept. 1898, 18'9619 Aug. 1925.
Toronto Daily Star, 17 Oct. 1921, 17 Aug. 1925.
F. H. Armstrong, The Forest City: an illustrated history of London, Canada ([Northridge, Calif.], 1986).
E. B. Biggar, Hydro-electric development in Ontario: a history of water-power administration under the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario (Toronto, [1920]).
E. V. Buchanan, A history of electrical energy in London ([London, 1966]); London's water supply: a history (London, [1968]).
Canadian annual rev.
A. C. Carty, "Sir Adam Beck," Waterloo Hist. Soc., Annual report (Kitchener, Ont.) 13 (1925): 159'9666.
City of London, Minutes of council, 1902'964, 1910.
J. T. H. Connor, A heritage of healing: the London Health Association and its hospitals, 1909'961987 (London, 1990).
Merrill Denison, The people's power: the history of Ontario Hydro ([Toronto], 1960).
Directory, London, 1894'961923.
D. E. Dodd, "Delivering electrical technology to the Ontario housewife, 1920'961939: an alliance of professional women, advertisers and the electrical industry" (phd thesis, Carleton Univ., Ottawa, 1989).
E. C. Drury, Farmer premier: memoirs of the Honourable E. C. Drury (Toronto, 1966).
K. R. Fleming, Power at cost: Ontario Hydro and rural electrification, 1911'961958 (Montreal and Kingston, Ont., 1992).
N. B. Freeman, The politics of power: Ontario Hydro and its government, 1906'9695 (Toronto and Buffalo, N.Y., 1996).
P. W. Graham, Sir Adam Beck (London, 1925).
C. W. Humphries, "Honest enough to be bold": the life and times of Sir James Pliny Whitney (Toronto, 1985).
Kitchener Light Commissioners, The origin of the Ontario hydro-electric power movement ([Kitchener, 1919]).
London Health Assoc., The story of the Beck Memorial Sanitorium (London, 1949).
The London Hunt and Country Club: a distinguished tradition, ed. Brandon Conron (London, 1985).
H. V. Nelles, The politics of development: forests, mines & hydro-electric power in Ontario, 1849'961941 (Toronto, 1974).
Ontario Hydro, The Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario: its origin, administration and achievements (Toronto, 1928).
W. R. Plewman, Adam Beck and the Ontario Hydro (Toronto, 1947).
Frank Proctor, Fox hunting in Canada and some men who made it (Toronto, 1929).
Queen Alexandra Sanatorium, Annual report (London), 1910'9648.
B. S. Scott, "The economic and industrial history of the city of London, Canada, from the building of the first railway, 1855, to the present, 1930" (ma thesis, Univ. of Western Ont., 1930)


Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online 1921-1930 (Volume XV)

Adam married Lilian Ottaway 7 Sep 1898, Hamilton, Wentworth Co., Ontario, Canada. Lilian (daughter of Cuthbert John Ottaway and Marion Elizabeth Stinson) was born 1877, , England; died 17 Oct 1921. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Misfortune: committed suicide
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-218808
• Residence: 1871, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Misfortune: 31 Mar 1928, London, Middlesex, Ontario, Canada; Suicide by Gun Shot Wounds

Other Events:

• FindAGrave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/154263166
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-139616
• Residence: 1861, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Occupation: 1871, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Farmer
• Residence: 1871, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; C. Presbyterian
• Residence: 1881, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Presbyterian Canada
• Occupation: 1891, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Farmer
• Residence: 1891, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

Other Events:

• FindAGrave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/154270075
• Eby ID Number: 00039-3130.8
• Residence: 1861, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Residence: 1871, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; C. Presbyterian
• Occupation: 1881, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Labourer
• Residence: 1881, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Weslyan Methodist
• Occupation: 1891, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Laborer
• Residence: 1891, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Christadelphian
• Occupation: 1901, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Gardener
• Occupation: 1911, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Laborer, Gardner
• Residence: 1911, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Christadelphian

Notes:

Jacob Beck, 88, Dies at Doon

Jacob Beck passed away on Saturday night at the home of his daughter, Mrs. William Marshall at the age of 88, following a brief illness. Mr. Beck was born in this community, a son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Fred Beck. Surviving are one daughter, Mrs. William Marshall, one sister, Miss Elizabeth Beck of Doon, one brother Charles of Blair, five grandchildren and three great grandchildren. Mrs. Beck predeceased him 15 years ago, also one son. The funeral took place on Tuesday afternoon from Ratz-Bechtel funeral home, Kitchener to Doon cemetery for interment. The funeral was largely attended.

Waterloo Chronicle 23 Jul 1936, p. 3

Jacob married Sarah Burkholder 16 May 1872, Guelph City, Wellington Co., Ontario, Canada. Sarah (daughter of Samuel G. Burkholder and Magdalena Rosenberger) was born 19 Mar 1842, Hespeler (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; died 5 Jun 1916, Doon (Kitchener), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; was buried , Doon Presbyterian Cemetery, Doon (Kitchener), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-52831
• Residence: 1861, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Residence: 1871, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; C. Presbyterian
• Occupation: 1876, Doon (Kitchener), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; general dealer
• Residence: 1876, Doon (Kitchener), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
• Ordained: 1881, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
• Residence: 1881, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Weslyan Methodist
• Occupation: 1891, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Laborer
• Residence: 1891, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Occupation: 1901, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Laborer
• Occupation: 1911, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Gardner, Farm
• Residence: 1911, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Methodist

Charles married Sarah Ellen Barber 1 Nov 1876, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. Sarah (daughter of George Barber and Maurice) was born Feb 1855, , Wales, United Kingdom; died 29 Dec 1921; was buried , Blair Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Name: Emily Beck
• Name: Emma Coons
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-139619
• Residence: 1861, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Residence: 1871, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; C. Presbyterian
• Residence: 1881, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Presbyterian Canada

Emma — William Albert Coons. William (son of Daniel Coons and Elizabeth Lewis) was born 14 Jul 1863, , Grey Co., Ontario, Canada; died 1944; was buried , Hagey Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-268733
• Residence: 1861, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

Other Events:

• FindAGrave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/154272440
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-139621
• Residence: 1871, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; C. Presbyterian
• Residence: 1881, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Presbyterian Canada
• Residence: 1891, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-412658
• Residence: 1861, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

Other Events:

• Name: Charles Clare
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-35006
• Residence: 1861, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Residence: 1868, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
• Occupation: 1871, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Moulder
• Occupation: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Stove Moulder
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Evangelical
• Occupation: 1901, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Moulder
• Occupation: 1911, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Foreman, Foundry
• Residence: 1911, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

Carl married Salome Fredericka "Sally" Roos 12 Jan 1868, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. Salome (daughter of George Roos and Salome Schmidt) was born 10 Jul 1845; died 13 Jun 1925, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; was buried 15 Jun 1925, Preston Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-35008

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-35009

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-346861
• Residence: 1861, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Occupation: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Tinsmith
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Occupation: 1901, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Tinsmith

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-40951
• Residence: 1861, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

Other Events:

• Business: Canadian Office and School Furniture Co., Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Canadian Office and School Furniture Co.
• Business: Galt Stove and Furnace Co., Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Galt Stove and Furnace Co. - President
• Business: Preston Car and Coach Co., Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Preston Car and Coach Co.
• Business: Solid Leather Show Co. Ltd., Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Solid Leather Show Co. - president
• Business: Stamped and Enamelled Ware Co., Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Stamped and Enamelled Ware Co.
• Business: Wellington Mutual Fire Insurance Co., Guelph, Ontario; Wellington Mutual Fire Insurance Co. - director
• FindAGrave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/39697393
• Interesting: business, furniture, politics, life story
• Name: G. A. Clare
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-40954
• Residence: 1861, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Business: 1881, Clare Brothers and Co., Preston, Waterloo Region, Ontario; Clare Brothers and Co.
• Occupation: 1881, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Foundry Man
• Elected Office: 1883, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Councillor - Preston
• Elected Office: 1886, , Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Councillor - Waterloo County
• Elected Office: 1886, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Reeve for Preston
• Elected Office: 1891, , Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Councillor - Waterloo County
• Occupation: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Foundryman
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Elected Office: 1894, , Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Warden for the County of Waterloo
• Elected Office: 1900, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Reeve - Preston
• Occupation: 1901, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Manufacturer
• Occupation: 1911, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Manufacturer
• Residence: 1911, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Office: 1913, , Ontario, Canada; Privy Councillor - Canada

Notes:

In 1875 worked for his father in his foundry. Later in 1881 purchased the foundry in partnership with his brother Frederick and Henry C. Hilborn. Business became known in 1901 as Clare Bros. Ltd. He was president of this company among others such as: Galt Stove and Furnace Co., Clare and Brodest Ltd of Winnipeg, Canadian Office and School Furniture Lt, Solid Leather Shoe Co. Ltd., Preston Car and Coach Co. Director of Stamped and Enamelled Ward Ltd. of Hespeler and Wellington Mutal Fire of Guelph. Served on Preston council, became Mayor of Preston, served on Waterloo council and warden. In 1900 elected as MP of South Waterloo, appointed a Privy Councillor in 1913. He died in office.

Cambridge Mosiac, Jim Quantrell, 1998, City of Cambridge [abbreviated snippet from original text in book]

Business:
In association with Otto Klotz (the father of the Canadian Astronomer and Surveyor Dr. Otto Julius Klotz 1852-1923), George A. Clare, George Fink and William Hudson, they later formed the joint stock company "Canadian Office and School Furniture Co." (C.O.S.F.). This company expanded very quickly - as well as they also produced bureaux and church furnishings. It is said that C.O.S.F. outfitted 1250 Canada bank offices. In 1908 they had about 125-180 employees.

Business:
President

Business:
Director

Business:
George Adam Clare, Frederick Clare and Henry C. Hilborn founded Clare Brothers and Co.

Office:
named Privy Councillor by Prime Minister.

George married Catherine Fink 19 Apr 1876, Waterloo City, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. Catherine (daughter of Paul Fink and Maria Catharina Stein) was born 27 Aug 1854, , Ontario, Canada; died 14 Nov 1936, Hamilton, Wentworth Co., Ontario, Canada; was buried , Preston Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-40955
• Residence: 1861, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Business: 1881, Clare Brothers and Co., Preston, Waterloo Region, Ontario; Clare Brothers and Co.
• Business: 1881, Clare Brothers and Co., Preston, Waterloo Region, Ontario; Clare Brothers and Co.
• Occupation: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Foundryman
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Occupation: 1901, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Manufacturer
• Occupation: 1911, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Manufacturer
• Residence: 1911, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Brethern

Notes:

Frederick Clare was born in Preston educated in Galt. First job was with James Crosbie & Co. of Preston in 1874. In 1877 he moved to the Clare Bros. foundry established by his father in 1853. In 1881 he, his brother George and Henry Cornell Hilborn acquired the foundry with the retirement of his father which eventually became known as Clare Bros. Ltd. In 1912 he established the Stamped and Enamelled Ware factory in Hespeler. He was mayor of Preston, member of the Preston Hydro Electric Commission, and the Preston School Board. Later he among other brought the electric railway to Preston.


Cambridge Mosiac, Jim Quantrell, 1998, City of Cambridge [abbreviated snippet from original text in book]

__________________________


Frederick Clare, President of Clare Brothers, in 82nd Year

PRESTON, Jan. 14— Frederick Clare, president of Clare Brothers and Company, Limited, Preston and the Stamped and Enamel Limited, Hespeler, died suddenly early this morning at his Queen street home here. He had been in failing health for some time. The late Mr. Clare was in his 82nd year. One of Preston's leading citizens, the late Mr. Clare was at the time of his death, the oldest stove manufacturer in Canada. It was said recently that the Clare firm manufactures more furnaces than any other company in the British Empire, a tribute to the ingenuity of the late Mr. Clare who, with his brother, the late Hon. George A. Clare, founded the firm here in 1881. The deceased was also the prime mover in the establishment of the Hespeler company about 1912. With the late Mr. Clare the business in which his firm is engaged was his uppermost thought practically from the time the industry was started on a small scale until late years when he took a keen interest in its progress. He was always a regular attendant at his office, paying his last visit there ten days ago. Illness however, forced his retirement to his home and he appeared improved considerably even yesterday. He retired last night about 11.30 o'clock and passed away peacefully in his sleep during the early hours of this morning. Friendly associations with his employees were always one of the keynotes, to his success. The late Mr. Clare was an inspiration to all who knew him. His interest in his fellow-worker was an attachment that endeared him to all workers in the plant as evidenced at gatherings of Clare Brothers Benefit Society, a mutual aid organization which he helped to sponsor and of which he was honorary president. From a civic standpoint the deceased was a robust citizen. He believed that every capable man should assist in the operations of his community. To this end the deceased did civic service for many years, commencing public life first as an alderman, then as a reeve and in 1906, 1907 and 1908 the electorate voiced appreciation of his services by returning him as mayor. The late Mr. Clare was born in Preston and apart from a short time, some six months that he worked in Chicago, he lived here his full life. He received his education at the Preston public school and upon graduation he attended the famed Tassie Hall in Galt. A staunch Conseevative in politics, the deceased was also a member of the Oddfellows lodge. Besides his wife, who before her marriage was Isabella Stuart Cameron, there survive two sons, J. Stuart Clare of Preston and Frederick C. Clare at home and two daughters, Miss Elizabeth at home, and Mary, Mrs. George Moss, Blair. Two grandsons and two granddaughters also survive. The funeral will be held Monday afternoon from the family residence, 231 Queen street, at 2.30 o'clock. Interment will be made in the Preston cemetery.

Kitchener Daily Record 14 Jan 1938 pg 3

Business:
George Adam Clare, Frederick Clare and Henry C. Hilborn founded Clare Brothers and Co.

Business:
George Adam Clare, Frederick Clare and Henry C. Hilborn founded Clare Brothers and Co.

Frederick married Isabell Stuart "Bella" Cameron 26 Apr 1894, Biddulph Twp., Middlesex Co., Ontario. Isabell was born 24 Dec 1867, Granton, Biddulph Twp., Middlesex Co., Ontario; died 24 Jul 1968, Bracebridge, Macaulay Twp., Muskoka District Municipality, Ontario, Canada; was buried , Preston Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Name: Minnie Clare
• Name: Wilhelmina "Minnie" Fox
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-41837
• Residence: 1861, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

Notes:

Died,/ In Orangeville, on Friday, April/ 12th, 1889,/ Mrs. Minnie Fox,/ Beloved wife of John Fox, aged 31/ years, 1 month, and 17 days./ Funeral/ Will take place on Sunday, at 2/ o'clock p.m., from the residence of/ Mrs. John Clare, to the Lutheran/ Church, and from there to the Pres-/ ton Cemetery./ Friends and acquaintances will/ please accept this intimation./ Preston, April 12th, 1889.

Funeral Card of Minnie Fox, From: Doon Heritage Crossroads, Accession Number: X.961.360.001

Wilhelmina married John Charles Fox 3 Sep 1884, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. John (son of Franz Xaver "Xavier" Fuchs and Eva Hollinger) was born 1848, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; died 3 Oct 1896, Orangeville, Mono Twp., Dufferin Co., Ontario, Canada; was buried , Preston Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-41859

Other Events:

• Name: Alvina Simpson
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-89243
• Residence: 1885, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Anglican
• Residence: 1911, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Presbyterian

Alvina married Thomas Simpson 23 Sep 1885, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. Thomas (son of James Simpson and Elizabeth, son of John Fred (?) Simpson and Annie Elizabeth "Elizabeth" Wilson) was born 8 Dec 1849, , England; died 1922, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; was buried 29 May 1922, Preston Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Name: Margaret Elizabeth Erb
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-350956
• Residence: 1949, 519 Queenston St., Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada

Notes:

Mrs. Margaret Erb

PRESTON, Dec 22. One of Preston's oldest citizens, Margaret Elizabeth Clare. widow, of Harry Joseph Erb, died at her residence, 519 Queen Street, last night at the age of 81 years. Mrs. Erb was well known in Preston, having resided here for 77 years. Her, death culminated an illness of the past six months. A daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. John Clare of Preston, she was the last surviving member of their family. Born in Preston, she resided here all her life with the exception of four years spent in Winnipeg, about 40 years ago. A member of St. John's Anglican Church, she was active in the work of the church and various church organizations, until recent years. Surviving is a son, John Clare Erb of Preston. Her husband predeceased her in 1916. The body is resting at the residence, where the funeral will be held tomorrow at 2: 30. Interment will he in the Preston Cemetery.

Kitchener-Waterloo Record 22 Dec 1949 pg 7

Margaret married Harry Joseph Erb 16 Jan 1901, , Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. Harry (son of Reeve Abraham Albert "Abram" Erb and Margaret Wallace) was born 1856, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; died 18 Sep 1916, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; was buried , Preston Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Name: Lizzie Clare
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-346863
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-105237
• Residence: 1861, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-258866
• Residence: 1861, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-87891

Other Events:

• Business: 16 King St. E., Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Beck & Shell
• Name: J. F. Beck
• Eby ID Number: 00060-3992.1
• Occupation: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; merchant
• Occupation: 1901, Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; ?
• Occupation: 1911, Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Grocer
• Residence: 1911, 106 Queen St. S., Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
• Residence: 1911, Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

John married Catherine Huber 26 Aug 1891, Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. Catherine (daughter of Samuel S. Huber and Mary Tuerk) was born 1 Jan 1864, North Dumfries Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; died 1 Sep 1937; was buried , Mount Hope Cemetery, Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• FindAGrave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/237164864
• Name: Mena Beck
• Name: Wilhelmina "Mina" Wurster
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-353685
• Birth: CALC 12 Oct 1858, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Residence: 1911, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

Notes:

DEATH OF MRS WURSTER.

Preston, April 30. - The death occcurred here this afternoon of Mrs. F. G. Wurster, in her 48th year. Deceased had been ailing for some time and her demise was not unexpected. The late Mrs. Wurster is survived by a husband, a prominent merchant here, and three children: George, accountant in the local branch of the Merchants' Bank, and Miss Clara and Master Harold at home. Deceased belonged to the great Beck family, being a daughter of the late Jno. Beck, She was well known to all Preston people and was ever ready to lend a helping hand to those in distress. Always an active member of the Lutheran church, she, was also greatly interested in the Women's Hospital Aid Society and other charitable organizations. The funeral will be held on Wednesday afternoon from the late residence to Preston cemetery.

The Chronicle Telegraph 3 May 1906, p. 1

Wilhelmina married Frederick George Wurster 25 Mar 1879, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. Frederick (son of Rev. Immanuel "Im" Wurster and Carolina Huttner) was born CALC 11 Nov 1854, Waterloo City, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; died 11 Oct 1918, Galt (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; was buried , Preston Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-218710
• Residence: 1871, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-218711
• Residence: 1871, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-121157

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-121158

Other Events:

• Name: Emily Ann "Emma" Marshall
• Name: Emma Beck
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-91760
• Residence: 1891, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Christadelphian
• Residence: 1911, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Presbyterian

Emily — William Marshall. William was born 4 Jan 1869, , Ontario, Canada; died Yes, date unknown; was buried , Doon Presbyterian Cemetery, Doon (Kitchener), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-147339
• Residence: 1881, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Weslyan Methodist
• Residence: 1891, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Christadelphian

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-57771

Notes:

In Blair, on Saturday, March 7th, the twin daughters of Mr. Jacob Beck, aged 12 days.

Galt Reporter Mar 13 1874 pg 3

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-26958

Notes:

In Blair, on Saturday, March 7th, the twin daughters of Mr. Jacob Beck, aged 12 days.

Galt Reporter Mar 13 1874 pg 3

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-53023
• Residence: 1881, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Weslyan Methodist
• Residence: 1891, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Christadelphian
• Occupation: 1901, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Laborer

John married Ada Vrooman 2 Jul 1900, Brantford, Brant Co., Ontario, Canada. Ada (daughter of James Samuel Vrooman and Mary Connor) was born 2 Jun 1878, Guelph City, Wellington Co., Ontario, Canada; died Yes, date unknown. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Name: Elizabeth Beck
• Name: Lizzie Beck
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-52834
• Residence: 1881, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Weslyan Methodist
• Residence: 1891, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Occupation: 1911, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Parlor Maid, Private Famly
• Residence: 1911, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Methodist

Other Events:

• Name: Edith Emily Jost
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-52835
• Residence: 1881, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Weslyan Methodist
• Residence: 1891, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Occupation: 1901, Wilmot Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Teacher

Edith — Edward B. Jost. Edward was born Abt 1880; died Yes, date unknown. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Name: Girtie Beck
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-52833
• Residence: 1881, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Weslyan Methodist
• Residence: 1891, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Occupation: 1911, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Cook, Private Family
• Residence: 1911, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Methodist

Other Events:

• Name: Sarah Nona "Nonie" Pryce
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-374077
• Residence: 1891, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

Notes:

BLAIR SUPPLIED PRESTON WITH HYDRO, ELECTRIC POWER
BY Nonie Beck Pryce
James Fenwick owned and operated the first electric light plant in Preston in 1891. Records in the Town Treasurer's office show that the first account in Preston's books was registered in 1891 when they paid $407,00 for street lighting. There were power shortages and the burden fell on the shoulders of the owner. Mr. Fenwick first operated his steam plant and dynamo in Harry Hamacher's Carriage Shop on King Street. The street lights were turned off at twelve o 'clock. I believe that on moonlight nights they did not come on.
A steam plant was expensive and waterpower was much cheaper so the plant was moved to Blair on the property of Charles Beck. There was a big stone building on this property which had first been a tannery, run by Bechtels, then a distillery owned by Thomas Reed.

Even in those days there were dry speels, and the water power had to be supplemented
with steam generated power.

In winter storms raged bringing down poles and wires. A Privately owned plant had lots of trouble. Collections were made from customers every Monday morning. While in Blair an opposition plant was started by John Shearer, chiefly supplying light for homes.
After a number of years Mr. Fenwick moved back to Preston, renting a room and steam power from Clare Bros. In 1910 Preston built a municipal plant and agreed to take 600 horsepower from Hydro, Community" dances were blacked out at midnight unless arrangements were made to have the power left on, then a fee of a dollar an hour was charged.

Grand River Womens' Institute

Sarah — Samuel Herbert March Pryce. Samuel was born 7 Nov 1873, Corwen, , Merioneth, Wales; died 25 Aug 1954, Blair (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; was buried , Blair Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Name: Frederick Beck
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-52830

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-52837
• Residence: 1891, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Occupation: 1901, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Laborer

Joseph — . Unknown [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-211795

William married Margaret Janet Shiel 17 Sep 1927, Hespeler (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. Margaret (daughter of Robert Shiel and Mary Linton) was born 1889, Galt (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; died Yes, date unknown. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-214970

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-92044
• Occupation: 1911, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Student
• Residence: 1911, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Methodist

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-92233

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-204008
• Occupation: 1911, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Laborer, Stove Foundry
• Residence: 1911, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; United Bretheran

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-89886
• Occupation: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Bookkeeper
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Evangelical
• Occupation: 1901, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Manufacturing Agent

Notes:

I REMEMBER

By O. A. KUMMER Long Time Resident of Preston

EDITOR'S NOTE -This is the third in a series of articles being written for The Preston Reporter by long-time resident O. A. Kummer. Dealing with Preston's past, as Mr. Kummer remembers it, the article swill [sick] appear in these columns from time to time.


BICYCLE MEETS used to be a popular pastime in the area; the Town of Preston had many of them.

Riverside Park was usually the scene, and hundreds of cyclists attended.

I remember one particular day when there seemed to be only one winner. It was none other than Herbert Clare.

Two other noted cyclists from the area, who were famous for their long distance ability, were Ernie Evans and Albert Near.

I REMEMBER when Preston was famous for its horse racing meets in Speed Park. as it was called then. Trotting and pacing races were held periodically, and usually attracted fine crowds.

The track was noted as a fast one, and I can recall being in conversation with some of the horsemen. who said it "had a kind of bounce to it."

This, no doubt, was because the base upon which the raceway rests is more liquid than solid.

Preston horsemen included Perc Sauerson, Ed Perine, Blarrs Wilkes, J. Wetherall and H. Osgood.

I CAN RECALL when Preston had very little in the way of fire protection for the village-mostly water from the Speed River and the Klotz Dam.

A tank was constructed across from the Commercial Hotel to supply water and the pumping equipment consisted of a contraption resembling a railroad jigger upon with four men, two on each side, operated it in unison.

I REMEMBER when W. A Husband lived in the cottage which stands on the opposite corner of our municipal complex, and when he was clerk of the village.

He was also greatly interested in growing things and in horticulture in general.

He had a beautiful vine growing upon the verandah posts. the most beautiful vine I have ever seen, and he also took delight in presenting the earliest flower in the spring to the local editor of The Preston Progress, Mr. Blackstock.

Herbert — Nellie Mee. Nellie was born 10 May 1873, , Ontario, Canada; died 1959; was buried , Preston Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Name: Emma Rosalie Weller
• Name: Emma Rosalie Weller
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-346639
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Evangelical
• Residence: 1894, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada

Emma married Rev. Reed Paul Max Wilhelm "Paul" Weller 26 Sep 1894, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. Reed was born Jan 1869, , Prussia, Germany; died 1950, Machias, Washington, Maine, United States; was buried , Longfellow Cemetery, Machias, Washington, Maine, United States. [Group Sheet]

Emma married Paul Weller 26 Sep 1894, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. Paul (son of Gustav Weller and Paulina) was born 1869, , Germany; died Yes, date unknown. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-346640
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Evangelical

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-131967

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-90072
• Residence: 1911, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

Other Events:

• Name: Lulu Elizabeth Krueger
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-346641
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Evangelical

Lulu married William J. Krueger 14 Apr 1909, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. William was born 30 Sep 1876, , Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; died 1964; was buried , Parklawn Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Name: Hugo Clare
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-346642
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Evangelical

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-346643
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Evangelical
• Occupation: 1901, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Bookkeeper
• Occupation: 1911, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Laborer, Road
• Residence: 1911, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

Herman married Letitia Pearl McMillan 7 Apr 1915, Orangeville, Mono Twp., Dufferin Co., Ontario, Canada. Letitia was born 1884, , Ontario, Canada; died 1969; was buried , Preston Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Name: Norman F. Clare
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-346644
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Evangelical

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-346646
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Evangelical

Other Events:

• Name: Teakla Nita Clare
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-90075
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Evangelical
• Occupation: 1917, Ottawa, Carleton Co., Ontario, Canada; teacher

Notes:

MOE - MAY 24. 1935. NINA TEKLA Clare, beloved wife of O. O. Moe. Survived by her husband and daughter. Barbara; three sisters, Mrs. Paul Weller of Machias, Me., Mrs. W. J. Krueger and Mica Maude Clare of Preston. Ont.. and three brothers. Herbert and Herman Clare of Preston. Ont.. and Norman Clare of Toronto. Funeral service on Monday, May 27, at it o'clock. in the chapel of the Mount Pleasant Undertaking Company. Rev. Dr.. J. G. Brown officiating. Cremation. Ottawa and Toronto papers please copy.

The Province Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada 25 May 1935, Sat Page 17

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-90076

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-128630

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-89899
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Occupation: 1901, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Office Hand
• Occupation: 1911, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Manufacturer
• Residence: 1911, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

Other Events:

• FindAGrave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/239184588
• Name: Laura May Edwards
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-415947
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Residence: 1911, Galt (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Presbyterian

Laura married Mayor Alexander Mackay Edwards, MP 26 Apr 1905, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. Alexander (son of Charles Edwards and Annie MacKay) was born 6 Apr 1872, Bothwell, Zone Twp., Kent Co., Ontario; died 3 Jun 1938, Galt (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; was buried 6 Jun 1938, Mount View Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-347364
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-89901
• Residence: 1911, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

Other Events:

• Name: Minnie Ethel Todd
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-347365
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Residence: 1911, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

Minnie — Martin Milne "Milne" Todd. Martin (son of Martin Nichol Todd and Johann Gilholm) was born 22 Jul 1891, Galt (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; died 20 Oct 1963; was buried , Mount View Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-89383
• Residence: 1911, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Presbyterian

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-230832
• Residence: 1911, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Presbyterian

Other Events:

• Military: WW1
• Residence: Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
• Residence: Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-89384P
• Military: 1914, WW1; WW1, Lieutenant, 29th Regiment, Service #513679
• Military: 1914, WW1; WW1, Sergeant
• Occupation: 1923, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; manufacturer

Notes:

John Stuart Clare, educated in Preston, Galt and St. Andrews College in Toronto. He served in the First World War then entred the family business of Clare Bros. Ltd., becoming president in 1938 after the death of his father.


Cambridge Mosiac, Jim Quantrell, 1998, City of Cambridge [abbreviated snippet from original text in book]

John married Marjorie Montague Briscoe 26 Sep 1923, Galt (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. Marjorie (daughter of Reuben Alfred Briscoe and Florence Alexandria "Alexandria" Roat) was born 28 Mar 1900, Galt (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; died 1994; was buried , Preston Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-352537
• Residence: 1911, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Presbyterian

Other Events:

• Name: Mary Margaret Moss
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-351116
• Residence: 1911, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Presbyterian
• Residence: 1978, 98 Blenheim Rd., Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada

Mary — George Francis Moss. George (son of Austin Moss and Ellen Errington Pattinson) was born 1 May 1911, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; died 27 Dec 1978, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; was buried , Preston Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Name: Bessie Clare Bray
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-89242
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Anglican
• Residence: 1911, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Presbyterian

Bessie married Sydney Hughes Bray 18 Sep 1912, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. Sydney was born 29 Sep 1885, Ottawa, Carleton Co., Ontario, Canada; died Yes, date unknown. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Military: WW2 - RCAF
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-350957
• Residence: 1970, 501 Queenston Rd., Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada

Notes:

John Clare Erb

PRESTON, John Clare Erb, 501 Queen St., died Friday, at South Waterloo Memorial Hospital, Galt. Born in Preston, Mr. Erb was a registrar in the Waterloo county registry office, in Kitchener. Except for a few years in Western Canada, he lived in Preston all his life. He served in the Royal Canadian Air Force, during the Second World War. He was a member of St. John's Anglican church. He was predeceased by his wife, the former Margaret Gee, in 1962. Surviving is one daughter, Catherine Margaret, at home. The body is at the Barthel-Stager Funeral Home, until Monday, when removal will be made to the church for service, at 2 p.m. Canon John Birtch will officiate. Interment will be in Preston cemetery.

Kitchener-Waterloo Record 31 Oct 1970 pg 27

John — Margaret Elvira Gee. Margaret was born 17 Apr 1910, Toronto, York Co., Ontario, Canada; died 21 Mar 1962, Galt (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; was buried 24 Mar 1962, Preston Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Name: Vera Kathryn Winsby
• Eby ID Number: 00060-3992.2
• Residence: 1911, Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Methodist

Vera married John James Winsby 16 Jul 1915, Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. John was born 1889, Kirkwall, , Orkney Islands, Scotland; died Yes, date unknown. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: 00060-3992.3
• Residence: 191, Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Methodist

Other Events:

• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-37498
• Residence: 1911, Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Methodist

Other Events:

• Interesting: military, elected office,
• Military: WW1 - 61st Battalion
• Residence: Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
• Residence: Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-353686
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Occupation: 1901, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Banker
• Military: 1914, WW1; WW1, 106th Regiment, Service #461084
• Military: 1914, WW1; WW1, Sergeant, 61st Battalion
• Elected Office: 1919, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Township Clerk - Preston

Notes:

PRESTON LOSES ITS TOWN CLERK George Wurster Succumbs to Pneumonia - In His 47th Year.

Town Clerk George Wurster of Preston passed away on Friday evening at six o'clock following an attack of pneumonia. Those who survive to mourn his loss are a sister, Mrs. Percy Atkinson, with whom Mr. Wurster lived: one brother, Harold, of Walkerville; two uncles, Immanuel of Preston, and Christian of Hamilton, and an aunt, Miss Carrie Wurster of Preston.

The funeral was held Monday afternoon, the service being held at Mrs. Atkinson's home, Rev. W. H. Knauff of St. Peter's Lutheran Church, officiating. He was buried with Masonic honors.

The death of the late town clerk removes from Preston a man whose estimable qualities had won him a host of friends in all walks of life. Born in Preston 47 years ago, he was the eldest son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Fred G. Wurster. The family is one of the oldest in Preston, and his grandfather, the Rev. Immanuel Wurster, was the founder of the Lutheran church in this part of Waterloo County, organizing St. Peter's church more than 90 years ago. It was in 1915 that Mr. Wurster enlisted in the Great War, joining the 61st battalion of Winnipeg, and accompanying the battalion to Flanders Fields where he was on the front line for more than two years. Shortly after his return from the war in 1919 he was appointed town clerk, a post which he held until his death. A week ago Mr. Wurster was apprised of his appointment as JP. at for Preston and the county of Waterloo. He was a popular member of Preston Lodge A. F. and A. M. He was an accomplished pianst and at was for many years a member of the at Preston silver band.

Waterloo Chronicle 19 Jan 1928, p. 1

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MANY AT FUNERAL OF GEO. WURSTER

LATE TOWN CLERK IS LAID TO REST-MASONS TAKE PART IN SERVICES

Hundreds of Preston's citizens from all walks of life yesterday afternoon paid their last tribute of respect to the memory of the late George Wurster, J.P., late town clerk, at the funeral held from his residence, King street near Argyle, scores of friends being present at the service inside the house, where Rev. W. H. Knauff, pastor of St. Peter's Lutheran church, officiated. The pallbearers were taken from among the most prominent citizens and near relatives, and were Messrs. A. R. Bernhardt, Karl Homuth, M.L.A., Town Assessor Ephraim Reist, Percy Atkinson, Christian Wurster of Hamilton and Fred Shantz.

At the close of the simple but impressive service Preston Lodge A.F. and A.M. took charge of the funeral, and, following the pall bearers, members of the lodge accompanied by eight representatives from the Preston Veterans' Association of which the late Mr. Wurster had also been a very popular member officiated as flower bearers. The officers of the masonic lodge formed a guard of honor as well as the representatives of the P.V.A. All officers of the Masonic lodge wore the time honored insignia of office. The members of the town council, the officers of the corporation and a large number of prominent and public men were among the hundreds present who paid their last respects. Chief Crawford ordered the line of traffic at the corner of King and Argyle streets.

Pays High Tribute

In his address the pastor paid high tribute to the memory of the late Camb clerk, and I am sure he said "that to many of us the question has arisen why God has done this thing. We know that the shadows often flit over us and obscure our path, but, as Jesus said to St. Peter, we may not know now but we shall in due time. We were all shocked Friday evening when our dear brother suddenly passed out. He was a man of illustrious ancestry, he came of a family of pioneers in this county and of this town, whose people were primarily responsible for the establishment of our church of St. Peter's in Preston, a man of Christian antecedents, of a fine Christian spirit. That glorious line of pioneers and representatives of pioneer families is becoming more and more extinct as one by one they are being laid to rest."

"Our brother was a gifted, a talented man, who all his life gave freely and willingly of all he had, a man who I believe was once organist of our church, who in social circles gave of his musical talent generously, who always liberally helped others, always helped to bring sweetness to the lives of those about him. A town official. he is surrounded now, as he is laid to rest, by you town fathers. Only a few short days ago he received the signal honor of the appointment of justice of the peace. A few days ago few thought this was to be his last illness. Having seen service in France on the front line he had still been permitted to give even greater service among his fellow men here in the town where his grandfather, the Rev. Immanuel Wurster, established more than 90 years ago the first Lutheran church. This was an inconsequential illness, but God saw fit to take him. Coming as he did of a true Christian family with its honored traditions, himself baptized in the Lutheran faith, and having in every way become a Christian and lived a Christian he has gone back to God."
More than 25 automobiles followed the remains to Preston cemetery where they were interred as the last rites were carried out, and ....

Other Events:

• FindAGrave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/237166932
• Name: Clara Rosina Atkinson
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-353745
• Residence: 1891, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran

Clara married Percy Atkinson 14 Oct 1920, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. Percy was born 1879, Bradford, , Yorkshire, England; died 1963; was buried , Preston Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Other Events:

• FindAGrave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/135475839
• Occupation: Grosse Pointe, Wayne, Michigan, United States; secretary and tressurer - Murray Corporation of America
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-89493
• Occupation: 1911, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Banker, Merchant Bank
• Residence: 1911, Preston (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Residence: 1928, Walkerville, Sandwich South Twp., Essex Co., Ontario

Notes:

WURSTER-Harold W., Feb. 12. Husband of Marie Krug. Father of Harold F. Nannette, Angela M.. John D. Wurster. Brother of Mrs. Percy Atkinson, Preston, Ont. Funeral from the home of Mrs. Hartman Krug, Kithener, Ont., Tuesday morning at 10 o'clock.

The Windsor Star Sat, Feb 13, 1943 Page 30

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Harold W. Wurster

Murray Corp. Executive Funeral on Tuesday

Funeral services for Harold W. Wurster, 51, secretary-treasurer and a member of the Murray Corp. for 15 years, will be held at 10 a. m. Tuesday in Kitchener, Ont.

The body will remain at the William R. Hamilton chapel, Cass and Alexandrine, until Sunday afternoon.

Surviving are his wife, Marie: two daughters, Nannette and Angela; two sons, 'Harold F. and John B., and a sister, Mrs. Percy Atkinson of Preston, Ont., birthplace of Mr. Wurster.

Detroit Evening Times Detroit, Michigan Sun, Feb 14, 1943 Page 16

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Rites for H. W. Wurster to Be Held Tuesday

The funeral of Harold W. Wurster secretary-treasurer and a member of the Murray Corp. for 15 years, will be held at 10 a. m. Tuesday in Kitchener, Ont.

Wurster, who was born 51 years ago in Preston, Ont., died Friday night in Woman's Hospital where he had been taken two days ago. He had been ill since May.

Wurster started his business career in Detroit as an auditor for the Dime Savings Bank. Later he joined the C. Harold Wills Co., of Marysville, Mich., as secretary of the corporation before becoming associated with the Murray Corp.

He was a member of the DAC and the Essex Golf and Country Club and made his home at 855 Balfour, Grosse Pointe.

The body will remain at the William R. Hamilton chapel, Cass and Alexandrine, until Sunday afternoon, when it will be shipped to the home of Mrs. Hartman Krug in Kitchener.

Surviving are his wife Marie; two daughters, Nannette and Angela; two sons, Harold F. and John B., and a sister, Mrs. Percy Atkinson, of Preston.

Detroit Free Press Sun, Feb 14, 1943 Page 10

Harold — Marie Krug. Marie (daughter of Hartman Krug and Mary Ann Theresa "Annie" Dunn) was born 13 Jul 1890, Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; died 7 Sep 1975, Toronto, York Co., Ontario, Canada; was buried , Mount Hope Roman Catholic Cemetery, Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]