Let me introduce you to William Wallace Lockwood. It is 1903, and he has decided to take a break from his farm in Ontario to ride across Canada to see what the Canadian Pacific Railroad has made available to travelers. He leaves his wife Emily and their 4 children at their farm at Caradoc and sets off for the West. It’s not that he hasn’t been west before. When he was younger and single, he had left his father’s farm at Caradoc and homesteaded close to an uncle and aunt with a large family near Pembina in the Dakota Territory. But now he is a married man, has bought his father’s farm back in Ontario and is settled down with the young lady from 3 miles down the road to raise a family of 3 daughters and one son.
The story is told by his youngest daughter that Mr. Lockwood met a man on the train who knew Moose Jaw well: ” A Winnipeg a man called Mr. Annable got on the train, and he talked of the wonderful land at Moose Jaw. The result was that my father got off the train at Moose Jaw with him. They hired a horse and buggy and drove out in the direction of what is now Tuxford. His first farm was bought there. The Ontario farm was then sold and the family moved out west in 1906.” Mildred (Lockwood) Jeffree in Heritage of the Wheatlands: Tuxford Area.
Probably, the Mr. Annable was George Malcolm Annable. His story is partly told in Revenge of the Land by Maggie Siggins. He is claimed by Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and BC as a pioneering businessman, rancher, farmer, and politician. He was such a congenial person that there is also a biography about him called The Laugh that Shook the West. There is a place name in BC named for Mac Annable. You can visit here to see more of his humour.
Manitoba honoured “Mac” Annable as a “Memorable Manitoban” in a book of cartoons published in 1909. The online version of these characters is here.
Thanks to Mr. Annable’s hospitable representation of Moose Jaw, the Lockwood family established themselves in the Tuxford area, (township 18 range 27) and then also had a house in Moose Jaw. In fact, it seems that they later became neighbours of the Annable family on Ominica Street West.
Meanwhile, William Lockwood’s brother George Franklin (Frank) also came to Tuxford and purchased land. He moved his family there in 1904. In some ways, his adult life has been more complicated than William’s, but of course, many of their experiences were similar. George Franklin was born in Caradoc when William was 5 years old. He was the third son in the family. A second brother, James, had been born between them in 1861. When GFL was 18 years old, in 1881, his older brother James died at the age of 20. His brother William Wallace was homesteading at Pembina in Dakota Territory at the time, so Frank went west to join him. The men made this move during what has been called the Great Dakota Boom. It didn’t seem to matter that 4 generations ago their forefathers had barely escaped with their lives from the United States. There was land to be had, and possibly even “gold in them thar hills!” Both brothers William and Frank lived for a while with their Uncle Benjamin Lockwood and his wife Emeline, and their large family. But by the census of 1891, William and Frank were both counted in Caradoc, Ontario.
William married Emily Christina Bateman in 1886 and started his family: Bertha Fay in 1888, Margaret Lillian in 1890, Flora C. in 1894 who only lived for 2 months and 24 days, Howard William in 1896, and Mildred Emily in 1900. Four out of five babies survived and one baby girl died with bronchitis.
Frank Lockwood also married after his return from his Dakota Territory venture. His bride was Martha Humphries, and they are listed by the census of 1891 as farmers. Their son Percy was born in 1893. His mother Martha lived for two weeks after his birth and then died at the age of 23 years 6 months. Percey himself lived for two more months and then died of cholera infantum.
Four years later, Frank married again. He is now 34 years old. The first child is born in 1898, a son, George Newton. By 1905 there were 5 children in total, and then 3 more followed after they left Caradoc in Ontario to move to Saskatchewan. The stories of these two Lockwood families will be important because they were the first two families to live in the house at 1037 Clifton as best we know. Neither family stayed long in the house. Although there was a Lockwood on the title deed from 1913 until 1927, each family stayed in the house for only a few years. The adventurous spirit that moved them to the west kept them moving: British Columbia, California, back to Ontario, back to Moose Jaw, back to BC. Some family members of both William Wallace Lockwood and Frank Lockwood continued to live on in the Moose Jaw area and a number of their gravestones are in Moose Jaw cemeteries.
William Wallace Lockwood and Frank Lockwood settled their families in the country and in the town. William’s wife and children are counted in the 1906 Census on a farm at Tuxford, but it seems that George’s family waited until the birth of James Douglas in September 1905 and even until December 30th when the birth was registered before moving to Saskatchewan from Ontario.
Here is the 1906 summary from the Tuxford history book in the words of William Winfred Lockwood: It was in the spring of 1906 that the Lockwood family moved to Tuxford and lived for the summer and part of the winter on what was later known as the Herb Rowan farm. situated on the correction line, a mile or so west of Tuxford. the family at this time consisted of George, Thelma, Lois, William, and Douglas. The last mentioned child, Douglas, had valvular heart trouble and passed away early in the winter of 1906. Perhaps because of this tragic happening, the land was sold and the family moved to California before the end of the year.
In fact, in 1908, some or all of William’s family made the trek from Saskatchewan to California to visit Frank’s family in Ontario, California.
This seems to have been the last time for these Lockwood brothers to have a winter holiday with their wives and children. By October of 1909, William’s family is facing a tragic loss of a dear one back in Moose Jaw. The Moose Jaw Times reported in some detail. The paper calls her by her husband’s name, so I will remind you that her name was Emily Christina Bateman Lockwood. She was 5 ft, 3 and a half inches tall. She had brown hair and brown eyes. Her father had died suddenly with heart troubles at age 55. Emily was 45 when she died. 
The day of Emily Lockwood’s funeral was the same day that the cornerstone was being placed for the Legislature in Regina. A special train was to leave Moose Jaw at 10:00 am returning at 11:30 that evening. The band of the 16th Light Horse traveled on the train. I suppose many people were going along for the special round trip ticket rate to celebrate the work completed on this grand project. “The framework up to the drum base of the dome was completed by October 4, 1909. On that day, the Governor General of Canada, His Excellency Earl Grey laid the cornerstone at the grand entrance.”
However, in Moose Jaw that day another stone was laid, and a cortege of over 30 rigs followed a grieving family to view a stone that said simply: Emily.
The family is listed in the 1911 census without Emily. You can see that they are living next to Mr. and Mrs. Annable. By 1916 Census, they will be listed at 1037 Clifton. The city will have a new street numbering system just making research a bit more complicated.
I am still looking for a picture of Emily Christine Bateman Lockwood and any of her family members. I like to think that when they moved from the house on Ominica to this house on Clifton, they had pictures of her to put on the wall or on their desks or dressers to remember her by. I am sure that even though she didn’t get to live with her family in this house, her influence was here, perhaps in the way the house was designed, furnished or decorated, perhaps in the choices of books on their bookshelves, or recipes and utensils in the kitchen, plates on the plate rail in the dining room. Most important of all, of course, would be the influence she had on her husband and children. Although she didn’t live long enough to see her children marry or to know her grandchildren, William Wallace did. And so did George Franklin and his wife Mary Elizabeth Tilden Lockwood.
Next post will include some stories about the children and grandchildren of William Wallace and George Franklin Lockwood.