1037 Clifton was the last early house added to the 1000 block. It was not there in the 1912 Henderson Directory and in 1913, there it was! In 1914 the new numbering system for streets is in effect.
The only census document that shows Lockwoods in the Clifton house is the 1916 census. The family would go through lots of changes before 1921.
William and Emily’s children
All of the William Lockwood children eventually were married. The two elder daughters married two brothers. One couple stayed on in Moose Jaw, and the other moved to B.C.
Daughter #1
Sometime in 1914 or thereabouts, Bertha Fay married William Cox, a merchant who had been born in Peterborough, Ontario. It is not clear where he lived as a young adult, but by 1916 he was reporting from Granum, Alberta with a wife and a baby daughter, Mildred Isabel. She had been born on September 4th, 1915 in Winnipeg. William was a “merchant” and eventually in the lumber business as his father had been. Mildred Isabel at 9 months was living on Dufferin Street in Granum. Her mother was 28 and her father was “38”. Fay who was raised Methodist is now listed as a Presbyterian with her family.
By 1917 William and Fay (as she preferred to be called) were located back in Moose Jaw and living at 1017 First Ave. N.E.
This photo is clipped from Google Maps, so of course, the car in the driveway is anachronistic, but its presence there reminds me of a story I received from William and Fay (Lockwood) Cox’s grandson in Ontario. Here it is in his words:
William taught Fay how to drive a car. Now, this was very risky for the time as only men “should” drive cars as women just did not have the capacity. Fay told me that when she drove the car in downtown Moose Jaw, women walking on the sidewalks would hide their eyes and look away. It was just too improper for a woman to drive a car and no women should have to see such a sight! Fay said that the roads in Moose Jaw at the time were very rough. She said that she would “pick her favourite rut and follow it.” As far as I know, she may have been one of the first women in Moose Jaw to drive a car.
Perhaps the car pictured here would be better suited sitting in front of the house above. I have reason to believe that Mr. Lockwood preferred to drive a Hudson. That was the car that he was driving in the late 1920s.
I had already figured that William Wallace Lockwood was a man ahead of his time when I found that he had designed a hay stacker in 1916 that was patented in 1917.
But I realized again that William Lockwood could be called open-minded when his great-grandson shared this story with me.
When Emily died in 1909, Fay was in her early twenties. At this time, women in Canada were not allowed to vote and were considered “inferior” in many aspects, especially finances and anything mechanized. William was very forward thinking for the times and needed Fay’s help in running the farms and business. Accordingly, he went to the bank to give Fay power of attorney. The bank manager was horrified. He told William, “She will ruin you! She will buy white gloves!”
To which William replied, “Do you really think that if I did not trust my daughter and have faith in her that I would give her power of attorney?” Needless to say, Fay was given power of attorney and helped run William’s business for several years.
When my grandmother told this story, she would always chuckle about the “white gloves” comment. White gloves were in style at the time, and the bank manager felt a woman would do nothing with money but “buy white gloves”. Fay managed the farms with the help of her sons (my dad John and my Uncle Bill (William)) up until she passed away in 1979.
Another insight into William Wallace Lockwood was included in a small book called Prairie Storekeeper by D. E MacIntyre. The author tells about taking a chance on the westerners’ love of fruit and bringing in for his little Tuxford store a carload of first-grade apples from the Georgian Bay district. He remembered “one big farmer named W. W. Lockwood taking ten barrels in anticipation of threshers. It was his custom to leave one barrel open near the kitchen doorway and tell all the men to help themselves to as many as they wanted.”
I was reading this book to find out more about Tuxford’s early history in general, and now, here loading 10 barrels of apples onto his wagon, was my Mr. Lockwood. It was good to see him presented as a generous man when he farmed in the Tuxford area.
WWL really only stayed in Moose Jaw until 1917 when he sold the Clifton house to his brother’s wife, Mary Elizabeth (Tilden) Lockwood and moved to Vancouver. So eventually he ended up with two daughters in Vancouver and one daughter and one son here in Saskatchewan. Bertha Fay Cox the oldest daughter stayed on in Moose Jaw, helping to look after her father’s interests in this area.
William’s Daughter #2 stayed here until after the 1921 census and then moved to Vancouver. Margaret Lillian had married Elwood Livingston Cox on July 12, 1915, in Winnipeg. Elwood was 14 years younger than his brother, William, and was trained as a dentist. For the 1916 Census, Margaret and Elwood were living in Moose Jaw with WWL at the Clifton house. It may be that they were living there because WWL had begun having serious heart troubles in 1915. So the household had two “Heads” in the census. Listed under Mr. Lockwood are son Howard 19, and daughter Mildred 16. so Margaret and Elwood were the first married couple to live in the house, and Howard and Mildred were the first teenagers to live here.
By 1917 City Directory, everyone was re-locating because Uncle Frank and Aunt Mary Lockwood have bought the 1037 Clifton house. It was unusual for the time to have Mary Elizabeth (Tilden) Lockwood hold title instead of her husband, and because she didn’t work outside the home, she is never listed in the City Directory with Frank in 1917 and 1918. Their daughter, Thelma, is with them in the house in 1919.
Elwood (the dentist) and Margaret Cox are taking a house at 104 Oxford St. E. while Bertha Fay and William are at 1017 1st N. E., so the two brothers and two sisters are just around the corner from each other. It appears that both William and Elwood Cox have offices in the Hammond Building. Perhaps they walked to work together: William to his lumber business, and Elwood to his dental office. This cosy arrangement seems to have continued until after the 1921 Census.
Howard, the only son of W. W. Lockwood, lived out his life in Moose Jaw and Tuxford. He was drafted in 1918 but not soon enough to see active duty. He is single in 1921 and is living at 13-19-27 W2. He has people working for him at the farm so he is not alone.
In August of 1923, William and his daughter Mildred, who have been living in the same house in Vancouver, embarked on a “Round the World” trip with Canadian Pacific. It seems they departed from Montreal on August 18, 1923, on the Empress of France. Their first port of call was in England where they arrived on August 25th. Their proposed accommodation in London was listed in the ship’s manifest as 2 Lombard St., London EC3.
Some of you may be interested in the September 1923 earthquake that happened near Japan and involved certain cruise ships playing a role in the rescue operations, lowering their boats for victims and taking some on board. I have no way of knowing if the Empress ship that Mr. and Miss Lockwood were cruising on was in the area at the time, but it was a great tragedy and they could have been very close to it. The Empress of Australia played a major role in the rescuing of people, but the Empress of Canada was there too, and that is the ship on which William and Mildred arrived back in Vancouver on Jan. 1, 1924.
While his father is travelling the world in a luxurious steamship, Howard Lockwood is working hard as a farmer at Tuxford. The history book for the area shows photos of his harvest crew in 1924 and again in 1926.
The Moose Jaw Lockwoods were anticipating a busy summer. Fay Lockwood Cox was expecting her third child in September of 1927. Aunt Mary, who had sold the house on Clifton in January would be passing through this June on her way from BC to Toronto, and in July, it would be great to have Grandpa William here for a time to visit and perhaps help out with his granddaughter, Mildred Isobel, who is 12, and grandson, William Lockwood Cox, who is 7. Perhaps he would be able to stay until the baby came. He might even take a stroll with his grandchildren up Clifton Avenue to show them the house he had left when he moved to Vancouver. They might get a peek at the four generations of the Thomas family who are living there now and actually own the house after seven years of renting it from Aunt Mary. Grandpa would be able to see the new machinery at the farm at Tuxford. They might all spend some time with Aunt Edrie, Uncle Howard’s new wife. Everyone loved her. Maybe they would be invited for a ride in Uncle Howard’s airplane.
Howard Lockwood, the uncle of these two children was an innovator in his farming methods and in transportation. He was a pilot, a member of the Moose Jaw Flying Club, and the owner of a de Havilland DH Moth described as the first one in Saskatchewan. In 1926, Howard and his wife Edrie Alberta (Byers) were newlyweds living on the farm near Tuxford. (I have as yet found no wedding date for them). Howard’s father William did make a trip from Vancouver to Moose Jaw in the summer of 1927. I don’t know if he came by train, or if he drove the Hudson that was in his possession. (It was valued at $1000.) The trip back to the prairies was Mr Lockwood’s last trip, for it was here in Moose Jaw at this daughter Fay’s house at 1917 First N.E. that William Wallace Lockwood died.
I have wondered if he was able to have a ride in Howard’s plane, but that information is not available. The house on Clifton had legally changed hands in January of ’27. However, before I introduce you to that next family, it is important to say some final Lockwood goodbyes. A published version of Mr Lockwood’s obituary was well written but hard to reproduce. But in 1927, Mr William Wallace Lockwood was buried here in Moose Jaw close to Emily who had died in 1909.
There will end up several more stones near the Lockwood Monument in Rosedale Cemetery. I will tell you briefly about two more of them before we move to the next family. But for our Mr William Wallace Lockwood, what better tribute than the one from the Moose Jaw Evening Times in July of 1927. “He was a man of genial disposition and loved by all with whom he came in contact. I liked that he bought apples for his workers and that he wanted his daughter to drive and take some leadership in the family business. I liked that he took his single daughter on a world cruise. I also am tickled that my very own hairdresser lived for a while in the same house where Fay raised her children and where William Wallace Lockwood came back to visit. I am glad that when he died he had family members with him. His years living in this area did not turn out the way he expected, but I am glad he came first to live here and then to find his Moose Jaw resting place beside Emily. 
Moose Jaw Rosedale Cemetery