A Baby, A Secret, and a New Life: What I Discovered About My Great-Grandmother’s Immigration
Growing up, I was told that my great-grandmother’s family came to Canada to find work, like many of us were told about our ancestors. But the truth was far more personal—and shocking.
Once I started to become more serious with my genealogy research in my teen years, I started to uncover missing puzzle pieces that solved family mysteries. But this time, I found an entirely new mystery that revealed the true reason as to why my great-grandmother, her parents, and her sisters all immigrated to Canada. And that reason was a little baby girl named May.
The Story I Knew Growing Up
My great-grandmother Louisa was born in Wales, the second of five daughters to William and Mary Ann Hunt. William had worked as a coal miner in Wales, but following the First World War decided the family should move to Canada for new work opportunities, and settled in Brockville, Ontario in 1922.
My great-great-grandfather found a job at the Phillips Electric Works plant after landing in Brockville. Louisa and her three younger sisters initially found work as domestic servants, but their father didn’t like one of the households that two of the girls worked for. My grandmother told me that this was because the man of the house didn’t allow the girls to have Sundays off to attend church and observe a true day of rest which angered William, a devout Salvation Army officer. So, they found work at a local cookie factory instead.
It wasn’t long after that Louisa met my great-grandfather, also named William, who also worked for the Phillips Electric Works. Like her mother, Louisa had five children during her marriage and managed her own household while raising her children.
Louisa passed away in 1985, so I never had a chance to meet her. I got to know her through her recipes like Welsh tea cakes and shortbread cookies that were handed down to my grandmother. I heard so many stories about their time with Granny (as her many grandchildren called her) with her devout Salvation Army officer sisters in Brockville and later Montreal. It wasn’t until I was a university student that I actually learned her family’s migration history, and I didn’t learn much about her life before coming to Canada. This was where my genealogy research came into play.
At First, The Story Seemed True
At this point in my genealogical journey, I knew I had to look past family stories at face value and used records to fill in the gaps left in family lore. I had already done some initial research to make sure facts like birth and death information for the Hunt branch were accurate, but I hadn’t researched these ancestors much otherwise. I was starting to find surprising facts for other family branches from records like censuses, immigration records, and historical newspapers, so I decided to see what I could learn about the Hunts from these sources.
I looked over the family’s copies of Form 30A, which was filled out for anyone entering Canada via a port of entry from 1919 to 1924. These forms showed that William and Mary Ann, along with their four youngest daughters, travelled together to Canada in August of 1922. Louisa’s older sister (also named Mary Ann) joined the family in February of 1923, which I later learned from my grandmother was because she was involved in a training program as an officer in the Salvation Army and couldn’t leave until it was finished.
The forms also stated that the four younger sisters all intended to find domestic work, confirming the story I had learned growing up. William hadn’t found work yet, and Mary Ann would continue her duties as mother of the Hunt household. The sisters were all in their late teens and early 20’s, and William and Mary Ann were in their mid-40’s. It seemed that like many other immigrants from the British Isles, the family were all ready to lay down roots in the hope for a better life in Canada.
Towards the end of my university career I extensively studied women’s immigration schemes to Canada, having been inspired by my own female ancestors. The Canadian government facilitated many immigration programs during the early twentieth century to attract young women to Canada as domestic servants. It was when writing a paper on church-sponsored domestic work immigration programs that I thought; I wonder if I can find any specific records for the Hunt sisters under a Salvation Army sponsored program?
And that’s when I became a bit obsessive about my ancestors’ lives.
Why They Really Came to Canada
Despite my best efforts (including driving from Toronto to Ottawa and back in a day to do archival research,) I couldn’t find anything specific to the Hunts in Salvation Army or other archives that would be relevant to my university research. I was, however, incredibly stubborn and determined to find out more about their lives before coming to Canada. I wanted to know—did someone convince them to come to Canada? Were there ads in their local paper promising a better life across the Atlantic?
I moved beyond government records and starting looking through historical newspaper archives. It took a few years of intermittent research, but I eventually started looking through the British Newspapers Archive. In January of 2022, nearly 100 years after it was published, I found a short court notice mentioning a Louisa Hunt.
Published on May 13, 1922 in the Pontypridd Observer, was this notice stating that Louisa Hunt sued a man by the name of Alfred George Stephens for the paternity of a baby girl born the month prior.
What? Granny had a baby back in Wales?
I had never heard about a baby girl, and neither had my father. She would be my grandmother’s older sister. How come we had never been told about her? What was her name? She was born just three months before the Hunts arrived in Canada, so how had I never come across her before in my research? Why were there no marriage records, voters lists, or obituaries that mentioned her?
I had to know what was going on with this notice. The first thing I had to do was confirm that this Louisa Hunt was actually my great-grandmother. The notice lists her as living on Queen Street. The 1911 Census of Wales listed the Hunt family at a different address, so I would need a more recent document to corroborate this finding.
I turned to UK passenger lists for departures, since they note a passenger’s most recent address in the UK (either their home address or where they stayed when visiting.) I found one passenger list with the correct travel details, which had all four of the younger Hunt sisters as living on Queen Street. Normally would have excited me since it did confirm the address, but William and Mary Ann weren’t listed with their daughters. And more importantly, there was no infant girl with the last name Hunt or Stephens on the manifest. I had to keep digging.
I knew from the Form 30A entries that everyone except the younger Mary Ann arrived in Canada together, so William and mother Mary Ann had to be on the manifest somewhere. I started to review the other pages of the list, and after flipping through a few I finally found the confirmation I was looking for.
William and Mary Ann Hunt, from the same Queen St address, were accompanied by a three month old baby girl named May Hunt. I finally had her name, but no other information about her. I quickly plugged the little information I did have into my Ancestry tree, and immediately hints popped up—just not the hints I had hoped for.
May Hunt, 1922-1922
Three hints popped up: a UK birth index entry, a Form 30A record, and an Ontario death registration.
The birth index entry further corroborated what I had learned—May was born to Louisa Hunt in April of 1922. Form 30A listed all of the same travel and landing details as the other Hunts. But the death registration bared the worst information. Just a month after landing in Canada, at the age of only 4 months, May died of bronchial pneumonia.
Reading that ripped through me. I broke into tears. She was never mentioned in any other records because she wasn’t there to begin with. She was only here for a blip in time.
After taking in the sadness of my finding, I looked over the rest of the death registration only to find something even more shocking. William and Mary Ann Hunt were listed as May’s parents instead of Louisa and Alfred Stephens. I looked back over the entry forms, and William signed May’s record on her behalf as her father. This was no mistake.
The Real Reason: A Second Chance
During the 1920s, so much stigma and shame existed around being an unwed mother with an illegitimate child. And in Louisa’s case, the father of her child refused to marry her and conform to this societal expectation. I don’t know, and I’m not sure if I ever will know, what other factors came into the Hunt family’s decision to immigrate to Canada. But I do know that they chose to immigrate claiming that May was a later-in-life baby, rather than an unwed mother’s baby.
William and Mary Ann had their children during their 20’s, and were both 45 years old when they landed in Canada. Unlike today, governments didn’t require certain documentation like a birth certificate or passport to allow for global passage of an infant, so there wouldn’t have been any point in the immigration process where the Hunts would need to actually prove their relationship to the baby. It may have been unusual that their “other” daughters were all in their late teens and early 20’s, but far more acceptable for a middle-aged married couple to have a baby together than a single 23-year-old woman.
Although I can only speculate, I feel pretty certain that considering the social climate of the 1920’s, the family decided it would be best for both Louisa herself and the family as a whole to live under the guise of May being a much younger Hunt daughter rather than grandchild. It would have allowed Louisa to live a “normal” life without having to bear the shame of having an illegitimate baby. And in the end a more painful fate came, where she would have to grieve the loss of the child she couldn’t even raise as her own.
It wasn’t long after discovering all of this about Granny that her daughter, my grandmother, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I ultimately chose not to tell her about her older sister that she never got to meet. I didn’t want her to grieve her sibling that she never knew while also losing herself. But I also considered that she may have already known and chose to keep whatever pain this caused her private, keeping with her generation’s way of handling sensitive matters.
More Answers, More Questions
I always come back to different branches of my family tree after not researching them for some time, as new records are constantly becoming publicly available. I recently checked in on the Hunt branch after Ancestry added the 1921 Census of England and Wales to its collection, since this would be the last UK census to capture the family before coming to Canada.
I first searched the census for William, and sure enough the correct William Hunt popped up at the top of the search results. Interestingly, only the three youngest daughters were listed with their parents at the Queen Street address. I knew that this was the time that daughter Mary Ann was away training with the Salvation Army. So where was Louisa?
When I searched for her, some interesting but not very surprising information came up. The first entry for a Louisa Hunt with the correct birth details listed her as residing and working as a waitress at the Barry Dock Hotel in Barry Docks. The man she sued for paternity in 1922 was a Barry Docks resident. This was definitely my great-grandmother.
The 1921 Wales Census entry for Louisa Hunt, line 17. Source: Ancestry.ca
It isn’t difficult to put these pieces together now that we seem to have them all. Granny had left the family home to work as a waitress in a nearby port town. The census was taken during June—was it just a summer job, or did she plan on being there long-term? It didn’t matter either way, because a summer love would force her back to her parents’ house, pregnant and desperate. What if May’s father had actually married Granny? She wouldn’t have come to Canada and had her five children who survived into adulthood. My grandmother wouldn’t have been born. I wouldn’t be here. Was Granny devastated with grief, or was there a part of her that was relieved to not have to live a lie? Would that have been more painful in the end?
Even if what you discover isn’t surprising, you’re sometimes left with more questions than answers. It’s possible I’ll continue to find out more about my great-grandmother and this tumultuous time in her early 20’s. But I unfortunately think that the usual genealogy records I consult will never give me the answers that I’m looking for. My biggest question remains—who knew about May?
I know, and now you do too. Despite being one of the many infants who died without ever getting to write their own story, May’s story has had a chance to live on. And I’m honoured to be her storyteller.
