HelPeR - BYU Idaho Special Collections and Family History

Watson carpenter entries, from the
Winnipeg Alphabetical Directory, 1882
Watson family entries, from the
Winnipeg Alphabetical Directory, 1884
Watson family entries, from the Winnipeg
Alphabetical Directory, 1883
same address as well as profession. Both of these
young men had left their large family in St. Catharines
to make their fortune in the west, even though
David was only 14 years old at the time. By 1883,
another of the Watson brothers shows up in the Winnipeg
directory—J R Watson (John Randolph Watson),
also making his living as a carpenter and living at the
same address with Alexander and David. 2 Several
other John and J Watsons appear, but being able to
establish the common address and profession of these
young men is the factor which convinced me that they
are indeed my family.
By 1884, J R Watson is not listed, and I feel confident
that the eight other John and J Watsons in the
directory belong in a different family, because none
of them works as a carpenter or lives with Alexander
and David. 3 Those two brothers are listed in the directory
for the final time in 1885, and I presume that
following the death of Alexander on the battlefield,
David went home to his family in St. Catharines, for
he is enumerated with them there in the 1891 census.
Without the city directory entries, I would never have
known that David and John Randolph Watson also
had ventured west.
Other gems pop up in the directories as well. Researching
another of the eleven Watson children, I
located Angus Watson in the 1900 census in Rochester,
New York. Going straight for the city directories, I was
Watson family entries, from the
Rochester (New York) City Directory, 1916
able to confirm the name of his wife, Katherine, for in
1916, the Rochester directories began listing wives’
names. 4 And, to my delight, all of Angus’s children
began showing up in the directories, once they became
old enough to work themselves, but still lived at
home. Thus I learned that his son Angus A. worked as
a draftsman; his daughter Isabel E. did bookkeeping;
another son, Kenneth, worked variously as a clerk,
a wireman, and a radio repairman; and a third son,
Frederick, began working as a wireman and then became
a chauffeur. When Isabel stopped appearing at
the family address of 10 Anson Place in 1930, I had a
hunch she had married about that time, so I was able
to contact the county courthouse to request a marriage
search in a limited time frame (a search which produced
the marriage record I sought). Certainly some
of this information can be gleaned from censuses, but
not all of it, and this data isn’t cut off at 1930.
Although I had been able to locate Angus Watson
in Rochester via the 1900 U. S. census, he had other
brothers and sisters who had left St. Catharines by the
time the 1901 Canadian census was taken, and I had
no idea where they had gone. So when I began my
work with the Rochester city directories, I searched
for the rest of the missing siblings. I was rewarded in
the 1891–92 volume by finding Thomas Duncan Buchanan,
the husband of Angus’s sister Mary Ann Watson.
The Buchanans actually had moved to Rochester
Ja n ua ry/Fe b r u a r y 2009 Ev e r t o n’s Ge n e a l o g i c a l He l p e r © 21