The Thomson Family

Last Thursday was spent double checking the accuracy of my entries. I also added a last name search bar to my database. However, I cannot seem to figure out a way for the search bar to pull up the form version of an entry. It only pulls up the table version, which is much more difficult to

Finished look of the form version of the database.

read than the form version. I spent a couple hours searching the internet for a way to pull up a form version of the entry and fiddled around with different coding options but nothing worked in the end. I ended up just changing it back to what I originally had and felt a little sad I just lost two hours of time that could have been spent doing something else. It really is amazing how much time stuff like that can take up. I did not quite finish double checking all of my entries as I had a lecture at the university I had to be at for 7:30 and so left a bit earlier than usual (4:30). As my progress has been rather slow (again), I am going to quickly highlight one of the most prominent pioneer families buried at St. Stephen's for the rest of the post: the Thomson family.

Thomson family plots. 

The Thomson family plots (#116-122) are marked by a large granite, rustic style tablet monument with additional plaques placed on the granite kerbing bordering the plots. It is one of the largest family burials in the Cemetery. Thomson was the second person to allocate farm land in the Mount Newton Valley, the first being Angus McPhail. Thomson’s arrival to Vancouver Island was troubled, and the ship he travelled on crashed near Barkley Sound, allegedly due to a drunken captain. Although the captain died, Thomson and the other passengers made it safely to shore (OCSV 1995; Wilkey & Wilkey 1995:5). Thomson made his way to the Mount Newton Valley, where in 1856 he staked out 200 acres of land, for which he paid the Hudson Bay Company 14 pounds, thirteen shillings, and four pence. Shortly after this, he married

Western face of the monument. 

Duncan Lidgate’s step-daughter, 15 year old Margaret Dyer. In 1858 they had their first child and moved into a small log cabin on Thomson’s land. (Wilkey & Wilkey 1995:6, OCSV 1995). Thomson provided the land that St. Stephen's Anglican Church and Cemetery sits on today in February of 1863. A payment of $20 dollars is noted in Bishop Hills' diary as having been paid for the land. This sum of money for 6 acres of land is a marginal amount and that same diary shows that $220 was paid for 7 acres of land elsewhere in the Victoria area (Wilkey & Wilkey 1995:6-7; Bell 1982:23; Hills 1893:172). The Thomsons were active community members and contributed much to the early pioneer community in the Mount Newton Valley area. In the Saanichton area today many streets are named after the Thomsons--a lasting legacy of the important role they played in the early pioneer history in the area. 


Bibliography 

Bell, Betty

    1982    The Fair Land. Victoria, British Columbia: Sono Nis Press.

Hills, George

    1863    Bishop Hills Diaries Volume 7, May 6-June 25 1863. 35 mm microfilm. Victoria, British Columbia: Royal British Columbia Museum Archives. 

Old Cemeteries Society of Victoria

    1995    Historical Research. In The Old Cemeteries Society: Report to St. Stephen’s Anglican Church. Victoria, British Columbia.

Wilkey, Gwen and Michael Wilkey

    1995    Symbols of Faith: The Story of Saint Stephen’s Church Saanichton, British Columbia. Saanich: West Saanich Aerographic Publications.

  

A Modest Monument

Sign welcoming visitors to the Church.  

Unfortunately last Thursday I did not make it to the Church. I have quite a few assignments in my other classes right now, and so I was unable to dedicate a whole day to my research. However, I was able to do some work at home, and I managed to review a few more entries to ensure their accuracy. Due to the small amount of work that I have completed since the last post, I will highlight a specific monument type that I encountered a lot during monument recording. Out of 54 monuments recorded in all, the slant faced monument with a plaster top made up 10 of them. This equates to about 18.5 % of all of the Victorian Era monuments in the cemetery. This is a substantial portion of the monuments and is second in quantity only to the simple, concrete only slant-faced markers, marking pioneer burials. They are equal in quantity to domed tablets, which are made of a greater and often more expensive variety of stone.

Earliest dated monument of this type. 

This monument is one of the simplest monuments in the cemetery, and usually does not have any motifs engraved upon it. There are two exceptions to this, wherein two Latin crosses are engraved on either side of the inscription. The earliest date at which this type of monument appears is 1876, marking the burial of Baby Michell. This type of monument is used for both children and adults,

One of only two of this type of monument that had any motif
decoration upon it. 

although they differ in size accordingly. When marking the burial of children, these monuments are not as wide horizontally as the adult monuments are. Although I was unable to take measurements at the time of monument recording due to not having a tape

One of only two of this type of monument that had any motif
decoration upon it. 

measure, I intend to do this on Thursday. Interestingly, for this monument, the burial trend noted in Ross Bay and York Cemetery by Buckham (as spoken of in my first post), is consistent. Not one child's monument is the same size as an adult monument, and each child's monument is only commemorating one child, even if said child was too young for a name. Some, although not all, children's monuments had smaller ground ledgers as well.

The modesty of this monument is notable. While in the pictures, it appears to be made of a material mimicking a higher grade stone, it is actually a base of concrete with some kind of plaster layered on top. It is within this plaster that the inscription is engraved. On most of the monuments, the plaster is cracking or chipping off. A picture below shows a side view of one of these monuments, illustrating clearly its dual composition. Also note how chipped the plaster is on the edge. It seems to me that this monument may be so popular because of its modesty. Despite the Victorian era being marked by elaborate monuments, one of my hypotheses from the

Side view revealing the dual composition and tendency
to chip. 

beginning of this research project was the possibility that monuments in a Christian cemetery were more likely to display less extravagance so typical of the era. This is possibly due to Christian beliefs that value modesty, both material and behavioural. Of course, it may also relate to the presumably cheaper cost of the monument, or may be a combination of both factors.

I apologise for the late post this week, it has been a busy time for me! I will be posting again this week, probably on Saturday or Sunday, providing updates for my progress to occur on Thursday.

Forms, Buttons, and Formatting

View walking up to the Church.

I spent most of last Thursday searching YouTube videos on how to make my database look more polished through forms, buttons, and lots of formatting!  I was mostly successful, although I am pretty sure there is not a way to create a search bar that allows you to search any piece of information about the deceased and have it pull up that individual. There is, however, a way to create a search bar that will perform a specific query, such as a first or last name (but not both!). So I will probably just end up adding one of these next Thursday. Then I have to double check my data, as I only got about half way through last Thursday, and then I am done the database! Next, I will be reading a lot of sources to create my annotated bibliography. I anticipate at this point I will be inundating my blog with interesting things I find in the literature! Here is a screen shot of my database:

The "More Info" button when clicked leads to a new page which displays all other available information I could find about that particular burial. This includes monument class, plot type, plot section, monument materials, inscriptions, motifs, age of deceased, birth and death years and dates, occupation, cause of death, and any other notes that are relevant, but do not fit in the above categories. Of course not all of this information is available for all burials so there are definitely blanks among these categories for many of the burials. Also, because the Thomson burial had 6 people on the monument, of which I included all in my database, all of the forms contain spots for up to 6 first and last names, birth and death dates/years, and ages. Because the burials are so variable in the quantity of people on the monument, I had to make a standardised form that would accommodate them all. This means that most of the forms have many blanks because most only had one or two people named on them. However, I could not find any other way to mitigate this, so while a bit of an inconvenience, it is not that bad. Here is a shot of the form:

You have to scroll down and to the right a bit to get all of the information, but it is still pretty easy to nab the information you need. Formatting this form took me ages! Getting all of the columns to line up, and making sure the text boxes all had the same width required a lot of fiddling with formatting, but it felt amazing once it was done! So that is my database! All 54 entries are in and once it is entirely complete, I will be discussing how it can be made available to anyone that is interested. There is more information in it than just that which is displayed on the monument. It also has information I gathered for genealogy forms. I would like to note that while I did include all names on the monuments, even if some went past my 1911 end date (I think the latest is 1929), I did not include genealogy information about the deceased that were buried after 1911. I included their names as I did not want to omit information that was actually on the monument, but because they are much more recent, I also did not want to include extra information on them as I did with those people who did fall into the Victorian date range I am using (1869-1911). That is it for now, but while looking through my photos I found one that I would like to share here. It is close to one I have posted before, but imparts a bit of a different view and atmosphere. It is my favourite photo that I have taken to date.

Data Entry: Mission Complete (Well, Almost)

Beautiful view on my morning drive to the Church!

Last Thursday was spent in the vestry again. The set up I have in there is quite lovely, and I am extremely grateful to the Church for allowing me to use the space!! There is a great desk in the space, and I have room to spread out all the binders and books I am using. The below picture

Desk level view of half of my workspace.

shows only half (the neater half!) of this spread. Note all of the beautiful wood in the vestry! I completed my initial database entry in my time spent there. In total, there are 54 entries, including four entries that had no monuments, but had kerbing (a stone or cement plot boundary). I did have some difficulties with data entry in regards to conflicting data (I hear this is common with genealogy research). All of the conflicting data had to do with ages and birth and death dates. After speaking with my supervisor, I will be making slight modifications to some of the entries I made, and will be noting in the notes section of the database the other information I encountered. I keep thinking to myself that data entry will be a quick and easy process, but I spent 8 hours at the Church on Thursday inputting all of the information. Now I must make a few, small changes to the database, check the accuracy of my entries, and convert it to a more polished version with forms and buttons in Microsoft Access. Hopefully only one more day will be spent doing this, but knowing my skill with estimating time needed, it will probably take more.

Sarah Pope's tablet. The inscription reads "Farewell Dear Mother."

This week I am going to talk about the symbolism found on the Pope and Kranz tablets. Here is a website that lists meanings of common monument motifs. All four of these tablets have clasped hands with ribbon motifs. Both male and female graves have similar inscriptions on the ribbon for their respective genders. In addition to clasped hands, the Pope tablets also have Easter lilies, roses, and lily of the valley on their monuments. All of these motifs have highly symbolic meanings that may indicate aspects of the lives of the deceased lived.These are the only four monuments in the cemetery that display the clasped-hands motif.    

Abraham Pope's tablet. The inscription reads "United Above."

Caroline Kranz's tablet. The inscription reads "Farewell."

Fred Kranz's tablet. The inscription reads "United Above."

 Clasped hands are a common motif on Victorian Era monuments. Two of the four tablets display the variation of this motif where one finger on the grasping hand points downwards. On the Pope tablets this is displayed on the wife's monument, and on the Kranz tablets, on the husband's. Clasped hands are indicative of a final farewell and a close bond. The finger pointing downward can be associated with sudden death, morality, or a secret masonic handshake (Truswell and Townsend 1997:65, 79; Gillies 2013), but in this case since the two deceased were well into adulthood, it likely represents morality, which also fits in with the other religious symbolism present on the Pope tablets. The Easter lily symbolises purity, innocence, and resurrection, while the rose represents love, beauty, and hope. The lily of the valley flower symbolises the return of happiness, purity, and humanity. Note that on both Pope tablets there are four lily of the valley flowers, which likely represent the four writers of gospel: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The three different types of flowers on the Pope monuments represent the Holy Trinity (Truswell and Townsend 1997:79). Both women have "Farewell" inscriptions on their monuments, and both men have "United Above" inscriptions. In both cases the women died first, and with this context it makes sense that both the men and women would share the same inscriptions. On Frederick Kranz's tablet you can clearly see that one cuff is frilled, representing a woman's hand. This likely represents his wife hand leading him to heaven (Gillies 2013). The Pope tablet imagery suggests that both wife and husband were deeply religious people. All four tablets suggest that both couples were deeply committed to their spouses. The symbolic imagery on these tablets provides a fascinating glimpse into the lives of these four people.

Bibliography 

Gillies, Matthew. 2013. "The Grave Secrets of Symbols and Iconography of the Cemetery." Accessed November 2, 2013. https://mysendoff.com/2012/08/the-grave-secrets-of-symbols-and-iconography-of-the   cemetery/.                                                                                                                                         

Truswell, Norm and David Townsend.1997. A Guide for the Recording, Care and Use of British Columbia's Heritage Cemeteries. Victoria, British Columbia: The Old Cemeteries Society of Victoria.