Find Ancestors

This looks to be the birth of Edna from that census:

Name Lena Edna Kerr
Event Type Birth
Event Date 23 Nov 1912
Event Place Mimico, York, Ontario, Canada
Gender Female
Father's Name John Kerr
Mother's Name Mary Kramp

Image here:
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9Q97-Y3S4-KX1
----------------------------

and John's marriage in 1911:

Name John Kerr
Event Type Marriage
Event Date 27 Dec 1911
Event Place Egerton, Grey, Ontario, Canada
Gender Male
Age 32
Birth Year (Estimated) 1879
Father's Name Alexander Kerr
Mother's Name Elizabeth Herriot
Spouse's Name Mary Kramp
Spouse's Gender Female
Spouse's Age 25
Spouse's Birth Year (Estimated) 1886
Spouse's Father's Name Frederick Kramp
Spouse's Mother's Name Caroline Marklinger

Image here:
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9Q97-Y399-S8F6?i=1229&cc=1784216

I hadn't noticed before because I didn't click on family members' names.

The names of the wife and daughter of that John Kerr have been corrected by a family member at Ancestry:

'The original data on the record is incorrect.
Mary Kerr was my grandmother.'

If this were to be our John ... the rest of the story of the going to Canada doesn't check out.

This is him in the 1921 Canadian census.


Name: John Kerr
Gender: Male
Marital Status: Married
Age: 41
Birth Year: abt 1880
Birth Place: Ontario
Relation to Head of House: Head
Spouse's Name: Harry Kerr
Father Birth Place: Scotland
Mother Birth Place: Scotland
Racial or Tribal Origin: Scotch (Scotish)
Province or Territory: Ontario
District: York West
District Number: 145
Sub-district: Mimico (Town)
Sub-District Number: 74
City, Town or Village: Mimico
Street or Township: Superior Ave
Municipality: Mimico
Occupation: Engineer
Income: 1800

John Kerr 41
Harry Kerr 34 (obviously it's "Mary")
Edna I Kerr 8
John Kerr 4
Murray Kerr 6/12

(1800 was a very healthy income. It's double the 900 of a labourer on the page, nearly double the 1050 of a locksmith also on the page, etc.)


If it were him ... Margaret, who went to Canada as a domestic, could have been employed in the household ...

So well done AG.

Now we don't know for sure this is him. But he seems a very good bet.

A train engineer ... that's a bit of a highly skilled job to just fall into. He would have had to have rather extensive railway experience, for that. It was also a pretty well paid job, so if he were single he might have boarded, but he might also have owned the house.

Edit - saw your edit, so he was the owner. That might be a little odd, owning a 3-storey house and not having a family.

I'll tell you a secret. :-)

My great-grandfather was a fireman (the engine man) on the railway in southern Ontario from 1906 or so, when he immigrated with his family, until he retired, which was around about 1935. He had had the same job in Nottinghamshire before that.

Ah, in 1921 he is listed as an engineer. Maybe he had been promoted.

There was just enormous work on the railways in Canada from the 1860s up to the depression at least. So there was great demand for labour of all kinds -- actual train employees, plus carpenters in the yards, etc. etc.

No sign of John in 1926 - at least not at that address, and not working for CRN.

In 1927-1928 he's at 27 Superior, working for Goodyear Tires.
In 1929 he's at 27 superior, an engineer for CNR.


Still no listing for Margaret in Mimico - but she would be a lodger.

John was still in Superior Ave in 1932, still working for CNR.
In 1930, he was at the same address, an engineer for CNR.

Margaret McKee isn't listed anywhere in Mimico 1930-31.
Only one name is listed for each address, so if she was John Kerr's lodger, for instance (or bidie-in), and he was the owner of the house, only he would be listed.

John of Superior Av is listed as an employee of CNR (Canadian National Railways).

His name also has an asterisk at it - there must be an explanation somewhere, but haven't found it yet!

EDIT:

Aha!
An asterisk means that to the best of the directory compilers' knowledge, the person living there is the owner.

o m g, Argyllgran, you did it - went through all those names.

At least it wasn't like the voters' list where you have to click on the image for each name to see exactly where it is and who's in the household and what their occupation was!

But that John is the one with no occupation listed .....

(The John E on Glen Road would be the lawyer I had mentioned earlier who was not the right person. Google finds the firm listed in a city directory on Bay St. That's "the City" or Wall Street, Toronto style.)

Sandra, this is the house on Superior. I managed to find a year when the trees were not yet in leaf so you can see the house. It's the left-hand side of the double you are looking at. It might very well have had lodgers in the early 1930s.

https://tinyurl.com/ybafhno3

1931 directory -

John Kerr -

15 Fairmount Cres
122 St Patrick
51 Woodycrest Av (bricklayer)
1864 Davenport Rd (clerk ?)
178 St Cranens Av (clerk)
102 Springhurst Av (computer, valuation dept)
27 Superior Av, Mimico <<<<<<<<<
107 Jones Av
160 Wallace
99 Cottingham (gardener)
27 Lambton Av (musician)
157 Margueretta (operator, gutta percha)
287 Shaw (salesman)
239 Withrow (salesman)
24 Follis Av (shipper, mfg co)
794 Shaw (supt, paving co)
103 Roxburgh (supervisor, city treas dept)
36 Fifth (traveller, Standard Fuel)

John A, 210 Lawlor Av
John A, 138 Broadway Av (space sol)
john A, 1310 Danforth Av (pc, No 8 Stn)
John E ,222 Glen road (of Kerr, Kitchen & Keyes)
John H, 33 Lenty Av (clerk, employment office)
John H, 7 Briggs Av, labourer
John J, 58 wnchester, stationers traveller
John M, 23 Hayden, carpenter
John M, 42 dingwall Av, drug app
John M, 137 Highfield Ave, with Tor Hydro
John M & Son (Wm R Kerr), mfg agents, 29-33 Melinda
John McD, Rev, 312 Roehampton Av
John R, 203 Vaughn Road
John R, 327 Davisville Av (ctr Eatons)
John R, 150-6 Bathurst, supt albert Kerr Co
John R D, 478 St Clarens Av (storekeeper)
John S, 135 Hastings Av, lineman, Bell Tel
John T, 99 Cottingham, mail order clerk
John W, 2244 Queen, grocer & butcher


580 Ontario St - Wm McClung (with an asterisk at his name, as many other people do - don't know why)

I've looked at the 1930 directory.
Wm McClung was still at 580 Ontario Street.

There were lots of John Kerrs in various streets - too many to list at this time of night!

When I have more time , maybe tomorrow, I'll have a look at the 1931 directory - they take ages to download.

All the directories are here, if you want to have a go yourself:

http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/history-genealogy/lh-digital-city-directories.jsp

His first name was John ?

Yes, it's possible to search by name.

However -
there are lots of Kerrs, but
a) we don't know Mr Kerr's first name (do we ??)

b) all the streets of Toronto are arranged alphabetically, without specifying which area of Toronto they're in, so you'd have to know the names of the streets in the Mimico area to be able to see if there were any Kerrs listed in those streets.





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimico#Main_streets

Main streets

Lake Shore Boulevard is a four-lane arterial that runs parallel to the Lake Ontario waterfront from east to west, and is primarily residential within the Mimico area. The major north-south route is Royal York Road.
The original naming convention for Mimico side-streets was for English community names: Buckingham, Windsor (now Blue Goose Street), Newcastle, Portland, Burlington, Manchester, Oxford, Dorchester (now in The Queensway), Southampton (Cavell), Salisbury Ave. (Park Lawn Rd.), Torrington (Grand Ave.), Cambridge (to the North became Mendota), Coventry (to the East became Queens Ave.).
Some later streets were named for Mimico settlers: O'Donnell, Van Every, Robert Hendry (Wheatfield), George (Hendry), Pidgeon (western part of Stanley), Howland (Ourland), Stock's Side Road (Queen St., later The Queensway); and more recently for former mayors of Mimico: Skelton, Norris. The Griggs and Edwards retirement homes are also named for former mayors.

Argyll Gran is it possible to search by name, if I knew he lived in mimico in 1931?

Related threads:

https://www.genesreunited.co.uk/boards/board/ancestors/thread/557032

https://www.genesreunited.co.uk/boards/board/ancestors/thread/521086

Don't know if this might help ?? Probably not if he was just a lodger.

https://archive.org/details/torontocitydirectory1929



EDIT:

From the above Directory, Wm McClung was at 580 Ontario street in 1929.

Hi everyone who has kindly helped me in the past. I have decided, after chewing it over for almost a year, that I can't let this lie. I need to find out what happened to my grandfather John Kerr! I have today contacted the Salvation army in Canada to see if they have records of my grandmother in the hope it might lead me to some sort of disclosure about John Kerr and his whereabouts

I do have a question for you very knowledgeable people! What records would have existed in 1929 which could find him. All I know is his address 580 Ontario Street?? When my father was born in 1931, his mother was in Mimico.

Wait til Father's Day and FTDNA will have a sale on YDNA testing. You start with Y37 to see whether there are any likely-looking matches. If so, you can work with them to try to refine the match to see how distant the connection might be.

The reason my sig line says "Researching Hore/Hoar/Hoare esp. St Austell/Roche Cornwall" is that in trying to figure out which of my ancestor's surnames might be his 'true' paternal line - the surname his birth was registered in or the one he assumed as an adult - I discovered that his male-line descendant's YDNA is a very close match (almost certainly with a common ancestor within 300 years before his birth) with a completely different surname/family.

https://www.familytreedna.com/products/y-dna#compare

You can get all kinds of help at that site from people in the surname project your brother's YDNA may match with. And if you decide to give it a try, I can give you info about iron-clad protection for his privacy at the site unless he chooses to disclose info. (You can administer his 'kit', as I do for my male rellies who have tested.)

The surname group for Kerr is called Carr (probably because most participants are in the US and immigrants there tended to phoneticize their names - my match's grandfather had abandoned the 'Hore' spelling for instance :-) ).

https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/carr/about

'The Carr Surname Project is open to everyone searching their Carr paternal line family history. All phonetic variations of Carr are included in the project. Phonetic variations of Carr include Kerr, Karr, Carre, Keir, Corr, among others. Membership requires testing the YDNA of a male with paternal line descent (father to son in each generation) that has used the Carr surname for several generations. The goal of this project is to unite Carr families around the world with the lost Carr cousins who share their recent paternal line ancestry. Studies show us that the geographical origins of people using the Carr surname today include Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany and elsewhere. We also find that the spelling of the Carr surname across generations within the same family often includes many phonetically equivalent variations. YDNA identifies paternal lines that may share a genealogically significant recent paternal line ancestor. Using this information and traditional genealogy methods has helped many family historians extend their family history back generations.'

And if there is no match with any Kerr, then you may still find a match with another surname, and be left, as I am, trying to figure out what the heck the connection is. :-)

wow never thought of that! Actually I have 6 brothers, so plenty to choose from. :-D

Sandra, women throughout history, lots and lots of women, and their children, have been abandoned by the fathers of their children. Until recently, they had very little recourse, and of course had access to very few resources of their own to support their children. Childcare and working did not go together well in the 1930s.

A woman alone with a child in a country where she had no family at all, like your Margaret, would very likely be in desperate circumstances. Returning to Ireland would have been a sensible move, and maybe the only real option open to her, if she wanted to keep her child.

I see I haven't mentioned DNA yet. :-)

Do you by any chance have a brother? Or does your dad's brother Frank have a son?

Male-line descendants of the mysterious John Kerr would carry his YDNA, probably an identical copy. If you have such relations - a son of a son of John Kerr - testing that person could possibly find a match in the YDNA database at Family Tree DNA, for instance. That is the most accurate way of finding genetic matches, but it works only for male-line descendants, to identify a common male ancestor.

The other possibility is autosomal DNA, which Ancestry tests for its stupid ethnicity analyses, but also does matching, as I understand it. Family Tree also does this testing, with its 'Family Finder' test. It can identify genetic relations possibly as distant as 5th cousins. If a match is found, the legwork has to be done to try to figure out what that match is (and in particular which of the tested person's parents' side it comes from), but it can be a valuable pointer.

Matches can only be found if (a) they exist (e.g. the family has not dwindled to a single line, as one of mine did when the only son, born c1820, of an only son of an only son was the only one left of what were once several families in a village), and (b) someone related has tested.

But it is not outrageously expensive, and it can be particularly likely to yield a match if the possible match is in the US, or to a lesser extent Canada or Australia, where people are much more likely to be searching for ancestral info than people in the UK and Ireland are.

Give that a think. A test might very well turn up nothing and nobody at all, but the only way to know is to try it!

Sandra -
back in September you said,
"Maybe he just decided he didn't want to be a father and left them. That could be why they came back alone, or maybe he died between Jan - April? Or maybe he was married ."

Any of these are possible - but it's so frustrating knowing we'll never find out the reason!