Theodore's son Gustav, or How I Discovered a Home Child in my Family Tree

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Theodore's son Gustav, or How I Discovered a Home Child in my Family Tree

This is a copy of my article about finding a British Home Child in my family tree which was re-printed in the most recent issue of The British Home Child, the newsletter of the Ontario Genealogical Society’s BHC-SIG (British Home Child Special Interest Group), vol. 3, issue 2, June 2013, pp. 15-17.    It's similar to the draft I posted here on Sept 6/2010.

Theodore's son Gustav, or How I Discovered a Home Child in my Family Tree

                                         Marcia Cuthbert

[This article was previously published (with a few small edits) in the Toronto Tree, Volume 41, Issue 5, September/October 2010.]

The name my grandfather was known by in Canada was Augustin Richard HAGUE. He died at age 37, on August 7th, 1905, of typhoid fever during the devastating typhoid epidemic in Winnipeg. At the time of his death, all seven of his children were under 12 years of age. Thus almost no information about him was retained to be passed on to the next generation.

One thing that we did know about him for certain was that his date of birth was February 15th, 1868. It was said that he was English, but it was not known exactly where in England he was born. The registration of his death that I obtained from the Vital Statistics Agency of Manitoba, when I first started my search about 15 years ago, stated only that he was born in England1.

His 1893 marriage record that I obtained shortly after that from Vital Statistics Manitoba2 indicated that he was born in London. And what was vitally important for my later research, his mother’s name, Mary REYNOLDS, was documented there.

On the other hand, an item relating to his death, obtained from the Diocese of Rupert's Land Anglican Archives3, stated that his place of birth was Birmingham.

And to add to the mystery, two of Augustin’s children’s marriage certificates from the 1920’s listed his birthplace as Manchester. So was it London, Birmingham or Manchester? All were possibilities but no one seemed to know for sure.

For ten years off and on I tried to find his birth certificate under the name he was known by in Canada, that is, Augustin Richard HAGUE. Finding no success I finally decided that I would wade through the entire microfilm of 1868 births in England, looking at every child born that year with what to me was the somewhat unusual first name of Augustin.

Since his surname was HAGUE I decided to start with the H’s. The very first name beginning with H in the March quarter of 1868 was Gustav Richard Rudolph HAAG4. Since the name Gustav sounds something like Augustin, and Richard was thought to have been his middle name, I ordered the certificate. To my amazement, this Gustav’s mother was Mary Margaret HAAG, formerly REYNOLDS! So I had found my ancestor’s place of birth at last, on Frith Street in Soho, the artists’ quarter of London - although with a very German-sounding name.

Further research led me to discover something that none of us, his descendants, had known - that Gustav/ Augustin’s father, Theodore HAÁG, was a violinist and orchestra conductor, born in Budapest, son of another Gustav HAÁG, a major in the Austrian army. Theodore had immigrated to England on the ship, the Magnet, in 1851, and was enumerated in the 1851 UK census as Theodore “HAGEN”, Professor of Music5, Bateman’s Buildings, Soho, London.

In the 1861 UK census Theodore is shown in Newcastle-upon-Tyne with his wife, Mary, and their first two children, Charles (age 4) and Louis (1 month). In the 1871 census, Theodore is enumerated twice! In one case he’s shown in Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester, as married with children: Charles (14), Albert (7), Mary (5) and “Gustave” (age 3). But there’s no mention of his wife, Mary, or their second son, Louis. In the second enumeration he’s shown as a widower, stopping by in a coffee house at 23 and 24 Charing Cross, London, with fellow Professor of Music, Frederick “NAWIRTH” (actually NEUWIRTH)6.

In 1874, Theodore died at only 49 years of age, leaving his children all under the age of 18 as orphans, including my grandfather Gustav who by then was only 6 years old. It is therefore no wonder that so much of the family history was lost.

The 1881 British census shows Gustav, shown as Augustine (with a final “e” on the name) HAAG, living in a Roman Catholic orphanage, St. Phillips, at 11 Oliver Road in Birmingham. His four siblings - Charles Maria Henry, Louis Paul Gustavus Rudolph, Albert Edward and Mary - are nowhere to be found in the 1881 census.

For a long time I had no information about Augustin’s whereabouts between his appearance in the 1881 UK census and his 1893 marriage in Winnipeg, Canada. At some point I put a post on the HAAG Genforum7. Not long afterwards I received an e-mail message from England from the granddaughter of Albert Edward, one of Augustin’s brothers. Albert’s granddaughter had her grandfather’s army records which listed as his next of kin, his brother Gustav (my grandfather) at MCGEE’S Farm, Eardley Post Office, Quebec, Canada, just across the river from Ottawa.

Family lore had indicated that Augustin had come to Canada as a boy with an aunt but that the aunt had decided to go back to England. No one seemed to know where his parents were and why he would have come with an aunt.

On the chance that he might have been sent to Canada with a group of orphans, I wrote to the Dr. Barnardo Homes in England but no records were found. I then tried the Catholic Children's Society (Westminister)8 who confirmed that they had Gustav HAAG listed on their database of Canadian migrants, that he had sailed in 1881/2, and that he had been sent to Ottawa, Ontario.

So it seems that Gustav was indeed one of the Home Children recognized in 2010 by the Canadian Parliament in the officially designated Year of the British Home Child.

At the time I was researching this, the ships’ passenger lists of child migrants were being transcribed by the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa9. A preliminary draft of the transcription showed a “Henry HOAG”, age 14, sailing from Liverpool on October 28th, 1881, on the ship Peruvian with Father MANNING’S group of 13 children destined for Quebec. I checked some of the boys’ names from the Peruvian ship in the 1881 UK census and found that, while a number of them were listed in orphanages in that year, there was no such person as “Henry HOAG” anywhere in the 1881 census. The name on the microfilm of the ship’s passenger list is extremely difficult to read - almost illegible - but it has now been transcribed as Gustav HAAG and that is how it appears is on the Library and Archives Canada Home Children site10. The handwritten names may be seen on page 1 of the Peruvian passsenger list at the Library and Archives Canada Passenger Lists 1865-1922 site which indicates that Cardinal MANNING’S group was “sent to the Bishop of Ottawa”11.

I would be interested in knowing about Augustin’s life at MCGEE’S Farm in Eardley, Quebec, and where he was between his arrival there and the time of his 1893 marriage in Winnipeg. I am hoping that some further information may be revealed.

As a postscript I could add that knowing one’s ancestor’s religious denomination can usually be helpful to genealogists in tracking down the records. We always thought that my grandfather was Roman Catholic. The story was that he didn’t tell my grandmother, who was a Protestant from Northern Ireland with family roots in the Orange Order, and that she only found out after they were married when a priest came to the door. But in the computer age new, and sometimes contradictory, information is always coming to light. Not long ago Ancestry put a collection of London, England, Births and Baptisms, 1813-1906 on line, including records from more than 10,000 Church of England parishes. Lo and behold if it doesn’t include the baptisms of Gustav HAAG at 6 years of age and his older brother, Albert Edward HAAG, in the Church of England (Anglican) Parish of St. Paul’s, Walworth, Surrey (now part of London) on July 15th and 23rd , 1874, not long before their father, Theodore HAAG’S death in Newington, Surrey, on September 1st, 1874, of phthisis (tuberculosis).

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1 Manitoba Family Services and Consumer Affairs, Vital Statistics Agency, 254 Portage Avenue Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3C 0B6. Summary now on line at http://vitalstats.gov.mb.ca/Query.php where his death is listed twice - as Augustus HAGNE and Augustus HAGUR.

2 Shown on http://vitalstats.gov.mb.ca/Query.php as Augustus Richard Hogue. 3 Diocese of Rupert's Land Anglican Archives, 935 Nesbitt Bay, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3T 1W6

archives@rupertsland.ca Listed as Augustus HAGUE. 4 I found the record on the Family History Library microfilm of Births in England, March Quarter, 1868, but

it is now shown on FreeBMD at http://www.freebmd.org.uk/.

5 I’ve come to learn that this term meant a practising musician rather than an academic.

6 On the Ancestry site, the second enumeration is mis-transcribed as Theodore “HOAG” and so I didn’t find it at first, and learned only later that he might have been a widower in 1871 when I found the World Vital Records transcription.

7 http://genforum.genealogy.com/haag/ 8 Post Adoption & Care Team Leader, Catholic Children's Society (Westminster), 73 St Charles Square,

London, England W10 6EJ 9 http://www.bifhsgo.ca/ 10 http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/home-children/index-e.html?HPSESSID=3i68f1h5noveqgrs5f0tufefp2

11 http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/passenger/001045-119.01-e.php? &sisn_id_nbr=1857&interval=20&&PHPSESSID=uedl33bs1eu4r1k0f12trvvtv1

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