My First Post

On January 9, 2012 I was kindly mentioned in Jeff Mahoney's article in the Hamilton Spectator in reaction to an email I had sent him, that one reacting to a story of a woman who grew up in the Hamilton  Jail.  My mention was in regard to a story my Grandpa Lee (Howard Kenneth Lee) told me about 15 years ago as I was gearing up my genealogy research.  I always joke how I would often 'interrogate' my poor grandparents about the past, almost to the point of shining a light in their eyes and demanding the truth.  This was grounded in a kernel of truth.

One day when asking my Grandpa Lee what he remembered about his grandparents, he was always a little cagey about what he would give me, maybe because he honestly didn't know that much, but more likely I had to earn the info.  Grandpa admired a good work ethic. I would ask him about his Grandfather on his mothers side, William Berry one day.  I knew he was a turnkey at the Barton Street jail, and I remembered my dad saying he had a steel plate in his head from an injury sustained in an attempted jailbreak. I don't remember where we were when we had this conversation, possible the Moose Lodge on Barton Street, or maybe at my dad's, but I asked him if he remembered if he recalled when his Grandfather was injured.  He said he did, he was pretty young and at the time didn't know exactly what was going on, other than he and his mother were on an HSR Trolley downtown and a police officer told his mother about the jailbreak.  His mother left with the policeman to be at the Hospital for her father.

Keep in mind, this is how I remember the conversation between Grandpa and I, time does funny things to the memory.

"Grandpa, do you recall how old you were at the time? "

" I dunno, I was young, pretty little"

'Did your Mother know the policeman?"

"yeah, maybe a guy from the Witness" (My great grandparents were staunch Johovah Witnesses, My Great Grandpa Percy Lee was an Elder)

"Do you recall if there was snow on the ground? "

"Why do you need that?"

"I'm trying to establish when to look for this in the paper, I assume it would have been in the Spectator"

"Yeah, it' was cold, it was around my birthday" (Bingo, Grandpa was born in Nov 1912)

"How did you get home? "

"My mother told the (HSR) driver to drop me off at Main and Margaret" (where they lived at the time, and where the trolleys used to loop from King to Main Streets). "and he did. "

I never did ask Grandpa if his brothers were with him at this time, he never mentioned them,  but that would have made more sense, his eldest brother Al would have been around 4-5 years older than Grandpa.   It seemed like a different era where trolley Drivers and police acted differently than today, and it is entirely likely the trolley drive did exactly that without complaint.   I'm told thats how people did things back then.

In my research at the Hamilton Public Library, special collections, I learned they have scrap books all indexed for all the major stories in Hamilton, and they had a scrap book or two on Hamilton Jail.  through their kindly existence i found many articles from the Spectator and the Hamilton Herald, including a picture of my 2 X Great Grandfather, William Berry, Turnkey.  I made photocopies of all I could find and returned to my Grandfather.   I felt like I earned that information, I think he did too.