#136 MY GREAT GRANDPARENTS AS FOSTER FAMILY
TWO LITTLE GIRLS
Census records remain one of the most foundational tools in
genealogy because they help connect people, places, and timelines in ways few
other sources can; they provide snapshots of individuals and families at
specific points in time.
Some people underestimate census records because they can
seem incomplete or unreliable at first glance. Information was often
given verbally and recorded by an enumerator, so names, ages, and birthplaces
may be misspelled or inaccurate. Others find them less important because they
may repeat information already known from family stories or other sources, or
because individuals can be hard to find due to indexing errors, name
variations, or missing entries. Census records must be carefully analysed as
they reveal relationships, ages, occupations, residences, and migration
patterns, they help researchers track ancestors across generations and place
them within their social and historical context.
Census records revealed a quietly remarkable story in my
family: two different sets of my great-grandparents opened their home to a motherless
child and stepped up to provide stability and support in a time of hardship.
Through these records, a deeper narrative emerges—one of compassion,
responsibility, and community ties.
It was not uncommon, especially in rural communities, for
neighbours and extended family to take in a motherless child. In fact, this
kind of informal fostering was often the first and most natural response to a family
crisis as government support services were minimal and widowed fathers often
could not manage childcare while working long hours, Thus neighbours, relatives
and church communities stepped in to provide immediate care, continuity of
schooling and emotional stability.
I am in awe of my great grandparents’ compassion.
Of course, I wanted to know more about each of these
girls—what led to their being fostered by my great grandparents and what
happened to them in life.
ELIZA “LYLE” JANE SRIGLEY
It was on the 1881 census for Turnberry Township, Huron County that I found Eliza, aged 11, living with my paternal great-grandparents, August and Adelaide (Netterfield) Homuth and their children, John and Elizabeth. It is noted that she is attending school and was Presbyterian (as were the Homuths). The personal connection between Eliza (for some reason always known as Lyle) and my great-grandparents is not known although they were definitely neighbours. How long Lyle lived with the family is also unknown.
Eliza “Lyle” Jane Srigley was the second youngest of a
family of six children. Her parents were Richard and Jane; he worked as a painter-carpenter.
Sadly Jane, aged 35, died in September1876 of apoplexy and paralysis (stoke).
It is quite likely that the children were moved out shortly after their mother’s death because father Richard did not seem to be a stable presence. He had been charged for assault and battery (1865), then, in 1878, sent to jail for threatening language. In October 1877, “the Srigley house of ill-fame [was] broken up in Wingham.” The next year “Maggie Hough, a prostitute, who has been living with Dick Srigley of Wingham for some time past was sentenced to two months in gaol on a charge of vagrancy and ill behaviour. Wingham could very well spare a few more such characters…We were always under the impression that Wingham was a moral town but the last sentence makes it look bad.” In August 1877, Richard, aged 44, married 17 year Julia Erwin and they had one son. None of Richard’s children from the first marriage lived with him on the 1881 census; daughter, Eliza, was living with the Homuths. It seems that Julia died in the 1880s and son Allan was adopted. Things worsened for Richard through the 1880s. He went blind, his property was forfeited by the municipality and eventually, indigent, he was given monthly $3-$8 charity allowances. Richard passed Jan. 5 1893 OBIT—clinton era
Meanwhile Lyle left Huron County, made her way to Detroit, then on to Winnipeg. (What she was doing is unknown.) On December 26, 1894 she married widower George Orpen, a tinsmith. (George's brother was a very popular, wealthy and well-known Toronto race-track owner and philanthropist. He married Lyle's cousin.) George had come from Toronto, worked in Winnipeg for about 15 years before the couple returned to Ontario. There he became a tinsmith-contractor, a skilled tradesman who secured roofing, eavestroughs, watertank and metalwork projects and hired/supervised a team to complete the job. George and Lyle had 3 daughters and 5 sons (one son died in 1942 at Dieppe). They lived at 564 Dovercourt Rd in Toronto, a practical, working street—modest homes, close neighbours, and a strong sense of shared daily life.
George passed Oct 17, 1925, aged 66; Lyle passed Sept 30, 1929, aged 60. They are buried in St.James Cemetery, Toronto in a now unmarked grave.
I like to believe that Lyle enjoyed a happy and satisfying life. I wonder if she ever had any contact with the Homuth foster family. Did she ever visit Wingham? Did she keep in touch with her siblings?
ELIZABETH “BETTY” SAVALOJA
It was on the 1916 Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta census that I found Betty, aged 2, listed as a “Roomer” and living with my maternal great-grandparents, Jalmar and Minni Hendrikson and their children, Kaari and Aimo on their Wiseton homestead.
Betty was the youngest child of Abraham and Kaisa (Ruonakoski)
Savaloja.
Abram was born in Finland in 1878 and married Kaisa in 1897; three children were born there. Like so many young men, he left Finland to escape Russian conscription and he arrived in the US in December 1899. Kaisa and the 3 children joined him in North Dakota in 1901. Eight more children were born in Dakota before the family left, in 1912, to take up a homestead in Saskatchewan. (This land was later flooded for the man-made Lake Diefenbaker reservoir.)
Betty was born on the family homestead on March 8, 1914. A month later, Kaisa, aged 37, died from complications from this childbirth. The task of taking care of her nine other siblings fell to Olga, the oldest daughter; then,sadly, Olga died in 1916. Olga, her mother and two sisters are buried in Saskatchewan.
It was at this time, that baby Betty was taken in by my Hendrikson
family.
On the Saskatchewan prairie, where distances were great and
formal support systems scarce, survival depended on neighbours. Among Finnish
settlers, shared language, faith, and culture created a network of mutual
responsibility. The care of this child was not simply an act of kindness, but
part of a broader tradition of community support, where families stepped in for
one another in times of crisis
There were many reasons why the Hendrikson and Savaloja families
must have known each other. Finnish families in the Wiseton-Dunblane area were
not random arrivals but part of a chain migration from Finland and later from
North Dakota. They would have met each other, maybe at church, but especially at
the local Finnish Hall, the heart of the community; these halls brought
together Finnish families from miles around to share coffee, cardamon bread,
laughter, fiddle and accordian music, dancing, celebrations and where they
could speak Finnish together; these were not small gatherings but often the
main social life of the region. Through this shared space, Finnish homesteading
families who lived far apart became part of a close-knit cultural network.
With the loss of both Kaisa and Olga, Abram took his family of five children, including Betty, back to farm in North Dakota. He died there in 1957.
Betty married Wilfred Juntunen in 1935 and they
Betty (Savaloja) Juntunen
Wilfred died in 1980, aged 63; Betty passed August 2007, aged 93. They are buried in the rural cemetery of Mt. View, Towner, North Dakota.
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