Irish Ancestry

 

My elusive maternal grandmother Bertha Burns was born in Quebec City, Canada in 1892 to George Burns and Elizabeth Williamson, the youngest of four children, Albert, William, Ethel, and Bertha.

George Burns died when Bertha was but a year old, Ethel never saw adulthood. I think she died of Tuberculosis but that is merely hearsay with no proof. I've never been able to find any concrete details regarding William.

Albert, the oldest, married in Montreal and he and his wife Lily moved to Scarborough, ON He was a telegraph operator for the Canadian National Railway.

Apparently sometime after my great-grandfather George Burns death, in 1893, Elizabeth and Bertha traveled to Montreal, I wonder what led them there.

Bertha and her mother Elizabeth are found in the borough of St. Laurent in Montreal on the 1911 Canadian census living as boarders at a rooming house owned by DeLima Fisk. This was a female only arrangement as single women did not live by themselves in the first half of the twentieth century.

Bertha married my grandfather Ovila Bernard in 1925. They had 4 children, Norman, Pauline, George, and Lorne. She died 19 September 1955 in Montreal from an accidental fall.

Elizabeth
Williamson Burns

My equally elusive great-grandmother and Bertha's mother, Elizabeth Williamson Burns, also known as 'Lizzie,' was born in Quebec City in1858 to Jane Pyle and Samuel Williamson. 

Elizabeth married George Burns, a stevedore in 1882. They had 4 children, Albert, William, Ethel and Bertha. 

George died in 1893 and is buried in the historic Mount Hermon cemetery in Quebec City. 

Albert married Elizabeth Murphy in Montreal then moved to York, Ontario, and had several children. He was a telegraph operator for the Canadian National Railway. I've never found Ethel or William. Ethel was said to have died of TB; the whereabouts of William is still a mystery.

Elizabeth passed away on May 9, 1941, of heart failure, she was 83 years old.

He was 'Uncle Albie' to us. He was my grandmother's oldest brother, my great-grandmother's first-born son. He came to my great-grandmother's Lizzie's funeral, but no one remembers him visiting on a regular basis.

He became a supervisor for the National Canadian Railway, he passed away on July 9, 1945 leaving his wife Elizabeth known as Lily and five children, Christine, Bertha, James, John, and Robert, one daughter Veronica preceded him in death in 1922.