Edith,
Ethel and Lizzie Belford
on the steps of their Lisgar
Street home from a family album belonging to Simon Fuller
The Province of Upper Canada was established in 1791 to accommodate Loyalist refugees from the United States. It included all of Southern Ontario and part of Northern Ontario.
Jane Eliza (Jennie) Thomas Belford was born about November 9, 1838 or 1839 in Toronto, Canada. Her parents were John Morgan Thomas and Mary Lewis. She was baptised July 7, 1839. The sponsors were Jane (Attilia) and Alexander Smith.
The Dumfries Reformer Marriages reported that she was married to Charles Belford on November 14, 1864 in New York at the Church of Ascension by the Reverend Edward O. Flag.
Charles Belford was born on June 7, 1834 in Cork County, Ireland. His parents were William Belford and Mary Cook. He immigrated to Toronto in 1857.
Charles and Jennie's children were: Ethel Jane Belford Fuller (1866), Edith Louise Belford Beament (1870),
Elizabeth (Lizzie)
Garner Belford (1871),
Maud Alice Belford, (1872),
Charles Audley Belford (1875),
Albert Victian Belford (1877), and
John Alexander Belford (1879).
Charles was the corresponding secretary of the Ontario Literary Society between 1860 and 1861. He was editor-in-chief of his great-uncle James Beaty's paper, The Leader, from 1867 until 1871.
At the time of the 1871 census they were living in the St. David's Ward of Toronto. The household consisted of Charles age 34, Jennie age 31, Jane (Ethel) age 4, Edith age 1, and Jennie (Lizzie) age 3 months as well as Charles' 16 year old brother, Alexander and two servants.
In 1872 Charles was appointed chief editor of The Mail, and in 1876 he co-founded the publishing firm of Belford Brothers, which published a journal of literature and art, Belford's Monthly Magazine, as well as British and American reprints.
Albert died at 3 months in October, 1877.
Charles resigned from The Mail and Belford Brothers in 1878 due to ill-health. In 1879 he was appointed secretary to the Dominion Board of Appraisers and moved to Ottawa. (from
the Dominion Annual Register and Review, 1880-1881, p. 392.)
Charles died on December 19, 1880 of consumption which he had had for three years.
In 1881 Jennie and the children were living in the Wellington Ward of Ottawa. The household consisted of Jennie age 40, Ethel age 14, Eda (Edith) age 11, Lizie age 9, Maude age 8, Charles age 5, and John age 2.
The city of York was incorporated as Toronto on March 6, 1834. The city grew and developed significantly during the the 19th century. The Irish famine brought a large number of Irish immigrants to the city and they became the largest ethnic group.
Tuberculosis (TB) is a common and often deadly infectious disease. It was called consumption. It usually attacks the lungs and the symptoms are coughing blood, fever, night sweats, and weight loss.
The peak period of Irish immigration to Canada was during the Great Famine between 1845-1849. Most immigrants went to Canada because the fares were lower. Ships that reached Canada lost many passengers and even more died while in quarantine. From the reception station at Grosse-Ile, most survivors were sent to Montréal. The typhus outbreak of 1847 and 1848 killed many of the new immigrants. An economic boom following their arrival allowed many men to work in on the expanding railroad, in construction, in the logging industry, or on farms.
Charles Belford, journalist and publisher was born in Cork, County
Cork, Ireland, 25 April 1837 of Irish Protestant parents; m. in Toronto,
Jennie Thomas, 11 Nov. 1864; d. Ottawa, 19 Dec. 1880.
Charles Belford came to Toronto with his two younger
brothers, Alexander and Robert J., in 1857. Charles had been trained in
Ireland as a draftsman but he turned to newspaper work in Toronto and went
on the staff of the Leader, published by his great-uncle, James Beaty. In
1867 he succeeded Charles Lindsey as editor-in-chief of the newspaper,
which ceased publication shortly before the end of 1871. Belford was a
vigorous writer and in March 1872 he became editor of a more outspoken
Conservative organ, the newly formed Toronto Mail. This was the Toronto
mouthpiece of Sir John A. Macdonald, whose fortunes were soon to be
overshadowed by the Pacific scandal in 1873 but whose loyal supporter
Belford nevertheless remained. In 1876, while continuing his editorial
duties with the Mail, Belford entered into partnership with his two brothers
to establish the publishing firm of Belford Brothers. Their stock-in-trade
was the publication of cheap, pirated reprints of popular British and
American authors, notably Mark Twain.
The first Canadian Copyright Act of 1872 had been
disallowed, but the act of 1875 made it legal to reprint in Canada any
American book not coming under the imperial copyright act of 1842, which
protected editions published first in the British Isles, or not registered
in the Department of Agriculture, Ottawa, within 30 days of publication in
the United States. The Belfords' publishing venture was within the law. At
the same time, however, it was in part a reprisal against American
publishers who pirated British authors and harmed their Canadian
counterparts by flooding the market with cheap reprints. Belford Brothers
published unauthorized editions of American subscription books which did not
conform to the Canadian act of 1875 and sold them to retail outlets by mail
order at prices undercutting the American editions. Thus they turned the
tables on American publishers who indignantly accused them of sharp
practice. Other Canadian publishers soon followed the Belfords' lead.
Belford Brothers operated from 1876 to 1878, during which
time the firm published, in addition to pirated reprints, a journal of
literature and art, Belford's Monthly Magazine, and a few Canadian books.
Among the authors published were Twain, W. D. Howells, Harriet Beecher
Stowe, Anthony Trollope, May Agnes Fleming [Early], Jean Talon Lesperance,
and G. M. Grant. Children's books, religious tracts, reference works, books
of travel and adventure, biographies, and autobiographies appeared in rapid
succession.
Charles Belford withdrew from the firm in 1878 and his
brothers reorganized the business with a new partner, G. M. Rose, as the
Rose-Belford Publishing Company. Within a year there was another shake-up:
Alexander and Robert Belford withdrew, and with James Clarke formed
Belfords, Clarke, and Company with headquarters in Chicago where Alexander
married a daughter of Walter McNally of the publishers, Rand McNally
Company.
It was a physical breakdown that made it necessary for
Charles to dissociate himself from his brothers' publishing activities and
to give up, at the same time, his editorship of the Mail. An able organizer
whose counsel was highly regarded by the Conservative party, he had worked
to a state of exhaustion during the federal election campaign of 1878, and
collapsed on the night of the Conservative victory. By autumn 1879 he was
sufficiently recovered to accept an appointment as secretary to the Dominion
Board of Appraisers and move with his family to Ottawa. He was still in
frail health, however, and died the following year, survived by his wife,
two sons, and four daughters.
The Great Famine or the Irish Potato Famine was between 1845 and 1852. About a million people died and a million more emigrated. It was caused by a potato blight. The famine permanently changed Ireland.
Samuel L. Clemens (1835 – 1910), was known by his pen name, Mark Twain. He grew up in Hannibal, Missouri which is in Ralls and Marion Counties.
During the American Revolution a Tory or Loyalist was used in for those who remained loyal to the British Crown.
By Meriel V. M. Beament Bradford in The Beechwood Way, Volume 5, Issue 18
The Belford sisters
Left a Lasting Legacy
Women have a way of disappearing in cemeteries. They are often
buried beside their spouse and subsumed under the husband’s family
name. On the Fuller monument in section 39, featured in the Winter 2010
edition of The Beechwood Way, is inscribed the name of Ethel Jane Belford,
May 28, 1866-Jan 10, 1939. Ethel Jane
and her sister, Edith Louise Belford
Beament (1869-1957) lie close beside
each other, as Edith is buried across the
way in section 51 in the Beament family plot.
These women were the daughters of Charles Belford, journalist and
publisher, and his wife, Jennie.
Charles Belford was unsuccessfully
sued for literary piracy by Mark Twain
and in 1872, as editor of the Tory paper,
The Toronto Mail, became a strong
supporter of Sir John A. Macdonald and
was instrumental in helping him overcome the effect of the Pacific scandal of
1873. Charles subsequently assisted
Macdonald in winning the hard fought
election of 1878, thereby putting the
Tories back into power which they retained until 1891.
Soon after the 1878
election, accompanied by Jane Eliza
(Jennie) Thomas, the daughter of a Toronto piano and organ builder, Charles
brought his young family of six children to Ottawa. Here he assumed the
position of Dominion Appraiser (chief
customs officer) and looked after the
Irish vote for the Tories.
Having worked on the 1878 election
campaign “to a state of exhaustion,"
Charles died just before Christmas
1880, leaving his dependents without
any visible means of support. His body
was kept at Beechwood until the spring
when it was taken back to Toronto for
interment. The bereaved Belford family
remained in Ottawa living in Wellington ward and becoming part of the Ottawa social scene.
Ethel Jane [Belford] made an excellent marriage to Thomas William Fuller III,
Chief Architect Dominion of Canada,
and produced two children, Caroline
Belford Fuller and Captain Thomas
George Fuller IV, known as the “Pirate
of the Adriatic" for his WWII exploits.
Edith Louise [Belford] also made a very successful marriage, having met her future
husband, Thomas Arthur Beament (1870-1958), an up-and-coming young
lawyer, at an outing of the Bytown Bicycle Club. Prior to her marriage at age
28, Edith supported herself and helped
the Belford family finances by working
as a “typewriter" in Sir John A.’s civil
service, no doubt a position the PM
helped her acquire as a way of assisting
the family of his old campaign supporter. Edith was an innovator, both as
a young working woman and as the first
woman to ride a bicycle in Ottawa, having taken lessons at the Riding Academy in New York’s Central Park and
importing her own machine to Canada.
Thomas Arthur and Edith Louise built a
new house for their growing family at 9
Marlborough Avenue, now the Embassy of the Ivory Coast.
The two sisters were close and spent
their summers at Britannia in adjacent
cottages, where their children could
play together while the husbands commuted to their offices in the city. Pictures from the early days at Britannia
show the families in the Beament automobile, supposedly the first automobile
in Ottawa. Other photos show the patriotic fervour of the young Tom Fuller,
playing soldiers and cowboys and Indians with his older sister Carol and the
Beament cousins. The Fullers continue
to live in Britannia and have maintained
contact with some of the Beament clan
still resident in the Ottawa area.
