JOHN LUTHER MORRIS

	Born	16 Jul 1869 in Alton, ON
	Married	Jun 1891 to Lillie Eva Cantelon
	Died	21 Dec 1906 in Medicine Hat, AB, CAN

Parents of John:

• Father: William Morris
• Mother: Mary McSpadden

(Lillie Eva Cantelon was born 14 Jun 1942 in Clinton, ON)

Children:

• Earl David
• Fern Edith
• Ethel May
• Edward John
• Allan Arthur
• William Reginald
• Eva Louie

John’s Early Years

John spent his very early years in the Caledon, Ontario area. It has yet to be determined how he managed to meet Lillie, as the Cantelons lived in the Goderich/Clinton area, and given that this was the mid-1800's, those towns were some distance away from his home town. However, somehow they did meet and marry.

John and Lillie

Their firstborn was Earl David and was born in the Caledon area in late 1893. Then the family moved to Wisconsin, USA, probably in the spring of 1894. There they established a farm near Mellon. The next two children, Fern Edith (1895) and Ethel May (1897) were born in Wisconsin. Shortly after that the family moved to Medicine Hat, Alberta, where they started a homestead just north of the town. The remaining children, Edward John (1899), Alan Arthur (1902, William Reginald (1904) and Eva Louie (1907) were born in Medicine Hat.

It appears that John did not take to farming very well, as he soon went into carpentry, building some of the early houses in Medicine Hat. There is a set of binders in the City Clerk's Office at the City Hall in Medicine Hat that are there as a result of a project to document the history of early houses and businesses in Medicine Hat. John's name appears on some of the pages of those binders as the builder.

The Final Years for John

It should be noted that John passed away at the age of 37 of causes unknown leaving behind a widow with a lot of responsibilities, that is, children to take care of.

Footnotes

-- EarlMorris - 24 Feb 2006
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