The First to Move North of the Border

I have been trying to track down my great-grandfather Edward Donahue for some time now with great difficulty. He came to Canada from Minnesota and had a family in Saskatchewan with his wife Clara. I’ve often wondered what brought him to Canada- why did he leave behind his family? Why didn’t he maintain connections?

This is where I believe that Julia (Donahue) McElgunn enters the picture. She was his aunt who came to Canada before him. She may have put the bee in his bonnet to move northwards. In fact, censuses place the McElgunns in Gull Lake, Saskatchewan the year that Edward crossed the border. This is hardly a coincidence because Edward and Clara ended up settling in Gull Lake.

Julia (Donahue) McElgunn and her family

Today I made another discovery when I found two other members of ancestry.com who had posted much more detailed information on the Donahue-McElgunn family. There is a photograph of Julia and her husband John McElgunn along with their children (left), and another of Julia as an elderly woman with several of her middle-aged children (below). There were photographs of their children as adults (also below).

At this point I’d just like to thank these two fellow researchers, wbond1958 and TierneyLawler for sending these precious family photos into the nether regions of the internet.

I have determined from these other distant relatives’ research that the Donahue-McElgunn family moved from High Forest, Olmstead, Minnesota (1895) to Redpath, Traverse, Minnesota (1900), before crossing the border. It turns out that the couple had 9 children while still in Minnesota (8 survived), before coming up to Canada to live. After crossing the border, the family lived in Moose Jaw (1911) and then Gull Lake (1916). These children would have all been Edward’s cousins.

The surviving McElgunn children and their stories are as follows:

Frank McElgunn

Frank Thomas McElgunn (1888-1917) lived in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan according to the 1911 federal census. He died in North Battleford, Sask. on March 17th.

Dennis McElgunn

Dennis William McElgunn (1889-1970) was born in Stewartville just south of the Donahue estate. He was likely named for his maternal grandfather. Dennis married a woman called Adah Weaver in Gull Lake on September 25, 1917. He must have eventually moved back to the United States, as he was the proprietor of Mack’s bicycle shop in Phoenix, Arizona. He died there on the 16th of March.

John Edward McElgunn (1890-1916) was born on the 16th of September. Like his siblings, he spent his early childhood in Minnesota and then moved up to Saskatchewan with the family. Unfortunately, as a young man at the age of 25, he died in a farming accident on April 9th-he never married or had children.

Michael McElgunn

Michael Martin McElgunn (1892-1953) was born on February 19th in Olmstead. He did live in Saskatchewan with his family as a teenager, but moved back to Minnesota where he married Ann McDermitt in Rochester in 1918. The couple had at least one child, and Mike moved back to Canada again later on. He died in Lethbridge, Alberta on September 1st.

Ann Veronica Bechtel (1893-1984) was born on July 18th. She married Cyrus Edward Bechtel in Gull Lake, Saskatchewan on November 27, 1912 and they lived in Carmichael for several years. Ann and Cyrus had 7 children (2 daughters and 5 sons), all but one whom are still living. The family eventually moved back across the border to Minnewaukan, Benson county, South Dakota. Ann died in Los Angeles on May 4th.

Leo McElgunn

Leo Joseph McElgunn (1894-1977) was born on December 19th in Stewartville. At age 23 he was drafted as a soldier in Regina, Saskatchewan. He married Marie Francis Dyer, although I don’t know whether or not they had children. Leo died in Medicine Hat, Alberta on the 24th of May at age 82.

Bernard James McElgunn (b. 1895) was born on October 25th. Like his brother Leo, he was drafted into the military in 1918 and went overseas to fight in the war. When he returned to Saskatchewan, he married Catherine Philomena Hengel (October 24, 1920) in Shaunavon. They had a son, Myron James,  the following year (now deceased).

Lizzie McElgunn

Lizzie Gertrude Smith (1897-1988) was born on the 22nd of September in Stewartville.  She married a man named Gordon Murray Smith at City Hall in Shaunavon, Saskatchewan on May 7, 1921. The couple had four children (three daughters who are all still living, and a son who is now deceased). The family eventually moved to British Columbia as her parents had, because they both died in New Westminster, BC.

It has been a wonder to find this McElgunn family, and I plan to head over to New Westminster in the next month to visit Julia’s grave. She and her family are my surrogate connection to the mysterious and ever elusive Edward Donahue.