🍁Eustace Haselwood Grubbe (1876

A short while ago, at the beginning of March, I received my first message from Marianne, who lives in Canada, as a comment on my first blog posts about the Burke and Grubbe families. I was really pleased that she had enjoyed reading them. I’ve written three blogs about the families, and also, more recently, four blogs about Julia Grubbe’s diary.

Since then, she has very kindly shared her research into her branch of the family with me.

I thought, while reading, that there were probably more people out there who would be interested in what she had researched and written about her Grubbe family.

So I offered to turn her words into a blog to share on my site, which I’m pleased to say she agreed to.

Marianne also pointed me towards the website with an excellent biography of Eustace, which also shares these three wonderful wedding photos of her ancestors, originally from the British Columbia Archives.

Direct links for each photo are at the end of the blog.

1. Item D-06828 – Wedding of Eustace H. Grubbe, Hazelwood.

This is part of one of Marianne’s emails to me:

“Dear Lynn,

What an amazing collection of family trees you have produced on Ancestry. SO interesting and so well organised. I am a granddaughter of Eustace Haselwood Grubbe (1876-1951). He is the son of Robert William Grubbe, whose father was William Henry Grubbe (1812 – 1891) (died in Barrie). His father was John Grubb VI, who emigrated to Canada after selling the family manor at Horsenden in 1841. I was so thrilled to read all about William Henry’s sisters and brothers in your blog, and also the details about the one sister, Anne Elizabeth, who married Henry Haviland, a father of Confederation, and lieutenant-governor of the province of Prince Edward Island, Canada.

I am Canadian. I was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, which is where Eustace Haselwood went as a young man (moving across the country from Peterborough, Ontario, to Vancouver, a journey of thousands of miles).

He met my grandmother there and married her in 1905. (I have wedding photos which are just lovely.)

They eventually settled in Vancouver permanently. My mother, her sister, and brother were raised there.

My mother and her husband (my father is from England, but came to Vancouver during the war) lived for many years in Vancouver. I am one of seven children from that marriage”.

The Grubbe Family Story.

Eustace Haselwood Grubbe (1876–1951) was my maternal grandfather. He was born in 1876 in Peterborough, Ontario, and died in Vancouver in 1951, just two years before I was born in 1953. Although I never met him, he lived to the age of 75, quite an achievement for the time, particularly as he suffered from diabetes. I am told that he was a wonderful, loving and caring husband and father.

At the time of his death, my mother, Barbara Haselwood Grubbe, was 31 years old. She was married to my father, John Robert Potts, and was between children. Their youngest at that time, Rosi, was two years old. The other children were Diane (5), Elizabeth (8), and Robert (11), my half-brother.

The family was living in Victoria then, before later moving to Vancouver, where I was born. Three more children followed, making eight in total, seven born to my mother.

The Peterborough Generation.

Eustace’s father, Robert William Grubbe (1844–1923), was my great-grandfather. He was born in India in 1844, raised in Barrie, Ontario, and later moved to Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, in his early twenties. There, he became a banker with the Bank of Toronto, where he stayed for most of his career.

Robert William married Ada Louisa Haselwood Wrighton in 1868. He was 24, and she was 22. They had two sons:

Eustace Haselwood Grubbe (1876–1951)

Henry Haviland Grubbe (1881–1955)

Both were born in Peterborough.

2. Item D-06829 – Wedding of Eustace H. Grubbe.

From England to India to Canada: William Henry Grubbe.

Robert William’s father, William Henry Grubbe (1812–1891), was my great-great-grandfather. His life spanned continents and dramatic changes in fortune.

He was born in October 1812 in Ide, County Devon, England, to John Grubbe VI (1786–1846) and Sarah Anne Carrington (1785–1861). Just six weeks before his birth, his grandfather, John Grubb V, had died.

Soon after, the family moved to Buckinghamshire, where they took possession of the family estate, Horsenden House, a large manor set within hundreds of acres of land. William Henry was the eldest son of fourteen children (seven sons and seven daughters), though two died young.

William Henry would therefore have been the heir to the family estate upon his father’s death.

As a young man, William Henry joined the East India Company’s Madras Artillery at age 18. While in India, he married an Irishwoman, Eliza Conwell, in 1836. They had three children there. Tragically, Eliza died in 1845 in Kolhapur, India.

One of those children was Robert William Grubbe, my great-grandfather.

In 1846, William Henry remarried in Ireland, this time to Maria McGeaugh, also Irish, and soon after brought his young children to Canada. The journey would have been long and difficult, particularly for children aged roughly nine, seven, and three. William Henry died 29 Jan 1891 in Barrie, Ontario, Canada. Maria outlived him for a few years; she died in 1900.

The Fall of the Horsenden Estate.

William Henry’s father, John Grubbe VI, had inherited Horsenden House in 1812 at the age of 26. This was a large family estate held since 1662. However, financial difficulties forced him to sell the entire property in 1841 to the Duke of Buckingham.

Shortly thereafter, John emigrated to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, with his wife, seven of their children, a housekeeper, and eight servants. Despite leaving England under financial strain, the family lived in relative splendour in Charlottetown and was part of the island’s upper social class.

He purchased a large home called Holland Grove and also began building a grand estate called Falcon Wood on 280 acres of land along the Hillsborough River.

Unfortunately, John Grubbe VI died in 1846, likely of dysentery or cholera, before Falcon Wood was completed.

His widow, Sarah Anne, remained in Charlottetown for several years before returning to England in 1857, where she died in 1861.

I have no idea if there was any money at this point or who it would have gone to. The heir to the estate, William Henry, does not appear to have inherited any kind of fortune.

Falcon Wood and Its Legacy.

Falcon Wood, a very large eight-bedroomed property, though completed after John’s death, was never truly used as a family home. Instead, it was leased to tenants.

One notable tenant was Sir John A. Macdonald, Prime Minister of Canada, who stayed there in 1870 while recovering from illness.

Over time, the estate fell into disrepair. The land was later used for agricultural experimentation and eventually sold. By the late 19th century, it became the site of a mental health institution.

Further details can be found here:
Historic Places

Anne Elizabeth Grubbe and the Haviland Connection.

One of William Henry’s sisters, Anne Elizabeth Grubbe (born 1818), remained in Charlottetown when the rest of the family returned to England.

In 1847, she married Thomas Heath Haviland Jr., a prominent politician, Father of Confederation, and later Lieutenant Governor of Prince Edward Island.

The Haviland family were among the wealthiest landowners on the island.

The splendid home of his parents, Fairholm, built in 1839, still exists today as the Fairholm Boutique Inn.

Anne Elizabeth became an accomplished botanist, and her plant collection was eventually housed at Kew Gardens in London, England.

Life in Early Ontario: Barrie.

After arriving in Canada around 1847, William Henry Grubbe settled in Barrie, Ontario, a small and developing pioneer settlement of about 500 people at the time.

Life in those times, in the ‘backwoods’ of Canada was very difficult. Travel was slow and uncomfortable, disease was widespread, and many people died of accidents.

The main occupations of farming and logging required immense labour. Roads were primitive, often muddy or made of logs, and journeys to Toronto could take two days.

No railroad existed from Toronto to Barrie until 1865.

William Henry worked as a builder and raised a large family. He had eight children in total, three from his first marriage and five from his second. Tragically, his youngest child drowned at age three.

Despite these hardships, William Henry built a modest home in 1851 at 268 Codrington Street, which still stands today and is included in Barrie’s heritage tours.

He was also an artist, creating what is believed to be the earliest panoramic watercolour of Barrie in 1853.

Return to Eustace Haselwood Grubbe.

Eustace, born in 1876, moved west to Vancouver in 1898 at age 22, drawn by the opportunities of a rapidly growing city following the completion of the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway.

He married my grandmother, Bertha Marie Rouleau (on some records known as Marie Bertha Rouleau), on 3 May 1905 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. They had five children, though one tragically died at 6 months and another at age 3.

Marguerite Ada Elvina Grubbe.

Born: 22 Mar 1906, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Died: 23 Sep 1906, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Bertha Elizabeth Grubb.

Born: 2 Feb 1908, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Died: 20 Mar 1988, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

John Rouleau Grubbe.

Born: 18 Dec 1912, New Denver, British Columbia, Canada

Died: 24 Nov 2000, West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Henry Rouleau Grubbe.

Born: 22 May 1915, Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada

Died: 21 Jun 1918, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Barbara Haselwood Grubbe.

Born: 1 Mar 1920, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Died: 28 Jan 2015, Lindsay, Kawartha Lakes Municipality, Ontario, Canada.

Obituary.

My mother was the youngest child of Eustace and Bertha, and according to my uncle, a great favourite of her Dad.

She lived a long life, passing away in 2015 just shy of her 95th birthday.

She had many accomplishments, but the greatest was the birth and raising of seven healthy children.
She also raised her very young stepson as if he were her own. Her obituary is on Find A Grave.

She resided in her large residence in Smiths Falls for many years on her own, after Dad died in 2001.

In the last month of her life, my brother John and his wife took her to live with them in Lindsay, Ontario, where she died peacefully in the local hospital.