Heritage: Raising My Children & My Parents Final Years

by Annie Coleman (Kerr) Sexton, published in Stanton Stats February 17, 1995

When I was thirty-one, in the year 1920, [my first daughter,] Kathleen, was born. She was followed in quick succession by four brothers and two sisters. Ruth was born in 1930 on my parents’ golden wedding anniversary. I wasn’t the efficient housekeeper my Mother was, but, somehow I managed to keep all those children fed and clothed. We were indulgent parents, although I used the rod plenty.

One boy, a blue baby, only lived four days. Murray at twenty gave his life in World War II. George at seventeen years drowned in a dugout on the farm. Don was in the Army in World War II but came home to us.

The summer when he was eighty-four, [Father] developed mild pneumonia and after two days he passed away. His funeral in Deloraine United Church, conducted by his life time friend Rev. Lousley, was August 14, 1934, just two weeks after his eighty-fourth birthday.

When Father died, Mother was seventy-eight and she went back to her Catholic faith. For a few years she lived with different relatives. Then she became a semi-invalid in a wheel chair and she spent her last three years with me. In August, 1941, she passed away at the age of eighty-three. Her last wish was fulfilled [which was] to have her funeral in the Catholic Church but to buried beside Father in the Protestant cemetery.

Now [my children] are all living in their own homes in Canada and the United States. They are all so good to me I feel I don’t deserve all their kindness. Each Winter I live with one of them and during Summer I live alone in Deloraine. Ruth and her family, who live on my farm, visit me often so I don’t get lonesome.

I find this a very friendly town and I have grand neighbours. I’m now eighty-one but I’m very content and find much of interest in life.

(written October 21, 1970)