Walter Currie
Walter Currie (22 August 1868 - March 1954) was a Scottish-Canadian-American who worked in the wool industry and had six daughters.
He spent his first 14 years in Scotland, lived in Canada until age 36, and lived the rest of his life in America until his death at age 85.
Namesake
In the Scottish census of 1851, a 13-year-old Walter Currie appears with his 5-year-old brother John Currie as living in a house headed by a 38-year-old Christina Currie. That would put this elder Walter as having been born in 1838. Therefore it appears that Walter Currie 1868, the subject of this article, was named after his uncle.
Early life
Currie was born 22 August 1868 in Scotland, to John Currie and Mary Riddell.
At 14, he, his parents, his brother and two sisters boarded the S.S. Corea in June 1883 to emigrate to Canada.
Marriage and children
On 3 Feb 1893 a Walter Currie appears in the Almonte Gazette as treasurer of the masonic lodge #79. He was 24 at the time.
At age 25, on 27 September 1893, he married 23-year-old Louisa Ward, who was born in England in 1869 or 1870 to parents Heneretta Berry and John Ward.
With Louisa he had six daughters:
- Henriette Berry "Etta" Javery (1895 - 1967), moved to Florida
- Mary Riddell Currie (10 February 1898 - 24 March 1976)
- Ethel Louise Currie (11 October 1901 - 12 August 1974)
- Grace Josephine McDonald (19 June 1907 - 10 February 1981)
- Jean Dorothy Currie (1910 - 1 July 1993)
- Ruth Leona Reeves (8 June 1912 - 12 January 1981), moved to Orlando, Orange, Florida, also, and died there.
It's likely their first two daughters were named after their maternal and paternal grandmothers, respectively.
According to the Canadian census of 1901 he was still living in Almonte, with a religion of Presbyterian, and his occupation as Warper Wheit.
Move to America
He emigrated to Worcester, Massechussetts, USA in 1905 with his wife and children, likely to take a job at a mill there.
By the time of the 1910 census he is an "overseer" in a woolen mill in Worcester. His 81-year-old father-in-law was living with them, and listed as blind and deaf/dumb.
He's listed in the 1920 American census his occupation is listed as Dressentinder, in the Woolen Mill industry, with a rented home, he had just moved into in 1920, on Colton Street, in Worcester Ward 5, Worcester, Massachusetts.
In 1930, he's living on Southbridge Street, Worcester, with his wife and Grace, Gene, and Ruth. He, his wife, and Gene are unemployed, but his daughter Grace is an assembler at a machine shop, and his daughter Ruth is a clerk at a telephone company. The woolen industry was evidently in severe decline by this point.
His wife died 28 September 1930, according to the Worchseter Directory, page 634.
On 17 July 1931, the Almonte Gazette reported that he returned to Almonte to visit his sisters Christena and Grace:
Mr. Walter Currie of Worcester, Mass., is visiting with his sisters, Mrs. Edward LeMaistre and Miss Grace Currie at present.
Relationship with extended family
My dad (Jack Currie) did refer to him as “Uncle Wattie” although I never did ask if he (Dad) had ever met him (Walter).
— Bill Currie, 29 May 2018
Death
He died in Worcester in March 1954.
Attestation
He appears in the Canadian census in 1901, and the American censuses of 1910, 1920, and 1930.
Sources
Almonte Gazette, 3 Feb 1893, Page 1 [1]
Almonte Gazette, 11 March 1954, Page 2 [2]
Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, Death Index, 1901-1980 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013. Original data: Department of Public Health, Registry of Vital Records and Statistics. Massachusetts Vital Records Index to Deaths [1916–1970]. Volumes 66–145. Facsimile edition. Boston, MA: New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, Massachusetts.
Ancestry.com and Genealogical Research Library (Brampton, Ontario, Canada). Ontario, Canada, Marriages, 1826-1936 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Original data: Archives of Ontario; Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Registrations of Marriages, 1869-1928
Year: 1920; Census Place: Worcester Ward 5, Worcester, Massachusetts; Roll: T625_750; Page: 12B; Enumeration District: 263 Source: Ancestry.com. 1920 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Images reproduced by FamilySearch. Original data: Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920. (NARA microfilm publication T625, 2076 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C. For details on the contents of the film numbers, visit the following NARA web page: NARA. Note: Enumeration Districts 819-839 are on roll 323 (Chicago City).
Year: 1930; Census Place: Worcester, Worcester, Massachusetts; Page: 18A; Enumeration District: 0069 Source: Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002. Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930. T626, 2,667 rolls.
U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995, Worcester 1931, page 634.