By Jill Passmore, Visitor Experience Coordinator
Rollin, Channing, and George Henry were the three oldest sons of George and Polly Ann Henry. They seem to have been very close and were the first to continue with family trends of working in photography and fruit cultivation/agriculture.
The three boys were born in East Whitby when the family was still living at the lakefront. George and Polly Ann lived on the west side of what is now Lakeview Park on Guy’s Point (Bonnie Brae Point) with neighbours and family friends, Thomas and Margery Guy.
Rollin Hayward Henry was born in 1848 and died in 1949, living to be 101 years old. He was the only grandchild to live this long. He married Almira (Myra) Simpson on June 23, 1875 in Lincoln, Ontario. Myra’s parents were from Oakville, which may account for their marriage here; there is only 60 kilometres between Oakville and Lincoln around the eastern shore of Lake Ontario. In April 1876, Rollin’s namesake was born. In 1878, their daughter Pauline was born. When Rollin Junior was five years old, the family travelled to Leavenworth, Kansas to visit his Uncle Eben. Prior to marrying Myra, Rollin had a photography studio in Oshawa. Perhaps Rollin took his family to Leavenworth because of this shared interest. The family ended up living there for a few years because the 1880 U.S. Federal Census enumerates them here. By 1885, the family had returned to Oshawa where Rollin continued to work as a photographer on King Street. In 1900, the family spent a few years in South Bend, Indiana before settling in Pasadena, California in 1904, a town and area along State Route 210 that would become the point of convergence for many of the Henry cousins.
When Channing Ellery Henry was born on February 1, 1850, in East Whitby, his father, George, was 25 and his mother, Polly, was 24. In the 1851 Census, the family is listed as living on 200 acres of their ancestral farmland – BF, Lot 7, the same land on which Henry House still stands.
By 1861, the family, which now included a baby sister for the boys, lived in Darlington Township on Lot 11 of Concession 3. Today this is on Liberty Road and Concession 3, south of the Bowmanville Golf and Country Club.
Channing married Bertha Eliza Gamsby on June 30, 1884. In retrospect, we know that the Gamsby family came to have many close ties to the Henry family. Channing and Bertha had only one child during their marriage, Roy Lyman Henry. Through the 1890s, the family lived in Tillsonburg, Ontario, where Channing works as an apple merchant. At some point, Channing experienced an injury that resulted in a “medical deformity – left hand. Affecting ability to earn living,” as listed in his Detroit Border Crossing documentation in 1910. Ten years after his brother settled in California, Channing and Bertha made their way there as well. Channing didn’t work in California, according to the 1920 and 1930 U.S. Federal Censuses; this must have been due to his injury. Bertha taught music lessons. Channing received his naturalization just one and a half years before he died of heart disease in September 1936 at the age of 86. He is buried where many of the Californian branch of the family are – Mt. View Mortuary & Cemetery in San Bernadino.
George’s life took a very similar path as his older brothers. He was born on January 10, 1856 in East Whitby, before the family moved to Darlington. In his early twenties, the 1881 Census of Canada lists him as being a student, though it is unknown what he studied or where this took place. On June 28, 1883, in Toronto, George married Edith Grace Codd in a Christian ceremony. He was 27 and she was 19. The marriage record lists George as a Fruit Merchant. Throughout the 1800s, they went on to have two children, a boy and a girl, and moved to British Columbia and Seattle, Washington. It was while living in Maple Ridge, British Columbia that George was working as a ‘Nurseryman,’ according to Henderson’s British Columbia Gazetteer and Directory, 1891. This was only 35 minutes away from Hatzic, British Columbia, where his Uncle Jesse would later settle. Edith passed away in 1894. George remarried and had one more child, a daughter. They moved around, getting married in Detroit, living with Polly Ann in Kingsville, Ontario before she died, and then returning to Detroit before settling in Pasadena near his brothers. George passed away in 1921 and is buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena, California. This is a different location from where Channing is buried (Mt. View Mortuary & Cemetery in San Bernadino).
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