Canadian Grandchildren
My grandchildren, Alexander (born 1993) and Elisa
(born 1996), live at Oakville, Ontario. Alexander is currently trying
that gentleman's game, and prime source of cauliflower ears, English
rugby. He is the fifth generation in our family with Ford as middle
name. - RFD
Isaac on the Job
Inspecting the roadbed west of Moncton, N.B., 1894
Passed Away [From the Kings County Record (Sussex, New Brunswick), 27 March 1914, page 2] One of the oldest and most respected residents of Sussex died this morning, while after an illness of some months, Isaac DeBoo joined the great majority. Mr. DeBoo was 79 years of age and was a native of Huntingdonshire, England. He came to this country in 1854 and entered the employ of the Grand Trunk Railway. Later he accepted a position on the I.C.R. and was with them until his retirement from active work several years ago. Mr. DeBoo, for a few years resided in Newcastle, but on his retirement from active service returned to Sussex, where he had previously resided for many years. The deceased was highly respected by all who knew him. He was a man of sterling character and stood for high ideals. As a member of the Presbyterian Church, he will be greatly missed by members of that congregation. He is survived by his wife, three sons, Jacob, St. John; John F., Chaudiere Junction; and Frank R. Sussex, and four daughters, Miss Ella, at home; Mrs. A. R. Bell, Worcester, Mass.; Mrs. John R. Weldon, Athabaska Landing, Alberta; and Mrs. H. A. McArthur, Toronto. The family will have the sympathy of their many friends in their bereavement. By request, no flowers. The funeral will be held on Sunday afternoon at 2.30 o'clock. - RFD
Richard De Boo Publishers
[Foreword - Richard Willard De Boo (1897-1970), my uncle, has been featured in several previous issues of this newsletter. In the last Issue, for example, we proudly presented a piece on his service in the Canadian Medical Corps during WW I. He was my personal role model during my uncertain teenage years. In April 1994, I interviewed John Renouf at his retirement home near Vancouver, BC. John was a holder of a law degree, and a long-term employee of Richard De Boo Publishers at Toronto. The company's specialty was publication of legal texts, especially concerning tax law. John told me that my Uncle Dick was an entrepreneur and salesman at heart. He would travel coast to coast in Canada, eventually building up a very important specialty publishing firm with regional offices. The firm was eventually merged with Carswell Publishing within the large Thomson publishing empire. The De Boo logo (above) was retained. Richard Willard De Boo lived at Cooksville (now part of Mississauga) on the western fringe of Toronto. He married three times, had two daughters. He was an avid gardener and golfer. At one time, he owned the Oneida Golf Club. A favorite trick, according to John, was to challenge friends to a chipping contest - off his home-office rug into a golf bag. Apparently, he rarely lost. He also loved hunting and fishing - I remember vividly his dropping off of ice-filled washtubs of New Brunswick-caught Atlantic salmon to my parents at Quebec City on his way home to Toronto during his business/pleasure trips. Following is a short history of De Boo Publishers, written by John Renouf (who retired in 1982 after 31 years service) and given to me at the end of the interview. It is a great success story strongly supporting the motto "de aanhouder wint" - persistence rewards. - RFD] Richard De Boo was an entrepreneurial salesman with the Canadian branch of the British law book publishing firm of Butterworth. In 1939, realizing that his original ideas on the publishing of law books were being ignored by his employers, De Boo decided to start up his own (firm). Ideas were plentiful, but money was in short supply, and when De Boo commissioned a young lawyer, Gerlad D. Sanagan to compile an encyclopedia of Canadian legal words and phrases, he paid the salaries of the editors and the typesetting bills out of advances from pre-publication sales. It speaks much for De Boo's reputation that this shoestring venture was a success. In 1940 Richard De Boo Limited was incorporated and opened its office in a former warehouse in Toronto, with a staff consisting of the Vetter brothers (also ex-Butterworth), a secretary and De Boo himself. The time was propitious for the launching of a looseleaf work on wartime prices and emergency laws. In co-operation with the federal authorities in Ottawa, De Boo provided the one current publication containing essential information for the pricing of goods and services in Canada during the war years. De Boo always perceived the need for the publication of up-to-date tax information. In the early 1940's, he approached the Deputy Minister (Legal) of the Department of National Revenue, H. Heward Stikeman, for his advice on this matter. Mr. Stikeman coincidentally had the germ of an idea for a tax work which he was happy to develop and to place in De Boo's hands. In this way, the forerunner of the famous Canada Tax Service was produced which, at this time (1994), is still under the principal editorship of Mr. Stikeman (and) in the format of eight looseleaf volumes. The Canada Tax Cases, started from 1917, the date of the first federal Income War Tax Act, was also edited by Mr. Stikeman. In the late 1940's, De Boo was fully established as a looseleaf publisher of tax works, and the time had arrived for developing the corporation law field. With his usual happy flair, De Boo found Robert A. Kingston, a young energetic corporation lawyer, who wrote a practical manual on Ontario corporation law. The same model was followed by acknowledged authorities in other Canadian jurisdictions, the whole group of publications constituting a sine qua non for practice by lawyers and company officers in Canada. By the 1950's, De Boo was considered the most innovative Canadian law and business book publisher. Richard De Boo had a knack of finding new authors willing to contribute their talents in return for the wide recognition afforded by a publisher of repute. Arthur Gilmour, an established chartered accountant in Montreal, was a prime example. Gilmour's Income Tax Handbook, which ran to twenty-seven editions from 1951, was an outstanding case of an ideal author-publisher relationship. Into the 1960's De Boo remained a very personal group; staff and authors being bound by a strong loyalty to Richard De Boo personally. A sense of family relationship between staff members was fostered by De Boo's willingness to perform the most menial tasks in the publishing world. His "office" was a desk where the receptionist would normally be found, in the middle of an area noisy with the racket of typewriters and adding machines (circa 1950). It was not unusual for De Boo's secretary, Mrs. Brown, to call for a cessation of all work if the boss was speaking on a not too clear long distance line. De Boo would often be found in the shipping area tying up parcels, working the postage meter, etc. - truly a man of many parts. The arrival of Vernon Neil, a chartered accountant from the senior ranks of the Department of National Revenue, as tax editor in 1962 marked the start of an expanded professionalism in the production of tax publications. By 1966, the time had arrived for a change of relationship and De Boo, drawn by his regard for his near neighbour, Lord Thomson of Fleet, agreed to bring the company into the Thomson organization. Richard De Boo remained President of the Company until shortly before his death in 1970 at the age of 72.
New facilities and technological improvements coincided with an expanded publishing program which has rapidly enlarged the publishing list. The addition of newsletters and other updateable publications has been emphasized. Building on its legal and accounting market base, the market for professional reference materials hasd been extended to include related material for the institutional and business community. In May 1984, Gerry Halpin was appointed President. The Company looks forward with optimism to becoming the major professional reference publisher in Canada within he next few years. […and it has - but under the Carswell banner - please see Internet websites such as www.carswell.com/publications for current information - RFD] - John Renouf, Burnaby, British Columbia
Since first presenting our Family Tree in the Gazette, we have had good intentions of completing and formalizing this information in the Salt Lake City chart format. Most recently, Debrett Ancestry Research Ltd. was contracted to double-check and confirm lineage from my English great-grandfather, Jacob of Yaxley (1796-1864), back to Peter of Holme, born in the 17th C. Our tree for this period was confirmed as shown below except for Peter - we had the wrong fellow. Thus, information shown in the KEY TO THE TREE below (1. Peter) is likely incorrect. Debrett will be engaged to help with other verifications, to complete the data for Peter, and to determine my line's linkage to the Deboo families at Thorney (or Whittlesey), and perhaps from there to the original 1626 immigrants at Sandtoft.
We've appended new information concerning the related Hadden (ref #17 Loretta May DeBoo) and Draper (ref #15 Richard Willard DeBoo) families at the end of this subsection. Also, during a visit to the Huntingdon (England) Record
Office during 2001, I checked the 1841 Census (Norman Cross Hundred
Vol 2) and found the following information for # 5 Jacob Deboo's family
at Yaxley: The 1841 information is very important because we now have 6 children listed for this family vs only two in the 1851 Census. This discovery opens the door to exciting new possibilities, especially to finding close relatives for our Canadian line via sons Jacob and John. Isaac DeBoo is recognized as both "patriarch" and "common denominator" for our Canadian lines and for our American cousins. Slowly, but surely, Isaac's surprisingly large and widely dispersed family is coming to light. With the help of others, notably our English friends and colleagues, we have been able to upgrade our ancestry since our first outline of our family tree in 1997. Evidence is accumulating to show that we likely connect to Peter Deboo of Thorney, born circa 1641. Counting in my own grandchildren, Alexander Ford DeBoo (born 1993) and Eliza Maud (b. 1996) of Oakville, Ontario, we have the framework now for tracing members of our families for eleven generations, over 350 years. Naturally, we have a few places where the linkage is weak and suspect. This is mostly because of the series of three "Jacobs" between Peter and Isaac and their good wives - all called "Mary!" We may need some more help from our friends in England to confirm our roots there. Companion research by another good English friend, David Horwill of Sunbury-on-Thames, suggests that there are six known Deboo family charts in England since the mid-17th century, one of these being ours from Peter of Thorney. Further, others who have worked on DEBOO (and its variants) in England have found evidence to suggest that the first namesake there might have been a skilled weaver who emigrated from Flanders during the first half of the 16th century. So DEBOO (most commonly "Deboo") could be an English name since circa 1535, and the six family lines might tie in to just one or two individuals, although it is more probable that there was a trickle immigration pattern to England from the Low Countries/northwestern France over a period of 200 years. Yes, there remains a big challenge and lots of work to fine-tune DEBOO in England. Even more challenging is the work needed to connect the English lines back to the continent. To date, only Alan Bullwinkle has come close to finding this linkage (please note Bullwinkle 1998 in our DEBOO References Section). However, my own snooping and digging during travel in 1992 and 1994 has pretty well confirmed DEBOO concentration in Europe to be in the Belgian province of West Flanders. Following, then, is only part of our DeBoo Family Tree - we
know there must be a little more to be found in England, and we know
there is lots more work to do should we ever be able to find that
link back to the continent where the name has been known since the 15th
century. Now that would be some kind of tree!
The reader is cautioned that the family tree above, and the key details below, should be considered as a second draft of the information summarized and presented in the first issue of this newsletter. More work is required to confirm some of the dates, names, life benchmarks, and places of residence for the members referred to numerically and included in this tree. Please consider this tree a "work in progress." Also, please note we will eventually convert from this home-made pictorial to a professional/conventional system, most likely the Personal Ancestral File (PAF) charting method developed at Salt Lake City. As shown, we are still looking for our roots in Flanders. We assume the Flemish connection because of the strong concentration of DEBOO families there today, as well as the historical emigration patterns to England, Holland, Germany and other locations (for details, please click on the Belgian flag this issue). With hard work and help from friends, we hope to find this linkage in the near future. We must thank Gerry Lewis, Margaret Long, Eric Day and Alan Bullwinkle for most of the information from England. Please note especially all the Jacobs and Marys after the two Peters, and all the multiple marriages! I'm a bit uncomfortable with the connection between ancestors 2 and 3 particularly. But I think its better to try to confirm this link rather than to try to find it from way over here on the Pacific Rim. And thanks to Margaret and Alan, and the artistic talent of Yaxley's own Ken Burton, I now have a finely illustrated, eleven-generation chart "DeBoo Family Tree - FromReeds to Railways" which was presented to me at the 1997 Thorney Workshop. In Canada (and later in the USA), there are two main branches from Isaac (6) resulting from his two marriages. Mary Eliza Gilmour was his first wife (Branch A), Maria Moore his second (Branch B). I (32) belong to A, Sylvia Clark (35) to B. Besides my own line (8, 18, 32, 34, 39), I am unaware of descendants and the continuation of the DeBoo name via Jacob (7) and Lloyd (13) in the A grouping. While there is a chance that the DeBoo name lives on in Branch B via Frank (23) and Malcolm (31), it is unlikely as Malcolm died in 1945 during military service. If Malcolm did not have (male) children, it is likely that the name has been extinguished in Branch B (thus the dashed lines shown there after 23). THEREFORE, AS FAR AS WE KNOW AT THIS TIME (JULY
1998), THE SOLE LIVING CARRIERS OF THE DEBOO NAME IN BOTH BRANCHES OF
THIS FAMILY ARE MY GRANDSON, ALEXANDER FORD DeBoo (#39), MY SON, RICHARD
FORD DeBoo (#34) AND MYSELF, ROBERT FORD DeBoo (#32) - A THIN AND PRECARIOUS
LINE, INDEED! KEY TO THE TREE: [b=born (~baptised/christened); d=died; m=married; ca.=circa (about)] 1. Peter Deboo (born circa 1641), likely at Thorney (?); married Mary Belinton (first wife) and Susan Cugny (second wife); children - Susanne (b. ca. 1667), Susanne (b. ca. 1671 at Thorney), Marie (b. ca. 1673), #2 Peter (b. ca. 1676 at Thorney), Sara (b. ca. 1679 at Thorney), Mary (b. ca. 1682), Rachel (b. ca. 1684 at Thorney). 2. Peter Deboo (ca. 1676-1759, b. at Thorney), turfman and waterman at Holme (?); married Mary Whitehead of Holme (?) as first wife, and Eleanor Keep of Holme in 1717 as second wife (?); children - Issac (1700-1701, b. at Holme); Benjamin (b. 1702 at Holme), m. Ann Popper of Holme in 1730; Robert (1707-1750), b. at Holme, m. Mary Bellamy of Holme in 1723; Daniel (b. 1717); Peter (1719- 1719), born at Holme; Richard (b. 1721 at Holme); Issac (b. 1724), m. Catherine Morton of Holme in 1749; Daniel (b. 1726 at Holme); Joseph (b. 1727 at Holme); Mary (b. 1730 at Holme); Jacob #3 (b. 1734 at Holme). 3. Jacob Deboo (b. 1734 at Holme), m. Mary Lethall in 1758; children - Mary (b.1760 at Holme); #4 Jacob (b. 1761 at Holme, d. 1832 at Yaxley). 4. Jacob Deboo (b. 1761 at Holme, d. 1832 at Yaxley), m. Mary Stimpson (b. 1766) at St. Peter's, Yaxley, in 1792; children - John of Yaxley (1794-1813); #5 Jacob (b. 1796 at Holme, d. 1864 at Yaxley). 5. Jacob Deboo (1796-1864) of Yaxley; boatwright, carpenter; m. Mary
Grave(s?) 1824; children - Jacob (b. ca. 1826); John (b. ca. 1828);
Mary (b. 1830 at Yaxley); John (b. 1831 at Yaxley); Mary (b. ca. 1831
at Yaxley); Elizabeth (b. 1832 at Yaxley); #6 Issac (=Isaac) of Yaxley
(b. at Yaxley 1834, d. at Sussex, NB, Canada 1914). 6. Isaac Deboo (later DeBoo) of Yaxley (1834-1914) came to Canada in 1854; inventor, Trackmaster, railway Road Builder mostly in Canadian Maritime Provinces; m. (A) Mary Eliza Gilmour (?) as first wife and (B) Maria Moore (1845-1920) of Fredericton, NB as second; children of the first marriage (A) - #7 Jacob (1863-1934), #8 John Ford (1867-1938); children of the second marriage (B)- #19 Ella (1872-1949, did not marry), #20 Edythe (1877 -1961), m. Abe Bell of Fort Myers, Florida), #23 Frank R. (1877-1954, Sherrif at Hampton, NB), #21 Ida (1881-1971), #22 Hazel (1886-1973 ), Ethel (died as infant ca. 1880; shown as ? next to #19 on tree). 7. Jacob DeBoo (1863-1934) was biller/messenger for Canadian National Telegraph in New Brunswick, killed in auto accident; m. ?, children - Mrs. Marion Konstantine (#9 on tree), Mrs. Robert C. Kelly (#10), Miss Elizabeth DeBoo (#11), Mrs. J.P. Foley (#12) [- all of New York City according to 1934 newspaper clipping], Lloyd (#13) [resident of Sussex, NB] 8. John Ford DeBoo (1867-1938) was railway engineer for the Intercolonial and Canadian National (CNR) Railways, lived at Charny, Quebec; m. Julia Gorham of Campbellton, NB ( - ); children - #14 Hilda Maud (did not marry, CN Telegraph messenger dispatcher at Montreal, ca. 1895-1989), #15-Richard Willard (later De Boo, Publisher at Toronto, 1897-1970), #16-Mildred (Mrs. N.B. West of Charny, - ), #17-Loretta May (Mrs. W.J. Hadden of Quebec, - ), #18-Alfred Ford (1907-1976). 9-13. Children of Jacob DeBoo, see 7 above. 14-17. Children of John Ford DeBoo, see 8 above. 18. Alfred Ford DeBoo (1907-1976) worked at Signals Dept. of CNR (Charny), mechanic at Boswell Brewery and service advisor at Albert Barre Chevrolet dealership (Quebec City), Married Hazel Helen Carswell (1906-1992) of Quebec, children - #32 Robert Ford (b. 1936), #33 Nancy Joy (Mrs. H. Panjwani of Wyckoff, NJ, USA, b. 1941). 19-20, (+?). Children of Isaac DeBoo and Maria Moore, see 6 (B) above. 21. Ida DeBoo (later DeBou, 1881-1971) moved to Vancouver, BC, school teacher, m. John R. Weldon 1912; children - #24-Sylvia L. (1913- ), #25-John ( - ), #26-Dorothy (1917- , m. Wilson H. Drexel 1942), #27-Mary ( - , m. ), #28-Josephine ( - ) 22. Hazel DeBoo (b. 1886 at Sussex, NB, died Winter Park, Florida, 1973) m. Herbert A. McArthur (1884 -1959); children - #29 Jean (1923 - ), #30 Anne (1917 -1987, m. first Maurice Boyd (killed WWII, 1945), second Dan L. McKinnon (1916-1995 ) of Winter Park, Florida). 23. Frank R. DeBoo (1877-1954) of New Brunswick m. first Vera MacLean ( - ), second Edna Powell ( - ); children of first marriage - only one known is #31 H. Malcolm (1907-1945) who died in U.S. military service. 24-26, 28. Children of Ida DeBoo and John Weldon, see 21 above. 27. Mary Weldon (-) m. x Clarke; children - (SBC to complete) 29. Jean McArthur (1923 - ), m. William R. Ennis (1952) lives at Etowah, NC, USA; two children - Richard (1956- ), Michael (1959 - ). 30. Anne McArthur (1917-1987), see #22 above; children - Maurice (Maury) Boyd b. 1944, (Maury's children - Sheldon, Ashley), Jean McKinnon (Hiatt) b. 1955 (Jean's children - Daniel, Meredith), Elizabeth McKinnon b. 1957; (Beth's children - Sean, Anne). 31. H. Malcolm DeBoo (1907-1945), see 23 above; children - ? 32. Robert Ford DeBoo (1936- ) born at Quebec City, resident of Victoria, BC presently, retired from Canadian & BC Forest Services, now President of Ford Foresters (consultants); m. Ann Daly of Fredericton, NB; one son - #34 Richard Ford. 33. Nancy Joy DeBoo (Panjwani), b. 1941 at Quebec, see #18 above. 34. Richard Ford DeBoo (b. 1960 at Fredericton, NB) m. Filomena Tamburri, lives at Oakville, ON, engineer at de Haviland Aircraft; children - #39 Alexander Ford b. 1993, #40 Elisa Maud b. 1996. 35. Sylvia Barbara Clarke ( - ) m. first (SBC to complete) ADDENDA: Some descendants of Loretta May DeBoo (#17) & William
J. Hadden:
Descendants of Richard Willard De Boo (#15) & Olga Selma Cornelia
Tunstall:
"
" Richard Willard De Boo (#15) and & Edythe Reid Dowds:
"
" Richard Willard De Boo (#15) & Joan Riley:
Buried Treasures in New Brunswick During a general browse of the Internet, I stumbled upon Ruby Cusack's very fine Website (www.rubycusack.com) where there is reference to William and Ann DeBoo of Hampton, New Brunswick. It is an early 20th C application for a burial permit during an infectious disease outbreak period.
This document is surprising for two reasons: (1) It features an unknown New Brunswick DeBoo family (flagging names of special interest for future investigation), and (2) it opens a new and unusual source of genealogical data for this part of Canada. Please visit the Ruby Cusack site for details about these burial applications/permits. The Saint John Branch of the New Brunswick Genealogical Society can be found at: www.nbgssj.ca. - RFD
There are several telephone directories on the Internet for just about any country. I use www.whitepages.com most of the time for quick checking for namesakes, including for individuals living in Canada. It is a good way to quickly check for changes or lost contacts, for newcomers or for distribution of the name. The website directories provide reasonably current information.
Another Canadian names source is the Canada 411 directory
at: http://canada411.sympatico.ca.
A check for DEBOO mid-October 2003 produced a list for 16 individuals
(below). However, the list is incomplete as known individuals with
telephones at places like Toronto and Kingston, Ontario, and Prince
Rupert, BC, are not included. I'm not sure why, but suspect the Canada
411 site is missing a significant number of Canadian namesakes (apart
from unlisted names and numbers by request).
The White Pages website, by comparison, has
19 DEBOO listings. It lists by Province/ - RFD |
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