Elizabeth Derosa Wallace : Short Biography

Elizabeth WALLACE, my maternal grandmother,  was the daughter of Mary KEITH and William WALLACE, born 3 October 1879, in Belfast, Antrim. Little was known about the life of my grandmother while I was growing up and not a whole lot more surfaced in the after dinner discussions that were a common occurrence when my mother and her four sisters were together. One tale I recall was that Elizabeth's marriage to my grandfather had taken place on the rebound. Sadly, that is all I know about the broken heart episode.

Nevertheless, Elizabeth did meet my grandfather, William EDGAR around 1904 and they wed on 14 November 1904 in Newinton Presbyterian Church, Belfast. Their first child, a son Samuel, was born on 5 October 1905 in Belfast. Sometime before January 1908. the family of three joined the other EDGARS in England where they had lived upon returning from several years in Sydney, NSW, Australia.

Children arrived with some regularity throughout the marriage until there were nine...five girls and four boys. It was just months after the birth of the third child, a daughter also named Elizabeth Derosa, born 1909, made the trip to Canada. At the time the family included William's mother, Rebecca McCLOY EDGAR, and her son, John Gibbons EDGAR. Also emigrating with the family was Ralph EDGAR, only son of the eldest of Rebecca's children, also named Ralph, who had died just a few months before the birth of his son, Ralph, on 1 January 1900. I cannot quite wrap my head around young Ralph's mother allowing her only son to go off on this grand adventure, never to return to her again. And the William EDGAR and Elizabeth WALLACE EDGAR family...already three small children in tow...rounded out the party that arrived in Owen Sound, Ontario in early 1910.