Historical Plaque Properties

 

Joseph Bullock - Machinist - City Water Works
50 Queen Street
Stratford, ON
1913


 

Joseph Bullock was born in January 28, 1846 in North Kyme, Lincolnshire, England. He was the son of Thomas Bullock and Francis Bulman. The Bullock family is listed in the 1851 Lincolnshire census where 5 year old Joseph is shown living with his parents and four siblings in Toll Bar House. His father, Thomas, was the toll keeper.  By the time the census was taken in 1861, Joseph’s mother had died and Joseph, 15, and his father were working as agricultural labourers in Barrowby.

 

In 1866, Joseph married Fanny Jemima Flood in North Aylesford, Kent, England. Fanny was born October 8, 1848 in New Brompton. She was the daughter of Thomas Chappell Flood, a shipwright, and Mary Ann Hughes. The 1861 census shows that Fanny, 12, and her 9 year old sister were attending school while their brother had become a shipwright’s apprentice.

 

 

Over the next three years, the couple had two children. At this time, they made the decision to emigrate from England to Canada. According to the 1871 census, the young family had settled in Clinton, Ontario, Fanny had given birth to their second son, Edward, and Joseph was working as a labourer. Two years later, they moved to Stratford.

 

Joseph obtained employment at the Grand Trunk Railway shops where he became a machinist. The 1881 census shows that the family had grown to include four sons and two daughters. Two more sons and another daughter were born by 1886. Unfortunately, Fanny Bullock, aged 40, died in July of that year.

 

 

Six years later, Joseph married Mary Ann (Annie) Scott, the daughter of Henry Scott and Ann Martin of Ellice, on August 22, 1892. Annie gave birth to three daughters over the next four years and a son in 1905.

 

Joseph continued to work as a machinist with the railway until the great railway strike of 1905. At that time he went to work for the Public Utilities Commission. His second youngest daughter, Victoria, married John Joseph Till in Cochrane in 1912. They had married there because he was an actor and according to their marriage registration, they wanted to “evade due publicity in any other venue”.

 

 

Eight years after leaving the GTR Joseph built the house at 50 Queen Street. He was a machinist for the City Water Works at the time. He lived there for the rest of his life. He died on February 5, 1929 leaving behind his wife, five sons and six daughters. Two of his children had predeceased him. Joseph, Fanny and Annie are buried in Avondale Cemetery. His daughter Victoria and her family moved into the house a year later.