The search for William Myers

(A recent piece about the link between churches in Kilcullen and Hamilton, Ontario, brought a response from Bernie Linnane, whose grandfather's uncle, William Henry Myers, left Kilcullen in 1914 to serve in the Great War. He subsequently emigrated to Canada, where he served on the Hamilton police force for many years. In this letter, Bernie details how she searched for and eventually found the other side of her family. Bernie's uncle, Nicky, still lives in Kilcullen.)

As a child growing up I heard about this mysterious uncle of my mother, who had gone to Canada and joined the Mounted Police. I thought it was wildly romantic, but then forgot about it for years. About 11 years ago, I became interested in genealogy, and decided to try to trace William's family. I did a bit of genealogical digging about on the (then quite new) internet, but hit a wall at every turn where William was concerned. A request for information from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police drew a blank, as they confirmed that he had not been a member of that force.

I took up the search again about three years ago, along with a couple of cousins, but we didn't have very much information to start with. From talking to family members we knew that William's son had been killed in WW2, but apart from his having (allegedly) been a policeman, that was the sum of our knowledge. We didn't know what part of Canada he had gone to, and as no-one had heard from there in 50 years we actually thought William's family had died out.

Then, in a stroke of luck, I found the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website. I searched for Canadian WW2 casualties, and discovered that there were 17 with the name Myers. Of these, two had fathers called William Henry Myers. I had no idea which one was my cousin until, some time later, my mother stumbled across a very old postcard photograph of two children in a wicker pram. It was dated 1922, was sent from Canada to my grandparents, and was signed "Will and Ida". The name Ida was the key, as one of the young casualties I had earlier found through the CWGC had been the son of William Henry and Ida Myers of Hamilton, Ontario. His name was Henry Patrick Myers, known as Harry, born 1920, killed in Holland 1944.



I searched Canadian newspaper archives and found several clippings related to his death. One of these mentioned that Harry had a younger brother, Thomas. This must have been the second child in the wicker pram. None of the family had any idea what had happened to him, but all were convinced that William's sons had not survived the war.

I obtained a copy of Harry's death certificate, which gave me the family's address in Hamilton. From there, I searched local cemetery records on the internet, and found a headstone listing for William and Ida Myers in Hamilton. This gave their dates of death, in 1958 and 1959, and I was able to obtain copies of their obituaries from the local newspaper.

William's obituary nearly knocked me off my seat. Apart from confirming that he was indeed a policeman (although in the Hamilton police, not the RCMP) it stated that he had been survived by his son, Thomas, and four grandchildren. Thomas, the second son from the wicker pram, had survived the war. As he must have been born some time around 1921-1922, it was unlikely that he would still be alive (I found all this information in 2007), but there was a very good chance that some of his children or grandchildren would be! The only problem was how to find them.

Again, from William's obituary I knew that Thomas Myers had been living in Simcoe, Ontario in 1958. Armed with this information, I looked up the current Canadian telephone directores and found that there were only seven listings for Myers in Simcoe in 2007. I wrote to all of them. On 26th June 2007 I received an email from Nancy Myers of Simcoe. Her husband, Tom Myers, was William's third son (he and Ida had lost their first child, also named William, at six months), and my mother's first cousin. He had indeed been the second boy in the wicker pram. Best of all, he was still alive, at the age of 86, although bed-ridden due to the effects of a stroke. Over the course of the next week, I received further emails from two of Tom's sons. It turned out that three of the seven Myers families in Simcoe were related to the Myerses of Kilcullen.

We have remained in touch ever since, though unfortunately we have lost Tom. He passed away on 23rd October last. It is my great regret that I never got to meet him. Perhaps one day I'll get to meet his children or grandchildren.

The original picture of the two little boys in the wicker pram hangs in the dining room of Kathleen Myers-Savage, William's grand-daughter.

Bernie Linnane.