The colonies during the 19th century offered the chance for young men to better themselves in a new country and tales of such successes that were brought back to Lincolnshire spurred on more to make this drastic change in their circumstances and to seek their fortunes in faraway places. Many from Bourne made the perilous sea voyage across the Atlantic to the New World and among them was Joseph Tye Flatters. He was born in Bourne on 6th July 1841 and on 21st August 1865 he married Frances Harriet Hester, then aged 21, of Hanthorpe village and was working as a professional photographer, most probably for his father-in-law, a partner in the grocery and drapery business Rodgers & Hester which operated from shop premises in the market place on a site now occupied by the National Westminster Bank and also included a photography service. 

Joseph was well known in the town as a bell ringer at the Abbey Church and playing trumpet with the town band. But he was also a crack shot while serving as a private with the 15th Lincolnshire Rifle Volunteers based in Bourne and frequently won prizes at their shooting competitions. On 4th October 1867, for instance, the unit held its annual shoot over 150, 200, 500 and 600 yards followed by a dinner at the Angel Hotel when awards were presented and Joseph took the first prize of £7 [£350 in today's money] together with the Prince of Wales Challenge Cup. He also qualified for a share in the £5 awarded for the best drill attendance of the year. 

This money most certainly helped pay his fare to Canada and, undeterred by the fact that he had a large family, arrived there in the summer of 1871 with his wife and their three young children, sons John and William and daughter Nellie. Twins had also been born to them in England but both had died before they emigrated although they were to have eight more children in Canada, but one, a baby girl called Fannie Lewella, died soon after Christmas in 1882, six weeks before her second birthday. 

Joseph settled at Aylmer, Quebec, six miles up the Outaouais or Ottawa River from Ottawa, the Canadian capital, a river that played an important role in the country's fur trade and lumber industry and in opening up the Canadian west. But he soon discovered that the new settlers had little money to spend on having their photographs taken and so he sought more remunerative employment and by 1879 was working as a sheriff and court bailiff, covering much of the territory around Aylmer where his many duties included serving subpoenas and collecting debts. He travelled his district on horseback and by horse and buggy, switching to a horse and sleigh when the snows came during the winter months, but soon discovered that his new job could be a very dangerous one indeed. 

On one occasion, he went with another bailiff and a military escort to a town called Low, 30 miles away, where residents were refusing to pay their taxes but instead of persuading them to honour their liabilities, an angry crowd took the two law officers prisoner and kept them in a cell at the town jail for two days without food or water. 

Another incident occurred during the winter months at Quyon, 26 miles away, while serving a legal notice on a Mr Brady, a member of a notorious family of fighters who gave Sheriff Flatters a terrible beating before putting him in his sleigh, turning the horse around and sending it packing on the road back to Aylmer and after reaching home badly injured, he was quite ill for a long period. 

Joseph went on to work for the municipality in various positions including secretary and treasurer, captain of the volunteer fire brigade, town constable and inspector of roads and nuisances. In June 1885, while carrying out his duties as sheriff, he stopped a young lad, Daniel Ardell, aged 14, for questioning in the matter of a stolen watch. The boy had a gun, panicked and shot Joseph in the hip. The bullet lodged deep in the flesh and doctors were unable to extract it and he died two weeks later on 1st July 1885. He was 43 years old and had been in Canada for only 14 years. Ardell was tried and sentenced to 14 years in prison but served only seven and when released and reputedly reformed, he became a preacher and spent the rest of his life in the western provinces of Canada. 

The killing left Joseph's widow Frances in difficult circumstances and although the two eldest boys, John and William were already working, she had her other eight children still to support, among them three-months-old Josephine, the latest addition to the family who had arrived on 20th March 1885. But Joseph had been a careful man and he wrote in his diary for the year 1879 that he had taken out an insurance policy on his life for $1,000 and so his family would not have been left penniless and the town council also voted to pay Joseph's widow his entire year's salary of $400 that he would have received had he lived. 

Here is the redoubtable Frances with six of her daughters, Nellie, who was born in England on 16th December 1869, Kate Alice (born 19th October 1873), Elizabeth Arnold (born 11th December 1875), Annie Maud (born 24th February 1879), Ella Constance (born 20th March 1883) and Josephine (born 20th March 1885).

Frances lived to be 84 and died at Aylmer, Quebec, on 31st August 1928, but not before she had returned to England for a visit in 1906, sailing from Quebec aboard the steamer Empress of Ireland, her first time home since she had left for a life in the unknown 35 years before. Today, her extended family is a large one and spread throughout Canada. Her youngest daughter Josephine, the last in line in the picture above, was the mother of Mrs Ethel Moore-Guertin, now aged 82, who still lives at Aylmer and who has told me this stirring tale of her grandfather, one of the early pioneers from Bourne in Lincolnshire who helped bring stability to a small and then untamed part of the North American wilderness, and of her grandmother who was left with a large family and little else but hope to bring them up but showed true pioneering courage to smooth the path for their survival. 

Joseph's memory is still strong in the family and the actual trumpet he played with the Bourne Town Band that he took with him to Canada is treasured by the family and has recently been handed down to his great great grandson, Jeffrey Guertin, aged 25, who works as an industrial engineer in Toronto, and so Bourne will be remembered here for many years to come. 

WRITTEN DECEMBER 2000

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