Beadles leaves his mark on Auburn

Back in the 1960s, music groups from Britain, like the Beatles, came to North America. They called it the British invasion and the music scene here has never been the same since. 

However, what a lot of people don’t know is that Auburn had experienced its own British invasion of sorts 100 years earlier when the Beadles came across the ocean to live in Huron County. In 1861, Henry Beadle and his uncle Peter Beadle immigrated from the area of East Yorkshire in England to the Auburn area. Henry’s older brother George preceded them having arrived here about two years earlier.  

When I write about people from our past, I will often research their ancestries to make sure I have facts and dates correct. I found something I have never seen before when I looked at Henry’s family tree. His father’s name is officially listed as William ‘Old Hallelujah’ Beadle. I wonder how he got this name? I like to think he got the name because he was the kind of person who loved to praise the Lord during church services shouting, ‘Hallelujah’.   

Henry and Peter came to Canada upon a ship travelling in the cheapest of classes, the Steerage Class. Often this meant they had no privacy with the most basic of amenities and limited toilet use.  I do know that Henry and Peter were responsible for their own food on the trip. They brought with them a small wooden chest to hold all the food they would have available to them for the two-week journey across the ocean. Auburn historian Jim Schneider still has the very chest they brought with them.  When you see it in person it is hard to imagine how two men could have packed away enough food to live on for such a long voyage.

Two years after arriving in Canada, Henry married a girl from East Yorkshire named Martha Marriott here in the Auburn area. I am pretty sure that both the Beadle and the Marriott families would have known each other back in England. I am assuming this, not only because the two families lived only about five miles apart, but because Henry’s older brother George had already married Martha’s older sister Emma four years earlier in East Yorkshire. Records indicate that most of the Marriott family had moved to the Auburn area.  

So two brothers married two sisters and they all lived in Auburn.  Martha would die in 1902 at age 57 and then a year later Emma died at age 65. Both sisters are buried locally in Ball’s cemetery where their parents are buried as well.  

Henry must have moved out to Alberta sometime after his wife died for he is listed as having died on July 19, 1926 in Cochrane, Alberta where he is also buried.

Records show that Henry and Martha had eight children.  One of them was Charles Maitland Beadle born in 1870. Charles grew up to be a butcher in Auburn, but he was also well-known for his marksmanship with a rifle. He served as the captain of the Auburn Rifle Club which had won numerous trophies and awards. Charles earned the title of Dominion Rifle Champion at the Toronto Exhibition both in 1909 and then again in 1913. There is a picture of the Auburn Rifle Club from 1914 where the men are posing with their trophies. Jim Schneider is the caretaker for both a silver plate and a trophy the club won. While I can’t be sure about the plate, I am almost certain that the trophy Jim has today is one of the actual trophies in the 100-year-old photo. Jim also has on display the original long-tail tuxedo and vest that Charles was married in around 1900.