on June 20, 1889, when he gave the Benediction at the First Annual Commencement Exercise of the Tawas City Public Schools, in the Opera House at 7:30 pm, a source of pride and gratification to the young minister. After having served the Alpena District of the Detroit Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, George, still suffering from his malaria bout, was sent south to Laingsburg in the Saginaw District in the fall of 1889. The little family was no doubt thankful to be uprooted this time and to leave the mosquito infested shores of Lake Huron. On Christmas Day 1889, George was the officiating clergyman at the wedding of his brother, Samuel Weir, to Caroline Voss in Oswego, Illinois. The following year, George was assigned on a supernumerary preacher status, which means temporarily without employment, usually due to illness or family problems.
Later George would write of his early experiences as a minister:
The Presiding Elder did not think they paid me properly. He refused to return me for another year and sent me to Alcona and Black River. I had no conveyance and had to do my work on foot. I walked eight miles to preach and had to walk the eight miles back to preach and look after the Sunday School. I finally moved to Black River, where my daughter was born. I was moved to Tawas City because the preacher, W.J. Balmer, claimed he had been unfairly dealt with and the church was torn to pieces. The members were divided and unfriendly to each other. Mr. Balmer did not try to bring about peace and helped the trouble to become worse. Another trouble arose. The town was supported by a saw-mill which depended on Canadian logs. When the supply of logs was cut off there was no work for the mill to do and the people had no means of support except a little work they picked up on the shore loading and unloading boats on shore. My family had but little to support them. Here I was taken sick with a most malignant type of malaria. I never recovered entirely from the malaria and still feel bad effects from it at times. I still trust and love my dear Saviour and my prayer is,
‘More love to thee, oh Christ, more love to thee,
E’en tho it be a cross that raises me.’
George and Sarah took stock and decided to pack up and come back home to London. Their hopes for George’s career as a rising young minister were dashed. “He never fully recovered,” according to Sarah many years later. As he had not been an outstanding success at teaching before he entered the ministry, he did not resume that choice of career. George had a low level of tolerance when it came to high spirited young people and had left London early in his teaching career, probably while he was still in his teens. Insistent on obedience, he set strict rules of behaviour. A story was told of him that when a young lad behaved in a manner that George considered to be obstreporous, he punished the boy and the parents considered the punishment too severe. In the nineteenth century this would have been the strap or caning. The parents complained to the principal. George Sutton’s reply to the parents was a couplet:
“You are all ass but ears, So don’t you meddle with the Weirs.”
His country school teaching first in Bruce, and later Lambton counties, began shortly after the undiplomatic rebuke.
The little family arrived back home in London in 1890, but George Sutton’s careers in education and the ministry were both in tatters and the family breadwinner’s health was permanently undermined by malaria. The future looked uncertain.
3 AN IMPROVED BEGINING
ONCE BACK IN LONDON, GEORGE SUTTON WEIR TOOK WHAT employment he could find, some odd jobs and sometimes as a conductor on London’s street railways. The family moved into a small house at 795 York Street in London’s east end, a working man’s district. It was a modest dwelling similar to a number of others on the street, with no means of heating other than a fireplace. All their lives the Weir children suffered from colds, bronchitis and pneumonia and it may well be that constantly being cold as small children contributed to the weakness in their lungs. Indeed the next few years were very difficult ones for the little family. There is no record of George ever attempting to preach on a regular basis again, although the family attended church with great regularity. George probably felt that his health was not up to the rigorous demands made on a preacher or a circuit rider and, as well, he was not connected with The Toronto Conference.
In 1895 another daughter, Martha Frances Irene, was born on July 12. As Sarah’s struggles to keep the little family clothed and fed increased, she did dressmaking. One of her customers, Mrs. Robarts, was the mother of John Robarts, later to become Premier of Ontario. At times she took in washing, an exhausting enough task for her own family’s needs, let alone others. It was a trying comedown for her, living in a small town intent on making its mark financially. Its citizens did not extend much sympathy to the impoverished. Sarah kept her head up as best she could and dwelt on the achievements of George’s brothers, notably Samuel who was doing brilliantly in Germany, to uphold family pride.
A letter from Samuel was always eagerly received by George. On April 3, 1895, he sent a postcard to George from Schenkendorf Strasse, 27, Etage III, Leipsic, Germany:
My dear brother: —
It is so long since I heard from you. I shall only risk a postal this time. I made the examination March 6th with highest honor summa cum laude. This honor is seldom given to anybody and was never before given by the University of Jena to a foreigner. I am now settled at the above address. It took some time to find a comfortable room at a reasonable price but I have it very pleasant at last. Leipsic is a big city and things are not so simple as at Jena. I will study here till Aug. 1, partly in Philosophy and partly in Theology. There are lots of Americans here. I am located pretty well out of their way. Met the preacher however and am probably booked to preach on Easter Sunday in the American church. But for the language and the flags and the official forms one could hardly notice the difference between Leipsic and an American city of similar size. I will find a carry for Harry and send it as soon as you have written. Your address is about as uncertain as mine — Aff. Sam Weir.
George and Sarah had been living at 795 York Street for five years when Samuel’s post card arrived. There may well have been misgivings about the suitability of the neighbourhood on George’s part which gave Samuel the impression that they had moved. For the next few years however, the house on York Street was all the family could possibly afford. On August 12, 1898, Sarah gave birth to her second son, our Samuel Edward, called Samuel after his distinguished uncle.
Whether George was unable to find the cash to pay the realty taxes on the York Street property or whether he was forgetful or even resented paying taxes at all, the tax bill was overdue by the end of the year and was in arrears. Two years later, Samuel Edward’s brother, Charles Wilfred Paul, Sarah’s last child was born. Samuel Edward was known in the family as Ted and sometimes Teddie while Charles Wilfred Paul was called Paul. Later Ted chose to be known to friends and clients as Sam and Paul changed his name to Carl. However, within the household the boys were always Ted and Paul.
When Paul was a year old, George was superannuated by the Detroit Conference and thus was entitled to a pension which he refused to accept, saying that “others need it more than I.” The talk in London was that the Weirs were “poor and proud.” His self denying piety was hard on Sarah and the children.
Samuel Edward, born 1898, photograph taken circa 1901.
In 1902 a warrant was issued by the City of London for unpaid taxes on the York Street property and it was sold to A.E. Danks in two parcels, for $3.37 and $3.38 plus $1.80 each for costs of sale. This was a severe blow to Sarah’s pride. Friends of Samuel Edward’s remember their mothers saying that Sarah Weir seemed to be “always in tears.” With so much stress and worry it was not surprising that George’s health, never robust after the bout of malaria, gave him further trouble. After developing a severe pain in his abdomen and being unsatisfied with the doctors’ inabilities to relieve him, George decided to study medicine himself, with a doctor in London as was the custom. He persevered with his studies even though he had taken on work as a truant officer during the school year and as tram conductor when time