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View Tree for Mildred SargeantMildred Sargeant (b. 16 Aug 1891, d. 14 Sep 1989)


Picture of Mildred Sargeant
Mildred Sargeant Stratton

Mildred Sargeant (daughter of William Sargeant and Martha Milda Robinson)277, 278 was born 16 Aug 1891 in Back 50- Prt Lot 14 Conc 3, Derby Township, Owen Sound, On, and died 14 Sep 1989 in McMaster Medical Centre, Hamilton, On. She married Robert William Stratton on 02 Sep 1924 in at farm home Conc 3 Derby Twp, Ontario278, son of Moses Stratton and Sarah Ann Walsh.

 Includes NotesNotes for Mildred Sargeant:
[SargeantFamilyTree.FTW]

Mildred Sargeant Stratton

The Lord was her strength and song.

Mildred was born August 16th 1891 on the 3rd Concession of Derby, in the
original farm house. She was the elder of six children born to William and
Millie Sargeant.

Mildred---Bessie Randall took me to school the first day. I went to a one
room public school. There were two students to each desk. Bessie had a seat
mate. I had to sit with Beatrice Connel on the back seat. My feet didn't touch
the floor. I was probably five or six. There was no kindergarten. I have a
record of my first day. We used to have to go about three miles, but in the
summer it was only about a mile since we would hop the fences and cut across the
fields.

There is a picture of Mildred as a young girl on page 74 of The History of
Derby Township. She is part of the SS No.2 Derby School picture.

Mildred---I used to love to go to school. I loved those spelling matches,
Friday afternoons. Sometimes I was chosen captain. I loved spelling, arithmetic
and quick-work.

When I was a little girl, I was returning home from school and had to be home
in time to wash the dinner dishes before supper. Mother would be busy helping
Father in the fields with the haying. I took a short-cut through the fields and
on the way home I used to enjoy cuddling the little lambs. One day there was
this lovely little lamb. I picked it up and was cuddling it. It was so soft and
sweet. Suddenly the ram came around the rock and I had to escape so I climbed up
on the rock. The ram wouldn't let me down. Finally at about dark, he gave up and
went away. I had to run home and because I hadn't done my job, I got a very hard
whipping for not coming right home. I don't think they believed the story about
the ram. It's true though.

Sometimes in winter Grandpa Sargeant would get the big sleigh with the team
out and take us to school. He'd pick up any other children on the way and would
come and get us.

In winter we went to Grandma Richards house in Owen Sound. Our feet were cold
and our hands. Grandma would open the oven door and put chairs there and we'd
get our feet warm. She would give us caraway cookies. My,that was wonderful. She
made us hot drink of some kind. We'd stay with her while mother did the
shopping.

One day I was wading in the Syndenham River near my grandfather's place and I
cut my foot. What do you think Grandmother used to stop the bleeding? She had a
stable where the kept a cow and she gathered cobwebs out of the stable and put
them on my foot to stop the blood. It worked!

I was very resentful as a child. I was the eldest child and every two years
another baby came along. I never quite got to go shopping in town on Saturday.
Somebody had to stay home and that was me. I'd be just about ready to go to town
and another baby came along. One day Mother showed me what was in the bottom
dresser drawer and it was MORE GRAY FLANNEL! Anyway-

One day my brother Jess and I had a fight. I had just scrubbed the wooden
floor clean and he walked in with his dirty farm boots and tracked mud all over
it. I pushed him and he fell out the door, hitting his head on the spout of the
kerosene can. He fell to the ground and lay still. I thought I'd killed him. He
then sprang up, laughing and I was so mad.

Later I was sitting on the front door step with Mother. I asked her if the
time ever came that she had to give up one of her children, who would it be. I
was thinking she would say Jess, but she thought for a long, long time. I was
waiting to see what she would say. She said "Well, Mildred, if the time ever
came that I had to give up any one of my children, I think you would be the only
one I could give up." I felt all the wind went out of my sails. So I never asked anymore questions like that. Wasn't she a wise mother?

Jess and I used to have to pulp the turnips for the cattle's evening meal. I
would take a sharp knife and peel and scrape a turnip and eat some of it before
supper while sitting on the turnip heap.

I learned to milk the cows as soon as I could sit upright on a three-legged
stool. What a job turning the cream separator handle, and to wash the thing
afterward. We would wash the milk pails and set them out on a large block of
timber that father had cut off the end of a large log to dry. It was called a
doze.

I was converted at the Gaelen Hatch Crusade at the First Methodist Church in
Owen Sound.

Jess always called me Mengie. One time, after I became a Christian, I wanted
father to say grace at meals. I could not eat, one time when I came home from
Business College and went up stairs to cry in my room. Father came up to my room
and said, "You come down and say grace. You're the only one who can do it."
When I came to the table, Jess said "Don't look at Mengie, she'll bawl". I
remember that.

Beth---She graduated Northern Business College where she studied bookkeeping and
penmanship. There are some fine testimonials she gave to the school on file and
one can tell that NBC thought a lot of her.

Mildred---Mr C.A. Fleming called me into his office when I was about finished
at Northern Business College. I took shorthand so he had me take town this
paragraph " Although inexperienced, I assure you of my best effort to extend
your enterprise at all times in your employ." I put that paragraph in my first
application and it was accepted.

In 1910 at age 19, she took her first train trip to Toronto to start work for
the Canada Showcase Company.

Mildred---I got $7.00 a week. I paid $4.00 for my board, so I had $3.00. But
my bank book shows that sometimes I only put $1.00 in the bank, but I put it in.
After a while, in a few years, it added up.

I was in an adding machine competition at the Canadian National Exhibition. I
have a bronze medal I won the night that I tried with a number of other girls.
They took all the winners from through the week, (and they competed). The one
that got the big silver cup had an electric machine. The rest of us had hand
machines. There is a photo on file of Mildred with her competitors.

Mildred---After about 3 years I got to thinking that maybe I could find
another position even after all these nice things had happened to me. I answered
an advertisement for a place in the wholesale district and on the way home from
the interview happened to sit on the streetcar near a man from Owen Sound. I'd
been getting milk and butter from him when I was at home. He asking what I was
doing and I said I was looking for a job with more money. He said you go back to
your manager and give him two weeks notice and come and work for me. That was Mr
McFeeters of McFeeters Honey Butter. I was at the Toronto Creamery for about 10
years.

Mr McFeeters brought in quite a few of the men from the various creameries.
One of these gentlemen had been to a convention at Land O Lakes in the States
with Mr McFeeters and he came into the office. After a time there was this
letter came while I was in the office. It was a proposal of marriage.

Beth---You better tell John who that man was.

Mildred---I haven't got to that part yet.

John---I was trying to figure this out. We have all these men coming to the
office and suddenly we have a proposal of marriage.

Mildred---I was trying to keep you in suspense. :-)

Beth---But she hasn't told you the real thing yet. She was engaged to another
fellow while this was going on.

Mildred---I didn't think you wanted that in the story. Anyway this other gentleman was very nice. I met him at Bible School and we walked home together and he carried my books. I had his ring and I had to take it back when I decided, on my knees, that I would marry RW.

RW is how Robert William Stratton was known and referred to. He was also,
Beth said, called Uncle Rob.

Mildred---We married and it was beyond my hopes and expectations. A lovely
home in Guelph all paid for. I went in and I was there 57 years and never
moved.

I'd saved some money after I'd been in Toronto about a year and I wanted to
pay my father back for sending me to school and paying my board with Aunt Hannah
in Owen Sound while I went to school. I had kept careful records but when I
offered him the money, he said " Mildred I haven't been able to do much for your
education, but it was the best I could do. I want you to do your best and I
don't want any money." A little later I sent mother a barrel of china--a set of
12 setting in Limoges Bridal Wreath. She wept when she opened the barrel.

She graduated with honours from Toronto Bible College in 1921. She had taken
3 years of night classes to do this. The lessons she learned there were never
forgotten and her daily life reflected an enthusiastic Christian faith.

Mildred---In 1971 there was a reunion of the class and we all met again. For
many years after I came to Guelph I was a member of the alumni--the Kitchener
group. We had meetings every month and sometimes they would come to our home. It
was lovely.

Notes from her Bible Class teaching days, reflect a person learned in the
Christian faith. She sang in the Alexander Choir and generally really enjoyed
her days in Toronto.

After she moved to 15 McTague Street in Guelph, she joined First Baptist
Church, and her membership of some 65 years must be somewhat of a record. She
was always involved in the church, teaching Sunday School, Mission Circle,
Ladies Aid, etc. She , for years, spent time faithfully visiting the sick and
shut in with copies of Link and Visitor.

Mildred---I wanted to tell you too that I am reading through the Bible this
year. I try to keep a couple of days ahead, so that if I'm sick or something, I
don't fall behind. Some of the readings are 3 or 4 chapters. It's been a
wonderful experience. I have Sunday School classes and all that, but I never
really read the Bible through from beginning to end. That's what I'm doing this
year (1988-at age 98!). My eyes get tired and I can't read too long, but--I have
a big Bible with giant print and it's wonderful to read.

She had three daughters, Beth, Mrs Charles Murtagh (who was of great
assistance in the writing of this history), Helen, a single lady and nurse, and
Lois, Mrs Colin Campbell, who had collected many of the Sargeant family
heirlooms.

She and her sister Roseline, were especially close. For over 40 years they
exchanged almost weekly letters. These still exist and have been kept by the
families. They are particular in that they never expressed a hard word. Mildred
was the one who influenced her sister Roseline to become a Christian. Although she had her times of illness, she remained well until the last. She was delighted to visit her family of three daughters and the grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She never forgot nieces and nephews with a little note or letter. She often helped members of the family and others, financially. When the writer started University, she invited him to board (free) at her home.

Nick--Once or twice I can recall Mildred and RW dropped by our home on Grand
Ave and took my sisters Norma and Joan, perhaps my brothers Norman and Digby for
a few days down to the cottage at Turkey Point.

The writer can recall Mildred getting in touch with my father (Dow) and
saying "Now Dow, you and Mae need a rest. You go down to the cottage, rake the
lawn or clean up or this and that and enjoy yourselves." The cottage was called Green Gables and was white with green trim. I can recall walking out into Lake Erie with the mud squishing up in between my toes. It was very marshy there. They had a large white wooden boat, like a life boat. I can remember being so sea-sick when I went fishing out in the lake with my father, that I crawled up under the bow, so I couldn't see the boat moving and stayed there till we went home. Had great perch suppers there.

Mildred---One time my little great-grandson, Keelan Murtagh told me: "Yes,
this is my birthday. I had my mother 5 1/2 years ago today".

Isn't it satisfying to come across something that although written a long
time ago, still is true today.
"As for old age, embrace and love it. It abounds with pleasure if you know
how to use it. Gradually declining years are amongst the sweetest in a man or a woman's life. I maintain that even where they have reached the extreme age limit, they have there pleasures still."
They tell me ulcers are something you get from mountain climbing over mole-hills
A good book is like a garden, carried in a pocket.

___Mildred passed away the 14th of December 1989 at McMaster Medical Centre
Hamilton Ontario in her 99th year. She is interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in
Guelph beside R.W.

Pastor John C Perkin---Mildred lived her faith in devotion to her Lord and in
helping others. She gave of herself to countless friends, family members and
worthy causes, but she was quiet about this, preferring not to let her left hand
know what her right hand was doing. But we know, without a doubt, that there are
many people whose lives she touched in special and helpful ways.

Roseline " It was always a delight to us when Mildred came home from Toronto for her summer vacation. We loved Mildred. I never recall having even a spat with her. On her completion of her college training at the Owen Sound Business College, she was given an office position in Toronto. I, her little sister Roseline, was very young perhaps 5 or 6 , and was feeling so sad to part with her. I got under the kitchen fall leaf table crying as she was soon to leave. My little hands worked back and forth on something that pushed under there and down came a bunch of my mom's good dishes right on the floor. It was an accident which I had no idea would happen. No spanking was meated out to me. Nor no hurting scolding on top of all my sadness and tears. Mildred's first gift to my little mother was a pretty set of china dishes with roses on them. It was purchased with her first good pay cheque I recall
.
I got a letter near every week from Mildred sometimes typed and sometimes written by hand. Good, well-worded, newsy and well written by my 98 year old sister. She has been a great sister. She spoke to me about all the importance of giving my heart to Christ and at the age of near fifteen years I made this choice repended of sins and found wonderful peace and joy in serving Jesus Christ.
December 17, 1990

More About Mildred Sargeant:
Burial: Unknown, Woodlawn Cemetery , Guelph, Ontario.279, 280
Known As Name: Mingie.281, 282
Occupation: worked for Canada Showcase Company in 1911, then for Toronto Creamery and finally for Guelph Creamery.

More About Mildred Sargeant and Robert William Stratton:
Marriage: by Rev Benjamin Goodfield of Toronto.
Single: 02 Sep 1924, at farm home Conc 3 Derby Twp, Ontario.282

Children of Mildred Sargeant and Robert William Stratton are:
  1. +Beth Marie Stratton, b. 10 Jul 1926283, 284, d. 06 Jan 1998285, 286.
  2. Helen Stratton.
  3. +Lois Ann Stratton.
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