Hess / Robertson Family History

research by Jane Neale & Robert Hess

Descendents of the Hess and Robertson families come from a long line of Canadian tradesmen, artisans, shop-keepers and manufacturers, stretching back to the early days when Canada was still a British colony, and before that in Germany and Scotland. Since arriving in Canada in the early 1800s and settling in the frontier settlements of Zurich, Galt, and Hamilton in what was then Upper Canada, our family has been proud to call themselves simply Canadians... never German-Canadians, Scottish-Canadians, eastern-Canadians, or western-Canadians. To us Canada is a bilingual (French/English) nation forged from sea-to-sea-to-sea by first the Seven Year's War between France and Great Britain, the exploration and commerce created from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Arctic by the Northwest Company and the Hudson's Bay Company, the repulsion of invasions by the United States (during the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Fenian invasions of the 1850's, and the constant threat of attack by the Union Army after the end of the American Civil War, during the negotiations over the border after 1867, the escape of Sitting Bull and his Sioux warriors to Canada after their victory at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, the Fenian raids of the 1850's, and during the Klondike gold rush in 1899), the opening of the west to settlement and the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and then the nation-building exercise of being the only nation in North or South America to enter both the First World War and the Second World War when they started, long before the United States.

Our ancestors on both my father's side and my mother's side were European immigrants who settled in Upper Canada, now the south-western part of the province of Ontario, which was opened to settlement by the colonial government after they were permanently secured as part of British North America by the defeat of American invasions during the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. The key component of the American defeat was a combined force composed of British regular army troops (notably the Newfoundland Fencibles Regiment), Canadian settler volunteers, including black soldiers who had escaped from slavery in the US, and First Nations forces from new American territories created since the American Revolutionary War (Shawnee, Mohawk, etc) who had joined the British forces to fight for the return of their territories in New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan, and First Nations forces from British-held territory (Algonquin, Chippewa, etc) attempting to stop an American victory which would mean the confiscation of their lands in Canada. Only 30 years before the first large wave of settlement began in Upper Canada the battle of the Thames at Moraviantown (near present-day Chatham, Ontario, and only 100 km from Zurich, and the future site of Hughes Boatworks Ltd at nearby Clinton) had seen the invading American army, who had crossed into Canada at Detroit, stopped from moving on to take York (the capital, now Toronto) – and thus take Canada, by a small force of 160 Shawnee warriors fighting from concealed positions in the forest, led by the famous war chief Tecumseh, who, although already badly wounded, was killed in a last desperate attempt to reach the American general on foot and kill him with a tomahawk (his body was mutilated by American troops before being spirited away by his warriors to be buried in a place known only to them – somewhere near the Thames River which flows through present-day London, Ontario).

Butler's Rangers, a combined Canadian & First Nations militia force which fought a guerrilla war with the Americans to defend Upper Canada during the American Revolutionary War, penetrating deep into New York, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and as far south as Kentucky to harass enemy supply lines and terrorize settlements to limit agricultural output designed for American troops (they defeated Daniel Boone and his Kentucky volunteers at the Battle of Blue Licks, Kentucky).

Tecumseh (Crossing Panther) – circa 1812

My paternal great-great-grandfather and grandmother, Matthias Hess and Ama Hess were the parents of my paternal great-grandfather, Frederick W. Hess, Sr., (1846-1918). The family was from Rothenberg, a village in the Black Forest region of south-west Germany. Frederick immigrated to Canada in 1867 (Canada became an independent country on July 1, 1867) with his brothers, and later his sisters (George, Andrew, Christian, William, Matthias, Katherine, Barbara, Rose, Susanna) and settled in Zurich, Ontario, a farming village in Hay Township, Huron County, in south-western Ontario, whose population at the time was primarily German immigrants. He married a local girl named Margareta (Maggie) Weil [?Wyle] on March 25, 1869 and had 7 children (Ferdinand Mathias, Elizabeth Anna, Angeline, William George, Amelia Margareta, Andrew, and George) before she died in 1883. On June 22, 1886 he married another local girl, Louisa Stelck (1859 - ?, parents Claus and Juliana Stelck), and had 5 more children (Frederick, Frieda, Flora, Cecelia, and Elgin). His son Andrew (1880 - 1949) was my paternal grandfather.

Hay Township was first settled in 1846 by farmer John Oesch, followed soon after by blacksmiths Peter Deichert and Frederich Axt, and carpenters Henry Wohlnich, Henry Greb, and John Goetz. The village of Zurich was first settled by a Swiss, Frederich Knell, who settled on Lot 21 of the 11^th Concession of Hay Township, which he had purchased from Andrew Hey, and registered on July 3, 1856. In 1857 a Post Office was established, with service 3 times a week from the town of Bayfield on Lake Huron. Knell was the first postmaster, and operated the first store, as well as building the first grist mill and sawmill. His wife was the first school teacher. Zurich was incorporated as a police village by Huron County Council on December 4, 1896.

At that time Queen Victoria was the Queen of Great Britain and the British Empire, including the Dominion of Canada, and when the Hess brothers became Canadian citizens a few years later, they would have sworn allegiance to her. This may not have as difficult for German immigrants like the Hess brothers as one might assume, since Victoria's mother, the Duchess of Kent, was a German princess, and her late husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, with whom she had 9 children, and who had died of typhoid fever at Windsor Castle on Dec. 14, 1861, was a German prince.

the Hess brothers George, Andrew, Christian, William, and Frederick (circa 1870)

Queen Victoria (1818 – 1901) - Queen of Canada 1837 - 1901

Frederick W. Hess, Sr., (1846-1918)

George & Rose (née Stelke [? Stelck]) Hess – circa 1880 (Rose was the first white child born in the settlement of Hay Township, Upper Canada)

George Hess began a watch-making business with, later, a sideline in photography. His first store was a jewellry shop on Goshen Street. In 1870 he added a photographic studio to the store. He registered a patent for a new type of tower clock mechanism which used a heavy crown gear and 4 pinion shafts to drive the 4 large clock faces from one central clock mechanism. Three of his clocks are still running: in the tower of St. Peter's Evangelical Lutheran Church, Zurich (1888), in the town hall in nearby Exeter (1887 - this clock was originally completely made of wood), and in the tower of Trinity Lutheran Church, Sebastopol, Ontario (1886). George Hess' greatest achievement, though, was the invention of Canada's first electric clock in 1888, which was a direct-current mechanism which ran initially on dry-cell batteries (later it was modified to run on an Edison gravity battery). Although he obtained a patent in 1889, he didn't proceed further with it because the standardization of home electrical systems to alternating-current made a direct-current mechanism unfeasible. The work days at Hess Jewellers were organized to designate Tuesdays as “clock day”, while other days were for watches and other types of jewellery. Other days or times were set aside for the business of winding clocks... the tower clock in St. Peter's Lutheran Church was wound every Saturday night at 11 pm. There were two mechanisms which had to be wound, the clock itself, and the striking mechanism which rang the church bells on the hour. George Hess also created hand-carved woodcuts for the local printers, and gradually added printing to the business. His original printing press was made in Oshawa, Canada West before 1867.

Hess Jewellry Store sign

Hess tower clock in the steeple of St. Peter's Lutheran Church, Zurich

The early businesses started by the Hess family in Zurich probably benefited from Prime Minister John A. Macdonald's National Policy, passed by parliament in 1878, which included a tariff to protect small Canadian manufacturers from US imports. The completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Canadian Pacific Telegraph in 1885 allowed many small Canadian companies (including the first large Canadian manufacturer, Massey-Harris Farm Equipment of Brantford, Ontario) to ship their products west to the thousands of immigrants arriving in the Northwest Territories (which then included what are now the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta), and the new province of British Columbia.

One of the first banks to open a branch in Zurich was the Bank of Montreal, which is Canada's oldest bank, incorporated in Montreal in 1817, and a key source of funds for the fur traders of the Northwest Company, which was Canada's first Canadian-owned national company (and a working partnership between the Scots immigrant owners in Montreal, the canoemen – aka voyageurs, and the native people who supplied the furs). Its employees explored Canada from Montreal to the Pacific and Arctic coasts while competing with its rival the British-owned Hudson's Bay Company.

Frederick, Sr. started a successful carriage and wagon repair business called The Hess Carriage Works - eventually employing his sons Ferd, Will, Elgin, George, and Andrew Hess. He later purchased the carriage business owned and operated by the Schnell Brothers and incorporated it into Hess Carriage Works. In 1910 Frederick, Sr. was also the village council clerk.

Sometime after 1900 relative John Hess owned and operated a confectionary store, and Harry Hess opened the first electric appliance store.

Because the Bell Telephone Company did not provide telephone service to rural customers until later, in 1906 Zurich resident Edmond Zeller, publisher of the Zurich Herald, started the first rural telephone system in Canada, the South Huron Telephone Company, which became the Hay Township Municipal Telephone System in 1911. His mechanic and linesman, and later manager, was William G. Hess. The first two phones were in the homes of William G. Hess and the jewelry store owned by his brother Fred. By 1913 the system was serving over 400 homes in Zurich and the surrounding rural area. This system was maintained on a contract basis by members of the Hess family until 1957, when William G. Hess' grandson Gordon Hess resigned to take a job with the Northern Electric Company. Since 1957 it has been directly managed by the Hay Township Council.

Frederick Hess' sons George, Will, & Andrew

On June 23, 1916 my paternal grandfather Andrew Hess married Mary [Marie] Thiel of Zurich (parents Henry Thiel and Elizabeth Elsie). Marie was born in 1893 in Zurich. Andrew was a notary public, owned the Zurich Herald, ran the village telegraph office, and was the village clerk and insurance agent.

Andrew Hess (1880-1949)

Marie Thiel's parents, Henry and Elizabeth, with her sister Emma – circa 1920

Marie Thiel (right centre) with her girlfriends – circa 1914

newly married Andrew & Marie (née Thiel) Hess – 1916

Although they spoke Canadian English with no accent, in their home Andrew & Marie spoke Low German brought to Canada by their parents and grandparents - Marie couldn't understand High German. Marie said grace before every evening meal in German - translation: “Come Lord Jesus, be our guest. And let this food, to us, be blessed.”

Marie, Quimby, Paul, Fred, Andrew Hess – circa 1944

Andrew and Marie had 3 children, all sons, born in 1917, 1918, and 1922 and named Quimby, Paul, and Frederick.

Hess Carriage Works, Zurich, Ontario – 1900

Zurich, Ontario – 1924 (Andrew Hess' Telegraph & Insurance Office is the small white building in the centre of main street)

In 1904 and 1907 respectively, Gordon McGregor of Windsor, Ontario, and Sam McLaughlin of Oshawa, Ontario, converted their wagon companies into the Ford Motor Company of Canada and the McLaughlin Motor Car Company (which became General Motors Canada in 19). Around this time William G. Hess (1876-1968), who had apprenticed at his father Frederick Hess Sr.'s Carriage Works, went south to Detroit, Michigan, looking for employment. For many different reasons Detroit was becoming the centre of the new engine-based economy of the industrial heartland of the United States, and was attracting young engineers, mechanics, and designers from all over the world. The first company to start manufacturing automobiles in Detroit was Oldsmobile in 1900 – the first mass-produced automobile in the world, followed soon after by Packard, which was moved to Detroit from Warren, Ohio in 1901. Ford started building cars in Detroit in 1903... the famous Model T was introduced in 1908. In 1908 General Motors was founded, and immediately began buying up many of the Detroit manufacturers including Buick, Oldsmobile, Cadillac, and Oakland (Pontiac). William G. Hess eventually became the manager of the first Fisher Body plant, which, beginning in 1909, fabricated automotive frame and body components for Cadillac, Buick, Studebaker, Packard, Hudson, and Ford. Fisher Body plants were located in Cleveland, Ohio as well as Detroit, Michigan [where else?... Pontiac, Flint, Fort Wayne??]. Fisher Body was founded by the Fisher brothers, Lawrence and ?, and eventually was bought by General Motors in ?. In 1936 the United Auto Workers union ordered its members to strike at the Fisher Body plant in Cleveland as a their first act in an effort to win major concessions from General Motors for their workers. After a reduction in the amount paid workers for piece work, the union stewards walked through the plant hammering on machinery and yelling “Sit down, Sit down”! A week later workers seized the huge Fisher Number 1 and Number 2 plants in Flint, Michigan.The strike lasted 44 days, and ended after the Governor of Michigan called out the Michigan National Guard. As one of the Fisher Body Company's original investors, William Hess had wisely taken advantage of a company plan to encourage employees to regularly buy company stock, and when General Motors bought Fisher Body his Fisher Body stock was converted automatically to General Motors stock, so he became a very rich man. He was famous for always driving a new Cadillac, since he got a new one every year, which was apparently considered a bit eccentric in the 1930's and 1940's because the Cadillac was very popular with (and later marketed directly to) middle-class blacks even though at the time Cadillac had a policy of not selling to blacks (black customers used white front-men to buy the new cars from General Motors dealers! Wealthy white motorists who wanted a General Motors product were encouraged to buy Packards. William Hess gave generously to Michigan charities, and retired to a dairy farm in Pontiac, Michigan (where he did some hunting with his beloved Blood Hound, Trailer. In 1989, his and wife Myrtle Hathaway's Lone Cedar Farm in Waterford Township, Pontiac, Michigan, was dedicated as The Hess-Hathaway Park. More information about the Fisher Body Company is available at http://www.coachbuilt.com/bui/f/fleetwood/fleetwood.htm

William G. Hess (1876 – 1968)

Although he must have been a very distant relative, and was probably unknown to the family in Zurich, it is interesting to note that the only Hess to die fighting for Canada in World War One (no doubt many Hesses also died fighting for Germany) was Ransom Howard Hess, a member of the famous PPCLI (Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry) – Eastern Ontario Regiment from the small farming town of Chesterville, Ontario, who was killed during the Battle of Amiens on August 13, 1918, 3 months before the Armistice. He was 18. Following the custom of the Canadian Army until recently, he is buried close to where he fell in battle, at The Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery, which is about 2 kilometres north of the village on the east side of the road to Fouilloy. Villers-Bretonneux is a village 16 kilometres east of Amiens on the main road to St Quentin. Ransom's descendents live in Chesterville to this day. His name is listed in the Book of Remembrance, in the Peace Tower of the Parliament Buildings, Ottawa.

The official history of the PPCLI (www.ppcli.com) records the period during the Battle of Amiens when Ransom was killed as follows:
The marshy ground to the front of the Amiens positions were intensively-prepared by combat engineers, and the employment of armoured scout cars using cavalry manoeuvre tactics to seek weak points in the defensive line was another first. The brigaded machine guns of Brigadier-General Brutinel's Canadian Independent Force (1st and 2nd Motor Machine2gun Brigades – 80 Machine guns in all) in their monstrous battle wagons acted as the fire department, pouring suppressive fire upon the enemy. At 0420 hours on 8 August 1918, the artillery barrage began. The ground for the attack consisted of a rolling plateau, with a diagonal depression traversing their advance – the Luce River Valley. The Australians faced poorly-prepared German defenses, and attacked between the Amiens-Chaulnes Railway and the Somme River. The Canadians attacked with three divisions up between the Railway and the Amiens-Royes Road. The 2nd Canadian Division was just south of the Australians covering a 1,600 metre front, the 1st Canadian Division was in the centre covering 3,000 metres, with the 3rd Canadian Division on the right covering 2,500 metres, and the 4th in reserve. The obstacles to their front were brushed aside through the efforts of the tireless Combat Engineers – even the Luce Valley posing little difficulty. By 1100 hours the engineers had two bridges in place across the Luce River. The 3rd Division had the closest fight of the day, as the French Corps on their flank relied upon an Artillery barrage instead of tanks for their penetration of the line, and were 45 minutes late across the Line of Departure and slow to advance. Currie's other main innovation was brought into play to cover the exposed flank – Brigadier Brutinel's Canadian Independent Force of mounted machine guns brought ample enfilading and suppressive fire to the German flank and helped the French forward. Excited by the sudden success, the Allied Supreme Headquarters launched the Cavalry which had waited since the start of the war to be employed on the breakthrough. Quickly outdistancing their supporting tanks, the 3rd Cavalry Division (UK), including the Canadian Cavalry Brigade, proved that they were still unable to defeat the machine guns. All but 50 Royal Canadian Dragoons participating in the attack were wiped out by well-sited machine guns. Despite this the Allies advanced 13 km by early evening on 8 August, an unparalleled achievement in the Great War. The Patricias were again at the front of the 7th Brigade as the offensive petered out, and LCol Stewart ordered the Patricias to use their Mills bombs to fight their way into the German positions at Parvillers to support the advance of the 42nd Battalion (Black Watch). Owing to a lack of Mills bombs, initial success ground to a halt, with the 3^rd Company exposed in its own small salient in the line. Now came one of the finest hours for the Patricias, as the Germans in their turn lobbed 'potato-masher' grenades into the Patricia platoons while they conducted a fighting withdrawal. On 13 August 1918, the second day of fighting in the Parvillers zone, Sgt Robert Spall earned a posthumous Victoria Cross for his actions in covering his platoon's withdrawal with a Lewis Machine gun. Once consolidated in the old German line, the Patricias held the line, and German casualties were heavy as they resumed their retreat.

Photo soon

Ransom Howard Hess (1900 – 1918)

The PPCLI moving up to the front lines – France, 1918

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