Elsie PEAKE (1896-1987)

Individual Events and Attributes

Marriage (1)

Marriage (2)

Individual Note (shared)

Elsie was baptised by her uncle,William Peake in the Primitive Methodist Church. Both Samuel and William Peake were Lay Preachers.As a young teenager, Elsie worked as a domestic away from home. She said she suffered homesickness, being so young. It seems she had a close relationship with her father and a favourite activity was long walks which they took together to a nearby "mountain" called the Wrekin. As she described one such day: they were walking when a thick fog descended and they were unable to see their way along the narrow pathway. Her father felt along the ground and found a piece of wood from a tree called "gorse". He used this for a walking stick to feel their way. Elsie kept this walking stick throughout her life and in her old age had it made into a cane.

During WWI, Elsie worked at a factory job near home. There was a young man to whom she was engaged, but she broke off the engagement after an argument. She said she threw the engagement ring into a field. He was later killed in combat during WWI.

Elsie's brother, Arthur, had emigrated to Canada and was living in Chesterville, ON. Upon his urging, the Peake family (father Samuel, mother Ann, and younger sisters Annie and Hilda) boarded the S.S.Corsican in Liverpool, England and made their way to Canada in August of 1920. During the crossing, she met Robert Watson Martin. During the voyage, Elsie and Robert were cuddling on a deck chair when Elsie saw her father strolling towards them. They pulled a blanket up over their heads so that her father wouldn't see them. Later, her father asked Elsie if that was her huddled under a blanket with some young man - which she denied. The courtship was short and from a distance - she and Robert were married in May of 1921.

For details of their married life, see notes for Robert Martin.

After Robert's death, Elsie stayed on in Nanticoke for three years. Granddaughter Lynn and her husband Larry Hall lived with her for a period. Elsie moved to Hamilton, ON and lived with sister Hilda and her husband Jack Tingey first on Limeridge Road East, then later on East 5th Avenue. After Jack's death, Elsie, now also needing a higher level of care, moved to Christopher Terrace Retirement Home on New Street in Burlington, ON. She died there and was buried beside her husband in White Chapel Cemetery in Hamilton, ON.²

Sources