Heaton

(submitted by Betty Searson-Anderson)

Roy Robert (1883–1961) and Ethel May (Allen) Heaton and their children, Allen (1907–1994) and Leah (1909–1997), moved from Essex County to Lot 15, Con. 6 SER Warwick Twp. in 1918. The house was called “Laurel Lee.” They moved to by Warwick train. On a trip that took three days through London, the men cared for the livestock — Holstein cattle and Percheron horses — in the box cars.

Roy Heaton was proud of his purebred Holstein herd and his Percherons. He always had white Percherons and would ride at the head of the annual July 12 Orange Parade in Watford. He would also talk about using his team to pull the hearse for Harper’s Funeral Home.

The family had moved to Warwick for health reasons. Ethel had respiratory problems and Leah had suffered from a very severe case of typhoid fever.

In the 1930s Roy began to grow market garden crops. One of his granddaughters remembers picking their rows of tasty strawberries. She couldn’t just pick the big ones; she had to pick as she went. There were rows of red and black raspberry bushes, black and red currant bushes and gooseberry bushes. As well, there were cabbage plants, cauliflower plants, potatoes and many other vegetables. Roy always had laying hens, pigs, horses and cattle. In the 1950s he sold Holstein heifers to Shore Brothers, St. Thomas, for shipment to Japan.

In 1945, on a very snowy January day, Roy was at the head of his team of horses at the end of a laneway. He slipped off the end of a culvert and one of the horses stepped on his right shoulder. In spite of many treatments that shoulder was always restricted in its movement after that.

In 1959 Roy and Ethel sold the farm to Tony Manders and moved to 569 St. Clair Street. The house was a white one-storey building. There Roy planted vegetable gardens and beautiful beds of flowers. Roy died very suddenly in 1961. Ethel lived there until her death in 1970. In the nine years after her husband’s death Ethel made Colonial Doll quilts for each of her grandchildren.

Leah married John Searson of Brooke Twp. They had four daughters and one son, as well as three children who died at birth. Having inherited the St. Clair St. house from her parents, in 1976 Leah (Heaton) Searson moved there from Brooke Twp. with her husband, John (1911–1984), her daughter, Betty, and granddaughter, Janet. Leah, who enjoyed quilting, tatting doilies and crocheting afghans, lived there until 1995 when she went to live with her daughter, Joan Roberts, in Dresden.

Roy and Ethel Heaton’s son, Allen, who married Kathleen McGarvin, was a teacher in Toronto and they had a family of two daughters.

Leah and John Searson’s daughter Betty married Bill Anderson of Oil Springs. Their granddaughter Janet married David Whitehead of Enniskillen Twp.

Chapter 24 of 25 - Heaton Family

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