John Charles Brinsmead is the younger son of William Brinsmead and Mary Anne Williams, born in 1876. William Brinsmead and his two older brothers, William and Arthur moved to the USA. William senior died in Brooklyn and gave up his two sons to the Children's Aid Society. Their history can be found on the USA Brinsmeads page.
Until recently we knew nothing of the fate of their younger brother John Charles. Now we have discovered that he emigrated to Canada as a young boy and later took a land grant to farm in Saskatchewan.
On the 1881 English census, which was taken after William and his two sons William and Arthur left for the New York, John Charles and his remaining siblings were living with their grandparents, Henry and Mary Brinsmead, in Holdenhurst, Hampshire, on the South Coast.
On March 2th, 1888, at age 11, as part of a Dr. Bernardo's party, he left Liverpool, in England, aboard the SS Polynesian, bound for Halifax in Canada. He was just one of a party of 205 boys.
He appears to have been adopted by a farm couple living in Innisfil, Ontario named William and Mary Ann Donnelley. In 1899 he was living in Innisfil, Ontario, by Lake Simcoe, and was planning on moving to the North West (at that point Saskachewan and Alberta were simply part of the Northwest Territories - Provincial status only came in 1905).
What he did with himself otherwise from 1888 to 1903 we do not know.
We have since discovered an entry for John Charles Brinsmead in the 1906 Census of Western Canada. He is shown as having emigrated to Canada from England in 1888. Further research shows that he received a Dominion Land Grant to a quarter section of land (160 acres) on December 3rd, 1903. The land is legally described as the NE part of Section 34, Township 6, Range 30, West 1st Meridian. This, and the census, place it near the small village of Antler, Saskatchewan. He would have arrived there just as the railway came to the area. We have obtained a poor copy of his land grant as well as his supporting affidavits which tell us he arrived in the Antler area in June, 1900.
These documents tell us that he built his 12 foot by 16 foot house in 1900. He broke 145 acres of land and acquired six horses. When he was not working his own land, he went thrashing for others. He was single with no family.
We are trying to find out more of what happened to John Charles, both between his arrival and 1900 and after 1906.