Born on 24 October in Govan, Lanarkshire in Scotland, Rose was the youngest child of Irish born parents - Bernard McCann, a ship's plater/boiler maker (described on Rose's death certificate as 'engineer'), and his wife Rose Anne Kelly. Married in the Catholic Parish of Kilmore, County Armagh, on 13th July 1864, Bernard and Rose Anne appear to have migrated to Scotland shortly between 1864-6, with the first of their children, Margaret, born at Greenock in 1866 followed by John (b 1868); Edward (b 1873) James (b1871-d1871), Mary (b 1877) and Rose (b 1882). At the time of her marriage to James Lee in 1904, Rose was living at 14 Great Junction Street Leith with her now widowed mother Rose Anne and sister Mary. 14 Great Junction Street appears to have been the McCann family home years for many years and features in correspondence to Rose from the War Office during the Great War. In a building comprising relatively large apartments over shops with a shared back garden, we have a picture of Rose's sisters Margaret (Molly) and Mary with their nieces sitting in the garden at 14 Great Junction Street. . Somewhat surprisingly at the time, my mother advised me "not to look too closely" at my father's birth certificate when I was applying for a visa to travel and work in England in 1971. Advice I of course completely disregarded! James Lee (compositor) and Rose McCann (clerkess) had married at the Catholic Chapel in Leith, four months before my father Anthony 'Tony' Lee was born at 8 Admiralty Place on September 23, 1904. A compositor by trade, it is on record that James had an 8 year career with the 3rd and 5th Royal Scots, so Rose would probably have had the typical life of a young army wife living in Leith at that time. Although Tony was to remain an only child for another 20 years, family history records suggest James had a particularly large extended family and that there were many causins for my father Tony to play with. There was even another Anthony Lee, also born in 1904. This Anthony, a mariner who never married, died like my father, in 1963, leading to some confusion on ancestry.com which I'm finding hard to rectify. At the time of the 1911 census, Rose and 7 year old Tony were listed as present at the home of her remarried mother Rose Anne and sister Margaret at their home in Leith, while James is found in the UK census in a printing business in London. A year later, James, Rose and Tony embarked on 'The Otway' to Australia, arriving in Brisbane on 28 October 1912, travelling on to Sydney where Sands Directory entries appeared listing James Lee running a printing business, and where Tony attended the junior school of Sydney Grammar School or 'Shore'. Rose must have begun to settle in and make friends, however the Great War was clearly imminent and then a reality. Rose, like James, must have known many of the Leith based Royal Scots soldiers killed so tragically in the Gretna Train Disaster of April 2015, an event which deeply affected the Leith community deeply. Not long after this event James enlisted in the Australian Armed Forces, leaving Australian shores a Lieutenant owing his earlier military experience with the Royal Scots and skills evident in running his printing business. Rose chose to return to England, travelling to London with Tony from Wellington in New Zealand via Monte Video and Teneriffe on the 'Corinthic'. Initially intending to live with her family at Great Junction Street,in Leith, Rose was able to join James to live at or near the Army Base at Perham Downs. Things we remember hearing? We remember hearing that Rose had 'worked in the canteens' during the war - these would almost certainly have been the canteens at Perham Downs Army Base on the Salisbury Plains when James was stationed there during World War I throughout 1916 and 1917. Rose and Tony appear to have been able to live as a family with James (a Lieutenant) during this period, with Tony attending nearby Andover Grammar School. Rose appears to have operated a boarding house for soldiers in a nearby village while James was posted to France from November 1917 - 18. Rose and Tony were given permission to travel with James in the troop ship on his return to Australia in 1920 and are recorded in the passenger records. . We remember hearing that James and Rose had become quite wealthy during the 1920's, owning what was once described to me as 'an ionic columned house with swimming pool in North Sydney', My mother described Rose as having had a very active social life in Sydney including involvement with 'new theatre'; a range of social sets and political discussion groups; card and bridge clubs, literary sets and as developing advanced skills in public speaking. My brother and sister remember our father's friends saying that 'The Lee's weren't just wealthy, they were very wealthy'. We also remember hearing that the depression resulted in the selling of my grandfather's two printing businesses - one in Sydney and one in Lismore - and the family home, and that thereafter they lived in a rented accommodation, including apartment in an historic home at 8 Osborne Road then divided into flats not too far from the Manly ferry terminal. I suspect Rose kept up her contacts at her card and discussion groups, as a journalist friend of hers, 'Betty', wrote a piece about my parents wedding in the social pages of the Sydney Morning Herald in 1942. My sister remembers our father explaining to her that he chose 'Rosemary' as her second name as it is the combination of his mother Rose and her favorite sister Mary's names. And we often chuckled and felt happy when our father told us that his mother always called him 'Snooks'. Here is a note to him written on the back of a photo while he was away at war... This began as a story about grandparents. Although Rose was alive when my parents married and while my mother worked in Sydney during the war, Rose never knew us, nor her daughter Bunty's children, who were all born after her death in 1945. There is a sad twist here. Grandchildren had been a part of her life until my father's first marriage disintegrated ('we were too young'), followed by an increasingly bitter divorce eventually decreed in 1933, Jacqu Leonard's son once told me there were pictures in a family album of Rose's 'first' grand children Aaron and Lenore, playing with him at a picnic. It's possible that their aunt, Bunty was playing with them as well. Bunty was born 20 years after Tony's birth and was barely three years older than Aaron. Perhaps Rose received occasional news of Aaron and Lenore, who grew up in Lismore, NSW, from family friends--I suspect and do hope so. Rose faced many challenges in her life. Becoming pregnant before marriage and this becoming a 'family secret'; migrating to Australia for a new life eight years later then returning to the UK during the war; managing a boarding house while her loved husband James at war in France throughout 1918; returning to Australia then having another child in her early to mid forties; experiencing the highs and then lows of the economic cycle after James very successful business failed during the great depression; losing a home; watching the failure of her son Tony's first marriage; losing contact with her grandchildren; Tony fighting in the Middle East and New Guinea during World War II; having an apparently volatile relationship with daughter Bunty who had joining the forces as soon as she was eligible; experiencing the pain of an incurable cancer at a time when pain management and treatments were not as effective as they are today; Apparently sometimes prickly and of a 'mercurial' temperament, aspiring to and for a time becoming a newly monied member of the 'upper middle' class in Sydney during the 1920's, ,Rose appears to have been an intelligent, adventurous and interesting person married a kind and wonderful man who reportedly loved her very dearly, and was clearly held in deep affection by my father, 'Snooks'. This post was written in response to the topic 'Grandparents' for my U3A memoir based Writing Workshop group.
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The Journey ...An 'occasional blog' recording elements of my renewed family history journey. This is the second wave in my 'family history' journey. The first lasted from 2010 to 2014. with intermittent bursts since then. It's time to revisit, to share more stories, to edit, to tackle uncertainties... Categories
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