Jesse Would ²⁷

   Cause of his death was stroke.

  General Notes:

Jesse was the youngest child of eleven, whose mother died when he was ten years of age, in 1902. It was then he began work as a farm hand for $5 a year. He also worked for his father at the White Hart Inn in Ludford, Lincolnshire. Basic education requirement in England was grade four, which he completed, and then worked on the railroad in Chesterfield. In 1911, Canada advertised for immigrants, so he followed his brother, Herbert, to acquire land in Leinan, Saskatchewan. To pay for it, he worked as a labourer on other farms, and by 1915, was able to send for his fiance, Elizabeth Fisher. By the end of 1918, "Spanish 'Flu" had struck and people were dying. Despite prohibition in Saskatchewan at the time, Jesse had a bottle of liquor, for medicinal purposes, from which he took a drink every morning. He continued to do his chores, and those of his neighbours, and never got sick, claiming it was the whiskey that kept him healthy! Jesse got his first car before 1925, and once, he took his family on a trip to Regina, a distance of only 150 miles/260 kilometers. They were all day getting there. There was rarely money in Jesse's pocket, but his family always had food to eat. In the fall of 1935, and due to several years of drought and crop failure, Jesse moved his family to Kelowna after auctioning off their home, it's contents, and all their farm animals and equipment. For his first five years in Kelowna, Jesse worked at a service station and fired boilers in the McDonald Building. In 1942 he became a grave digger at Kelowna Cemetery until retirement in 1966. Jesse and Elizabeth had a small home at 1736 Pandosy Street (later to be torn down and replaced with a gas station), and they grew a bountiful fruit, vegetable, and flower garden. Every year they hosted Christmas Eve for all their children and grandchildren. Jesse smoked fat smelly cigars, sat in his big chair with one leg slung over the arm, and he would drink rum and coke and laugh and wheeze. He suffered with hay fever every spring, so he used Snuff to make him sneeze, which eased his symptoms. After being diagnosed with diabetes, he refused to follow the proper diet, so in the end, fell into a diabetic coma for five days and died from a stroke.

  Medical Notes:

- had diabetes

Jesse married Elizabeth Fisher, daughter of Thomas Fisher and Mary (Polly) Hall, on 16 Nov 1915 in Swift Current, Sask., Canada.²⁶ (Elizabeth Fisher was born on 18 Jun 1895 in Church Street, Brimington, Derbyshire, England ²⁸ and died on 31 Jul 1994 in Kelowna, B.C., Canada.)