Winifred Bates

When Winifred Bates died in Canada aged 19, her parents put a notice in the Leicester Daily Mercury.

Winifred died in childbirth but her son, by Levi Joneson, survived and was named Rhuben Wilfred Joneson. (The 1921 Canadian census shows that Rhuben was the name of Levi's brother.)

The 1916 census shows that Winifred was employed as a domestic in the house of Mr and Mrs Luther Joneson in Chipman, a small settlement in central Alberta. Their son, Levi, lived next door.

When the Bates sisters arrived in Chipman, in 1913, the settlement was about 20 years old and had a population of 175. Winifred would have been living in a log cabin facing the railway line - the railroad arrived in 1905.

For more Chipman history see http://www.chipmanab.ca/