My Family Tree

Bertha Maude Maynard was born in Northam in 1893. On the 1940 census form she said she had attended elementary school, up to the 8th grade. In 1911, she was living at home with her parents Edmund and Sarah. She was working as a tailoress in a shop.

However, on a border crossing form, Maude said that she had been living in Boston from 1908-1916. On the 1930 Census, Maude said she had emigrated in 1908. Maude was described as being 5'1", with brown hair and blue eyes.

According to the book There to Here, by Roy Newcombe Maude married Wilfred Cecil Coleman around 1915. They had two children both of whom who died in infancy. One daughter, Helen Kathleen, died in Northam at 5 days old on January 25 1918. She is possibly the infant daughter of W. C. and M. Coleman in the Port Hill Church of England cemetery.

In 1919, Wilfred C. and Maude Coleman moved to the United States, giving Wilfred's mother Jane as their contact in Springfield, New Brunswick. Wilfred was a machinist. There were no children named on the border crossing form. They gave their last address as Amherst, NS.

Maud was with her husband and his mother in the 1920 US census. They divorced, and in the next census, both she and Wilfred Coleman were remarried.
Name: Bertha Coleman
Event Type: Census Event Year: 1920
Event Place: Boston Ward 7, Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States
Age: 26
Relationship to Head of Household: Daughter-in-law
Birth Year (Estimated): 1894
Birthplace: England
Immigration Year: 1909
Father's Birthplace: England
Mother's Birthplace: England
Household Role Gender Age Birthplace
Jane Coleman Head F 74 Canada
Wilfred Coleman Son M 30 Canada (New Brunswick?)
Bertha Coleman Daughter-in-law F 26 England
Gertrude Smedley Lodger F 27 Massachusetts

"Miss Gertrude Maynard has returned to her home in Northam, after spending the past six months in Boston with her sister, Mrs. W. C. Coleman. On her return she spent a few days in Moncton."
Summerside Journal - 30 Mar 1921, p.5

In 1926, Mrs. Edmund Maynard visited her daughter Mrs. Frankel of Detroit Michigan.

Maude indicated on the 1930 US census that her first marriage had been at age 22, that is, in 1915. I'm not sure where she and Wilfred Coleman were married. There was nothing in the online PARO files, or in New Brunswick, Maine, Nova Scotia or Massachusetts records.

Her second marriage, to Harry Frankel, was about 1924, according to a question on the 1930 census form, although her brother gave her name as Mrs. Maude Coleman on an emigration form dated November 1925.

Maude was living with Harry in Queens, New York, according to the 1930 and 1940 census records. Harry Frankel was born in Russia in 1888, and given that he gave his mother tongue as Yiddish on the 1930 census, he was probably a Russian Jew. He was the secretary of a trade organization, a laundry organization affiliated with AFL-CIO, according to his obituary. Harry lost his sight in the 1940s, and volunteered for an organization for blind adults.

Maude made many trips back to PEI, with her husband or her sisters. She sometimes spent the summer with her sister Gertie. There is a gravestone for her in a PEI cemetery (photograph on PEI Ancestry).

"Mr. and Mrs. George [sic] Frankel of Elmhurst, Long Island, returned to their home today after a very pleasant visit with Mrs. Frankel's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Maynard of Northam, and her sister, Mrs. John Jack, Summerside." Area News Briefs, from PEI Ancestry .

Maude became a US citizen in 1945.

Harry died in 1957.

Although the Maynard siblings lived far apart, there are a number of references in newspapers about their visits and trips together.
‎
Ludington Daily News - Jul 1, 1972, from Google News Archives
Mr. and Mrs. Leigh Maynard, Mrs. Gertrude Jack and Mrs. Maude Frankel of Prince Edward Island, Canada have been guests of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Maynard.