Lily Elizabeth Newton Cook Arnold 1881 - 1965

Lily Elizabeth Newton Cook

Now that we have encountered four hundred years of Harts, I would like to go back to my maternal lines for a bit. I have always been very curious about my great grandmother Faith Cook Saunders’ parents and siblings. My grandmother Alice Sanderson had mentioned them over the years, and I always found it a kind of sad that we had been out of touch with the families of her aunts and uncles even though some of them were apparently so close geographically. All I knew was that some of them lived in Salmon Arm, British Columbia. One of these aunts turned out to be her Aunt Lily. The one story I remember hearing about her specifically was that she had beautiful long auburn hair, which she brushed one hundred times every night. My mother told me that Faith had “idolized” her older sister. My mother had also told me that she remembered that a bunch of the family from the Okanagan had come through Vancouver in the 1930’s on their way to California. I have since discovered that one of the uncles, Samuel Cook, had lived in Torrance and Long Beach, California, but I will write about him separately. Uncle Godfrey, of whom everyone seemed to be fond, had had a drinking problem, according to the family story, and had died “in a parking lot” somewhere in the States. This turned out to be Ogden, Utah in 1940. The only other piece of information about this side of the family that I had, other than I have already shared in my postings about Emma Green Cook, was that my grandmother had told me that she had a male cousin in Salmon Arm who was a “famous psychic” who had been written up in McLean’s magazine. She said that he was famous for predicting natural phenomena such as earthquakes. He turned out to be Lily’s son, Stan Arnold, who died last year a few months before I joined Ancestry.

Lily, Martha, Clara & Faith Cook

My great grand aunt, Lily Elizabeth Newton Cook was born on September 25, 1881 in Guisborough, Yorkshire, England, while her parents, Emma and William Cook, originally from Lincolnshire, were still living there. (She is pictured above standing on the left. Next to her are her sisters Martha and Clara, I believe, and sister Faith is in front). She was partially named after her maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Newton, of whom her mother appears to have been very fond. She was baptised at the age of five on March 9, 1887 in Timberland, Lincolnshire, where her father was born. Her sister, Martha Annie Wheatly Cook, was baptised the same day at the age of two. "Wheatly" was the surname of their maternal great grandmother, the mother of Elizabeth Newton. Lily arrived in Canada with her mother and siblings in 1889, her father having emigrated the year before. (See my postings on Emma Green Cook for further discussion of the family’s early years in Canada). After living first in Ontario, the family moved to Moosomin, Saskatchewan between 1892 and 1900, where they homesteaded and had a farm. There Lily met Henry Edward Arnold, a.k.a. “Harry”, and they married in Moosomin in 1901. Harry was born on March 11, 1876 in Bethnal Green, London, England. He came to Canada with his family in 1884 at the age of eight. According to a local history, Lily and and Harry had ten children. So far, bit by bit, I have identified nine: Emma Clara Arnold, Ethel Annie Edna Arnold, William Henry Edward Arnold, Marion Lillian Pearl Arnold, Ralph Garnett Arnold, Franklin Morris Arnold, Herburt Stanley Arnold, Clara Grace Ella Arnold, and Stanley Edward Arnold. Lily and Harry were living in Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan in 1906, and by 1907 they were in Vancouver, British Columbia, where Harry’s parents and siblings had already been living since 1900. Lily was therefore the first person related to me to move to Vancouver, and her following Harry’s family was a key reason. It is interesting to note that where you are born is due to a series of decisions made by many other people long before you came into the world.

Harry had worked as a journeyman “printer’s devil” in Saskatchewan, beginning in Moosamin, where he worked on the Moosomin World newspaper. Part of his duties included operating a hand-turned press. He joined the International Typographical Union in 1907, and worked as a printer on various newspapers, including The British Columbian, The Salmon Arm Observer, and The Vernon News until 1930, when he turned to full-time farming. In 1911 or 1912, Harry and Lily moved to Salmon Arm, British Columbia where they had a farm and raised their family. They lived there for the rest of their lives. Lily was a founding member of the Valley Women’s Institute in 1922, a local service and charitable organization. In 1932, at the age of fifty-one, she and two other members of the Institute petitioned the District Council to be able to retain the old abandoned schoolhouse for their organization. They were determined that they would not leave until the building was granted to them instead of to a prospective buyer. The institute was granted the schoolhouse, but it had to be moved to a narrow lot farther west. Apparently, the lot was so small there was not even enough room for a path at the rear of the building. Firewood had to be carried through the hall for storing.

Lily and Harry were not without their share of loss and tragedy in their lives. They lost their daughter, Ethel Annie Edna Arnold, in 1904 at the age of one, when they were still in Saskatchewan, and their son, Herburt Stanley Arnold died in 1934 at the age of eighteen of cancer of the leg. Lily died of a stroke on March 23, 1965 at the age of eighty-three at her home on Arnold road, and was buried in Mount Ida Cemetery in Salmon Arm. Harry died on June 12, 1971 at the age of ninety-five of pneumonia, and is buried with Lily.

I hope that some of Lily’s descendants may read this and contact me. They are a branch of the family my side seems to have lost track of a long time ago, and it would be wonderful to reconnect and share stories. I am grateful to the volunteers at the B.C. Genealogical Society Library for helping me to locate two Salmon Arm local histories, A Salmon Arm Scrapbook, and Salmon Arm's Historic Routes and the People Behind the Names.