American-born son of two school teachers, he became an immigration officer. Living on both sides of the Canadian border, moving his Canada-born wife and children to and fro, accordingly, he stayed in contact with California relatives, with his mother, with half-sister Grace Harvey, with full-sister Laura Richardson. Cremated at Ocean View Burial Park, his ashes were not buried there. They were instead returned to the funeral home, that info provided in 2017.
After the personal biography:
Family
Scots and American Religion
Cemeteries Lost & Found
PERSONAL BIOGRAPHY. He left the States as a young man, to work in Canada as a USA Immigration Officer. Despite not having the proper Canadian accent, he convinced a Canadian named Agnes Ann Pearl Morton to marry him. A daughter of Henrietta Soper and Thomas Morton, they called her "Pearl". Pearl said yes in 1909. They would live on both sides of the international border, but always remained close to it.
Pearl lived many years, but died first, leaving William behind to grieve. Their daughter, Kathleen, signed both death certificates. She stated his burial place precisely (turned out to be his cremation place only), less so for Pearl. Did he and Pearl have more children? This writer finally found the whole family listed together, with William's West Virginian mother also there, for the 1920 US Census. The place was Blaine, in Whatcom County, Washington, so at a northwestern US Customs Port.
1920 Details. (William M. Shearer, age 39, Agnes A. P. Shearer, 31; Kathleen Shearer, 9; Morton William Shearer, 7). Children and mother Pearl were Canada-born. 1917 was given as an immigration date, so William had returned "stateside" only 3 years earlier.
William's mother, Martha, age 75, born West Virginia, had been nicknamed Mattie, earlier, making her records hard to find at times. Perhaps she was just visiting them in 1920? His father, Samuel Shearer, a teacher and then a school superintendent in the Bay Area of California, had died of a "protracted illness" in July of that year, said his funeral notice. Mattie's stepson and William's older half-brother) was Edwin F. Shearer, some of Climena French and Samuel Shearer. After Climena died, Edwin remained with his re-married father Samuel. Later, with boarders for added income, remaining a single man, Edwin occupied the house used long-term by the Shearers (still Mattie's house after Samuel died? in her son William's birth town of Salinas).
William died in Canada, at the amazing age of 96, in 1976. Apparently, marrying a Canadian could be good for you? William's lifespan outdid those of both his long-lived educator parents, Samuel and Martha Shearer.
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Sources & Grave Lists
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*"British Columbia Death Registrations, 1872-1986"
.......William's image, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-DYMS-NMF
.......Pearl's image, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-65LS-351
*Their Marriage in Canada
.......Image, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-D4VQ-5C2
*Son Morton Shearer's marriage in California
.......Image, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G93H-79SL-Y
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FAMILY.
William's parents died some years apart, in Monterey County, California. They had raised William and his older siblings there, one full sister, and two half-siblings. South of San Francisco, on the coast, it must have been a beautiful place. His full sister Laura had perhaps been his mother's caretaker, if his mother Mattie last lived with Laura's family? Mattie had been double-counted in 1930, once at each child's house, as if she "took turns" visiting them.
Mother. Born as Martha Young, Mattie married over a decade after the Civil War ended. She died a widow, in 1939, as the Great Depression wound down and Hitler became active in Germany.
Her birth state had turned into West Virginia by the time she married, but it had been Virginia at her birth. The debates over slavery and the meaning of the Revolution would have caused much conversation when Mattie was young.
Stories will vary. When she was young, some said a group of southern states started the Civil War in a fury over not being allowed to expand slavery westward, into California and Kansas and other places. The so-called border states, Kentucky, etc., began as undecideds. Some tried to use the argument of "states rights" to win them over , but others say said this was used more post-War, as if an afterthought. The state's right to do WHAT, exactly? Too many ancestors had fought or died in the American Revolution for West Virginians to throw away their freedom from the British and replace it with secession. The smaller farmers of WV thus broke away from their plantation-filled "mother state" of Virginia. Declared a "border state", they decided to join the North, not the South. They were intending to stop dis-union, their set not as anti-slavery as New Englanders and the arriving German-Americans.
Was Martha raised to think for herself? A teacher, she married Ohio-raised Samuel over a decade after the Civil War had ended. California had been a newly formed state where both northerners and southerners had flocked to, for the Gold Rush of the 1850s, pre-Civil War. More of the northerners went to the Bay area and northward. More of the southerners went southward. South and north met in greatest numbers in a "middling place", right below the Bay area, making it possible for a brand-new West Virginian to run into and marry a former Ohioan.
In his own biography for a local history book, Samuel would praise her as an intelligent and well-organized teacher. As his second wife, Mattie would raise the two children from his first, taking stepdaughter Grace through her teen years, to be another teacher. Full daughter Laura, in the rules of the time, was not allowed to become a teacher once she had married? Not all things are findable online?
Multi-Career Father The father, Samuel McConnell Shearer, died in July of 1920. That same year, the U.S. census caught Mattie, as Martha, visiting William's family. Was she recovering from a long period as an invalid husband's caretaker? Not wanting to be alone?
His parents had raised her deceased Samuel far away from Virginia plantations and WV small farms, far from hill lands that would house future coal mines. William's grandparent Shearers lived instead in Midwestern places. Their places often copied the ways of New England, perhaps inspired by impoverished farmers who had migrated westward, out of that Yankee region, wanting better for their children, for all children. The ex-New Englanders migrating west below Canada, through a string of states along the Great Lakes, typically promoted public education, and any kind of libraries. Others coming later added their own improvements.
Once out in California, Monterey County elected Samuel as superintendent for all of their schools. An Ohioan of Scottish descent, Samuel added teacher training. There was, thus, a "normal school" in nearby San Jose for William's half-sister, Grace, to attend.
An "Alcade" Great-Uncle. Samuel began his teaching career in Ohio and Indiana, then followed a newspaper-publishing uncle to California. The uncle, pre-statehood, pre Mexican-American War, was "alcalde" specifically for San Jose. The alcades generally had an extensive knowledge of local real estate, able to recruit settlers for a town, with Samuel thereafter then picking his own California locations well.
Samuel married his first wife, fellow mid-westerner, Climena Camilla French, when they were the only teachers hired for the same "old mission" school. He advanced his career, then saw her die "too young".
Camilla's youthful death would be true of her daughter, that is, William's half-sister Grace, Edwin's full sister. It would repeat for Grace's daughter, trackable back to some New Englander great-grandmothers, lacking the "long-life genes" that Samuel and Martha would pass to William and his children. Modern medicine prevents a lot of that now, "female cancer" detectable early.
In Dec. of 1876, his father Samuel married William's mother, Martha Jane Young.
Another Sib. William's full sister was Laura Lucinda Shearer, b. 1878, so two years older. Both she and William attended Pacific University. While William went further (Stanford University), she married in 1902. Her spouse was called Newton by his parents, but, apparently unhappy with that, he listed himself as N. Eno Richardson at marriage time, in Monterey County, California. She would have five children with Eno. Four were still present in 1920, when William was counted with just two.
LAURA'S DETAILS: The 1920 US Census found her and Newton Eno Richardson living in Sutter County, with three surviving daughters and a son (Lois, 16; Verna, 15; Helen, 4 yrs and 2 months in age; and Wayne, 2 yrs and 5 months. A prior daughter, Dorothy, was missing, reason unclear. Visiting someone? Deceased?)
By their 1930 Census, the Richardsons were still in Sutter County. Only the last two children remained at home, widowed Mattie Shearer with them.
By the 1940, Laura was out of Sutter County, her spouse Eno and her and William's mom Mattie both gone. She and Mattie were in the old Shearer house, so perhaps the widowed Laura and mother had returned there together. The 1940 Census specifically found Laura and her working daughter Helen, a dietician at a hospital, living in Salinas, Aliala Twp., on Pajaro Street, near its intersection with Alisal. That had long been Samuel and Mattie's address, and also that of half-brother Edwin.
William's niece, Laura's daughter Helen, would die later, at age 92, in San Bernardino. Like William's half-brother Edwin, she apparently never married, as she still used her maiden name as a surname, not as easy to keep it as true now.
HALF-SIBS. Recall that William and Laura's older half-siblings had, as their mother, Camilla, a former teacher. They were were Grace, a teacher, and Edwin, working mysteriously as a painter. (There were three basic kinds, house painter, versus selling art in galleries or on commission, versus painter of ads on barn and store sides for motorists to view.)
Half-sister Grace, while still a Shearer, was of record having crossed the border into Canada, which would allow her to visit William, so we think they stayed in touch. She married a Harvey. Again, Grace Shearer Harvey would live a too-short life, as would her daughter, Kathryn Harvey Love. Happily, Kathryn Harvey Love's daughters finally broke out of the pattern.
Edwin Shearer apparently stayed single, mostly a homebody. He thus is found in censuses mainly with their father, Samuel, but working, Mattie away, somewhere else, visiting.
Multiple family members had been in the newspaper business, which solicited ads to stay alive. Was he Edwin an ad artist?
Scots and American Religion
In Canada, not just the states, churches tracked marriages. Many tracked infant baptisms, naming child with parents, long before governments began to track births. ("Christening" would be a later term preferred by those choosing adult baptism? )
The church marriage of William's son Morton would make it into the Canadian records, not just William's. "Methodist" was mentioned by some as a family religion. If anyone was Methodist, however, then that choice of church might be formed more by American history, than by Canadian, triggered into full play in the US by the Revolution closing down King's churches, by moves into rural frontiers giving employment to circuit-riding ministers, copying the old French Jesuits before the French had been chased out, but using horses instead of canoes.
You see two bits of a Scottish family history in his names, McConnell being highlander, Shearer being lowlander. Two big patterns-- highlanders stayed Catholic longest, while lowlanders turned Presbyterian and insisted others be the same. Learning not to argue about religion took a long time. So, how did Methodists come about?
In Britain, John Wesley had been inspired by German Anabaptists he had met on a ship. He began the Methodists as a "prayer society" inside the national English Church (Anglican, aka Church of England, aka the King's church). One Methodist caused trouble by taking the lectern at one point, telling the rest of the congregation they were headed for the nether world, causing his portion of the prayer society to be kicked out of the Anglicans.
Their society or club had a method for praying, so were called Methodists. The subset staying closer to John Wesley and their Anglican origins might be called Wesleyan.
Some sociology professors teach "structural-functionalism". For a structure to persist, it must have a function, serve a broader purpose.
For a religion to survive long-term, on their own, without a king's backing it by force, they have to provide a social benefit. The Methodists' new benefit? They strove to eliminate alcoholism. That was in addition to sticking to the sometimes Anglican, previously Catholic religious goals of caring for the poor, whether orphaned, elderly, or crushed by recession or disaster.
In a rigidly class-bound old-time England, they attracted the working classes. Few were allowed to rise into the middle class, despite hard work, but knew, from family experience, that it took little to descend into poverty.
In America, the faith evolved differently, at first in reaction to the American Revolution. Former members of the King's church had to ask, "What to do, now that we are no longer with the King, as we now lack his church, is subsidies?" Trips to Britain were taboo, for a time. When selecting new regional church leaders (bishops), the earlier ordained were no longer there to put their hands on the newly ordained. To be ordained, one had to travel to England. So they decided it was no necessary to have that kind of succession
The other way America differed? The frontier was expanding, a rural edge moving westward, temporarily with too little population to support churches. Before the French were pushed out circa 1755, their Jesuits and other clergies had circulated across First Nation, Metis, and French villages, taking turns, this settlement this week, that settlement the next, and so on. The Methodists post-Revolution did the same. They called their traveling clergy "circuit-riders". Their difference for the Americans' British-descended clergy was that they were now married, traveled on narrow trails by horse, not wagon. Some had to leave unhappy wives and children back home. The pressure to stop riding and serve a church in one spot would soon surface for each married rider.
Many non-Methodists on the moving frontier edge came to the riders' church services. After decades of Americans splintering into more and more denominations, the frontier choice might be "listen to the Methodist minister, or have no minister at all".
The circuit-riders could be preachers ("exhorters"), rather than ministers (ministering to needs), but it was easy to combine the two by preaching against alcohol. Women with alcohol-tempted spouses felt the need. Legally, under old British style rules, very different from German Biergarten rules, women and children were forbidden to enter "saloons," unless employed there, even though needing to haul out an erring spouse.
When young, William sometimes listed himself as "W. S. McConnell Shearer". His middle name of "McConnell" matched that of his father, which matched the maiden name of grandmother Catherine McConnell, whose father came from Scotland. McConnell calls to mind men kilt-wearing and Celtic-speaking, not adapting well after their Bonnie Prince Charles was defeated and Scotland brought under British rule
Catherine's spouse, William's grandfather, was Hugh B. Shearer, whose father was Robert Shearer. Both Hugh and Robert were born in NY state, American the easy way, by birth. Robert was thought by family , however, to be the son of another Scottish immigrant.
Shearer was not a highlander "Mac"name, however, but of the lowlander sort. "Lowlander" means not found in the Scottish mountains, but in lower places, by rivers and sea sides. Lowlander dialect shows sings of long-ago Germanic origin. They had not arrived in lowland Scotland as Celtic-speaker. Celticness in the language of the highlanders was due to coming into Scotland from Ireland, in the time of William Braveheart.
A Shearer, whether spelled that way, or in a more clearly Germanic way, as Sherer, was an "occupational" surname, advertising how a family might be useful. Their springtime work would be with mature sheep, cutting off the winter wool no longer needed. What did they do in other seasons? Perhaps readied the shorn wool for the use of weavers? Carted piles of it to a market town, to be sold? Became dyers and weavers themselves? Scottish tweeds are unique?
The Highlanders and Lowlanders often differed in their choices of church. Before Brits ruled, Scotland had its own Kings.
The Scottish royals most appreciated for that they brought to the land's religion were Margaret and her son Alexander. A sign of this viewpoint was that many Scots began naming daughters Margaret and sons Alexander. Those two traditional names were not seen in this family.
When the older faith of Margaret and Alexander was no longer allowed, there were two national churches in its place, church of England and church of Scotland. Highland Scots would, more often than lowlanders, turn to the Church of England (Anglican). Lowland Scots would, more often than the highlanders, turn to the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian).
People of the "wrong religion" suffered consequences in favor of the British King's version of religion.. First they were penalized (property confiscated), then they were forbidden (battle, executions). This was done in several rounds. The nonroyal leader, Cromwell, looked promising at first. Then, he copied the Brit royals ahead of him, confiscating property of people deemed dangerous if not treasonous due to religious differences.
Often is not the same as always. Canadians, not affected by our American Revolution, still under a British king, could stay Anglican. Americans, no longer loyal to a King's church, turned Methodist or Episcopalian.
William's grandfather, Hugh Shearer, a first-generation American, was said to have been of the hybrid Methodist-Episcopal (M.E.) denomination. Again, during and after the American Revolution, all visits to England for clergy training and ordination stopped, as did saying prayers for the King. People were required to disavow any loyalty oaths previously made to the King, which some had to make earlier, in order to be granted land in the colonies. Those who refused to revoke their oaths were declared "inimical" to the Revolution (be aware that some disliked having Kings, but thought it immoral to renounce prior promises). The American offenders would be exiled to Britain or Canada, called Loyalist by the Brits and Tory by the new Americans. Their property in the American colonies would be confiscated without compensation, though the Brits did come up with some grants of land in Canada, as a reward for staying loyal.
William's wife was Pearl. Was that Pearl's family history in any way?
For people formerly at the King's churches in the States, switching to Methodism seemed sensible, as the Methodists had started as a society inside the Anglican church. The society simply continued without kingly permissions for activities, skipped prayers for the King as the Rev. War began.
Mattie's religion was not written down in obvious records. However, West Virginia had many Methodists.
William and Pearl both declared themselves Methodist at their marriage in Canada. Those Methodists in Samuel's San Jose area of Calif. treating ex-slaves well had been attacked by arriving pro-slavery people, their church was burned. People had services in the Town Hall ?
By the time of the Civil War, Samuel, William's father, had an interesting church record, with a denominational change. Samuel Shearer and his first wife, Camilla French, married in early San Jose, technically in a Presbyterian church, in the months before the Civil War. It operated out of City Hall, as its building had not yet been constructed. (A new building perhaps was deemed unwise? Again, the new Methodist church had just been burned down, by people who opposed its abolitionist preaching, making San Jose's Methodism clearly not the variation called Southern Methodist.)
Short of ministers, Trinity Presbyterian had already been using a missionary, an Episcopalian minister, not Presbyterian. Thus, while Samuel and Camilla's church began as Trinity Presbyterian, that church gradually changed to Trinity Episcopal. It stayed abolitionist, included free members of color in its congregation, some in important positions. In modern times, it become Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.
Its history was found at its web site in Fall, 2015. It said, in the years between statehood and war, that San Jose had been settled by both sides, so was torn between the southerners and northerners. The worst among the southerners were not as good as the best. The worst felt justified in illegal actions, such as arson to punish opponents, thefts of northerner property done to raise money to be sent to rebel leaders back home. Climena and Samuel married early in 1861, the War beginning that summer, her brother Ebenezer serving from Michigan, returning deeply damaged, now to live near them in San Jose, either not willing or able to marry, dead too soon. Her brother AO returned to Michigan in better shape, remarried after his first wife's death, having a few sons survive, to try a snowbird retirement in Calif.,but to be buried in back in Michigan.
The Wars changed.
Preceding WW II, William and Pearl's son Morton moved to southern California. he married another descendant of Scots down there, with a Highlander-sounding name (McFadden). The marriage would be at All Saints Episcopal, not near San Jose or San Fran., but southward, in Beverly Hills. It was probably her or her family's church. (Beverly Hills early deemed posh suburban, now viewed more as posh urban.) That All Saints still exists, has a website. Adapting in a changing world, it calls itself "multi-faith", much as military chaplains are expected to be.
SON MORTON'S MARRIAGE-- Sept. 1, 1944. The bride-- Mary Jane McFadden, of a Pennsylvania-born father. The groom-- Morton, age 32, business manager for a medical division of a company. His parents, William McConnell Shearer & Pearl. (WARNING--an online index wrongly cites George Arthur Shearer as William's father, despite the actual record microfilm showing Samuel, see below.)
The groom resided in Santa Monica; the bride, in Beverly Hills. His birthplace, Vancouver B.C., a overly town. Hers, Glendale, California, on the way to Disneyland and movie studios, if coming in from the east?.
The two would divorce in 1973, still living in Los Angeles County. He owned property in Irvine, nice but not posh, still listed as its owner after his death. He died in Tucson, Pima County, AZ.
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Cemeteries Lost & Found
Samuel's Grave Page. Yes, his father Samuel's death record was found. He was not now 170 years old, still going like an Energizer bunny, simply because we could not find his cemetery back in 2015. Unlike William's death place of Vancouver, his father's state of California apparently did not routinely write cemeteries down in their death records? A pattern was missing graves for Samuel's generation . Then, late in 2020, contributor Dona Mooring located Samuel's. She found it at Salinas in Monterey County, at the Garden of Memories. She found second wife Mattie's grave also there. (First wife Camilla preceded him in death by multiple decades. Her grave is still missing, as of June 2023.)
Apart from Civil War graves (Climena's brother Ebenezer French), easily findable cemeteries include half-sister, Grace Shearer Harvey, in California. We have Grace's stone photo, as a kind stranger photographed many markers at her cemetery, for inclusion at FindaGrave. Many California cemeteries remain unwalked?
William's wife, Pearl Morton Shearer, b. 1888, d. 1971, was cremated, like him, ashes only temporarily at Ocean View Cemetery in Burnaby, in Canada. No cemetery was named by their daughter when signing the records, who presumably scattered the ashes in Vancouver or in the ocean. (Pearl's death record is found under her first name Agnes, not under Pearl, the middle name she preferred.)
Though their daughter Kathleen signed, her married name is hard to decipher, Lockwood or Lockhardt? The images cited below showing her microfilmed signature.
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Copyright Nov., 2015, revised Feb. 6, 2016 and June 15, 2023, by JBrown, Julia Brown, Austin Texas. Permission given to Findagrave for use at this page, id 150403807. NOTE: If anyone in the direct line of William or his siblings wants to manage this or Samuel's grave, request that by Findagrave procedures. I will happily oblige. This writer's husband would be a distant cousin to William's half-siblings. However, we find the stories all interesting and with value. JBrown, Contributor #48697180)
After the personal biography:
Family
Scots and American Religion
Cemeteries Lost & Found
PERSONAL BIOGRAPHY. He left the States as a young man, to work in Canada as a USA Immigration Officer. Despite not having the proper Canadian accent, he convinced a Canadian named Agnes Ann Pearl Morton to marry him. A daughter of Henrietta Soper and Thomas Morton, they called her "Pearl". Pearl said yes in 1909. They would live on both sides of the international border, but always remained close to it.
Pearl lived many years, but died first, leaving William behind to grieve. Their daughter, Kathleen, signed both death certificates. She stated his burial place precisely (turned out to be his cremation place only), less so for Pearl. Did he and Pearl have more children? This writer finally found the whole family listed together, with William's West Virginian mother also there, for the 1920 US Census. The place was Blaine, in Whatcom County, Washington, so at a northwestern US Customs Port.
1920 Details. (William M. Shearer, age 39, Agnes A. P. Shearer, 31; Kathleen Shearer, 9; Morton William Shearer, 7). Children and mother Pearl were Canada-born. 1917 was given as an immigration date, so William had returned "stateside" only 3 years earlier.
William's mother, Martha, age 75, born West Virginia, had been nicknamed Mattie, earlier, making her records hard to find at times. Perhaps she was just visiting them in 1920? His father, Samuel Shearer, a teacher and then a school superintendent in the Bay Area of California, had died of a "protracted illness" in July of that year, said his funeral notice. Mattie's stepson and William's older half-brother) was Edwin F. Shearer, some of Climena French and Samuel Shearer. After Climena died, Edwin remained with his re-married father Samuel. Later, with boarders for added income, remaining a single man, Edwin occupied the house used long-term by the Shearers (still Mattie's house after Samuel died? in her son William's birth town of Salinas).
William died in Canada, at the amazing age of 96, in 1976. Apparently, marrying a Canadian could be good for you? William's lifespan outdid those of both his long-lived educator parents, Samuel and Martha Shearer.
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Sources & Grave Lists
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*"British Columbia Death Registrations, 1872-1986"
.......William's image, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-DYMS-NMF
.......Pearl's image, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-65LS-351
*Their Marriage in Canada
.......Image, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-D4VQ-5C2
*Son Morton Shearer's marriage in California
.......Image, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G93H-79SL-Y
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FAMILY.
William's parents died some years apart, in Monterey County, California. They had raised William and his older siblings there, one full sister, and two half-siblings. South of San Francisco, on the coast, it must have been a beautiful place. His full sister Laura had perhaps been his mother's caretaker, if his mother Mattie last lived with Laura's family? Mattie had been double-counted in 1930, once at each child's house, as if she "took turns" visiting them.
Mother. Born as Martha Young, Mattie married over a decade after the Civil War ended. She died a widow, in 1939, as the Great Depression wound down and Hitler became active in Germany.
Her birth state had turned into West Virginia by the time she married, but it had been Virginia at her birth. The debates over slavery and the meaning of the Revolution would have caused much conversation when Mattie was young.
Stories will vary. When she was young, some said a group of southern states started the Civil War in a fury over not being allowed to expand slavery westward, into California and Kansas and other places. The so-called border states, Kentucky, etc., began as undecideds. Some tried to use the argument of "states rights" to win them over , but others say said this was used more post-War, as if an afterthought. The state's right to do WHAT, exactly? Too many ancestors had fought or died in the American Revolution for West Virginians to throw away their freedom from the British and replace it with secession. The smaller farmers of WV thus broke away from their plantation-filled "mother state" of Virginia. Declared a "border state", they decided to join the North, not the South. They were intending to stop dis-union, their set not as anti-slavery as New Englanders and the arriving German-Americans.
Was Martha raised to think for herself? A teacher, she married Ohio-raised Samuel over a decade after the Civil War had ended. California had been a newly formed state where both northerners and southerners had flocked to, for the Gold Rush of the 1850s, pre-Civil War. More of the northerners went to the Bay area and northward. More of the southerners went southward. South and north met in greatest numbers in a "middling place", right below the Bay area, making it possible for a brand-new West Virginian to run into and marry a former Ohioan.
In his own biography for a local history book, Samuel would praise her as an intelligent and well-organized teacher. As his second wife, Mattie would raise the two children from his first, taking stepdaughter Grace through her teen years, to be another teacher. Full daughter Laura, in the rules of the time, was not allowed to become a teacher once she had married? Not all things are findable online?
Multi-Career Father The father, Samuel McConnell Shearer, died in July of 1920. That same year, the U.S. census caught Mattie, as Martha, visiting William's family. Was she recovering from a long period as an invalid husband's caretaker? Not wanting to be alone?
His parents had raised her deceased Samuel far away from Virginia plantations and WV small farms, far from hill lands that would house future coal mines. William's grandparent Shearers lived instead in Midwestern places. Their places often copied the ways of New England, perhaps inspired by impoverished farmers who had migrated westward, out of that Yankee region, wanting better for their children, for all children. The ex-New Englanders migrating west below Canada, through a string of states along the Great Lakes, typically promoted public education, and any kind of libraries. Others coming later added their own improvements.
Once out in California, Monterey County elected Samuel as superintendent for all of their schools. An Ohioan of Scottish descent, Samuel added teacher training. There was, thus, a "normal school" in nearby San Jose for William's half-sister, Grace, to attend.
An "Alcade" Great-Uncle. Samuel began his teaching career in Ohio and Indiana, then followed a newspaper-publishing uncle to California. The uncle, pre-statehood, pre Mexican-American War, was "alcalde" specifically for San Jose. The alcades generally had an extensive knowledge of local real estate, able to recruit settlers for a town, with Samuel thereafter then picking his own California locations well.
Samuel married his first wife, fellow mid-westerner, Climena Camilla French, when they were the only teachers hired for the same "old mission" school. He advanced his career, then saw her die "too young".
Camilla's youthful death would be true of her daughter, that is, William's half-sister Grace, Edwin's full sister. It would repeat for Grace's daughter, trackable back to some New Englander great-grandmothers, lacking the "long-life genes" that Samuel and Martha would pass to William and his children. Modern medicine prevents a lot of that now, "female cancer" detectable early.
In Dec. of 1876, his father Samuel married William's mother, Martha Jane Young.
Another Sib. William's full sister was Laura Lucinda Shearer, b. 1878, so two years older. Both she and William attended Pacific University. While William went further (Stanford University), she married in 1902. Her spouse was called Newton by his parents, but, apparently unhappy with that, he listed himself as N. Eno Richardson at marriage time, in Monterey County, California. She would have five children with Eno. Four were still present in 1920, when William was counted with just two.
LAURA'S DETAILS: The 1920 US Census found her and Newton Eno Richardson living in Sutter County, with three surviving daughters and a son (Lois, 16; Verna, 15; Helen, 4 yrs and 2 months in age; and Wayne, 2 yrs and 5 months. A prior daughter, Dorothy, was missing, reason unclear. Visiting someone? Deceased?)
By their 1930 Census, the Richardsons were still in Sutter County. Only the last two children remained at home, widowed Mattie Shearer with them.
By the 1940, Laura was out of Sutter County, her spouse Eno and her and William's mom Mattie both gone. She and Mattie were in the old Shearer house, so perhaps the widowed Laura and mother had returned there together. The 1940 Census specifically found Laura and her working daughter Helen, a dietician at a hospital, living in Salinas, Aliala Twp., on Pajaro Street, near its intersection with Alisal. That had long been Samuel and Mattie's address, and also that of half-brother Edwin.
William's niece, Laura's daughter Helen, would die later, at age 92, in San Bernardino. Like William's half-brother Edwin, she apparently never married, as she still used her maiden name as a surname, not as easy to keep it as true now.
HALF-SIBS. Recall that William and Laura's older half-siblings had, as their mother, Camilla, a former teacher. They were were Grace, a teacher, and Edwin, working mysteriously as a painter. (There were three basic kinds, house painter, versus selling art in galleries or on commission, versus painter of ads on barn and store sides for motorists to view.)
Half-sister Grace, while still a Shearer, was of record having crossed the border into Canada, which would allow her to visit William, so we think they stayed in touch. She married a Harvey. Again, Grace Shearer Harvey would live a too-short life, as would her daughter, Kathryn Harvey Love. Happily, Kathryn Harvey Love's daughters finally broke out of the pattern.
Edwin Shearer apparently stayed single, mostly a homebody. He thus is found in censuses mainly with their father, Samuel, but working, Mattie away, somewhere else, visiting.
Multiple family members had been in the newspaper business, which solicited ads to stay alive. Was he Edwin an ad artist?
Scots and American Religion
In Canada, not just the states, churches tracked marriages. Many tracked infant baptisms, naming child with parents, long before governments began to track births. ("Christening" would be a later term preferred by those choosing adult baptism? )
The church marriage of William's son Morton would make it into the Canadian records, not just William's. "Methodist" was mentioned by some as a family religion. If anyone was Methodist, however, then that choice of church might be formed more by American history, than by Canadian, triggered into full play in the US by the Revolution closing down King's churches, by moves into rural frontiers giving employment to circuit-riding ministers, copying the old French Jesuits before the French had been chased out, but using horses instead of canoes.
You see two bits of a Scottish family history in his names, McConnell being highlander, Shearer being lowlander. Two big patterns-- highlanders stayed Catholic longest, while lowlanders turned Presbyterian and insisted others be the same. Learning not to argue about religion took a long time. So, how did Methodists come about?
In Britain, John Wesley had been inspired by German Anabaptists he had met on a ship. He began the Methodists as a "prayer society" inside the national English Church (Anglican, aka Church of England, aka the King's church). One Methodist caused trouble by taking the lectern at one point, telling the rest of the congregation they were headed for the nether world, causing his portion of the prayer society to be kicked out of the Anglicans.
Their society or club had a method for praying, so were called Methodists. The subset staying closer to John Wesley and their Anglican origins might be called Wesleyan.
Some sociology professors teach "structural-functionalism". For a structure to persist, it must have a function, serve a broader purpose.
For a religion to survive long-term, on their own, without a king's backing it by force, they have to provide a social benefit. The Methodists' new benefit? They strove to eliminate alcoholism. That was in addition to sticking to the sometimes Anglican, previously Catholic religious goals of caring for the poor, whether orphaned, elderly, or crushed by recession or disaster.
In a rigidly class-bound old-time England, they attracted the working classes. Few were allowed to rise into the middle class, despite hard work, but knew, from family experience, that it took little to descend into poverty.
In America, the faith evolved differently, at first in reaction to the American Revolution. Former members of the King's church had to ask, "What to do, now that we are no longer with the King, as we now lack his church, is subsidies?" Trips to Britain were taboo, for a time. When selecting new regional church leaders (bishops), the earlier ordained were no longer there to put their hands on the newly ordained. To be ordained, one had to travel to England. So they decided it was no necessary to have that kind of succession
The other way America differed? The frontier was expanding, a rural edge moving westward, temporarily with too little population to support churches. Before the French were pushed out circa 1755, their Jesuits and other clergies had circulated across First Nation, Metis, and French villages, taking turns, this settlement this week, that settlement the next, and so on. The Methodists post-Revolution did the same. They called their traveling clergy "circuit-riders". Their difference for the Americans' British-descended clergy was that they were now married, traveled on narrow trails by horse, not wagon. Some had to leave unhappy wives and children back home. The pressure to stop riding and serve a church in one spot would soon surface for each married rider.
Many non-Methodists on the moving frontier edge came to the riders' church services. After decades of Americans splintering into more and more denominations, the frontier choice might be "listen to the Methodist minister, or have no minister at all".
The circuit-riders could be preachers ("exhorters"), rather than ministers (ministering to needs), but it was easy to combine the two by preaching against alcohol. Women with alcohol-tempted spouses felt the need. Legally, under old British style rules, very different from German Biergarten rules, women and children were forbidden to enter "saloons," unless employed there, even though needing to haul out an erring spouse.
When young, William sometimes listed himself as "W. S. McConnell Shearer". His middle name of "McConnell" matched that of his father, which matched the maiden name of grandmother Catherine McConnell, whose father came from Scotland. McConnell calls to mind men kilt-wearing and Celtic-speaking, not adapting well after their Bonnie Prince Charles was defeated and Scotland brought under British rule
Catherine's spouse, William's grandfather, was Hugh B. Shearer, whose father was Robert Shearer. Both Hugh and Robert were born in NY state, American the easy way, by birth. Robert was thought by family , however, to be the son of another Scottish immigrant.
Shearer was not a highlander "Mac"name, however, but of the lowlander sort. "Lowlander" means not found in the Scottish mountains, but in lower places, by rivers and sea sides. Lowlander dialect shows sings of long-ago Germanic origin. They had not arrived in lowland Scotland as Celtic-speaker. Celticness in the language of the highlanders was due to coming into Scotland from Ireland, in the time of William Braveheart.
A Shearer, whether spelled that way, or in a more clearly Germanic way, as Sherer, was an "occupational" surname, advertising how a family might be useful. Their springtime work would be with mature sheep, cutting off the winter wool no longer needed. What did they do in other seasons? Perhaps readied the shorn wool for the use of weavers? Carted piles of it to a market town, to be sold? Became dyers and weavers themselves? Scottish tweeds are unique?
The Highlanders and Lowlanders often differed in their choices of church. Before Brits ruled, Scotland had its own Kings.
The Scottish royals most appreciated for that they brought to the land's religion were Margaret and her son Alexander. A sign of this viewpoint was that many Scots began naming daughters Margaret and sons Alexander. Those two traditional names were not seen in this family.
When the older faith of Margaret and Alexander was no longer allowed, there were two national churches in its place, church of England and church of Scotland. Highland Scots would, more often than lowlanders, turn to the Church of England (Anglican). Lowland Scots would, more often than the highlanders, turn to the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian).
People of the "wrong religion" suffered consequences in favor of the British King's version of religion.. First they were penalized (property confiscated), then they were forbidden (battle, executions). This was done in several rounds. The nonroyal leader, Cromwell, looked promising at first. Then, he copied the Brit royals ahead of him, confiscating property of people deemed dangerous if not treasonous due to religious differences.
Often is not the same as always. Canadians, not affected by our American Revolution, still under a British king, could stay Anglican. Americans, no longer loyal to a King's church, turned Methodist or Episcopalian.
William's grandfather, Hugh Shearer, a first-generation American, was said to have been of the hybrid Methodist-Episcopal (M.E.) denomination. Again, during and after the American Revolution, all visits to England for clergy training and ordination stopped, as did saying prayers for the King. People were required to disavow any loyalty oaths previously made to the King, which some had to make earlier, in order to be granted land in the colonies. Those who refused to revoke their oaths were declared "inimical" to the Revolution (be aware that some disliked having Kings, but thought it immoral to renounce prior promises). The American offenders would be exiled to Britain or Canada, called Loyalist by the Brits and Tory by the new Americans. Their property in the American colonies would be confiscated without compensation, though the Brits did come up with some grants of land in Canada, as a reward for staying loyal.
William's wife was Pearl. Was that Pearl's family history in any way?
For people formerly at the King's churches in the States, switching to Methodism seemed sensible, as the Methodists had started as a society inside the Anglican church. The society simply continued without kingly permissions for activities, skipped prayers for the King as the Rev. War began.
Mattie's religion was not written down in obvious records. However, West Virginia had many Methodists.
William and Pearl both declared themselves Methodist at their marriage in Canada. Those Methodists in Samuel's San Jose area of Calif. treating ex-slaves well had been attacked by arriving pro-slavery people, their church was burned. People had services in the Town Hall ?
By the time of the Civil War, Samuel, William's father, had an interesting church record, with a denominational change. Samuel Shearer and his first wife, Camilla French, married in early San Jose, technically in a Presbyterian church, in the months before the Civil War. It operated out of City Hall, as its building had not yet been constructed. (A new building perhaps was deemed unwise? Again, the new Methodist church had just been burned down, by people who opposed its abolitionist preaching, making San Jose's Methodism clearly not the variation called Southern Methodist.)
Short of ministers, Trinity Presbyterian had already been using a missionary, an Episcopalian minister, not Presbyterian. Thus, while Samuel and Camilla's church began as Trinity Presbyterian, that church gradually changed to Trinity Episcopal. It stayed abolitionist, included free members of color in its congregation, some in important positions. In modern times, it become Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.
Its history was found at its web site in Fall, 2015. It said, in the years between statehood and war, that San Jose had been settled by both sides, so was torn between the southerners and northerners. The worst among the southerners were not as good as the best. The worst felt justified in illegal actions, such as arson to punish opponents, thefts of northerner property done to raise money to be sent to rebel leaders back home. Climena and Samuel married early in 1861, the War beginning that summer, her brother Ebenezer serving from Michigan, returning deeply damaged, now to live near them in San Jose, either not willing or able to marry, dead too soon. Her brother AO returned to Michigan in better shape, remarried after his first wife's death, having a few sons survive, to try a snowbird retirement in Calif.,but to be buried in back in Michigan.
The Wars changed.
Preceding WW II, William and Pearl's son Morton moved to southern California. he married another descendant of Scots down there, with a Highlander-sounding name (McFadden). The marriage would be at All Saints Episcopal, not near San Jose or San Fran., but southward, in Beverly Hills. It was probably her or her family's church. (Beverly Hills early deemed posh suburban, now viewed more as posh urban.) That All Saints still exists, has a website. Adapting in a changing world, it calls itself "multi-faith", much as military chaplains are expected to be.
SON MORTON'S MARRIAGE-- Sept. 1, 1944. The bride-- Mary Jane McFadden, of a Pennsylvania-born father. The groom-- Morton, age 32, business manager for a medical division of a company. His parents, William McConnell Shearer & Pearl. (WARNING--an online index wrongly cites George Arthur Shearer as William's father, despite the actual record microfilm showing Samuel, see below.)
The groom resided in Santa Monica; the bride, in Beverly Hills. His birthplace, Vancouver B.C., a overly town. Hers, Glendale, California, on the way to Disneyland and movie studios, if coming in from the east?.
The two would divorce in 1973, still living in Los Angeles County. He owned property in Irvine, nice but not posh, still listed as its owner after his death. He died in Tucson, Pima County, AZ.
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Cemeteries Lost & Found
Samuel's Grave Page. Yes, his father Samuel's death record was found. He was not now 170 years old, still going like an Energizer bunny, simply because we could not find his cemetery back in 2015. Unlike William's death place of Vancouver, his father's state of California apparently did not routinely write cemeteries down in their death records? A pattern was missing graves for Samuel's generation . Then, late in 2020, contributor Dona Mooring located Samuel's. She found it at Salinas in Monterey County, at the Garden of Memories. She found second wife Mattie's grave also there. (First wife Camilla preceded him in death by multiple decades. Her grave is still missing, as of June 2023.)
Apart from Civil War graves (Climena's brother Ebenezer French), easily findable cemeteries include half-sister, Grace Shearer Harvey, in California. We have Grace's stone photo, as a kind stranger photographed many markers at her cemetery, for inclusion at FindaGrave. Many California cemeteries remain unwalked?
William's wife, Pearl Morton Shearer, b. 1888, d. 1971, was cremated, like him, ashes only temporarily at Ocean View Cemetery in Burnaby, in Canada. No cemetery was named by their daughter when signing the records, who presumably scattered the ashes in Vancouver or in the ocean. (Pearl's death record is found under her first name Agnes, not under Pearl, the middle name she preferred.)
Though their daughter Kathleen signed, her married name is hard to decipher, Lockwood or Lockhardt? The images cited below showing her microfilmed signature.
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Copyright Nov., 2015, revised Feb. 6, 2016 and June 15, 2023, by JBrown, Julia Brown, Austin Texas. Permission given to Findagrave for use at this page, id 150403807. NOTE: If anyone in the direct line of William or his siblings wants to manage this or Samuel's grave, request that by Findagrave procedures. I will happily oblige. This writer's husband would be a distant cousin to William's half-siblings. However, we find the stories all interesting and with value. JBrown, Contributor #48697180)
American-born son of two school teachers, he became an immigration officer. Living on both sides of the Canadian border, moving his Canada-born wife and children to and fro, accordingly, he stayed in contact with California relatives, with his mother, with half-sister Grace Harvey, with full-sister Laura Richardson. Cremated at Ocean View Burial Park, his ashes were not buried there. They were instead returned to the funeral home, that info provided in 2017.
After the personal biography:
Family
Scots and American Religion
Cemeteries Lost & Found
PERSONAL BIOGRAPHY. He left the States as a young man, to work in Canada as a USA Immigration Officer. Despite not having the proper Canadian accent, he convinced a Canadian named Agnes Ann Pearl Morton to marry him. A daughter of Henrietta Soper and Thomas Morton, they called her "Pearl". Pearl said yes in 1909. They would live on both sides of the international border, but always remained close to it.
Pearl lived many years, but died first, leaving William behind to grieve. Their daughter, Kathleen, signed both death certificates. She stated his burial place precisely (turned out to be his cremation place only), less so for Pearl. Did he and Pearl have more children? This writer finally found the whole family listed together, with William's West Virginian mother also there, for the 1920 US Census. The place was Blaine, in Whatcom County, Washington, so at a northwestern US Customs Port.
1920 Details. (William M. Shearer, age 39, Agnes A. P. Shearer, 31; Kathleen Shearer, 9; Morton William Shearer, 7). Children and mother Pearl were Canada-born. 1917 was given as an immigration date, so William had returned "stateside" only 3 years earlier.
William's mother, Martha, age 75, born West Virginia, had been nicknamed Mattie, earlier, making her records hard to find at times. Perhaps she was just visiting them in 1920? His father, Samuel Shearer, a teacher and then a school superintendent in the Bay Area of California, had died of a "protracted illness" in July of that year, said his funeral notice. Mattie's stepson and William's older half-brother) was Edwin F. Shearer, some of Climena French and Samuel Shearer. After Climena died, Edwin remained with his re-married father Samuel. Later, with boarders for added income, remaining a single man, Edwin occupied the house used long-term by the Shearers (still Mattie's house after Samuel died? in her son William's birth town of Salinas).
William died in Canada, at the amazing age of 96, in 1976. Apparently, marrying a Canadian could be good for you? William's lifespan outdid those of both his long-lived educator parents, Samuel and Martha Shearer.
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Sources & Grave Lists
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*"British Columbia Death Registrations, 1872-1986"
.......William's image, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-DYMS-NMF
.......Pearl's image, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-65LS-351
*Their Marriage in Canada
.......Image, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-D4VQ-5C2
*Son Morton Shearer's marriage in California
.......Image, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G93H-79SL-Y
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FAMILY.
William's parents died some years apart, in Monterey County, California. They had raised William and his older siblings there, one full sister, and two half-siblings. South of San Francisco, on the coast, it must have been a beautiful place. His full sister Laura had perhaps been his mother's caretaker, if his mother Mattie last lived with Laura's family? Mattie had been double-counted in 1930, once at each child's house, as if she "took turns" visiting them.
Mother. Born as Martha Young, Mattie married over a decade after the Civil War ended. She died a widow, in 1939, as the Great Depression wound down and Hitler became active in Germany.
Her birth state had turned into West Virginia by the time she married, but it had been Virginia at her birth. The debates over slavery and the meaning of the Revolution would have caused much conversation when Mattie was young.
Stories will vary. When she was young, some said a group of southern states started the Civil War in a fury over not being allowed to expand slavery westward, into California and Kansas and other places. The so-called border states, Kentucky, etc., began as undecideds. Some tried to use the argument of "states rights" to win them over , but others say said this was used more post-War, as if an afterthought. The state's right to do WHAT, exactly? Too many ancestors had fought or died in the American Revolution for West Virginians to throw away their freedom from the British and replace it with secession. The smaller farmers of WV thus broke away from their plantation-filled "mother state" of Virginia. Declared a "border state", they decided to join the North, not the South. They were intending to stop dis-union, their set not as anti-slavery as New Englanders and the arriving German-Americans.
Was Martha raised to think for herself? A teacher, she married Ohio-raised Samuel over a decade after the Civil War had ended. California had been a newly formed state where both northerners and southerners had flocked to, for the Gold Rush of the 1850s, pre-Civil War. More of the northerners went to the Bay area and northward. More of the southerners went southward. South and north met in greatest numbers in a "middling place", right below the Bay area, making it possible for a brand-new West Virginian to run into and marry a former Ohioan.
In his own biography for a local history book, Samuel would praise her as an intelligent and well-organized teacher. As his second wife, Mattie would raise the two children from his first, taking stepdaughter Grace through her teen years, to be another teacher. Full daughter Laura, in the rules of the time, was not allowed to become a teacher once she had married? Not all things are findable online?
Multi-Career Father The father, Samuel McConnell Shearer, died in July of 1920. That same year, the U.S. census caught Mattie, as Martha, visiting William's family. Was she recovering from a long period as an invalid husband's caretaker? Not wanting to be alone?
His parents had raised her deceased Samuel far away from Virginia plantations and WV small farms, far from hill lands that would house future coal mines. William's grandparent Shearers lived instead in Midwestern places. Their places often copied the ways of New England, perhaps inspired by impoverished farmers who had migrated westward, out of that Yankee region, wanting better for their children, for all children. The ex-New Englanders migrating west below Canada, through a string of states along the Great Lakes, typically promoted public education, and any kind of libraries. Others coming later added their own improvements.
Once out in California, Monterey County elected Samuel as superintendent for all of their schools. An Ohioan of Scottish descent, Samuel added teacher training. There was, thus, a "normal school" in nearby San Jose for William's half-sister, Grace, to attend.
An "Alcade" Great-Uncle. Samuel began his teaching career in Ohio and Indiana, then followed a newspaper-publishing uncle to California. The uncle, pre-statehood, pre Mexican-American War, was "alcalde" specifically for San Jose. The alcades generally had an extensive knowledge of local real estate, able to recruit settlers for a town, with Samuel thereafter then picking his own California locations well.
Samuel married his first wife, fellow mid-westerner, Climena Camilla French, when they were the only teachers hired for the same "old mission" school. He advanced his career, then saw her die "too young".
Camilla's youthful death would be true of her daughter, that is, William's half-sister Grace, Edwin's full sister. It would repeat for Grace's daughter, trackable back to some New Englander great-grandmothers, lacking the "long-life genes" that Samuel and Martha would pass to William and his children. Modern medicine prevents a lot of that now, "female cancer" detectable early.
In Dec. of 1876, his father Samuel married William's mother, Martha Jane Young.
Another Sib. William's full sister was Laura Lucinda Shearer, b. 1878, so two years older. Both she and William attended Pacific University. While William went further (Stanford University), she married in 1902. Her spouse was called Newton by his parents, but, apparently unhappy with that, he listed himself as N. Eno Richardson at marriage time, in Monterey County, California. She would have five children with Eno. Four were still present in 1920, when William was counted with just two.
LAURA'S DETAILS: The 1920 US Census found her and Newton Eno Richardson living in Sutter County, with three surviving daughters and a son (Lois, 16; Verna, 15; Helen, 4 yrs and 2 months in age; and Wayne, 2 yrs and 5 months. A prior daughter, Dorothy, was missing, reason unclear. Visiting someone? Deceased?)
By their 1930 Census, the Richardsons were still in Sutter County. Only the last two children remained at home, widowed Mattie Shearer with them.
By the 1940, Laura was out of Sutter County, her spouse Eno and her and William's mom Mattie both gone. She and Mattie were in the old Shearer house, so perhaps the widowed Laura and mother had returned there together. The 1940 Census specifically found Laura and her working daughter Helen, a dietician at a hospital, living in Salinas, Aliala Twp., on Pajaro Street, near its intersection with Alisal. That had long been Samuel and Mattie's address, and also that of half-brother Edwin.
William's niece, Laura's daughter Helen, would die later, at age 92, in San Bernardino. Like William's half-brother Edwin, she apparently never married, as she still used her maiden name as a surname, not as easy to keep it as true now.
HALF-SIBS. Recall that William and Laura's older half-siblings had, as their mother, Camilla, a former teacher. They were were Grace, a teacher, and Edwin, working mysteriously as a painter. (There were three basic kinds, house painter, versus selling art in galleries or on commission, versus painter of ads on barn and store sides for motorists to view.)
Half-sister Grace, while still a Shearer, was of record having crossed the border into Canada, which would allow her to visit William, so we think they stayed in touch. She married a Harvey. Again, Grace Shearer Harvey would live a too-short life, as would her daughter, Kathryn Harvey Love. Happily, Kathryn Harvey Love's daughters finally broke out of the pattern.
Edwin Shearer apparently stayed single, mostly a homebody. He thus is found in censuses mainly with their father, Samuel, but working, Mattie away, somewhere else, visiting.
Multiple family members had been in the newspaper business, which solicited ads to stay alive. Was he Edwin an ad artist?
Scots and American Religion
In Canada, not just the states, churches tracked marriages. Many tracked infant baptisms, naming child with parents, long before governments began to track births. ("Christening" would be a later term preferred by those choosing adult baptism? )
The church marriage of William's son Morton would make it into the Canadian records, not just William's. "Methodist" was mentioned by some as a family religion. If anyone was Methodist, however, then that choice of church might be formed more by American history, than by Canadian, triggered into full play in the US by the Revolution closing down King's churches, by moves into rural frontiers giving employment to circuit-riding ministers, copying the old French Jesuits before the French had been chased out, but using horses instead of canoes.
You see two bits of a Scottish family history in his names, McConnell being highlander, Shearer being lowlander. Two big patterns-- highlanders stayed Catholic longest, while lowlanders turned Presbyterian and insisted others be the same. Learning not to argue about religion took a long time. So, how did Methodists come about?
In Britain, John Wesley had been inspired by German Anabaptists he had met on a ship. He began the Methodists as a "prayer society" inside the national English Church (Anglican, aka Church of England, aka the King's church). One Methodist caused trouble by taking the lectern at one point, telling the rest of the congregation they were headed for the nether world, causing his portion of the prayer society to be kicked out of the Anglicans.
Their society or club had a method for praying, so were called Methodists. The subset staying closer to John Wesley and their Anglican origins might be called Wesleyan.
Some sociology professors teach "structural-functionalism". For a structure to persist, it must have a function, serve a broader purpose.
For a religion to survive long-term, on their own, without a king's backing it by force, they have to provide a social benefit. The Methodists' new benefit? They strove to eliminate alcoholism. That was in addition to sticking to the sometimes Anglican, previously Catholic religious goals of caring for the poor, whether orphaned, elderly, or crushed by recession or disaster.
In a rigidly class-bound old-time England, they attracted the working classes. Few were allowed to rise into the middle class, despite hard work, but knew, from family experience, that it took little to descend into poverty.
In America, the faith evolved differently, at first in reaction to the American Revolution. Former members of the King's church had to ask, "What to do, now that we are no longer with the King, as we now lack his church, is subsidies?" Trips to Britain were taboo, for a time. When selecting new regional church leaders (bishops), the earlier ordained were no longer there to put their hands on the newly ordained. To be ordained, one had to travel to England. So they decided it was no necessary to have that kind of succession
The other way America differed? The frontier was expanding, a rural edge moving westward, temporarily with too little population to support churches. Before the French were pushed out circa 1755, their Jesuits and other clergies had circulated across First Nation, Metis, and French villages, taking turns, this settlement this week, that settlement the next, and so on. The Methodists post-Revolution did the same. They called their traveling clergy "circuit-riders". Their difference for the Americans' British-descended clergy was that they were now married, traveled on narrow trails by horse, not wagon. Some had to leave unhappy wives and children back home. The pressure to stop riding and serve a church in one spot would soon surface for each married rider.
Many non-Methodists on the moving frontier edge came to the riders' church services. After decades of Americans splintering into more and more denominations, the frontier choice might be "listen to the Methodist minister, or have no minister at all".
The circuit-riders could be preachers ("exhorters"), rather than ministers (ministering to needs), but it was easy to combine the two by preaching against alcohol. Women with alcohol-tempted spouses felt the need. Legally, under old British style rules, very different from German Biergarten rules, women and children were forbidden to enter "saloons," unless employed there, even though needing to haul out an erring spouse.
When young, William sometimes listed himself as "W. S. McConnell Shearer". His middle name of "McConnell" matched that of his father, which matched the maiden name of grandmother Catherine McConnell, whose father came from Scotland. McConnell calls to mind men kilt-wearing and Celtic-speaking, not adapting well after their Bonnie Prince Charles was defeated and Scotland brought under British rule
Catherine's spouse, William's grandfather, was Hugh B. Shearer, whose father was Robert Shearer. Both Hugh and Robert were born in NY state, American the easy way, by birth. Robert was thought by family , however, to be the son of another Scottish immigrant.
Shearer was not a highlander "Mac"name, however, but of the lowlander sort. "Lowlander" means not found in the Scottish mountains, but in lower places, by rivers and sea sides. Lowlander dialect shows sings of long-ago Germanic origin. They had not arrived in lowland Scotland as Celtic-speaker. Celticness in the language of the highlanders was due to coming into Scotland from Ireland, in the time of William Braveheart.
A Shearer, whether spelled that way, or in a more clearly Germanic way, as Sherer, was an "occupational" surname, advertising how a family might be useful. Their springtime work would be with mature sheep, cutting off the winter wool no longer needed. What did they do in other seasons? Perhaps readied the shorn wool for the use of weavers? Carted piles of it to a market town, to be sold? Became dyers and weavers themselves? Scottish tweeds are unique?
The Highlanders and Lowlanders often differed in their choices of church. Before Brits ruled, Scotland had its own Kings.
The Scottish royals most appreciated for that they brought to the land's religion were Margaret and her son Alexander. A sign of this viewpoint was that many Scots began naming daughters Margaret and sons Alexander. Those two traditional names were not seen in this family.
When the older faith of Margaret and Alexander was no longer allowed, there were two national churches in its place, church of England and church of Scotland. Highland Scots would, more often than lowlanders, turn to the Church of England (Anglican). Lowland Scots would, more often than the highlanders, turn to the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian).
People of the "wrong religion" suffered consequences in favor of the British King's version of religion.. First they were penalized (property confiscated), then they were forbidden (battle, executions). This was done in several rounds. The nonroyal leader, Cromwell, looked promising at first. Then, he copied the Brit royals ahead of him, confiscating property of people deemed dangerous if not treasonous due to religious differences.
Often is not the same as always. Canadians, not affected by our American Revolution, still under a British king, could stay Anglican. Americans, no longer loyal to a King's church, turned Methodist or Episcopalian.
William's grandfather, Hugh Shearer, a first-generation American, was said to have been of the hybrid Methodist-Episcopal (M.E.) denomination. Again, during and after the American Revolution, all visits to England for clergy training and ordination stopped, as did saying prayers for the King. People were required to disavow any loyalty oaths previously made to the King, which some had to make earlier, in order to be granted land in the colonies. Those who refused to revoke their oaths were declared "inimical" to the Revolution (be aware that some disliked having Kings, but thought it immoral to renounce prior promises). The American offenders would be exiled to Britain or Canada, called Loyalist by the Brits and Tory by the new Americans. Their property in the American colonies would be confiscated without compensation, though the Brits did come up with some grants of land in Canada, as a reward for staying loyal.
William's wife was Pearl. Was that Pearl's family history in any way?
For people formerly at the King's churches in the States, switching to Methodism seemed sensible, as the Methodists had started as a society inside the Anglican church. The society simply continued without kingly permissions for activities, skipped prayers for the King as the Rev. War began.
Mattie's religion was not written down in obvious records. However, West Virginia had many Methodists.
William and Pearl both declared themselves Methodist at their marriage in Canada. Those Methodists in Samuel's San Jose area of Calif. treating ex-slaves well had been attacked by arriving pro-slavery people, their church was burned. People had services in the Town Hall ?
By the time of the Civil War, Samuel, William's father, had an interesting church record, with a denominational change. Samuel Shearer and his first wife, Camilla French, married in early San Jose, technically in a Presbyterian church, in the months before the Civil War. It operated out of City Hall, as its building had not yet been constructed. (A new building perhaps was deemed unwise? Again, the new Methodist church had just been burned down, by people who opposed its abolitionist preaching, making San Jose's Methodism clearly not the variation called Southern Methodist.)
Short of ministers, Trinity Presbyterian had already been using a missionary, an Episcopalian minister, not Presbyterian. Thus, while Samuel and Camilla's church began as Trinity Presbyterian, that church gradually changed to Trinity Episcopal. It stayed abolitionist, included free members of color in its congregation, some in important positions. In modern times, it become Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.
Its history was found at its web site in Fall, 2015. It said, in the years between statehood and war, that San Jose had been settled by both sides, so was torn between the southerners and northerners. The worst among the southerners were not as good as the best. The worst felt justified in illegal actions, such as arson to punish opponents, thefts of northerner property done to raise money to be sent to rebel leaders back home. Climena and Samuel married early in 1861, the War beginning that summer, her brother Ebenezer serving from Michigan, returning deeply damaged, now to live near them in San Jose, either not willing or able to marry, dead too soon. Her brother AO returned to Michigan in better shape, remarried after his first wife's death, having a few sons survive, to try a snowbird retirement in Calif.,but to be buried in back in Michigan.
The Wars changed.
Preceding WW II, William and Pearl's son Morton moved to southern California. he married another descendant of Scots down there, with a Highlander-sounding name (McFadden). The marriage would be at All Saints Episcopal, not near San Jose or San Fran., but southward, in Beverly Hills. It was probably her or her family's church. (Beverly Hills early deemed posh suburban, now viewed more as posh urban.) That All Saints still exists, has a website. Adapting in a changing world, it calls itself "multi-faith", much as military chaplains are expected to be.
SON MORTON'S MARRIAGE-- Sept. 1, 1944. The bride-- Mary Jane McFadden, of a Pennsylvania-born father. The groom-- Morton, age 32, business manager for a medical division of a company. His parents, William McConnell Shearer & Pearl. (WARNING--an online index wrongly cites George Arthur Shearer as William's father, despite the actual record microfilm showing Samuel, see below.)
The groom resided in Santa Monica; the bride, in Beverly Hills. His birthplace, Vancouver B.C., a overly town. Hers, Glendale, California, on the way to Disneyland and movie studios, if coming in from the east?.
The two would divorce in 1973, still living in Los Angeles County. He owned property in Irvine, nice but not posh, still listed as its owner after his death. He died in Tucson, Pima County, AZ.
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Cemeteries Lost & Found
Samuel's Grave Page. Yes, his father Samuel's death record was found. He was not now 170 years old, still going like an Energizer bunny, simply because we could not find his cemetery back in 2015. Unlike William's death place of Vancouver, his father's state of California apparently did not routinely write cemeteries down in their death records? A pattern was missing graves for Samuel's generation . Then, late in 2020, contributor Dona Mooring located Samuel's. She found it at Salinas in Monterey County, at the Garden of Memories. She found second wife Mattie's grave also there. (First wife Camilla preceded him in death by multiple decades. Her grave is still missing, as of June 2023.)
Apart from Civil War graves (Climena's brother Ebenezer French), easily findable cemeteries include half-sister, Grace Shearer Harvey, in California. We have Grace's stone photo, as a kind stranger photographed many markers at her cemetery, for inclusion at FindaGrave. Many California cemeteries remain unwalked?
William's wife, Pearl Morton Shearer, b. 1888, d. 1971, was cremated, like him, ashes only temporarily at Ocean View Cemetery in Burnaby, in Canada. No cemetery was named by their daughter when signing the records, who presumably scattered the ashes in Vancouver or in the ocean. (Pearl's death record is found under her first name Agnes, not under Pearl, the middle name she preferred.)
Though their daughter Kathleen signed, her married name is hard to decipher, Lockwood or Lockhardt? The images cited below showing her microfilmed signature.
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Copyright Nov., 2015, revised Feb. 6, 2016 and June 15, 2023, by JBrown, Julia Brown, Austin Texas. Permission given to Findagrave for use at this page, id 150403807. NOTE: If anyone in the direct line of William or his siblings wants to manage this or Samuel's grave, request that by Findagrave procedures. I will happily oblige. This writer's husband would be a distant cousin to William's half-siblings. However, we find the stories all interesting and with value. JBrown, Contributor #48697180)
After the personal biography:
Family
Scots and American Religion
Cemeteries Lost & Found
PERSONAL BIOGRAPHY. He left the States as a young man, to work in Canada as a USA Immigration Officer. Despite not having the proper Canadian accent, he convinced a Canadian named Agnes Ann Pearl Morton to marry him. A daughter of Henrietta Soper and Thomas Morton, they called her "Pearl". Pearl said yes in 1909. They would live on both sides of the international border, but always remained close to it.
Pearl lived many years, but died first, leaving William behind to grieve. Their daughter, Kathleen, signed both death certificates. She stated his burial place precisely (turned out to be his cremation place only), less so for Pearl. Did he and Pearl have more children? This writer finally found the whole family listed together, with William's West Virginian mother also there, for the 1920 US Census. The place was Blaine, in Whatcom County, Washington, so at a northwestern US Customs Port.
1920 Details. (William M. Shearer, age 39, Agnes A. P. Shearer, 31; Kathleen Shearer, 9; Morton William Shearer, 7). Children and mother Pearl were Canada-born. 1917 was given as an immigration date, so William had returned "stateside" only 3 years earlier.
William's mother, Martha, age 75, born West Virginia, had been nicknamed Mattie, earlier, making her records hard to find at times. Perhaps she was just visiting them in 1920? His father, Samuel Shearer, a teacher and then a school superintendent in the Bay Area of California, had died of a "protracted illness" in July of that year, said his funeral notice. Mattie's stepson and William's older half-brother) was Edwin F. Shearer, some of Climena French and Samuel Shearer. After Climena died, Edwin remained with his re-married father Samuel. Later, with boarders for added income, remaining a single man, Edwin occupied the house used long-term by the Shearers (still Mattie's house after Samuel died? in her son William's birth town of Salinas).
William died in Canada, at the amazing age of 96, in 1976. Apparently, marrying a Canadian could be good for you? William's lifespan outdid those of both his long-lived educator parents, Samuel and Martha Shearer.
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Sources & Grave Lists
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*"British Columbia Death Registrations, 1872-1986"
.......William's image, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-DYMS-NMF
.......Pearl's image, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-65LS-351
*Their Marriage in Canada
.......Image, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-D4VQ-5C2
*Son Morton Shearer's marriage in California
.......Image, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G93H-79SL-Y
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FAMILY.
William's parents died some years apart, in Monterey County, California. They had raised William and his older siblings there, one full sister, and two half-siblings. South of San Francisco, on the coast, it must have been a beautiful place. His full sister Laura had perhaps been his mother's caretaker, if his mother Mattie last lived with Laura's family? Mattie had been double-counted in 1930, once at each child's house, as if she "took turns" visiting them.
Mother. Born as Martha Young, Mattie married over a decade after the Civil War ended. She died a widow, in 1939, as the Great Depression wound down and Hitler became active in Germany.
Her birth state had turned into West Virginia by the time she married, but it had been Virginia at her birth. The debates over slavery and the meaning of the Revolution would have caused much conversation when Mattie was young.
Stories will vary. When she was young, some said a group of southern states started the Civil War in a fury over not being allowed to expand slavery westward, into California and Kansas and other places. The so-called border states, Kentucky, etc., began as undecideds. Some tried to use the argument of "states rights" to win them over , but others say said this was used more post-War, as if an afterthought. The state's right to do WHAT, exactly? Too many ancestors had fought or died in the American Revolution for West Virginians to throw away their freedom from the British and replace it with secession. The smaller farmers of WV thus broke away from their plantation-filled "mother state" of Virginia. Declared a "border state", they decided to join the North, not the South. They were intending to stop dis-union, their set not as anti-slavery as New Englanders and the arriving German-Americans.
Was Martha raised to think for herself? A teacher, she married Ohio-raised Samuel over a decade after the Civil War had ended. California had been a newly formed state where both northerners and southerners had flocked to, for the Gold Rush of the 1850s, pre-Civil War. More of the northerners went to the Bay area and northward. More of the southerners went southward. South and north met in greatest numbers in a "middling place", right below the Bay area, making it possible for a brand-new West Virginian to run into and marry a former Ohioan.
In his own biography for a local history book, Samuel would praise her as an intelligent and well-organized teacher. As his second wife, Mattie would raise the two children from his first, taking stepdaughter Grace through her teen years, to be another teacher. Full daughter Laura, in the rules of the time, was not allowed to become a teacher once she had married? Not all things are findable online?
Multi-Career Father The father, Samuel McConnell Shearer, died in July of 1920. That same year, the U.S. census caught Mattie, as Martha, visiting William's family. Was she recovering from a long period as an invalid husband's caretaker? Not wanting to be alone?
His parents had raised her deceased Samuel far away from Virginia plantations and WV small farms, far from hill lands that would house future coal mines. William's grandparent Shearers lived instead in Midwestern places. Their places often copied the ways of New England, perhaps inspired by impoverished farmers who had migrated westward, out of that Yankee region, wanting better for their children, for all children. The ex-New Englanders migrating west below Canada, through a string of states along the Great Lakes, typically promoted public education, and any kind of libraries. Others coming later added their own improvements.
Once out in California, Monterey County elected Samuel as superintendent for all of their schools. An Ohioan of Scottish descent, Samuel added teacher training. There was, thus, a "normal school" in nearby San Jose for William's half-sister, Grace, to attend.
An "Alcade" Great-Uncle. Samuel began his teaching career in Ohio and Indiana, then followed a newspaper-publishing uncle to California. The uncle, pre-statehood, pre Mexican-American War, was "alcalde" specifically for San Jose. The alcades generally had an extensive knowledge of local real estate, able to recruit settlers for a town, with Samuel thereafter then picking his own California locations well.
Samuel married his first wife, fellow mid-westerner, Climena Camilla French, when they were the only teachers hired for the same "old mission" school. He advanced his career, then saw her die "too young".
Camilla's youthful death would be true of her daughter, that is, William's half-sister Grace, Edwin's full sister. It would repeat for Grace's daughter, trackable back to some New Englander great-grandmothers, lacking the "long-life genes" that Samuel and Martha would pass to William and his children. Modern medicine prevents a lot of that now, "female cancer" detectable early.
In Dec. of 1876, his father Samuel married William's mother, Martha Jane Young.
Another Sib. William's full sister was Laura Lucinda Shearer, b. 1878, so two years older. Both she and William attended Pacific University. While William went further (Stanford University), she married in 1902. Her spouse was called Newton by his parents, but, apparently unhappy with that, he listed himself as N. Eno Richardson at marriage time, in Monterey County, California. She would have five children with Eno. Four were still present in 1920, when William was counted with just two.
LAURA'S DETAILS: The 1920 US Census found her and Newton Eno Richardson living in Sutter County, with three surviving daughters and a son (Lois, 16; Verna, 15; Helen, 4 yrs and 2 months in age; and Wayne, 2 yrs and 5 months. A prior daughter, Dorothy, was missing, reason unclear. Visiting someone? Deceased?)
By their 1930 Census, the Richardsons were still in Sutter County. Only the last two children remained at home, widowed Mattie Shearer with them.
By the 1940, Laura was out of Sutter County, her spouse Eno and her and William's mom Mattie both gone. She and Mattie were in the old Shearer house, so perhaps the widowed Laura and mother had returned there together. The 1940 Census specifically found Laura and her working daughter Helen, a dietician at a hospital, living in Salinas, Aliala Twp., on Pajaro Street, near its intersection with Alisal. That had long been Samuel and Mattie's address, and also that of half-brother Edwin.
William's niece, Laura's daughter Helen, would die later, at age 92, in San Bernardino. Like William's half-brother Edwin, she apparently never married, as she still used her maiden name as a surname, not as easy to keep it as true now.
HALF-SIBS. Recall that William and Laura's older half-siblings had, as their mother, Camilla, a former teacher. They were were Grace, a teacher, and Edwin, working mysteriously as a painter. (There were three basic kinds, house painter, versus selling art in galleries or on commission, versus painter of ads on barn and store sides for motorists to view.)
Half-sister Grace, while still a Shearer, was of record having crossed the border into Canada, which would allow her to visit William, so we think they stayed in touch. She married a Harvey. Again, Grace Shearer Harvey would live a too-short life, as would her daughter, Kathryn Harvey Love. Happily, Kathryn Harvey Love's daughters finally broke out of the pattern.
Edwin Shearer apparently stayed single, mostly a homebody. He thus is found in censuses mainly with their father, Samuel, but working, Mattie away, somewhere else, visiting.
Multiple family members had been in the newspaper business, which solicited ads to stay alive. Was he Edwin an ad artist?
Scots and American Religion
In Canada, not just the states, churches tracked marriages. Many tracked infant baptisms, naming child with parents, long before governments began to track births. ("Christening" would be a later term preferred by those choosing adult baptism? )
The church marriage of William's son Morton would make it into the Canadian records, not just William's. "Methodist" was mentioned by some as a family religion. If anyone was Methodist, however, then that choice of church might be formed more by American history, than by Canadian, triggered into full play in the US by the Revolution closing down King's churches, by moves into rural frontiers giving employment to circuit-riding ministers, copying the old French Jesuits before the French had been chased out, but using horses instead of canoes.
You see two bits of a Scottish family history in his names, McConnell being highlander, Shearer being lowlander. Two big patterns-- highlanders stayed Catholic longest, while lowlanders turned Presbyterian and insisted others be the same. Learning not to argue about religion took a long time. So, how did Methodists come about?
In Britain, John Wesley had been inspired by German Anabaptists he had met on a ship. He began the Methodists as a "prayer society" inside the national English Church (Anglican, aka Church of England, aka the King's church). One Methodist caused trouble by taking the lectern at one point, telling the rest of the congregation they were headed for the nether world, causing his portion of the prayer society to be kicked out of the Anglicans.
Their society or club had a method for praying, so were called Methodists. The subset staying closer to John Wesley and their Anglican origins might be called Wesleyan.
Some sociology professors teach "structural-functionalism". For a structure to persist, it must have a function, serve a broader purpose.
For a religion to survive long-term, on their own, without a king's backing it by force, they have to provide a social benefit. The Methodists' new benefit? They strove to eliminate alcoholism. That was in addition to sticking to the sometimes Anglican, previously Catholic religious goals of caring for the poor, whether orphaned, elderly, or crushed by recession or disaster.
In a rigidly class-bound old-time England, they attracted the working classes. Few were allowed to rise into the middle class, despite hard work, but knew, from family experience, that it took little to descend into poverty.
In America, the faith evolved differently, at first in reaction to the American Revolution. Former members of the King's church had to ask, "What to do, now that we are no longer with the King, as we now lack his church, is subsidies?" Trips to Britain were taboo, for a time. When selecting new regional church leaders (bishops), the earlier ordained were no longer there to put their hands on the newly ordained. To be ordained, one had to travel to England. So they decided it was no necessary to have that kind of succession
The other way America differed? The frontier was expanding, a rural edge moving westward, temporarily with too little population to support churches. Before the French were pushed out circa 1755, their Jesuits and other clergies had circulated across First Nation, Metis, and French villages, taking turns, this settlement this week, that settlement the next, and so on. The Methodists post-Revolution did the same. They called their traveling clergy "circuit-riders". Their difference for the Americans' British-descended clergy was that they were now married, traveled on narrow trails by horse, not wagon. Some had to leave unhappy wives and children back home. The pressure to stop riding and serve a church in one spot would soon surface for each married rider.
Many non-Methodists on the moving frontier edge came to the riders' church services. After decades of Americans splintering into more and more denominations, the frontier choice might be "listen to the Methodist minister, or have no minister at all".
The circuit-riders could be preachers ("exhorters"), rather than ministers (ministering to needs), but it was easy to combine the two by preaching against alcohol. Women with alcohol-tempted spouses felt the need. Legally, under old British style rules, very different from German Biergarten rules, women and children were forbidden to enter "saloons," unless employed there, even though needing to haul out an erring spouse.
When young, William sometimes listed himself as "W. S. McConnell Shearer". His middle name of "McConnell" matched that of his father, which matched the maiden name of grandmother Catherine McConnell, whose father came from Scotland. McConnell calls to mind men kilt-wearing and Celtic-speaking, not adapting well after their Bonnie Prince Charles was defeated and Scotland brought under British rule
Catherine's spouse, William's grandfather, was Hugh B. Shearer, whose father was Robert Shearer. Both Hugh and Robert were born in NY state, American the easy way, by birth. Robert was thought by family , however, to be the son of another Scottish immigrant.
Shearer was not a highlander "Mac"name, however, but of the lowlander sort. "Lowlander" means not found in the Scottish mountains, but in lower places, by rivers and sea sides. Lowlander dialect shows sings of long-ago Germanic origin. They had not arrived in lowland Scotland as Celtic-speaker. Celticness in the language of the highlanders was due to coming into Scotland from Ireland, in the time of William Braveheart.
A Shearer, whether spelled that way, or in a more clearly Germanic way, as Sherer, was an "occupational" surname, advertising how a family might be useful. Their springtime work would be with mature sheep, cutting off the winter wool no longer needed. What did they do in other seasons? Perhaps readied the shorn wool for the use of weavers? Carted piles of it to a market town, to be sold? Became dyers and weavers themselves? Scottish tweeds are unique?
The Highlanders and Lowlanders often differed in their choices of church. Before Brits ruled, Scotland had its own Kings.
The Scottish royals most appreciated for that they brought to the land's religion were Margaret and her son Alexander. A sign of this viewpoint was that many Scots began naming daughters Margaret and sons Alexander. Those two traditional names were not seen in this family.
When the older faith of Margaret and Alexander was no longer allowed, there were two national churches in its place, church of England and church of Scotland. Highland Scots would, more often than lowlanders, turn to the Church of England (Anglican). Lowland Scots would, more often than the highlanders, turn to the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian).
People of the "wrong religion" suffered consequences in favor of the British King's version of religion.. First they were penalized (property confiscated), then they were forbidden (battle, executions). This was done in several rounds. The nonroyal leader, Cromwell, looked promising at first. Then, he copied the Brit royals ahead of him, confiscating property of people deemed dangerous if not treasonous due to religious differences.
Often is not the same as always. Canadians, not affected by our American Revolution, still under a British king, could stay Anglican. Americans, no longer loyal to a King's church, turned Methodist or Episcopalian.
William's grandfather, Hugh Shearer, a first-generation American, was said to have been of the hybrid Methodist-Episcopal (M.E.) denomination. Again, during and after the American Revolution, all visits to England for clergy training and ordination stopped, as did saying prayers for the King. People were required to disavow any loyalty oaths previously made to the King, which some had to make earlier, in order to be granted land in the colonies. Those who refused to revoke their oaths were declared "inimical" to the Revolution (be aware that some disliked having Kings, but thought it immoral to renounce prior promises). The American offenders would be exiled to Britain or Canada, called Loyalist by the Brits and Tory by the new Americans. Their property in the American colonies would be confiscated without compensation, though the Brits did come up with some grants of land in Canada, as a reward for staying loyal.
William's wife was Pearl. Was that Pearl's family history in any way?
For people formerly at the King's churches in the States, switching to Methodism seemed sensible, as the Methodists had started as a society inside the Anglican church. The society simply continued without kingly permissions for activities, skipped prayers for the King as the Rev. War began.
Mattie's religion was not written down in obvious records. However, West Virginia had many Methodists.
William and Pearl both declared themselves Methodist at their marriage in Canada. Those Methodists in Samuel's San Jose area of Calif. treating ex-slaves well had been attacked by arriving pro-slavery people, their church was burned. People had services in the Town Hall ?
By the time of the Civil War, Samuel, William's father, had an interesting church record, with a denominational change. Samuel Shearer and his first wife, Camilla French, married in early San Jose, technically in a Presbyterian church, in the months before the Civil War. It operated out of City Hall, as its building had not yet been constructed. (A new building perhaps was deemed unwise? Again, the new Methodist church had just been burned down, by people who opposed its abolitionist preaching, making San Jose's Methodism clearly not the variation called Southern Methodist.)
Short of ministers, Trinity Presbyterian had already been using a missionary, an Episcopalian minister, not Presbyterian. Thus, while Samuel and Camilla's church began as Trinity Presbyterian, that church gradually changed to Trinity Episcopal. It stayed abolitionist, included free members of color in its congregation, some in important positions. In modern times, it become Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.
Its history was found at its web site in Fall, 2015. It said, in the years between statehood and war, that San Jose had been settled by both sides, so was torn between the southerners and northerners. The worst among the southerners were not as good as the best. The worst felt justified in illegal actions, such as arson to punish opponents, thefts of northerner property done to raise money to be sent to rebel leaders back home. Climena and Samuel married early in 1861, the War beginning that summer, her brother Ebenezer serving from Michigan, returning deeply damaged, now to live near them in San Jose, either not willing or able to marry, dead too soon. Her brother AO returned to Michigan in better shape, remarried after his first wife's death, having a few sons survive, to try a snowbird retirement in Calif.,but to be buried in back in Michigan.
The Wars changed.
Preceding WW II, William and Pearl's son Morton moved to southern California. he married another descendant of Scots down there, with a Highlander-sounding name (McFadden). The marriage would be at All Saints Episcopal, not near San Jose or San Fran., but southward, in Beverly Hills. It was probably her or her family's church. (Beverly Hills early deemed posh suburban, now viewed more as posh urban.) That All Saints still exists, has a website. Adapting in a changing world, it calls itself "multi-faith", much as military chaplains are expected to be.
SON MORTON'S MARRIAGE-- Sept. 1, 1944. The bride-- Mary Jane McFadden, of a Pennsylvania-born father. The groom-- Morton, age 32, business manager for a medical division of a company. His parents, William McConnell Shearer & Pearl. (WARNING--an online index wrongly cites George Arthur Shearer as William's father, despite the actual record microfilm showing Samuel, see below.)
The groom resided in Santa Monica; the bride, in Beverly Hills. His birthplace, Vancouver B.C., a overly town. Hers, Glendale, California, on the way to Disneyland and movie studios, if coming in from the east?.
The two would divorce in 1973, still living in Los Angeles County. He owned property in Irvine, nice but not posh, still listed as its owner after his death. He died in Tucson, Pima County, AZ.
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Cemeteries Lost & Found
Samuel's Grave Page. Yes, his father Samuel's death record was found. He was not now 170 years old, still going like an Energizer bunny, simply because we could not find his cemetery back in 2015. Unlike William's death place of Vancouver, his father's state of California apparently did not routinely write cemeteries down in their death records? A pattern was missing graves for Samuel's generation . Then, late in 2020, contributor Dona Mooring located Samuel's. She found it at Salinas in Monterey County, at the Garden of Memories. She found second wife Mattie's grave also there. (First wife Camilla preceded him in death by multiple decades. Her grave is still missing, as of June 2023.)
Apart from Civil War graves (Climena's brother Ebenezer French), easily findable cemeteries include half-sister, Grace Shearer Harvey, in California. We have Grace's stone photo, as a kind stranger photographed many markers at her cemetery, for inclusion at FindaGrave. Many California cemeteries remain unwalked?
William's wife, Pearl Morton Shearer, b. 1888, d. 1971, was cremated, like him, ashes only temporarily at Ocean View Cemetery in Burnaby, in Canada. No cemetery was named by their daughter when signing the records, who presumably scattered the ashes in Vancouver or in the ocean. (Pearl's death record is found under her first name Agnes, not under Pearl, the middle name she preferred.)
Though their daughter Kathleen signed, her married name is hard to decipher, Lockwood or Lockhardt? The images cited below showing her microfilmed signature.
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Copyright Nov., 2015, revised Feb. 6, 2016 and June 15, 2023, by JBrown, Julia Brown, Austin Texas. Permission given to Findagrave for use at this page, id 150403807. NOTE: If anyone in the direct line of William or his siblings wants to manage this or Samuel's grave, request that by Findagrave procedures. I will happily oblige. This writer's husband would be a distant cousin to William's half-siblings. However, we find the stories all interesting and with value. JBrown, Contributor #48697180)
Gravesite Details
Cremated at Ocean Beach's facility in Vancouver, ashes returned to mortuary, presumed then returned to daughter Kathleen.
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