Mary Francis was born into the middle class of the 1880's in northern England. Her father was a baker, her maternal grandfather a confectioner rumored to have had his own candy factory. A more fanciful rumor about this branch of the family is that they descend from the same family as the Scottish Poet Robert Burns. I've yet to substantiate this but Robert Burns did have several siblings - so maybe someday I will solve this particular mystery.
What amazes me about MF is the difference in the life she led in comparison to her contemporaries (in my family tree) that were living the rural life in Canada. 1911 I have one great grandmother getting married, having babies (see the post about secrets...) and in England I have another great grandmother living with her sisters, no parents and working as a restaurant waitress. This may not sound like a big deal but there were four unmarried women holding their own - all working - making their own way in the world.
The family lore that comes with this story is that MF (and likely her sisters) did not like their step-mother. Their mother Annie had died in 1907 and their father had remarried a few years later in 1909 to a woman much younger than himself. There was such an age difference in fact, his new bride was only 3 years older than his oldest child. I can see how some young ladies would be annoyed that their step mother is closer to their age than that of their father. I see this as one reason they may have struck out of their father's home to live their own lives, in a time where women usually went from father's home to husband's home.
These women were also on the adventurous side. On June 29, 1912, just over two months after the sinking of the Titanic, Mary Frances and her sister Margaret set out for Cape Town, South Africa. Over the next 10 years (all) the girls would travel back and forth from Cape Town to England. They usually traveled two at a time, and sometimes was it one sister accompanied by the eldest child and brother, John Robert Hutton.
The story (I have no facts other than the passenger lists) is that Mary Francis and her sister had a tea room in Cape Town. The period of time the Huttons were there seems to have been an uneventful one (in terms of the history of South Africa). The Boer war had been over a decade prior and the Aparthied far off in the future. In any case, Mary Frances returned to England in the midst the beginning of WWI, arriving in April of 1916 only to ship herself off to Canada in November of the same year. There are no hand me down stories of why she left Cape Town or why she decided to come to Toronto on the verge of winter.
Life in Canada "slowed" her down. She never traveled back to England or South Africa - unlike her siblings who continued to travel. Within a year of her arrival she was married to a baker who was also English and trying to make his way in the metropolis. At the time of their marriage in 1917 they were living together - how progressive - but with parents on another continent who is to stop them! By 1920 the children began to arrive, 6 in total over the next 8 years. Maybe her stern and unloving demeanor (at least my mother's perception of it) was a result of some sort of caged bird feeling but I will never know.
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