Winthrop, MA
 |
John Mair Staveley was born in Hull, Yorkshire in 1860 to parents George Staveley and Elizabeth ALLISON of Halifax. John married Ada Emily Esther TOLKIEN on October 29, 1880 in Sheffield, Yorkshire, and by 1886 settled in Winthrop, Suffolk County, Massachusetts. |
1900: Sargent St., Winthrop, Suffolk, Massachusetts
| John M. STAVELEY | Head | M | Male | 41 | England | Salesman |
| Ada STAVELEY | Wife | M | Female | 36 | England | |
| Arthur STAVELEY | Son | U | Male | 18 | England | |
| Gladys L. STAVELEY | Daur | U | Female | 16 | England | At School |
| John STAVELEY | Son | U | Male | 12 | Connecticut | At School |
By 1910 John and Ada's son, Arthur George Mair Staveley, is married and living in New York City.
Two articles from the New York Times have been discovered that pertain to this family, and suggest that these Staveleys had moved to New Britain, Connecticut by 1901. The first was a letter written to the editor by John and Ada's young son John (aka Jack), as follows:
Another Rhyme on Roosevelt To the Editor of The New York Times: I write these lines in an attempt to prove that Philadelphia has not "got the cinch" on poetry. I am only thirteen years old and I believe I have succeeded: Our Teddy's warm and ardent smile JACK STAVELEY, Jr. |
A couple of months later, his father John Mair Staveley also wrote to the editor of the New York Times, but the tone of his letter was more serious:
The New York Times
December 22, 1901
CRITICISES LORD ROSEBERY'S SPEECH
To the Editor of The New York Times:
It is partly amusing and very annoying to an Englishman to read your cabled report of Lord Rosebery's speech, made yesterday, and to find that there are sufficient people in England to make a "crowded audience" to listen to him, at this stage of the Boer War. We Englishmen who have the slightest patriotic felling for the old country, look upon Lord Rosebery in exactly the same light as the Americans look upon Edward Atkinson, and others of that ilk, with this exception, that Mr. Atkinson has got a better argument in favor of his protégés than Rosebery has, because, in the first instance, the Filipinos were purchased from the Spaniards with their lands and all they thought sacred, and, in the second instance, the Boers, who would not grant it to others, were lacking the principle of liberty which the Filipinos possessed, and took upon themselves to invade British territory, consumed by an overwhelming conceit that they could conquer the English nation.
Whilst this conceit has proved disastrous to the Boers, they are not so much to blame for it as they might be, because Lord Rosebery, who was a member of Mr. Gladstone's Government at the time of the Majuba Hill disaster, and at that time was in the position to render a vote against his "conciliation policy," failed to do his secure office and defeat the Conservative Party, attempting to desive the British public by making statements which he would find it impossible to prove. And not only that--he is trading on his position as a nobleman (who has the reputation of possessing common sense in addition to his nobility) to work on the feelings of the "backbone" of the English nation by making statements which it would take the rest of his natural life to justify, and even then, if his veracity ws his mainstay for his hopes in heaven, would find those hopes very slim.
I presume, being an Englishman, most people will say (on this side of the water at any rate) that I am antagonistic to the Irish, and when I say I am willing to take the statements made by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Pretoria and abide by them, I am in hopes that they will have the more weight, for he, while admitting that he never in the whole course of his existence given the British Government credit for anything it had done in the past, and that he had consistently opposed it through the whole course of his life, felt that he must, after his experience in Pretoria, give it credit for prosecuting the most righteous war that it had ever embarked in, and thus proves to be the greatest exponent of my argument.
Of course, all my statements are open to discussion and proof, but as an Englishman residing in this country and endeavoring to the utmost of his ability to benefit it, and still possessing (which no one will blame me for) a love for the old county, it does seem awfully hard that your papers lose no opportunity of adversely criticising the mother country, irrespective of the feelings of those of whom you are so fond of lauding as "fellow Anglo-Saxons."
J. MAIR STAVELEY
New Britain, Conn., Dec. 17 1901
John Mair junior is living with his mother Ada in Boston during the 1910 census.