After his apprenticeship, Henry met and married Annie Bristow while he was living in Folkestone. They moved to Thames Ditton, close to Annie's family, where Henry plied his trade as carpenter. During the early 1900's, Grand Trunk Railroad sent out flyers or advertisements calling for skilled labour to come to Canada to work on the railroad. At that same time, Henry's wife, Annie, died leaving him with three children, two very young. Henry remarried, to Louisa, cousin to his first wife who had come in to help with the children. Both Henry, and his son George, were skilled carpenters, the building market had taken a downturn, and so they both took positions with Grand Trunk to build passenger coach cars, which at that time were made of wood. They lived in Monreal in Pointe Ste. Charles and Henry did this for many years. By 1925, his children grown or gone, his son George, who had become a member of the Royal Fellowship of Organists, and a skilled musician, contracted Spanish Influenza during World War I and died, his niece, Doris Bristow, who had been taken in as a baby, married a gentleman from Bermuda in 1919, and his youngest son, Reginald, was engaged to be married, so Henry and Louisa and their children, moved back to England, first to Faversham, Kent, and then to London. They remained there, in Wandsworth I believe, until Louisa's death in 1933 and Henry died in West Hampstead in 1948.
Family Historian
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1877
11th August - Bound to Henry Rye Mercer, Folkestone carpenter, for five years for £25.
The Bootshoe Boys
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1881
Apprentice (18) boarding in Folkestone
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1891
Living (28) in Thames Ditton with wife Annie and son
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1901
Joiner (37) in Thames Ditton living with wife Anne and family (Henry Clasen)
1901 census
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1904
Death of wife Annie
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1910
Emigrated to Canada between 1906 & 1910
Atlantic ports passenger Lists 1893-1959
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1929
Living in Cromford Road, Wandsworth with wife Louisa and daughter Lilian Louise
London, England, Electorial Registers, 1847-1965
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1933
Death of wife Louisa
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