Eugenie (Sauriol) Blagdon (1871-1963)

Eugenie Sauriol was born in Williamstown, Ontario on December 11, 1871. This picture from the McCord Museum in Montreal is supposed to be of a Eugenie Sauriol. It's supposed to date from 1867, but could it be the same person?

On February 22, 1892, she married Alfred Esdras Blagdon at Sacre-Coeur Parish in Toronto, whom she had met through her brothers, who were working at the Gendron carriage manufactury. These two pictures were taken at the same studio and in the same outfit. They were quite possibly taken around the time of her engagement and wedding, when she would have been 22. Her only child, Marguerite Cecil Blagdon, was born in 1899.

She was the seventh child in a big family, with whom she was very close. Her siblings were Prime, Marie-Louise Josephine, Arthur, Elisabeth, Joseph, David Vital, Nydia, Julia, Dolor, Maria and James. In these first two pictures, she's at the Toronto home of Joseph (Joe). On the left are (standing) Aunt Liz (Elisabeth) and (seated) Mrs. Joe Sauriol and Eugenie, to whom she was known as "Aunt Jen".

The photo on the right shows (left to right) Joe's son Charles Sauriol, a noted Toronto naturalist), Aunt Liz, Eugenie, another Sauriol and (seated) Mrs. and Mr. Joseph Sauriol. This may have been in one of several houses Joseph Sauriol owned on Munroe Street near Queen and Broadview in Toronto. Maybe about 1915-1920?

This would seem to be her daughter Margaret's graduation in 1917.

Here's a nice one with daughter Margaret, Aunt Liz and Eugenie. Some of these images may be in Toronto; others may be in Sturgeon Falls, Ontario, where she lived for some time with her husband. One gets the idea from these pictures that people in the 1920s spent a good deal of time sitting and standing about in gardens.

 Here's the birth of her first grandchild, Barbara, in 1925.

 And another with Barbara, perhaps in 1926?

In 1940, she filled out the National Registration, in which she reported that she was widowed and living at 121 Guestville Avenue in Toronto. Among other personal information, she wrote that she could speak both English and French, that she had had both primary and secondary education, and that she had been working as a housekeeper for “Father McCool” for ten months (also that she could “do plain cooking”).

Here she is in April 1957 at the wedding of her grandson Hugh, next to her granddaughter Barbara.

She died in Toronto on September 9, 1963, at the age of 91.