30 Days of Remembrance - Day 12 - John Laird

In memory of
Private
John Laird
who died on November 9, 1917 

Military Service:

Service Number: 172470

Age: 34

Force: Army

Unit: 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles (2nd Central Ontario Regt.)

Additional Information:

Date and Place of Birth: June 12, 1882

Son of John Laird and Christian Morrison Laird, of Leith, Scotland; husband of the late Catherine Laird, of Toronto, Ontario.

Cemetery: WHITE HOUSE CEMETERY, Belgium

Grave Reference: I. F. 28.

Commemorated on Page 270 of the First World War Book of Remembrance.

 The first thing that stood out on John laird's attestation papers was his marital status of widowed.

According to the same, John Laird was born in Leith Scotland in 1882. Ancestry had a matching tree but was missing some source citations so I looked to Scotlands' People to find out that John married Catherine Adams Laird in Leith, in February, 1907. Their eldest child was born 3 months later on May 7 and named for her mother,  the record for which I also found on Scotlands's People.

In 1909 the family moved to Toronto, Canada where their second child a daughter named Anne Robertson was born on August 4, 1909. 2 years later a third child, a son John, was born in Toronto on Aug 22, 1911. Both of those records are from the Ontario Birth registrations and can be found on Ancestry .ca

Sadly, Catherine died in Aug of 1915. Her death record, also available on Ancestry shows that she died of pulmonary tuberculosis, commonly known as TB. A mere seven months later in March 1916, John Laird joined 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles, leaving his young children in Canada.

 A notice in the Toronto Star tells of the death of John Laird at Passchendaele and the sad tale of his 3 orphaned children.

from The Canadian Virtual War Memorial

John Laird died  November 9 1917