Kenora Great War Project

 

Personal Details
Date of BirthSeptember 16, 1888
Place of BirthSydenham, London
CountryEngland
Marital StatusSingle
Next of KinJames Chandler, father, 17 Magdala Road, Buckland, England
Trade / CallingLocomotive Fireman
ReligionChurch of England
Service Details
Regimental Number503714
Service Record Link to Service Record
Battalion11th Battalion
ForceCanadian Expeditionary Force
BranchCanadian Engineers
Enlisted / ConscriptedEnlisted
Address at EnlistmentKenora, Ontario
Date of EnlistmentFebruary 19, 1916
Age at Enlistment27
Theatre of ServiceEurope
Prisoner of WarNo
Survived WarYes
Death Details
Date of DeathMarch 2, 1926
Age at Death37
Buried AtBrookside Cemetery, Winnipeg, Manitoba
PlotMLTY-0610-0

Chandler, Frederick George

Frederick George Chandler was born on 16 September 1888 in Sydenham, Lewisham in London, England. His father James Chandler, a gas fitter, was from Brighton in Sussex while his mother Hannah Keys was from Dover in Kent. The couple had married during the first quarter of 1869 in the registration district of Dover. Their first born child, Ellen Hannah, was born in Dover but by the time of the birth of their second child, daughter Emily Sarah in 1871, the family had moved to Sydenham. Other children born to the family in Sydenham were Charles (1873), Eliza (1874), Alice (1876), Kate (1878), Amelia (1880), Charles (1882), Thomas (1884), Harry (1886), Frederick, James (1891), and William (1893).

By December of 1914 Frederick was living in Grenfall, Saskatchewan where he signed his first set of attestation papers on the 22nd. His occupation was given as locomotive fireman and his next of kin as his father James back in Buckland, England. Frederick was discharged as medically unfit from the 10th Regiment Canadian Mounted Rifles in September of 1915 at Camp Sewell, likely due to his flat feet. By February of 1916 Frederick was living in Kenora, Ontario and working as a fireman for the railway, signing his second set of attestation papers in Winnipeg on the 19th. Organized at Ottawa in March of 1916, the 15th Field Company, Canadian Engineers embarked from Halifax on 22 May 1916. On board was Sapper Frederick Chandler.

Once in England the company was redesignated as the 11th Field Company and embarked for France on the 10th of August. In late March of 1917 Frederick was on command to a Cookery School, returning to the unit near the end of April. In September he was granted a fourteen day leave. On 19 February 1918 he was awarded on Good Conduct Badge. In May of 1918 the 11th Field Company was absorbed by the 11th Battalion, Canadian Engineers. In June Frederick was reclassified as in medical category B1 due to his flat feet and struck off strength to the Canadian Labour Pool, later attached to the 4th Canadian Divisional Employment Company. In late September he was granted a fourteen day leave, rejoining the unit on the 10th of October. In early December Frederick was transferred to England and posted to the Canadian General Depot at Witley. With the end of the war, Frederick embarked for Canada aboard the Canada on 15 February 1919.

Although Frederick returned to Kenora for a short time he was to make Winnipeg, Manitoba his home. On 12 July 1920, in Winnipeg, he married Ethel Maud Foyster. Born in 1887 in Barnstaple, Devonshire in England, Ethel was the daughter of Henry and Rebecca (née Shercliff) Foyster. With occupation given as domestic, she had arrived in Canada aboard the Tunisian on the 6th of July. Frederick and Ethel gave birth to daughter Eileen Mary in May of 1921. The 1921 Canada census found the family living on Spence Street in Winnipeg with Frederick working as a freight porter. In September of 1925 Ethel and Eileen travelled to England to visit with her mother who was living in Worthing, returning to Canada aboard the Montnairn in mid January of 1926. Their second child, Frederick John, was born in March of 1926, after the death of his father.

Frederick died on 2 March 1926 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He is interred in a military plot in Brookside Cemetery, Winnipeg. Predeceased by his mother Hannah in 1911, his father died that June of 1926, both in Dover. Ethel and the children were to make a number of trips back to England, all to Worthing. The first was in October of 1926, returning to Canada in April of 1927, then in September of 1935, and it is likely that they moved permanently to Worthing in 1938, arriving in Southampton aboard the Montclare on the 19th of May. Although records would be needed to confirm, it appears that Ethel did not remarry and died in December of 1950 in Worthing. Both Chandler children married, Eileen to Lucien Bonnier in 1942 and Frederick in 1950 to Zena Towgood, both in Worthing.

Frederick’s sister-in-law, Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Sister Ellen Lucy Foyster, was lost at sea on the HMHS Salta due to a mine explosion, a half a mile north from Whistle Bouy, Le Havre on 10 April 1917. She is commemorated for her service from 1915-1917 on the Salta Memorial in the Ste Marie Cemetery, Le Havre.

by Judy Stockham

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