Kenora Great War Project

 

Personal Details
Date of BirthOctober 18, 1889
Place of BirthBirtle, Manitoba
CountryCanada
Marital StatusSingle
Next of KinWilliam B Travis, brother, 253 Baker Street, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA
ReligionChurch of England
Service Details
Regimental Number21894
Service Record Link to Service Record
Battalion5th Battalion
ForceCanadian Expeditionary Force
BranchCanadian Infantry
Enlisted / ConscriptedEnlisted
Date of EnlistmentSeptember 23, 1914
Age at Enlistment25
Theatre of ServiceEurope
Prisoner of WarNo
Survived WarNo
Death Details
Date of DeathFebruary 28, 1915
Age at Death25
Buried AtBailleul Communal Cemetery, France
PlotJ.13

Travis, Herbert Gordon

Herbert Gordon Travis was born on 18 October 1889 in Birtle, Manitoba. His father Herbert Travis, a music teacher/professor, was from England while his mother Edith Florine Emily Wood was from Arkona in southwestern Ontario, having moved to Manitoba with her parents and siblings as a child. The couple married on 11 March 1885 in Birtle. Children born in Birtle were William Stanley Beresford (1884), Percy St Clair (1886), Ida Violette (1887), and Gordon. By the time of the 1891 census the family had moved to Rat Portage (later renamed Kenora) in northwestern Ontario where son Albert Edgar was born in 1894. At some point after Albert’s birth the family immigrated to the United States where they gave birth to daughter Mabel Edith in 1896 in Butte, Montana. Sadly, it appears that Herbert Sr passed away a short time later, with Edith and the children found living with her parents and younger brother in Saint Paul, Minnesota for the 1900 US census. By the 1910 US census Edith and most of the children were still living in Saint Paul while Gordon had returned to Canada by 1901 to live with his mother’s sister Violette Graham and husband William in the File Hills area of the Territories (Saskatchewan).

Gordon enlisted on 23 September 1914 with the 11th Battalion in Valcartier, Quebec. His brother William in Saint Paul was given as next of kin. He embarked for overseas aboard the Royal Edward on 3 October, rank of Private. On 1 February 1915 Gordon was transferred to the 5th Battalion. A short time later, on 28 February, Gordon died of an intestinal obstruction at the No 2 Clearing Hospital in Bailleul, France.

Gordon’s brother Albert had returned to Canada to enlist with the CEF in early July of 1917. He served in France/Belgium with the 8th Battalion, sustaining a gunshot wound to the thigh in August of 1918. He returned to Saint Paul after the war.

At the time of his death Gordon was predeceased by his father. He was survived by his mother Edith (d 1931, Saint Paul) and siblings Percy (d 1931, Saint Paul), William (1953, Saint Paul), Ida Violette (Charles) Graham (d 1973, Winnipeg), Albert (d 1975, Saint Paul), and Mabel (Robert) Jenson (d 1984, Saint Paul).

Gordon is interred in the Bailleul Communal Cemetery on the eastern outskirts of Bailleul, France. He is commemorated for his service on page 39 of the First World War Book of Remembrance in Ottawa and on the Saskatchewan Virtual War Memorial .

By Judy Stockham


« Back To Soldier Biographies