Name	Age
Hugh Janison	66
Margt Janison abt 1831 born NB wife	60
Charles Janison abt 1869 son	22

Mary Janison abt 1871daughter 20




This is Phoebe Almira ( Wood) Lawton, widow of Francis Lawton and common-law wife of Christopher Wager Cosman. I called her Grama. She was born in Saint John in 1883, and as her mother died 3 weeks after her birth. her father, Jacob Wood, brought up his 3 children on his own, Elizabeth, Walter and Phoebe, on the farm in Redhead and later, in the Rothesay Ave. House.

Phoebe was tiny, only 4ft. 11in. tall and with long hair that touched the floor when she let it down. She worked hard all of her life and brought up 11 kids with next to nothing. She was a wonderful gardener, both of vegetables and of flowers, a quiet lady who read her religious magazines when very old, sitting in her old chair at her son Eddie's place and reading softly aloud to herself.

Across the field from us when we were kids and when Grama had given up the farm, was Grama's little white house where she lived with her widowed daughter, Mabel Sprague. Later, Mabel and Grama moved across the road where Mabel opened a store. Here Grama tended a large and wonderful flower garden filled with tall heavy white and maroon dahlias, glads of every color, and compact, velvety, colourful cushions of Sweet Williams. Grama always bent over straight from the waist, her long, fine, gray hair wound up in a bun on top of her head, and her tongue never ceasing. She talked to me as she worked, bent over with her hands in the earth, telling me as I danced about her skirts of the shocking morals of the neighbours. The words became a song in my head, like the buzzing of fat, lazy bees, a song of summer sunshine, of flowers and of my enduring Grama.

The years went by, and Grama came to live with us, with her son Eddie and Muriel, who were the only ones of all her big family who would take her in as an old, old lady. Eddie, my Dad, cared for her tenderly until her death.
Eddie and his mother, Grama Phoebe, at Eddie's humble house.

Edward Christopher Lawton was born in the early 1920's . He had 3 half-sisters and seven half-brothers, and grew up very poor. Eddie told us kids stories about how he sawed wood with a crosscut saw, holding one end before he could even reach it by standing on top of the wood platform. Often he would get hit in the chin with the handle of the saw and knocked to the ground. Food was scarce and the two main treats he remembered were molasses and a turnip sliced in half and scraped out with a spoon. He said he waited all day for his mother to return from town in the wagon with the longed for molasses under the wagon seat. I read an old newspaper account of how people in Saint John could get free molasses from large casks left on the wharfs for the purpose.

Eddie went barefoot most of the time and went to school only for a few days for the lack of them. When he was married at 15, he could not read or write, and the Reverend Mr. Martin of St Mary's Anglican Church signed his name for him on the marriage certificate. Muriel, my mother, taught Eddie to read and to write and he first joined the army during the war, then became a motor mechanic, heavy duty motor repair man and head engineer at Coldbrook Government Garage before his early death, at age 61, from multiple sclerosis.

My dad never spoke of his father, Chris Cosman, to us. It was all hush, hush, possibly from the stigma of Chris and Phoebe being unmarried, or from the bad blood that existed between the Lawton kids and Chris Cosman, the Lawtons fearing Chris or Eddie might get the farm. The Lawtons made sure they kept control, and I will write more about that in their section of this story.


This is the old Lawton farm barn with Chris Cosman showing off his horse. My mother said Eddie was the boy with the big peaked hat, but I think the smaller, roughly dressed boy must be Eddie, from what he told about his life on the farm.

Chris Cosman was 56 years old when Eddie was born and died at about age 73. Legend has it that he died from internal injuries he received from a beating the grownup Lawton boys put on him. Mom and neighbours said Chris was a nice man but my sister said she heard Dad say Chris used the horsewhip too often on the kids. Neighbours remember Chris was good with horses and loaned them out in the neighbourhood and gave rose bushes from the farm to neighbours. These roses still bloom today.



Two of the Lawton siblings, Cecil and Allan, play with the baby ducks on the farm. Grama had big geese that were vicious, chasing and biting people who came in the yard and there were always a collection of dogs about the place.



Eddie about the time of his marriage.

Muriel and Eddie were childhood sweethearts and were married when just 15 years old.
This photo was made by scanning an old negative. Here is Grama Phoebe with her one and only dress and sweater, walking down a path on the farm, kids in the background.

Grama Phoebe's first husband was Francis Alfred Lawton and they were married in 1903. Francis bought a piece of his widowed mother's farm and set up housekeeping in an old farmhouse that he moved up the road aways from a swampy area. The farm was on The Old Black River Road, in East Saint John, and their house, barns and back field were located where the provincial Jail is now.

Francis was the son of Robert Lawton and Anne Jane White. Robert the son of George and Mary Lawton who came from northern England to New Brunswick in 1832.. Robert's farm was on the corner of the Cottage Road and contained a fine house, barns and fields overlooking the Bay of Fundy. Anne Jane, his wife, was born in Ireland, and her parents and brother lived in nearby Redhead.

Grama Phoebe married Francis Alfred Lawton in 1903. They had 10 children, Mabel, Grace, Gordon, Arthur, Hazel, Earl, Ernest, Cecil, Allan and Russell.The first, Mabel was born in 1903 and the last, Russell , in 1920, 10 kids in 17 years. Francis died in 1920, aged 46, at The Lunatic Asylum in Saint John, of complications from an untreated mental illness. His last days were terrible as he refused to eat or drink. So, Phoebe was left alone on the farm until Chris Cosman came as hired man and then, common-law husband and father of Eddie. He was a hard worker and kept them all alive and fed. Grama mentions in a sort of diary paper of how Chris fell while cutting wood at Mispec alone and of his other efforts about the place.



Note: I will create a page for each of the Lawton children.

A self portrait of Peewee Darlene, aged 10, painted 2008.


Page Links Reorganized

Darlene's daughter's sights in Yellowknife, Links below.

http://yellowknifescenes.wetpaint.com/?t=anon

http://silverdoodle.wetpaint.com/