Canadian Badge

Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-

Born in Easington Lane in April 1880, by the time he was ten years old John’s mother had died and his widowed father, Lancashire miner Thomas, had moved to live in Tanfield. In 1899 John married Annie Blakey from Hamilton Row, then living in New Kyo, and two years later they were living in Stanley and taking in lodgers, whilst John worked as a coal miner. Their two daughters, Mary and Florence, were born in West Kyo, and their son George after they had moved to East Stanley. Shortly after the 1911 census was taken, John left for Canada and a new life mining at the Hub Colliery, Cape Breton, with Annie and the three children joining him in Glace Bay in May 1912.

When John enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in May 1915 he was living near Lethbridge, Alberta, and originally gave his wife Annie as his next of kin; on his attestation paper her name is crossed out and that of his father, living in Edmondsley, inserted, and his will was also made out in favour of his father. She would appear to have remarried and crossed into the USA later that year.

John was posted to the 51st Battalion as Private 437254 and after initial training at Sarcee Camp, Calgary would have embarked for England on SS Missanabie on 18th April 1916 and billets at Bramshott Camp, Hampshire. Transferred to the 15th Battalion, on duty in France fighting as part of the 3rd Infantry Brigade, 1st Canadian Division on 26th September 1916 he was killed in action in an attack on the French town of Courcelette.

John Charles Prescott is remembered in Stanley on S135.04

In Canada he is remembered on their Virtual War Memorial and in their Book of Remembrance.

Canadian Book of Remembrance
Canadian Virtual Memorial
The CWGC entry for Private Prescott