Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-

When Edward was born in Lucknow Street, Sunderland on 9th November 1880, his father Thomas was away from home working as an Able Seaman, leaving his wife Ellen (maiden name McGinn) at home with 2-year-old Thomas and the new baby. The 1891 census shows that by this date Edward had three sisters, Mary, Ada and Ruth, and his father had given up the sea and was working as a coal teamer, a cartman driving coal wagons from the trains down to the staithes and waiting ships, and ten years later and still living in the same house in Tower Street East, Hendon, Edward was a railway engine fireman. At the end of 1903 Edward married Durham girl Elizabeth Hannah Gaddess and by the time of the next census in 1911 they had five sons, Edward, John Thomas, David, George and Andrew, and were living in Wallace Street, Dunston whilst Edward was working as a coal miner.

On 1st July 1912 Edward arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia having sailed from Liverpool aboard SS Pomeranian bound for the coal mining town of Stellarton, Nova Scotia. He was followed three months later by Elizabeth, who had travelled with the five boys from Glasgow to Quebec.

Edward enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force on 24th November 1914 as Private 69258 with “C” Company, 26th (New Brunswick) Battalion at St. John, New Brunswick, giving his wife as his next of kin and his employer as the Rothwell Coal Company of Minto, New Brunswick, and the next month the Battalion was inspected by Sir Sam Hughes, the Canadian Minister of Militia. June 1915 saw the Battalion sail on board the SS Caledonia to Plymouth and a posting to East Sandling Camp, Hampshire where they were assigned to the 5th Infantry Brigade, 2nd Canadian Division. Inspected in August by Bonar Law, Secretary of State for the Colonies, who had been born in New Brunswick, and the following month by King George V and Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, on 15th September 1915 they sailed from Folkestone to Boulogne and on into Belgium, where they had an instructional tour of the trenches near Scherpenberg.

In April 1916 Private Emmerson was granted a week’s leave to the UK and he would have been able to visit his wife and seven sons who had returned to England on the SS Corsican in December 1915 to stay with family in Dunston. They returned to Canada in August 1917 to their home at River Hebert, Nova Scotia.

Returning to the front line during fighting at Sugar Trench near Courcelette on about 16th September 1916 Edward was wounded in the chest and right arm and evacuated to the stationary hospital at Doullens before being invalided to Rusthall VAD Hospital in Tunbridge Wells. After convalescence Edward was discharged from hospital as Category D in November 1916 and after two months was posted to the 1st Training Brigade, Hastings at Category A, fit for active service. After a relapse he was posted to the New Brunswick Regimental Depot and in May posted to the 13th Reserve Battalion at Shoreham.

Volunteering to return to France he was posted to the 3rd Tunnelling Company as a Sapper, joining them at Mount Sorrel in mid September 1917 where they were employed constructing deep underground facilities in the Ypres Salient.

The end of January saw Sapper Emmerson taken ill with pneumonia admitted firstly to East Lancs Field Ambulance and then 3rd Casualty Clearing Station, Remy Siding, south of Poperinghe, Belgium where he died on 29th January 1918. He was buried the next day at Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery with the service conducted by Padre William L Archer.

Elizabeth and the boys returned to England in December 1919 staying with her brother in Dunston, and possibly visiting Edward’s grave in Belgium, and in 1922 returned to live River Hebert.

Edward Emerson is remembered in Sunderland on S140.048 part 9 page 200

He is also remembered in Canada on their Virtual War Memorial and Book of Remembrance.

Canadian Book of Remembrance
Canadian Virtual War Memorial
The CWGC entry for Sapper Emmerson