Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-
Born on 4th January 1895 in Newburn, as were all the family, Edgar was the fifth child of engine fitter Thomas Kirton and his wife Mary (nee Anderson), following Dorothy, Robert, Matthew and George Edward. In 1901 the family were living in East Westmacott Street and ten years later with the addition of Charles and young Mary Victoria they had moved to Wood House, Newburn Hall where Thomas was now manager and employer at a sand and gravel quarry. A few years later the family moved to Haydon Bridge where Thomas owned another quarry and the children attended the Shafto Trust School in the village and where the oldest boy Robert died in 1905.
April 1909 saw Thomas and son George travelling to Canada to start a new life farming in Alberta. Two months later on 5th June Mary and the five other children arrived in Quebec on the SS Virginian to join the men in Victoria, Alberta. Farming was not to be their life and within a few years the family had moved to live at 9518 100th Street, Edmonton where Thomas found work as a laundry engineer and Edgar was working as a clerk.
On 22nd November 1915, a few weeks after his brother Matthew, Edgar too enlisted with 63rd Battalion Canadian Infantry becoming Private 467509 and they underwent training together at City Park Barracks in Edmonton. The Battalion left on troop trains on 15th April 1916 and arrived on England on the SS Metagama on 4th May. Billeted at Westenhanger Camp, Kent by late June both the Kirton brothers were transferred to the 8th (Winnipeg Rifles) Battalion and posted to France becoming part of the 1st Canadian Division, 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade. Joining the Battalion in billets at Steenvoorde in Belgium at the end of June, within four weeks Edgar had received a shrapnel wound to his face but rejoined the battalion after treatment at a field ambulance station.
Having moved from Ypres to the Somme, it was during fighting in trenches near Courcelette that Private Edgar Kirton was killed in action on 7th September 1916, just days before his older brother Matthew died from his wounds.
Edgar Kirton is remembered in Haydon Bridge on H24.01, H24.03 and H24.04
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 Kirton
