John Ernest Sampson

John (Jean) Ernest Sampson was born on November 22, 1878, in the coastal fishing village of River Bourgeois, Richmond County, Nova Scotia. His father, Placide, was 42, a fisherman and seaman on a mail route, and his mother, Alexandrine Beranger, was 31. John had four siblings, two of them half-siblings from his father’s first marriage.

John Ernest, his parents, brother Placide, and sister Mary Delphine immigrated to the United States in 1896, according to the 1900 Census. They along with Mary’s husband, Remi Boudreau, are shown as living together in Newton, Massachusetts in 1900.

John married Emma Marie Bissett, of D'Escousse, a town on Isle Madame, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, near his birthplace. They were married on August 4, 1901, in Newton, Massachusetts. He was a 22-year-old shoe maker. She was 17.They had five children in 21 years, and for many years lived in a large house at 303 Freeport Street in Boston.

John and Emma were living in Cambridge in 1918 when he listed his occupation as a foreman at the American Rubber Company, which manufactured rubber boots, according his 1918 draft registration. He was described as being of medium height and build, with blue eyes and brown hair.

Barely six months after the birth of his fifth child, Walter, John died on July 8, 1923, at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Boston, at the age of 44. He was believed to have taken ill after eating contaminated shell fish. The death certificate listed typhoid fever and acute myocarditis as the cause of death. His demise left the family struggling to get by.

He was buried at Calvary Cemetery in Waltham, Mass.