World War II : Philip Service Cassidy (1863-1930)

I’ve been working for some time [as part of my work-in-progress, the genealogy book: see my piece around his daughter, my great-grandmother, here] to research the details of my second great grandfather, Philip Service Cassidy, including why he moved from Grenville, Ontario into the American Dakotas, where he married a local girl, and they had the first four of their eventual mound of children. They moved back to Carleton County after a while and had at least eight more children. Philip later signed up to fight in the Second World War, a war record I couldn’t quite figure out how to read.

Thanks to an assist from Marjorie Stintzi, I’m able to discern that the birthdate he offers when registering to join the 156^th Overseas Battalion Canadian Expedition Force, having previously served as part of the Kemptville-local 56^th Lisgar Rifles, is actually false. Apparently he was beyond the age for enlisting, claiming his birthdate as May 6, 1871 in Richmond, Ontario, which would have put him at forty-five years old instead of fifty-three. I knew there would have been an age minimum, but hadn’t realized a maximum, and I hear from multiple people that they knew of relatives pretending to be younger than they were. He apparently suffered a hernia while moving boxes later that same year, refused surgery, and was found at the medical examination to be overage, which even Stintzi suggests might have allowed him a way out.

What becomes frustrating: various sources on Ancestry and otherwise replicate Philip’s deception, instead of what the 1901 census offers as his birthdate: May 9, 1863. Ten years earlier, a further census lists his birthday as “about 1865,” but the 1881 census returns to the correct year, if nothing else, which puts him precisely at fifty-three during that 1916 paperwork. Apparently his reward for fudging his age was a truss, as he sent home to Kemptville. Completely unable to find a birth record or notice for him, I actually can’t find a death notice or obituary for him, either. He died somewhere either in British Columbia or Saskatchewan in 1930, having moved out that way, most likely, to live with one of his grown, married daughters. His story an enigma I’ve yet to fully discern.