Winslow Ephraim Acker
World War I Veteran Who Lived in Dorchester
Written by Camille Arbogast
Winslow Ephraim Acker was born on October 18, 1889, in Birchtown, Nova Scotia, Canada. His parents, Ephraim Acker, a farmer and mariner, and Alice May (Gibson), were married in Birchtown in 1887. They had two older children: Roy born in 1884 and Ina in 1887.
Winslow grew up in the Birchtown Bay area, his family residing in Birchtown in 1889, and in the nearby villages of Churchover in 1891 and Carleton Village in 1901. By 1901, Roy, like Ephraim, was a fisherman, while Ina and Winslow still attended school. Ina married lumberman Robert Collupy in 1908. In 1911, the Ackers were back in Birchtown. Winslow, then 21, was employed as a laborer. The Canadian census reported he worked 50 hours a week, and had been employed 40 weeks in 1910, earning $100. His brother Roy also lived at home while working for the railroad.
In 1911, Winslow immigrated to the United States, taking the train from Montreal on May 9 and arriving in Boston on May 10. In July 1917, he lived at 103 Geneva Avenue in Dorchester with Edward and Ella (Robertson) Vial. Edward was a wholesale meat salesman for the Batchelder and Snyder Company, who arrived in the United States in 1882; Ella immigrated in 1905. The Vials were possibly Winslow’s relations. Winslow was a carpenter, employed by Herbert L. Ray of Walnut Street in Newton, Massachusetts. On his First World War draft registration, Winslow reported that he was a Canadian citizen, and that his mother and father depended on him for financial support.
On October 23, 1917, Winslow enlisted in the 26th Engineers and was assigned to Company E. “Made up of skilled tradesmen and engineers,” the 26th Engineers were a water supply regiment. They trained at Camp Dix, New Jersey. On July 2, 1918, Winslow was made a private first class. Winslow sailed with Company E, leaving from Brooklyn, New York, on the Italia on August 17, 1918. They arrived in Liverpool, England, on August 31, where they boarded a train to Southampton. There, a channel boat carried them to Le Havre, France.
Company E was immediately sent to Pompey in Lorraine to serve as “army water-supply troops” during the St. Mihiel offensive. On September 17, they were “quickly and secretly transferred by night to the Argonne-Meuse front,” where they carried out their work from September 26 to November 11. During the St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne offensives, “the regiment constructed and operated 125 temporary and 105 semi-permanent military ‘water points’ for men and animals. It also operated approximately 100 existing French water points, and constructed 48 locomotive filling stations. A total length of 120 000 feet of 2- and 4-in pipe was laid … Whole companies served continuously within the range of enemy shell fire for periods from fifty to ninety days, without relief or rest.” The history of the regiment offered a description of its members’ feelings about their service: “Each man was working at his own trade, and the pressure and confusion of battle could not drive from him the ability to do the things which in civil life he had performed automatically, nor the ability to think intuitively in his own line of work. Added to this was the impelling desire in the face of suffering and death to perform some vital part in the game even if not in the forefront of the firing line.”
After the Armistice, Company E was sent to Faubourg Pavé, in eastern Verdun, where they constructed and operated locomotive water filling stations, repaired water systems, and participated in salvage operations. On January 2, 1919, they moved to Bourg-sur-Gironde, near Bordeaux, to prepare for their return to the United States. Winslow was promoted to corporal on January 10. On March 13, he sailed on the USS Matsonia with the Camp Devens Detachment of the 26th Engineers, leaving from Bordeaux, and arriving in Hoboken, New Jersey on March 24. He was discharged on April 10, 1919, at Camp Devens in Ayer Massachusetts.
On June 21, 1919, Winslow married Isola McSpirlin Acker in Birchtown. Isola, a trained nurse, had been born on Birchtown Bay in Hartz Point. She, too, had been living in the Boston area, where she was a resident from 1915 until February 1919.
Directly after the marriage they returned to Boston. The couple initially lived with the Vials, who then resided at 23 Duke Street in Mattapan. In 1923, Winslow was naturalized as an American citizen. At that time, he and Isola lived at 28 Ripley Road in Dorchester. Their son, Donald Isaac, was born in 1924 in Hartz Point. By 1926, the Ackers had purchased 67 Eliot Street in the village of Newton Highlands, in Newton, Massachusetts. After the war, Winslow continued to work as a carpenter, though the 1930 census reported that he was currently unemployed.
In 1933, Winslow’s father died of pancreatic cancer. That year, Winslow, Isola, and Donald returned to Nova Scotia, where Winslow was a general retail merchant. During the 1940s, he began to suffer from rheumatoid arthritis. His mother, Alice, died in 1941. Around 1944, his son Donald became an assistant post master. For about six years, Donald was ill with pulmonary tuberculosis. The tuberculosis spread to his brain and spine and he died of tuberculous meningitis in 1949. By the time of his death, Donald had married.
Winslow died of bronchopneumonia on April 23, 1957, at Roseway Hospital in Sandy Point, Nova Scotia, after a few weeks’ illness and a hospitalization of eight days. He was buried in Birchtown’s Mizpah cemetery. When Isola died in 1975, she was buried beside him.
Sources
Edmund West, comp. Family Data Collection – Births; Ancestry.com
Family Tree; Ancestry.com
“Nova Scotia Marriages, 1864-1918;” Birchtown, Guysborough, Nova Scotia, Canada, Nova Scotia Archives, Halifax; FamilySearch.org
1891, 1901, 1911 Canadian Census, Library and Archives Canada; bac-lac.gc.ca
World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration; Ancestry.com
“They’ll Remember the Cassin and Antilles,” Boston Globe, 23 October 1917: 14; Newspapers.com
Military, Compiled Service Records. World War I. Carded Records. Records of the Military Division of the Adjutant General’s Office, Massachusetts National Guard.
History of the Twenty-Sixth Engineers (Water Supply Regiment) in the World War, September 1917-March 1919. Published by the Regiment with the Cooperation of the New England Water Works Association; Archive.org
Lists of Outgoing & Incoming Passengers, 1917-1938, Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, 1774-1985, The National Archives at College Park, MD; Ancestry.com
Marriage Record, Birchtown, Shelburne, Nova Scotia, Canada, Nova Scotia Archives, Halifax, NS; FamilySearch.org
“Vermont, St. Albans Canadian Border Crossings, 1895-1954,” Soundex Index to Canadian Border Entries through the St. Albans, Vermont, District, 1895-1924, NARA microfilm publication, Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration; FamilySearch.org
1920, 1930 United States Federal Census; Ancestry.com
Petition, Naturalization Records. National Archives at Boston, Waltham, Massachusetts; Ancestry.com
“City Collector’s Notice,” Newton Graphic, 9 July 1926: 11; Archive.org
“Nova Scotia Deaths, 1890-1955,” Sandy Point, Shelburne, Nova Scotia, Canada, certificate 001307, Nova Scotia Archives, Halifax; FamilySearch.org
“Nova Scotia Deaths, 1956-1957,” Sandy Point, Shelburne, Nova Scotia, Canada, certificate 2716, Nova Scotia Archives, Halifax, NS; FamilySearch.org
Winslow E. Acker, FindAGrave.com