Correcting the story

 

                            A view of the churchyard of Leith United Church with the sign about the artist, Tom Thomson

Sometimes it pays to reread your sources. I didn't extract much information from Alexander Mathison's letter of September 18, 1917. It was the tenth letter in the collection. Maybe I was getting tired at that point or maybe I hadn't realized the significance of the date. The information extracted was as follows: 

                Letcher South Dak Sept 18 1917

• Got home yesterday morning at 10
• Information about his visit and his home community                          

It wasn't until I looked up the date of his nephew, Tom Thomson's death, that I realized this was the first letter in the collection which captured the time after Tom's demise. A reread of the letter opened it to a different interpretation.

Around this time, Alex started writing about his long visits to the State Soldiers Home in Hot Springs, South Dakota and when I looked at my notes later, that was in my mind. When he wrote about getting home to Letcher, I though that meant he had returned from the soldiers' home. But then I read further into the letter which was addressed to Dear Brother and Sisters, in other words, John Thomson, his wife Margaret and Margaret's sister, Henrietta. Further down in the letter he wrote: "It was much harder for me to leave you this time than it was any time before. I hope to see you again." Those sentiments seemed more in the line of something he had written to his relatives when he had recently visited them after their bereavement.

Given the timing of the letters he wrote before after his nephew's death, it was possible that Alex was there for the internment of his nephew's casket at the United Church in Leith, Ontario as Tom Thomson was laid to rest on July 21, 1917. This was his second burial and there was and is some controversy over whether the artist's body was truly in the casket. Even if Alex wasn't visiting at the time of the reinternment, I am sure there would have been a visit to the grave at some point in his visit. That grave was also the resting place of Kenneth Matheson, the father of Alex and his sisters, Margaret and Henrietta.

It's taking me a while, but I'm slowly piecing together a timeline for Alexander Mathison. He lived through a lot in his life so it seems it would be interesting to write about him in more detail. The task right now though, is to make sure I'm extracting the right information from his letters to come to the correct conclusions about the events of his life. 

Sources:

Little, John. Who Killed Tom Thomson? The Truth about the Murder of One of the 20^th Century’s Most Famous Artists. Skyhorse Publishing, New York 2018.