Lela Susan (Culbert) Beadle (1890-1992)

 If there was a prize for longetivity in the Culbert family, surely it would go to Lela (Culbert) Beadle who lived to celebrate her 102nd birthday.

Lela Culbert. Photo courtesy of Wendy (Gowland) Boole.

Lela Susan Culbert (pronounced LEE-la) was born 130 years ago today to Richard Culbert and Jane Eleanor Fairhall on 3 January 1890. She was born in a log house at Lot 19, Concession 2 on the Coursey Line near Lucan, Ontario, Canada. About a decade later, her father would build a new brick house and name the property Poplar Farm.

Lela's father built this new brick house to replace the log house in which Lela was born. The house was completed by 1900 or earlier when Lela was about 9 years old.

Lela's birth certificate erroneously lists her name as Susan Lillie Culbert. The person who informed the authorities about her birth was the local assessor, not her parents. He must have forgotten or mispoken her name when he went to the registration office. On her wedding certificate, she's correctly listed as Lela Susan Culbert. 

Her older siblings were Hulda (Culbert) Carscallen, G. Arthur Culbert, Myron Culbert, Ethel (Culbert) Gras, and Mary (Culbert) Hodgson. Another brother, Richard Edwin Culbert was born after Lela in 1896 but he died at age one month so Lela was the youngest child of the family.

The Richard Culbert-Jane Fairhall family. 1927. Front row, left to right: Parents, Jane (Fairhall) Culbert and Richard Culbert, and Ethel (Culbert) Gras. Back row, left to right: Hulda (Culbert) Carscallen; Myron Culbert; Lela (Culbert) Beadle; Arthur Culbert and Mary (Culbert) Hodgson.

Lela attended S.S. #2, also known as Atkinson's School, and then Lucan High School.

S.S. #2 Atkinsons's School in Biddulph Township.

She graduated from Stratford Hospital's nursing school in 1921 as a Registered Nurse. 

On 4 September 1926 in Stratford, 36-year-old Lela Susan Culbert married Albert Edwin Beadle, manager of a woolen mill. Albert, a 49-year-old widower, had two teenage children, Gordon and Anita. 

They lived at 253 Ontario Street in Stratford, Ontario.

Lela (Culbert) Beadle's house at 253 Ontario Street in Stratford, Ontario. For many years, Lela operated her home as a guest house for tourists and Stratford Festival theatregoers. This photo was taken in 2018, decades after Lela lived here.

Following her husband's death in 1953, Lela, now in her 60s, opened her house as a guest home to tourists and Stratford Festival theatregoers. She didn't find it to be hard work as there were usually only two or three guests at a time although she had as many as 10 people staying there overnight.

Lela with her mother and two of her three sisters. Front: Lela's mother, Jane Eleanor (Fairhall) Culbert. Back, left to right: Hulda (Culbert) Carscallen, Lela (Culbert) Beadle, and Mary (Culbert) Hodgson. Their sister, Ethel (Culbert) Gras is missing from the photo. This photo was taken in the 1940s prior to Jane (Fairhall) Culbert's death in 1949. Photo courtesy of Wendy (Gowland) Boole.

The four Culbert sisters on 30 May 1957. Left to right: Hulda (Culbert) Carscallen of Whitby, Ontario; Lela (Culbert) Beadle of Stratford, Ontario; Ethel (Culbert) Gras of Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Mary (Culbert) Hodgson of Lucan, Ontario.

Lela was known to be a bit of a penny-pincher. It's said that, "Lela wouldn't give up 5 cents for anything." Have you heard about people who don't trust banks so they keep their money under their mattress? That was Lela.

To save money on household costs, Lela would ask her sister Mary to drop whatever she was doing in Lucan to come to Stratford to clean her house and sew new clothes for her. This, despite the fact that Mary was an old woman!

Despite these idiosyncracies, Lela was an interesting woman who regularly received friends and relatives into her home and made them feel welcome. Lela's niece, Alice (Carscallen) Griffiths said, "the tourist home and her interest in people have kept her young. She's no recluse."

 

When she was about 92 years old, Lela sold her house and moved into Stratford's PeopleCare Nursing Home. It was here that she celebrated her 100th birthday.

Lela died at the age of 102 years in Stratford on 6 February 1992. She is buried in Avondale Cemetery, Section 2, Row 2 in Stratford. 

FAMILY TREE FOR LELA SUSAN (CULBERT) BEADLE:

Ancestors:

John Culbert & Mary Ward (grandparents)

Richard Culbert & Jane Eleanor Fairhall (parents)

No descendants.