One of the things we mention in our courses at the museum, is to go beyond the cold hard data and discover the story of an ancestor's life - to read between the lines and 'live' their life. Earl Daniel Stacey was born in Tiny Township on the 13th of January 1893 to Thomas Stacey and his wife Arletta Jane Brunson. When Dan was just 14 months old, his father Thomas died of heart failure, leaving a wife and 9 children on the farm. Shortly after Thomas' death, Dan's mother married George Smith and the family moved to Midland. The marriage produced half-siblings for Dan but by 1906 Arletta, again a widow, had married Gideon Cripps and moved to Penetanguishene. In his first 13 years of life, Dan had called three different men 'Father' and moved at least three times. By age 18 years in 1911, Dan was no longer in school and working in a sawmill. At age 20 in 1913, Dan married 18 year old Eva Beaudoin, a Penetanguishene girl. In the next 3 years she gavee birth to 2 stillborn children and another child who lived but 4 short days. In February of 1916, just 2 short weeks after the stillbirth of their third child, Dan enlisted in the army. He was considered fit for service and shipped overseas. Sometime later he was "invalided back to Canada for further medical treatment". His service records would probably reveal exactly the illness that caused the army to send him home, but it was likely "miliary tuberculosis". This was the disease listed on Eva's death registration when she died in April 1918, after a short illness. It is not known if Dan was in Canada when she died but her residence was given as the American Hotel in Penetanguishene. Almost exactly 1 year after her death, Dan married Margaret Kingston. She became a widow when Dan died in 1920 at age 27 years, only 14 months after their marriage, of "tuberculosis of lungs". The registration states he was a returned soldier and had the disease for 3 years. Earl Daniel Stacey is the only soldier I have located to date who died and was buried in Canada yet was given the same honours as any other soldier who gave his life for his country in World War 1. He is commemorated on Page 553 of the First World War Book of Remembrance. Pam