John Austin Sanderson (1887-1917)
From Bishopwearmouth fought with 1st/9th DLI killed in action at Vallencourt Ridge
John Austin Sanderson set out for Canada in 1913, to find a new life with his new wife in Toronto. Four years later, he would die with his comrades in the DLI at the Battle of Arras, leaving his young wife a widow with two young children.
John was born in October 1887, in Bishopwearmouth, Sunderland, the third of the four children of John and Mary Ann Sanderson (nee Austin). John senior was a bricklayer by trade, eventually becoming a foreman for Sunderland Corporation. The whole family was Sunderland born and bred.
John junior was a mechanic, according to the 1911 census, but when he sailed on the “Empress of Britain”, bound for St John in New Brunswick, Canada, he gave his intended occupation in Canada as bricklayer; the trade he must have learned from his father. Four months later, his fiancée, Ann Maria Friend Coombes, also born in Sunderland, followed him out to Canada, again on the “Empress of Britain”. The pair were married in Toronto on 6 July 1913, the day after she arrived.
However, with the outbreak of war, John and Maria returned to Sunderland where John found work as a tram cleaner for the Corporation. On 28 February 1916, at the age of 28, he was posted to the Army Reserve in Sunderland. Another four months went by before he received his call-up papers and he was finally posted as a private in the 1/9th Battalion of the DLI on 1 September 1916. The following day, he was marked as absent without leave for 12 hours and was admonished for his misdeed. A similar “crime” on 17 October, when he was absent for 22 hours found him confined to barracks for seven days.
John finally proceeded to France on 6 November 1916, joining his unit 11 days later. After a tough winter in the trenches, with the Battle of Arras raging, the 1/9th Battalion was thrown into the attack and counter-attack at Vallencourt Ridge. And it was here, on 23 April 1917, that John was killed in action. He had served for just 17 months.
John’s wife, Maria, was left with two young children to raise on a pension of just 22 shillings 11 pence (£1.29) a week. She would eventually remarry and become Maria Rodenby.
John’s memory is honoured on the memorial at Arras and on a plaque originally in the Church of the Venerable Bede, now in the Royal Artillery Club, in Sunderland.
Civil Parish: Sunderland
Birth date: 1887
Death date: 23-Apr-1917
Armed force/civilian: Army
Residence: 5 Infirmary Row, Bishopwearmouth (ecclesiastical parish of St Hilda 1891 census)
2 Infirmary Row, Bishopwearmouth (1911 census)
25 Greenlaw Avenue, Toronto, Canada (1913 marriage certificate)
5 Infirmary Row, Bishopwearmouth (1916 attestation papers)
Employment: Mechanic, bricklayer, tram cleaner for Sunderland Corporation
Family: Parents: John Sanderson (b 1863), Mary Ann Sanderson (nee Austin) (b 1866)
Siblings: Margaret Sanderson (b 1882), Elizabeth Sanderson (b 1887), James Sanderson (b 1889)
Wife: Ann Maria Friend Sanderson (nee Coombes) (later Rodenby) (b 1889)
Children: Irene Sanderson, and one other
Military service:
Regimental number 325683
Private
1/9th Battalion, DLI
Medal(s): British War Medal
Victory Medal
Memorial(s): Arras Memorial, France
Plaque originally in the Church of the Venerable Bede, now in the Royal Artillery Club, in Sunderland.
Gender: Male
Contributed by Kelloe Visitor, Trimdon Station
