Wallace Seager Chugg

Wallace Seager Chugg - youngest son of John Chugg and Anna Ada Milks Chugg of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

About age 6 about 1924. Question - Anna Ada died of septicemia, was it due to the birth of Wallace?

Wallace Seager Chugg - resident of Manhattan, New York, partner in Chugg - Carlin, Inc (a lighting business).

Wallace Chugg obituary

date

dd mm 1973

33515 Clearwater, Pinellas, Florida, USA

Children:

John Wallace Chugg Jr. Joan Chugg gen 4

December 4, 2007

Originally written June 2, 1983
Addition to : Nellie Chugg Lang’s original Chugg Family History
at Page 11 – Wallace Seager Chugg

by James Wallace Chugg

I continued with the history…

Wallace was an exceptional athlete and participate in numerous sports including boxing, swimming, basketball and hockey at which he excelled both in Canada and later in the U.S. As a child in the 1950’s I remember him swimming at Clayton and Grace’s camp at Blue Sea Lake, Quebec. He would swim from our cottage out to Sugar Plum Island (at least that’s what we called it!) to the railroad cut and back to th cottage. It seemed to me as a small child several miles. He would also, to humor us, submerge like a loon for several minutes at a time and then miraculously reappear large distances away, to our amazement.

On July 5, 1922 Wallace married Marie Beatrice McMinn. My understanding is that Marie attended Queens College og Magill University in Montreal and was one of the few female graduates at that time. She was a prolific writer who wrote short stories, poerty, and even a novel. These writings may still be in existence (see Wallace’s son John, later).

Wallace and Marie were married 43 years until her death on September 3, 1965. They became American citizens on June 24, 1935. and lived in New York City. When Wallace left sports as a livelihood he went to work for a lighting firm in New York. The owner, a Mr. Carlin, took a liking to Wallace who it seems possessed an astute business mind. Eventually becoming full partner the business was named Chugg-Carlin, Inc. and maintained offices at 11 West 25th Street, New York.

In the 1920’s they moved to a home in Montclair, New Jersey where they raised their two children, John Wallace, born July 4, 1926 and Joan Chugg, born December 24, 1929.

Later, after the children moved out, Wallace and Marie moved to an apartment in the City. Wallace began to dabble in the stock market through his friend and broker, Gus Weiser. Throuogh the years he did quite well. At one time I thought he owned the Chrysler Corpration because he had a new Chrysler New Yorker every year.

Upon his retirement he and Marie moved to Clearwater, Florida where they built a beautiful home with a screened-in swimming pool. This was around 1961. Marie passed away in 1965. I did visit them once just prior to her passing. Wallace sold the home and moved into a high-rise condominium on the then nearly empty Clearwater Beach. Two years later he married one Ida Hammond, twenty years his junior. When Wallace died she “made away” with most of the wealth he had accumulated over the years. A Chugg family nest egg was lost to an “outsider”.

Wallace should be remembered as a good-natured and generous man. At one time he told me he was contributing to the support, to some degree, several families including his son John (my father), his daughter, and relatives in Canada. He had purchased a lakeshore cottage in Vermont on Lake Champlain which we came to think of as “ours”. We spent many a fine summer day there in his company. He always treated us – his grandchildren – well, played with us and tried to instill us with morals and common sense. We all swam, fished, hiked, picnicked and water skied. When he left for Florida the camp was sold but I have returned there from time to time to remember.

Michael, etc -

Thank you very much for the Charles Robert Chugg and Catherine Julia Thompson information and photos. I also went to the Ourroots.ca web site and read even more Chugg history. This is so fascinating!

Here's another one for you all:

This is Wallace S. Chugg (Pop) at our cottage on Lake Champlain in 1958. Wallace and Marie spent as much time here as they could. They drove from Manhattan to Vermont. The cottage originally sat in the back yard of my childhood home in Georgia Plains, Vermont. It was just a little shack out by the chicken coop. Pop bought some land by the lake and had the cottage moved and refurbished. Later, my father, John Wallace Chugg, added on another room. I remember helping, probably as a go-fer and banging my thumb with a hammer.

Wife Marie (Gramma) fitted the cottage with nice things that she probably shipped up from NY. I remember a nice tea set. I had my first cup of tea there, and I'm still a tea drinker some 50 years later. Pop also built a garage. That's where we kids slept - on army cots lined up by the back door. We skipped stones, searched the shore for treasures, hiked the hills and swam. I remember we caught (and released) a giant snapping turtle and were amazed at how it could snap a stick with its powerful jaws. We fished, too. My father once caught a massive northern pike, so big we couldn't fit it into the net. We had to beach the boat and bring the fish ashore that way. The pike was ancient, with moss growing on his forehead.

Once, on a foolhardy adventure, my older brother John and I were out playing. It was late winter. We were young. The ice hadn't gone out yet. So we went out onto the lake. We didn't realize, that in those few minutes, the ice was truly breaking up as we hopped from mini iceberg to mini iceberg. At some point we heard our father bellowing through the wind at us, arms flailing in panic. We froze and looked back toward the cottage; it seemed like a mile back to a little boy. Frigid water was pressing on the ice floe we were on and suddenly the sheet of ice we thought we were on was now treacherous, with now apparent route back. My father took his life in his hands and somehow made it out to us and guided us back - as the once frozen lake, before our eyes, turned into Hell. Looking back, I do not know how we made it.

More, Pop was wonderful to us, his grandchildren. He was funny, "Do you want a puck in the gob?". He was watchful. He was really a joy to be around. (Gramma was a little strange.) The cottage on the lake was a tremendous experience for all of us. Often, on the ride back home, we'd stop at Bill's Ice Cream Stand in Milton, Vt for a cree-mee.

Just for kicks, I've also included a photo of some of our beef cattle here on the Ohio farm.