Cousin Darcy McKeough is trying to find the family connection between Thomas A. Stone (son of Flora Maude Campbell and Spencer Stone) and the Mr. Trotter mentioned as “Stony’s uncle” in John Birmingham’s biography “Memoirs My Guardian Angel Taught Me”.
There was a business relationship between Trotter and McKeough. (In 1905 Samuel Trotter incorporated McKeough – Trotter Limited.) On the other side, the McKeough’s and Stones (and Howell’s) are related through John Stone and Mary Burns.
I will keep looking, (here is my list of Trotter’s) but so far I haven’t located the connection between Stone and Trotter.
Here is the section of interest from the biography:
“In 1911, when automobiles were the craze of the moment, Dad bought an EMF car. Not to be outdone, our neighbour Uncle Phil, also bought the same make and model. There were no such things as drivers; licenses then, but after some instruction, I was allowed to drive the car, and in fact to take it out alone to town for shopping errands, and that sort of thing. A desire to have a car of my own kept mounting as the years went by and by 1914, I decided it was time so start to build one.
Tommy Stone, as usual, was my partner. Stony’s father had an old buggy which had served its usefulness as a horse drawn carriage vehicle, so this was given to us as a starter. Stony’s uncle, a Mr. Trotter, owned a machine shop in Chatham which made gasoline engines. These were the two cycle type of marine engines used mainly for fishing boats. Experimentally, Mr. Trotter had built an air-cooled engine which was not a great success. Although it would run, there was no market for it, so Mr. Trotter gave the engine to Stony. It was about a three horse power engine and about three times the size of the modern present-day engine of that power.”
