Andrew May was the fifth generation of Mays to live in the St. Catharines area. May was born on August 24th 1830 on his father’s 300 acre estate in Grantham Township. As a young boy the family moved into St. Catharines where May was educated at “the Old Academy” (notes by Andrew May, May-Morey collection). May later moved to Hamilton where he studied portrait painting with John B. and Mark Harrison.

While May studied art in Hamilton Ontario, a continual flood of letters and valentines arrived for Erecta. On March 1st 1853, the two long-time valentines wed and later had four children together; Louise E. (1854-1945), Annie E. (1859-1978), Lallah F. (1860-1917) and William Andrew (1870- 1948). Shortly after marriage the couple moved to London where May moved from art into dentistry under the tutelage of Dr. Darine Perrin. In 1860, after two years of study the couple returned to St. Catharines where May set up his own dental practice. May became very resourceful making all of his own tools and “also remodeled an old sewing machine for a lathe” (notes by Andrew May, May-Morey Collection). Some of his inventions were even patented, such as the “waxing up tool for dental trial plates” (Patent, Andrew May- Dentist, May-Morey Collection). The couple is buried together, along with two of their daughters Louise and Annie at Victoria Lawn Cemetery in St. Catharines (Grantham Township Ancestors, SPCL FC 3153 G6 P375 1999).

The May family has deep roots in the St. Catharines community beginning in 1739 and continuing today with the Mayholme Foundation. “Mayholme was built in 1857 for George May [Andrew May’s second cousin] by Orren Cole, of the Cole Brothers, Ten Mile Creek (Homer). This was the second house on the property granted in 1801 by the Crown to Peter May, U. E . George May, farmed here until his death in 1891, when he willed the property to his daughter Anna May who had married Eugene F. Dwyer in 1877. Their son Leslie continued farming, selling most of this land just shortly before his death in 1970. The remaining property and the house were inherited by his daughter Corlene (Dwyer) Taylor who has donated it to the Mayholme Foundation which she founded” to aid people in researching their past. (http://www.st.catharines.com/recreation/rec_ps_culture_events_doorsopen.asp)

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