A Spratt Family Affair

In this audio clip, Sandra Spratt speaks on Ted Spratt, her late husband and how he started as a quarry worker in Beachville. 

In the photo above stands (from left to right) Edwin Harry Spratt (Ted Spratt), Elwin Spratt (Ed Spratt), and Gordon Spratt. Gordon was Elwin’s father and Edwin’s grandfather. The three men all worked at the quarry in Ingersoll. Edwin Phillip Spratt was the first of the Spratt men to be hired at the quarry and worked as a gardener. He had come to Canada as a British home child and had landed in Oxford County to work on a farm. Edwin primarily gardened at the Plant superintendent’s house.  Edwin’s son, Gordon Spratt, started at the quarry on pick and shovel and later became a maintenance foreman with the company. Gordon’s son, Edwin Harry (Ted) Spratt, was born on October 25, 1934. After attending school in Ingersoll, Ontario, Ted started where his father had – on the pick and shovel. Ted ended his career as a plant supervisor in Guelph.

Sandra Spratt: “Ted worked at the quarries for the two summers before graduating high school. So they had hired summer students back then. And, then, when he graduated from high school he graduated from a commercial course. He was going to be a banker but he realized that they didn’t make as much money as the men working in the quarries [Laughter]. So he went to work at the quarries so he could buy a big car [Laughter]. And, uh, and that’s how he got started and he worked there for just over 40 years.”