Mary Anderson Samuels has an interesting history. She tried to help out when the ranch was in trouble. Mary Anderson was the baby of the Anderson family. They owned the Petrolia Hotel in the oil town of Petrolia, Ontario. Apparently, Mary was a cute one too! There are several stories of beaus and swinging gates, even in the later years.

Sister Annie was a teacher in Petrolia. Baby Mary wanted to become a nurse. Well, Michael James, that young renegade who went out west, hadn’t showed up yet to take Annie away. Imagine, just leaving everything and going way out west like that! Fame and fortune, likely story!

Someone had to look after Mary, since she had chosen to go to the best nursing school in New York. So, the Anderson family said, Annie Elizabeth had better give up teaching and go with Mary to look after her in the big city. You never know what trouble she could get into in a place the size of New York. Therefore, Annie applied to the same nursing school as Mary, with considerable credentials, and became a nurse with Mary at New York General Hospital.

As the story was told to us, when Murray was in Chicago in 1917, going to school, he and a couple of his friends were struck down with a terrible flu (Flu Epidemic of 1917). Little Mary came to the rescue and went to Chicago and nursed the boys back to health. Murray once said that, if it hadn’t been for Aunt Mary, they all would have died in the epidemic.

After the girls succeeded in being certified as nurses, they graduated in May, (1896), in New York, only Mary remained to work there. She was obviously a good nurse because she captured the heart of one wealthy fellow by the name of Sydney Samuels. Mary married Sydney and they lived on Park Avenue. We believe Sydney Samuels was in textiles business. He also had substantial investments in his brother’s tobacco plantations in Cuba. These were sold at substantial profits as time went on. However, Sydney passed away, leaving Mary with a large sum of money. Shortly after his death in about 1921, Mary took a long and wonderful trip around the Atlantic and toured the Mediterranean by luxury liner. I have her travel trunk and her daily diary in my library. My boy’s eyes were as big as saucers last winter when we took a trip to the basement to open up and peek into Aunt Minnie’s old trunk.

Mary returned to Petrolia with all kinds of wonderful trinkets and souveniers. She later moved out to Calgary, where in 1933, concerned about her sister living on a ranch in the middle of nowhere and the depression taking a stranglehold on the North American economy, she took her nephew’s (Murray’s) oldest son, William, to Calgary to stay with her. Billy was not very healthy and they thought he would be better off going to school in Calgary. Mary lived with Billy in the York Hotel for a number of years. Of course Billy got the best of care – and he was apparently quite a Hellion. Billy would visit the Lone Star Ranch in the summers and Mary would bring food and things to help out.

In 1933 when the tide seemed to be turning against the Lone Star Ranch, Mary made an offer to settle up with the bank on the freehold/fee simple lands, but we don’t know what could have been done about the leases. Annie passed away in 1957 and Mary died in 1959.