Saskatoon's 'Woman in the Well' -- She Looks Like An Agnes To Me

Author: Shane Lambert
Original Time of Writing: January 3rd, 2021; updated February 18th, 2021; updated October 15th, 2024
All articles are subject to editing after the original posting.

I spent several hours working on the case of Saskatoon's "Woman in the Well" on January 3rd, 2021. This was a woman who was found in a long-abandoned well in 2006 and, at that time, she was believed to have been long dead. There was a hotel at the site of this well that was known as the Shore Hotel in decades from the past.

Mon, Dec 16, 1912 – 69 · Star-Phoenix (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada) · Newspapers.com

Researching the Shore Hotel generated some names affiliated with the property and even some real-estate news from nearly one hundred years ago. However, while researching the hotel I didn't find anything of interest that connected to this case so I took a different angle on it, an angle that may have yielded something. Firstly, here are the Lady in the Well's specifications.

Unidentified Remains: Saskatoon Jane Doe, the so-called "Lady in the Well" or "Woman in the Well"; reference number 2012020100 with Service Canada's Missing.
Remains found: June 29th, 2006
Date of death: This Jane Doe's date of death is not clear but she is unequivocally believed to have been dead for decades at the time of her discovery; a range is given from 1920 to 1924 in an article that appeared in Victoria's Times Colonist on March 9th, 2007 (immediately below). Others have given different ranges. For my research purposes, I decided that any missing person from pre-1935 would be in play.

https://www.services.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/missing-disparus/case-dossier.jsf?case=2012020100&id=4 Fri, Mar 9, 2007 – 1 · Times Colonist (Victoria, British Columbia, Canada) · Newspapers.com

Ethnicity/Race: White

Sex: Female
Age at time of disappearance: Estimated to be 20 years old to 35 years old
Hair: Brown
Height and weight at the time of disappearance: 5'0" and slim build
Clothing: as pictured below

Forensic work circulated with this case.

The Jane Doe, by contemporary analysis, is considered to have been at least middle-classed in life (she had a gold chain). That is important because sad as it may be, it's a fact of life that the more money your family has the more likely you are to be on the radar when you go missing. I think that's a universal truth and not just for contemporary society.

That the Saskatoon Jane Doe was not a transient was something I considered to be a clue: whoever she was, if she was from the Saskatoon area then there should have been some media coverage of her disappearance in the Saskatoon newspapers around the 1920's. With that in mind, I assumed that any missing person cases from 1910 to 1930 for the Saskatoon area might have been picked over and examined already, at least cases that there are surviving records of.

My assumptions and research led me to think that the Jane Doe simply wasn't a local. Sutherland, the area near Saskatoon where she was found, was a railway stop according to Jeff O'Brien, a man cited as an archivist in an article I read and someone that I have exchanged emails with regarding the Jane Doe (same article as the one snipped below). He pointed out that she could easily have been "anybody riding the rails" in a newspaper article that appeared back in 2006.

Sat, Jul 22, 2006 – 4 · Star-Phoenix (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada) · Newspapers.com

Cases involving Jane Does that were "riding the rails" a hundred years ago or so is actually something I have experience researching. I actually did some work on a similar case a few years ago. If you are interested in the Lady in the Well from Saskatoon, you might also take interest in the Rahway Jane Doe. She wasn't found in a well several decades after her death but rather she was found in the street the night after her murder. She was thought to have alighted a train in the minutes or hour preceding her death. Like Saskatoon's Lady in the Well, the Rahway Jane Doe remains unnamed.

Lady in the Well: A Traveller to Saskatoon?

When I decided, for the sake of proceeding in a guided way, to assume that The Lady in the Well was someone who didn't come from Saskatoon, I next decided to look for a presumptive person who looked for her. I assumed that the Lady in the Well, the Saskatoon Jane Doe, would have had relatives after her death who would have wondered what became of her.

On this matter, I discovered one "Mrs. A.G. Mcintosh" who was of 4644 Bader Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio in 1938. Mrs. A.G. Mcintosh was also named Isabelle Pearson, someone who appeared in the American census of 1940. A.G. Mcintosh was Isabelle''s husband and the sister of one Agnes Goodall Pearson. It is this latter name that probably belongs to the Jane Doe in Saskatoon, in my opinion. It seems that Isabelle Pearson identified herself under her husband's name (ie. "Mrs. A.G. Mcintosh"), which some wives used to do.

My Procedure for Finding a Potential Match to the Jane Doe

One way people looked for people they lost touch with in the past was through classified ads. I've worked on so many hundreds of missing person cases, either individually or at Websleuths.com, that I know the keywords that appear in classified ads when someone is looking for someone. Phrases like "the whereabouts of" or "anyone knowing" or "anyone with information" or "missing since [year]" are examples of common phrases that appear verbatim in countless classified ads where the poster is looking for someone who is missing. They are not as popular anymore but these kinds of classified ads often appeared under "Missing Persons" columns in the past.

In looking through old classifieds, I started with "missing since 1910" and then explored the hits that came up. Finding nothing I went to "missing since 1911" and so on and so forth -- always with a focus on classified advertisements that appeared in Saskatoon. I would have considered classifieds for Calgary, Winnipeg, Regina, and Edmonton too. Most of the hits were of missing men, especially in the WWI years.

Finally, "missing since 1922" hit something that remains promising. The Lady in the Well might be named Agnes Goodall Pearson. I plugged that name into Google and didn't find any identical previous guess of that being her name so I'm thinking this is an original guess. Since the original publication of this article, her name as been mentioned in some forums but with links back to me.

A classified advertisement appeared in Saskatoon's Star Phoenix on August 9th, 1938 but the individual who placed the ad, Mrs. A.G. McIntosh of Cleveland, Ohio (ie. Isabelle Pearson), was looking for someone who went missing 16 years earlier -- so in 1922. I will note that 1922 is dead-smack in the middle of the 1920 to 1924 range that was given as the possible year of the Jane Doe's death.

Tue, Aug 9, 1938 – 14 · Star-Phoenix (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada) · Newspapers.com

Missing person as of August 1938: Agnes Goodall Pearson

Last seen or last contact: sometime in 1922

Age at time of last contact or last seen: about 52 years old (born about 1870)

I will note that the age of the missing person, doesn't match up with the estimated age of the Jane Doe. This is a point that has to be dealt with.

The Jane Doe is estimated to be 20 to 35 years old while Agnes was about 52 years old when she went missing. However, age estimates can be way off for Janes Does -- even ones that are found deceased for only a short time. When it comes to the long-deceased, one might think that the estimation process just gets all the more difficult.

I don't think Agnes' age of "about 52" rules her out as this Jane Doe at all. The Lady in the Well was found in an environment that was different than where most human remains are found and she was there for decades and decades. I think that those who gave an age estimate for this Jane Doe were working with facts surrounding her remains that were unique to their careers. Accordingly, I don't know how accurate their guesses are going to be.

One thing that I found interesting about the classified advertisement was that the person who posted it was from Cleveland, Ohio. The advertisement only appears in Saskatoon's Star Phoenix by my efforts. What that makes me think is that Mrs. A.G. McIntosh of Cleveland had reason to believe that Agnes Goodall Pearson went missing in Saskatoon, not further east nor further west. Someone from Cleveland, Ohio wouldn't advertise a classified for a missing person in Saskatoon without good reason. It's just too specific of an action.

I have very good reason to believe that the person who placed the advertisement was actually named Isabelle McIntosh. She appears in the 1940 United States Federal Census with the matching address of 4644 Bader Avenue (Bader Avenue can be seen in the original source, below is just a snippet). 

Her husband was named Andrew McIntosh (in fact, he was Andrew Grieve McIntosh). Thus, the "Mrs. A.G. McIntosh" in the classified advertisement from 1938 is the wife of the household. She is writing in her husband's name as many married women used to do.

Here's what I know of Isabelle McIntosh, the lady that placed the classified advertisement:

• she was born in Scotland in 1887 (she was 53 at the time of the 1940 census); I think she was born in Kilmany, Fifeshire
• her maiden name was Pearson
• she is the sister of Agnes Goodall Pearson, the person she was looking for
• the family was caucasian and Scottish

Ella Ogilvie, widowed, is a 30-year-old daughter with two children, children that might be alive at the time of writing. It would be interesting if one of them knew something about the details of Agnes Goodall Pearson. Did she reply to the advertisement? Did she come for Christmas one year? Or was Agnes' last known communication forever more the one documented in the classified ad (ie. in 1922). That would be expected if she was the Jane Doe in Saskatoon.

Agnes Goodall Pearson: Never Accounted For

I didn't find any other information on Agnes Goodall Pearson using online newspaper databases: the classified ad above is the only thing I note. Furthermore, a Google search (see below) for the quoted name contained no hits in written work on January 3rd, 2021. That search would cover forums and websites for missing people in addition to blogs and news websites. 

The only hit, prior to the publication of this blog post, that you are reading right now, was for Ancestry.com where I did find evidence of someone named Agnes Goodall Pearson. However, this was someone who died in Scotland in 1915. According to our classified ad, our Agnes Goodall Pearson was alive in 1922.

One way to rule out Agnes Goodall Pearson as the Lady in the Well is to find her, Agnes', grave. If you find a grave of Agnes Goodall Pearson (b. abt. 1870), then it rules her out as the Jane Doe in the well because the Jane Doe was in the well until 2006, not in a grave. I did not find a grave at FindAGrave.com for an Agnes Goodall Pearson, born in 1870, that matched.

I did find a grave for an Agnes Pearson that died in 1937 (b. 1869). She was buried in Red Deer, Alberta and this is a small city on the Canadian prairies. I considered the possibility that this was Agnes Goodall Pearson but ruled this out. The Agnes Pearson that died in 1937 married into the name. Her husband, one Nels Pearson, is referenced in the grave marker. Agnes Goodall Pearson, by my research, didn't marry into the Pearson family name but rather she had it from birth through her father.

Regarding an Agnes Pearson that resided in Saskatoon, on that matter, I emailed Jeff O'Brien, Saskatoon archivist. He claimed to have evidence of an Agnes Pearson in and around Saskatoon in the 1910s and early 1920s. However, he could not find a grave for her in the Woodlawn Cemetery. O'Brien said that this was the place where people from Saskatoon were buried if they died before 1950.

Her address in Saskatoon may have been 279 3rd Avenue North according to Jeff O'Brien, Saskatoon Archivist. That address would be from the 1913 Henderson directory. Jeff O'Brien also said "Agnes Pearson is in the 1923 and 1924 Saskatoon Henderson directories living in rooms at the Colonial Apartments, a rooming house at 525 20th Street West." These could be different Agnes Pearsons than the one sought out in the classified advertisement or they could be the same.

I think the person, Agnes Goodall Pearson, that was the target of the classified advertisement was at this link at ancestry.com. She appeared in the 1901 Scotland Census. She has a death date that is unknown according to one profile. 

Her unknown death date is promising when it comes to corroborating her ID as the Jane Doe in the well. Someone who ended up down a well for decades as a victim of foul play would likely have a death date that's unknown to those who cared for her. In fact, none of the public family trees had her date of death as per the public ones at Ancestry.com. That's a bit of a clue too because it shows that no one has great information on when she died, which is what you'd expect for a missing person.

Right now, what I have on Agnes Goodall Pearson is this:

• She was definitely born in or around 1870 in Forgan, Fife, Scotland
• She definitely appeared in the 1901 Scottish Census
• Her name definitely appears in a newspaper classified ad in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan on August 9th, 1938 with a reference to the year 1922 as her last-heard-from time
• Possible connection: an Agnes Pearson appears in the Henderson (near Saskatoon) directory in 1913 (could be a different person)
• Possible connection: an Agnes Pearson appears in the 1923/24 Saskatoon directories (could be a different person)
• She then disappears from the records (challenge: prove this wrong) meaning that she could be deceased
• She doesn't have a grave marker (challenge: prove me wrong, please)
• Possible connection: maybe she ended up in the well with her last contact to her sister Isabelle coming in 1922

Without a grave marker or a proven date of death that rules her out, this missing person remains a candidate as the Woman in the Well.

For further leads, use the name Agnes Goodall Pearson (born in or around 1870 as per her age of 52 in 1922). This woman is never married and was born in Scotland. When did she come to Canada? It seems sometime between 1901 and 1913. Her father is Alexander Pearson and her mother is an Isabella Pearson, an Isabella that's not to be confused with the classified ad poster of the same name. 

If you can, try and find a picture of Agnes Goodall Pearson so that it can then it could be compared, as food for thought, to the sketch of the Jane Doe. But we definitely want to try and rule Agnes out as the Jane Doe. If we can't do that then we can hold on to the opinion that she could be the Jane Doe. 

The main way to rule her out, I think, is to find her documented date of death (ie. an obituary) or gravemarker. With many angles to consider, you can see how there is a lot of work to be done in investigating this lead. Furthermore, I have leads on living relatives if DNA on the Jane Doe in the well is ever available.