What’s new 2026

January 2026

find these updates in the Addendum, added January 2026

Best wishes for the new year to all friends of UP TO RAWDON

The winter issue of https://qahn.org/news/quebec-heritage-news has been published; it contains the Burns family story that I announced in October. If you are not a QAHN subscriber,  you may read it there. Perils of Pioneer Life Recollections of the John Burns Family

In Heritage News it is called Rebels and Babies and Bears, oh My !

● McCurdy Update page 24

Wondering if the McCurdy family was from Antrim, Northern Ireland or were they from Kilmory, Bute, Isle of Arran, Scotland or did they have connections to both places?

Death of the widow Jane Piggott McCurdy

● Copping and Broadhurst – additions to the Addendum are at pages 148 and 141.

Photo p148 is St. Mary Woolnoth Church, London where George Copping and Elizabeth Saggers married on 5 June 1806. Their 220^th anniversary is approaching, how many of their hundreds of descendants, spread around the planet, will wish to celebrate that date?

St. Margaret’s, Leicester was the Broadhurst family’s home church and the photos at p_141are of the exterior and of the crowded St. Margaret’s church yard cemetery.

9th Great Grandparents. Broadhurst

Judi Broadhurst Geib of Kelowna, BC is a faithful subscriber to UP TO RAWDON and on a recent trip to England, with her

granddaughter Madison Geib-Miller and fiancé Wesley Auringer, they visited churches with connections to her Broadhurst and Copping ancestors.

At left is Judi in St. Margaret’s Church Yard, Leicester, Leics standing at the stone of William and Elizabeth Broadhurst. William died 1 November 1684, aged about 50. Judi wrote “I believe they are my 9th Great Grandparents.”  You may notice that she marked the burial stone by placing three small stones on it.

Judi added her Canadian ancestors, grandparents Florella Copping and William Broadhurst, to Photo Updates p_141, in 2021.

● William Long family – page 337 fn 2

and Abigail Smith correction of pages 848,1048, 1093

Correction: More than one William Long settled in Chatham Township, Quebec. Only one of these spent time at Rawdon. Harry Long of Rochester, NY, (whose work I shared in 2013 and updated in 2023), wrote to point out that I had combined data on two different Williams. He suggested that I remove what does not concern the Rawdon man. Harry Long’s ancestor arrived in Canada from  Connecticut via Vermont in 1796. Research has now shown the man who was at Rawdon is not related to this family. Harry Long is in the process of preparing an article for the Connecticut Nutmegger detailing the history of Zachariah Long (father of the other William) with his sources.

William Long was head of a family of six on the 1831 Rawdon Census, having arrived in 1830 from a temporary location in nearby Kilkenny Township. He is not known to have baptized children at Rawdon and they left the community about 1835. However, there was a baptism in 1829 at St. Mungo’s Presbyterian Church (Chatham / Grenville Township, Québec) for Helen Long, daughter of William, it is in LDS & BAnQ files and is believed to be for the Rawdon family.

Correction: Research by Harry Long, and others, clearly names Abigail Smith as the wife of only William Long of the American family. The references to Abigail Smith on page 337 footnote 2 and on pages 848,1048 & 1093 as a resident of Rawdon are incorrect. Mrs. William Long of Rawdon appears to have been named Maria.

● Parkinson pages 378 and 690. Some interesting tidbits added from 1899 notarial riles.

Daniel Parkinson after the death of his mother, in December 1898, sold the mining rights for the Parkinson farm, to a marble dealer. Details on update page 690.

James Parkinson sold the mineral rights on lot19b that his father-in-law Alfred Holtby had acquired, in 1857, to Edmund Mccoy who sold to P. S. Page of Scranton, PA. Details are on update page 378.

● Manchester Place page 512, history of ownership

Correction of the ownership of Manchester Place has been made on page 512 and in the file, Rawdon Township Opened to Settlers in 1820. This was possible by the ongoing research on saw mills and grist mills, by Guillaume Petit and Michel Lambert in notarial Montcalm County files.

● Bro /  Brault / now spelled Breault page 1059

Three brothers Augustin, Joseph and Paul Bro received adjoining locations at Lot 8, on the Rawdon Third and Fourth Ranges. They were descendants of Acadian families deported to Ipswich, Essex County, Massachusetts in 1755 and who returned to Canada in 1766, settling at l’Assomption and St-Jacques, where these men lived in 1822. They perhaps should have been included in The American Heritage of Rawdon, Quebec but were overlooked because they had already been two or three generations in Quebec and the American influence was greatly mitigated, except for a quite natural mistrust of British authority.

● Bloomfield and Dowler page 1091

Bloomfield and Dowler families have received an update to page 1091 based on inquiries made by Raynald Adams of Cedar Avenue, Rawdon who found a brick marked Bloomfield, in the foundation of his house, that we believe was built by Thomas A. Bloomfield c. 1920.

Information concerning a land agent at Rawdon named A. P. Bloomfield 1820- 1850 produced by Google claimed to be from UP TO RAWDON is false and alarming because it appears to be authentic historical research. It has since then disappeared. Thomas Bloomfield was the first and only settler named Blomfield at Rawdon. Read text and text updates on page 1091.