Updates made to Up To Rawdon

What’s New December 2022

Merry Christmas–  this update of UP TO RAWDON, has material that I have worked on since September, plus new photos and miscellaneous items and corrections.

Five additions to the Additional Information folder

1. I have transcribed the key points in the 1834-1846 cycle of Christ Church Vestry minutes that I ordered from the Montreal Anglican Archives. The earlier transcriptions were posted in September and this third set– Christ Church Vestry Minutes 1843-1846, 1843 Subscription List and the Completion of the Parsonagehas been up since October. This has been a huge task – to order photocopies of the 1847 and later Minute books, contact Sandra Kukou 1-514-843-6577 at Montreal Anglican Archives.
2. The minutes research was done to find when the first village church and the second parsonage were built. Check this in the Vestry postings and at Parsonage of Christ Church Rawdon, 1844, with colour photos and learn about Sue Ellen Jones and the plan to restore it.
3. I wrote in September that Rawdon Township Opened to Settlers in 1820 was also published in Quebec Heritage News. It has been translated by my friends Michel Léonard and Marie St Amour and is at https://www.histoirederawdon.ca/ under the headings Patrimoine or in Articles récents or go directly to the storyhttps://www.histoirederawdon.ca/le-canton-de-rawdon-souvre-a-la-colonisation-en-1820/. It has been a pleasure in 2022 to work with these ardent Rawdon historians in 2022, Merci à tous. In UTR, it is in Rawdon and Kildare research.
4. The Histoire de Rawdon group began this year to translate Beverly Blagrave’s https://rawdonhistory.com/ but in addition to Bev’s work it also reflects the interests and history of the Rawdon Québécois community.  It is still hoped that the George Copping Journals will appear hear once more on Bev’s interesting site.
5. Frank Mackey researches and writes on the history of the Black Community in Lower Canada. I attended his Quebec Family History zoom lecture in 2020, in connection with slaves held by some of the early Loyalist land owners. Frank sent me a question about Rawdon Township Opened to Settlers in 1820 and generously shared some new essential information that led this very interesting account: Stephen Rogers: A Black Man at d’Ailleboust. Rogers’ wife, Elizabeth Thompson, may have been one of the earliest burials at St. John’s, Kildare.

New photos

1) A photo of the Holtby Township Map and its commemorative plaque is at  photo updates p 372 and a copy showing the details of the map. 

2) Anita Norrish of Chilliwack, BC wrote to tell of the death of her father-in-law Roy Albert Norrish on 25 September 1922 and shared a photo p 680 of his great grandmother Mary Jane Dawson Norrish. It was amongst his papers; read about her life at Updates page 680. Thank you, Anita.

3) Florella Wright Copping and William Henry Broadhurst, photos at p148 , were a young married farm couple at St-Lin in 1901; it was a famous village then – the birthplace of the sitting prime minister Wilfrid Laurier. Read  Updates page 148.  Thank you, Judi Geib of Kelowna, BC, their granddaughter, for photos.

Some corrections and new information: Updates page 295 – Children of James Gray & Catherine Lewis Updates page 300 – birthdate & marriage for Jane Maria Murphy and family details and  on Updates pages 300-301 – information submitted by Maureen Savell masavell@verizon.net some years ago that has been revised. And on Updates page 596 – The dissent between the Rev. Robert Easton and Edward McGie went in the favour of McGie who seems to have taken on the role of real estate entrepreneur c. 1837 when he was a vestryman.

What’s New Fall 2022

Since June 2022 I have added a lot to the website. There are two important stories and several lists of early settlers Let me know what you find helpful.

◊ Rawdon Township Opened to Settlers in 1820 – The story of the first settlers to arrive in the Township. Click on the link or find it at Additional material / Rawdon and Kildare Research. 

I am pleased that this story will appear in the Fall 2022 issue of Quebec Heritage News, an excellent journal that is published quarterly by Quebec Anglo Heritage Network; membership in QAHN is reasonable and includes a subscription  https://qahn.org/membership-and-benefits and I recommend you check into what this group is doing – many interesting videos are online.

◊ John Lawrence Milton: Second Rector of Christ Church, Rawdon is in additional material / Supplementary information about families. A note on updates page 1045 (of the American Heritage chapter) directs you to the story of a unique and unusual man from the American south who was rector at Rawdon for six months in 1834. Thank you, Marc Dixon and Susan Q Wilson, for your assistance.

◊ Christ Church Vestry Minutes, 1834-1836, Building a new Village Church and Parsonage House and the Vestry Scandal  – this is a long title for a story inspired by my visit with Sue Ellen Jones, who is secretary of Vestry at Christ Church in 2022. It is in Additional material / Rawdon and Kildare Research. There is a revision of the proposal to name the village Charleston on updates page 122.

◊ Christ Church Vestry Minutes, 1837-1842 Rev. C. P. Reid and Rev. R. H. Bourne The minutes finalize the building of the new church in the village, opening of the ‘burying ground’ and the movement to construct a new parsonage to replace the one thrown up in a few weeks in 1834. Two letters from Bishop Mountain are firm but understanding of the duties of church members.

◊ Adherents of the Rawdon Protestant Episcopal Church: 1841-1842. There is a subscription list for each year and most but not all family heads are included. What was fascinating is that alternatives to cash were accepted.

◊ Citizens Petition, 11 June 1834, Begging for Benevolence on behalf of the Petrie Family is found in Additional Material / Supplementary information about families. It names 137 family heads, the majority of the Rawdon property holders in 1834, and illustrates the sense of community and support they showed for a fellow settler caught on the wrong side of regulations, everyone could imagine the plight of losing their hard-won acres of land. There are links at Updates page 1099 and for David James Petrie and son David at Updates pages 1093 and 1099. There were a few names on the petition that were not mentioned in UP TO Rawdon –  one was Daniel Smythe of Rawdon and George Ralston a possible relative of Peter and William Ralston (page 135 and the Connelly family). 

◊ Burton’s Church, An Irony of Rawdon History – did it become Presbyterian? I made changes to the original story about the Presbyterian Church and moved it to Additional material / Rawdon and Kildare Research. The church was consecrated by Anglican Bishop Stewart, and we believe it is the oldest building in the village. See updates page 1065 about a Presbyterian picnic in 1880.

◊ The Brace family of Vermont and New York were Millers at Rawdon, on or near the site of Dorwin Falls, in the 1830s.  A note has been added to updates page 514 fn. 13 directing readers to updates page 1045 of the American Heritage of Rawdon Quebec to this addition about a forgotten family,  once players in its economic life.

Some Church News from the Vestry Minutes

◊ updates page 1065 refers to a comment by George Copping in his Journal January 1836 that the family attended church in the village. Service was in the parsonage because the new church was being built. It appears that Burton’s church on the First Range was not used after he left in 1833. 

◊ Updates pages 1067-1069 I– have added a note to clarify that the new village church, which was in planning for several years, was completed and in use in 1837 and not opened in1834. I have determined this by a careful reading of Vestry Minutes from 1834 to 1842 Christ Church Vestry Minutes, 1834-1836 and Vestry Minutes, 1837-1842.

Websites about Rawdon

◊ The Groupe pour l’histoire de Rawdon was created in November 2021 when a group of Rawdon residents and friends got together to translate, with her co-operation, Rawdonhistory.com; the site of  Beverly Blagrave Prudhomme, who is an old friend of UP TO RAWDON. The team, solidly made of people with a deep attachment to Rawdon and its history, grew and acquired various and complementary skills, not only to translate the website in a few short months, but to undertake a research program on the history of Rawdon. It has been a pleasure to be included as a collaborator with the Groupe and make new and enthusiastic friends, who inspired me to take the Holtby map home to Rawdon in June 2022. The Groupe has a website, still under construction, the first pages available at www.histoirederawdon.ca. It is in French and English and in time some content will be available in other languages, to recognize the multicultural character of Rawdon today. Please check it out – it offers a different and complementary perspective to rawdonhistory.com and uptorawdon.com.

◊ Beverly Blagrave’s https://rawdonhistory.com/ has a  new look. Bev knows the community well and says that “the bare bones” of the revised site are there and it will take some months to complete. It still has the wonderful anecdotes she has collected and is preserving. Check for yourself and send her some encouragement

◊ Guillaume Petit has an amazing website https://montrealbb.ca/  with information about the mills on the Rawdon rivers and about forestry. Thank you, Guillaume, for bringing the importance of Rawdon red clover seed to my attention. It gained an award for settler John Jefferies in 1851 – see updates page 396 for this story and information about other Rawdon growers or the newspaper clippings in https://montrealbb.ca/trefle-rawdon/ 

New information, corrections and what is coming

– A new and confirmed date when the Dugas mill was established is at updates page 195 with the details in Rawdon Township Opened to Settlers in 1820.

– at updates page 840 I am confirming the site of the Smith / Boyce mill property on the Ouareau River, It has never been clear in previous posts.

– The sad details surrounding the death of George Parkinson on November 14, 1865, the day before his 23rd birthday are on updates page 692. We now have the location. I am grateful to Guillaume Petit who was researching lumbering on the Ouareau River and asked me if this Parkinson Lake that he found was connected to my family. 

– Who was Rev. Townsend? Does anyone know? See updates page 1065.

– Correction of dates for Leslie and Doris Parkinson at updates page 430.

– Thomas Griffith was a man of great influence at Rawdon as the representative of the Crown and on the Vestry of Christ Church. Corrections and new information about him is at updates page 316 a few months ago and there is a date correction now to updates 315 fn. 9. For a clearer view of his misdeeds at Vestry read the two sets of Minutes whose links are at the top of the page.

– The Citizens Petition contains 137 names of interest. Most are known to us. These few interested me. James Mullaney or Mulla’hey was a witness to the Brown autopsy updates pages 47-48;  Henry Law on updates page 531 and these old soldiers Thomas Cane & Patrick Martin at updates pages 1095 & 1098. 

– New Link: The lone on text page 225, fn. 34 is not active www.uptorawdon.com/eveleighmcgie and is replaced by John Eveleigh, junior and Mary McGie that is found at Additional Material / Supplementary information about families.

◊ A photo of the Holtby map, with its dedicatory plaque in French and English, is in place at Rawdon City Hall and will be featured in the next update around Christmas. This is the English text. 

William Holtby, junior, an original settler in 1824, used the map when Secretary Treasurer in 1846. A gift of the Holtby family of Washington State and Daniel Parkinson, Toronto.

 ◊ A story with photos about the new parsonage completed in 1844 & Vestry Minutes from 1843.

WHAT’S NEW JUNE 2022

This photo was added to the photo gallery. The Holtby Map was given to me by Mike Holtby and his siblings in Washington state and has found a new home in Rawdon City Hall. I presented it to the mayor and council and city staff on 8 June 2022. See the note on updates page 372.

Marc Dixon is an excellent researcher and as a friend of UP TO RAWDON has shared finds about the families that he follows at Rawdon and Kildare. Many are in the form of original newspaper accounts and highly informative. Check these update pages for new or corrected text, much from Marc’s diligence.

updates page xiii – The indigenous heritage of the township was overlooked in UP TO RAWDON. Marcel Fournier, in Rawdon: 175 Ans d’Histoire, referred to the Algonquin people circulating in the region for hunting and fishing and there were foot paths, which may have predated settlement, but I am unaware of villages or encampments in the township. An interesting reference is made in a newspaper report of the first service in the Roman Catholic Chapel by “a visitor at Rawdon” about a married couple who attended. The letter is reproduced as a footnote, on indigenous presence, to the Introduction

update to page 122 – Proposal to change the name of the village of Rawdon was not approved. There was a strong protest by the citizens to naming it Charleston for Charles Stewart, the Bishop of Quebec. Stewart is also mentioned on page 96 of the UP TO RAWDON text.

Copping, Dixon, Gray, Scroggie – Corrections and additions:

• In What’s New, March 2022, I mentioned the receipt of the gift by Marlene Fabbro of Wyoming, Michigan of her bound copy of the Journal of George Copping. It is now at Rawdon and will be placed in the new library that is planned. It is safe for now with Beverly Prudhomme.
• page XVI, footnote 4 The Journal of George Copping was accessed online for several years, from a Rawdon Historical link in the UTR Introduction. I regret this link is INVALID. Beverly plans to restore the journals on her website when the changes are complete http://histoirederawdon.ca (click on the button for the English version) I will follow the progress in a future What’s New.
• page 146 corrections to the children of George Copping & Margaret Gray and a complete list of the children of Wm. Copping & Mary Gray including birth & death of infant sons from 1835 & 1836
• pages 278-279 James Dixon and Nancy Scroggie children added
• pages 449 (450 & 455)Thomas Gray and Mary Kerr update
• page 1009 clarification about Samuel Dixon at Maryborough and Essa
  
  Cloutier, Dugas, Josiah Morgan – Corrections and additions:
• page 194 paragraph 3 – baptism of Marthe Eduard [sic Martha Edwards]
• page 195 – the Philemon Dugas mills burned on 31 December 1829
• page 197 – 1840 marriage Dugas and Leblanc
• pages 201 fn. 3 & 204 fn. 13 – Correction Hannah (not Sarah) Morgan was the wife of Joseph Dugas.
• page 1079 – I have collated, revised and added to the story of Josiah Morgan and Rebecca Whiting
  
  Incidental corrections, additions and summaries
• page 96 – did you know that there was a plan in the early days to change the village name to Charleston?
• 316 – possible address for T. W, Cartwright. – death of Thomas Griffith, son’s bio added. Correction of Griffith’s military career.
• page 600 – should read Children of Edward McGie and Mary Redgate (not Daniel McGie).
• page 827 – Mary Ann and Lydia Smiley were not twins; Lydia Smiley was born February 17, 1834 and was the younger sister by three years.
• page 1047 – details of Alexander Rea’s petition for land on behalf of Loyalists and recent immigrants
• page 1069 – acquisition of parsonage land summary references to John Griffis [sic] on updates pages 284, 317, 514 fn. 13
• page 1123 McCarty / McCarthy I added this summary because there was little on the family. They appear to be from County Longford.
• 1074 – Newspaper insertions from 1830 and 1831 indicate that John C. Turner was in financial difficulty. His attempt to rent his Rawdon farms failed to generate income for his debts and led to the sale of some of his properties there.
  
  How was Rawdon first opened to settlers? When was this and who were they? I will add an essay Opening Rawdon Township:
  Locations of Some Early Settlers this summer and one about the Rawdon Anglican parsonage after a tour of it with Sue Ellen Jones.

WHAT’S NEW MARCH 2022

the counties of Wisconsin, USA

Families left Rawdon to settle in Wisconsin, in the 1830s, before it, in 1848, became the thirtieth American state, many leaving Rawdon around 1849.  More followed their relatives and friends, later in the nineteenth century.  In 7^th and 8^th bullets of this update are links to Brown and to Craine / McNown emigrants to create the beautiful farms of that state.

Other families with stories in UP TO RAWDON were Ash, Bowen, Drought, Jackson, McEvoy, McGowan, McGuire, McManus, Parkinson, Pigott, Rourke, Smiley, Swift, Torney. They initially went to the counties of Adams/Juneau, Dane, Douglas, Racine, Rock, Waukesha, Waupaca.

News

Marlene Fabbro of Wyoming, Michigan (near Grand Bend) has been a friend to UP TO RAWDON since publication. Marlene’s families are Gray and Scroggie with connections to the Coppings, the Burns and the Coultra families – all pioneers who arrived at Rawdon in the 1820s. She has sent me a typed copy of the Journal of George Copping. I am holding it in Toronto to take to Rawdon in June as a donation to an archive that is to be created there. Beverley Prud’homme and France Pontbriand and a team of community volunteers are translating Bev’s Rawdon History https://rawdonhistory.com/ and stirring up interest in history at the municipal level. More news about this next time.

Corrections

• I published information from Lisa Lindsay McIntyre, in the update of March 1, 2018, about the Rawdon connection of hockey star Ted Lindsay and his goalie father, Bert. The McGill Director of Sports Communication gave Lisa wrong information from 1903-1906. Bert was not a McGill student and so did not play for the Redmen; that was an Albert Lindsay, and not from our Rawdon family. Details about the Rawdon connection are on update page 57 and https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#p057.

• My error on page 429. Fn. 1. – In 1997, Lorna Jones Rourke of Rawdon gave me copies of family letters, from Ireland, to settler Thomas Jones; we met at a quilt show in Rawdon. My apologies for naming her Linda in 2013. I thank Sue-Ellen Jones, another Rawdon quilter who I met at that show who has helped me correct my memory lapse and will be making copies for her,

Additions

• “have to get the tatties in”. Heather Henry wrote me about an album with postcards from 1912 and about Patrick Markey who was born at St. Alphonse in 1852. He was a brother of Ellen Markey, Mrs. Hugh Green  https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/ see updates page 309 and Greenan and Green Pat was a Rawdon farmer, the widower of Mary Guinan (died 1895); their daughters were Catherine (Hamel), 1883 and Mary, 1885.  Patrick married Agnes Price on 26 October 1896. The tale has been told for four generations that his sister Ellen had to drag him out of the potato field to get him to the church, him claiming “I can’t leave now, I have to get the tatties in”.  Let us hope there was no frost that night!

Heather’s album once belonged to Agnes Markey and her daughter Grace (born 1899). Patrick left Rawdon for New Russia, near Elizabethtown, NY, in 1900. He is mentioned on page 475 of the Kinsey chapter and update page 475. His older daughters later lived near Vergennes, Vermont. Grace was a nurse and visited her cousin Sarah Green Ryan Hannon (photo page 309) and her family in Rawdon and Montreal, which is how the album came to Heather.

• Another map added to the Additional Information folder, sourced from BAnQ – a Diagram of the Township of Rawdon c. 1795 by Samuel Holland, back then only two rangs (ranges) had been surveyed. I have transcribed the process for the surveyors of new townships concerning the allocation of land reserved for “king” and “church” and that the Loyalists named on the diagram were given properties before the survey was completed. The petitioners were granted Letters Patent in 1799. (Updates to page iv and to page 337, footnote 2.)

• Concerning Loyalist Captain William Dunbar (misspelled Dunbars in Fournier’s Rawdon History): he served with the First Battalion, of the 84th (Royal Highland Emigrants) Regiment of Foot, but previously had been highly prominent in the military and the colonial administration at Quebec. His heirs, Captain Ralph Henry Bruyeres (Corps of Royal Engineers) and George Selby, are mentioned on updates page 337 fn. 2 and page 1046, where I have added a biography of Captain William Dunbar. The land he was given at Rawdon Township First and Second Range are in present day Ste-Julienne.

Also added to updates page 337 fn. 2, a short summary of the career of the fur trader and civil servant George McBeath, a shareholder in the Northwest Company who was part of the defence of Fort Michilimackinac.

• My friends John and Gloria Weafer of Kitchener (my cousins through the Rawdon Brown family) previously shared about their descent from Gawn Brown – an older brother of my great grandmother Susanna Brown Parkinson. The Browns settled at Rawdon, from County Antrim, around 1824. Gawn went from Rawdon to Wisconsin, c. 1846. 1. I have added five grandsons for Gawn Brown, four of them born in Ontario before moving to Chicago, at Updates to pages 49 & 50. I was inspired to write about the Brown family and the links between the two countries over the years. I titled it, whimsically, ‘The Brown Girls  and Cross Border Shopping’. It will be published in OGS Families in late May 2022 but is now in Supplementary Information about families.

• I wrote about the Craines and McNowns (and others) in articles published in Families magazine in 2014 and 2015, I revised them in 2020 and again now in March 2022: From Union Jack to Union Blue. Marjorie McNown Zwickel of Wisconsin has helped me with all versions of these stories and provided all but one of the photos. She contributed to this new long update of the Craine family update page 14, footnote 19 – that now includes the brother who remained in Canada. Interest in Lucy Craine, from two California women and subscriber Steve Scott of Washington state & California inspired some thought. Lucy’s biological parents are still a mystery.

Miscellaneous Additions:

• George Jackson and Harriet Ellen Drought were two very early settlers who stayed at very short time in Rawdon. They eventually settled in Wisconsin. I have named their children at update page 178.

• In writing about Kirkland and Brown on Updates to pages 49 & 50, I was reminded of a connection to my grandmother Mary Hamilton included at updates pages 474-475.

• While revising the Civil War story, I found a lovely comment about Jane Bagnall McNown; it is at update page 15. It is said that Jane took roses bushes from Rawdon to Wisconsin in 1849.

New Photo in the Gallery

Marc Dixon worked with me on the Dixon family of Rawdon and Kildare and in September 2021, we published an update on the family. Marc was given a photo by an Ancestry follower, David MacDonald, https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#p167; it was two little girls of the Morgan – Coulter families at update pages 166-167. I am grateful for the thoughtfulness.

From the Newspapers: 1826-1861

Marc Dixon has been doing random searches at BAnQ (Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec) in early newspapers and found announcements concerning Rawdon residents between 1826-1861. He has shared them with UP TO RAWDON. Here are and the names of those with new or expanded details, the name of the newspaper, the update pages. Thank you, Marc.

James Brown & Hannah Burns pages 58 & 77, Coffey 1130, Justin Corcoran, his parents and sisters page 153, Samuel Cultra and Jane Hillis & infant, 163-166, Creighton-Jefferies marriage 395 fn. 28, Alexander Daley and Luke Daley & families also Keogh, Corcoran 1138, Babiane Dugas-Cloutier 196, George Hobs 337, Lord 1058 or 1117, Captain J. H. Pigott pages 22-28 & 1107.

What’s New December 2021

The biography the Reverend Mitchell Sadler: “Endeared to All” was revised and posted 25 October 2021 with assistance from Jean-Louis Lalonde, of Montreal, and Carolyn Goddard, of Red Deer, Alberta. It clarifies a few key points but establishes, sadly, that there is no marker for him in Mount Royal Cemetery. I have embedded my name in the biography because it was being copied into Ancestry trees without acknowledgment of authorship. Ancestry can be a bit of the wild west.

It is a pleasure to receive messages from subscribers and especially when they make a contribution to the content of UP TO RAWDON. In September 2021, I received a note from Michelle McClure of Iowa to thank me for posting this photo https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#p1123 – the Roach family of the old Fourth Range that became part of Ste-Julienne parish. It was added in May 2018 with an update on Christopher Roach and his family that had been shared by Kali Kathleen Baker of California. Michelle contacted Kali and questioned if Christopher Roach really had two wives named Margaret or was Margaret Carney the only one that he had. Her name was rendered differently in many church registrations. Michelle and I agreed there was only Margaret Carney. Revised and expanded details including a list of their eight known children was published on 25 October 2021 – ‘Christopher Roach of Rawdon / Ste-Julienne’ is in Additional Material / Supplementary Information about Families; it replaces updates page 1123. We are interested in hearing from anyone with an opinion on this topic.

Hazel Parkinson Thompson, my third cousin, assisted kindly when I collected the story of the Parkinsons who settled at Armstrong, BC and was thanked on page 689. She celebrated her 100^th birthday in August; her celebration photo at https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#p689

An excellent Rawdon resource https://rawdonhistory.com/history-of-rawdon has been the work of Beverly Blagrave Prud’homme, who also contributes to this website. Many of you have had tours of Rawdon with Bev when visiting there. Bev’s and my grandparents were siblings, Mabel and Edwin Parkinson. A group of Rawdon citizens has begun to translate Bev’s site so that it will be available in French and English. I was pleased to be invited as an honorary participant by France Pontbriand, the coordinator. Several in the group are optimistic that the Canadiana Village site of historic buildings may reopen – fingers crossed.

Some new maps with my comments have been added at Additional Material / Rawdon and Kildare Research with thanks to France Pontbriand. The first file shows the Gore of Kildare and explains what that is https://uptorawdon.com/Gore-of-Kildare The second file has the surveyor’s maps for the Village of Rawdon from 1844 and 1845 at https://uptorawdon.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Rawdon-Village-Layout-of-Lots.pdf

Facebook users can check Rawdon Quebec Historia. Recently, someone added a clipping from the Montreal Herald of 30 July 1828 concerning Mr. and Mrs. Charles Heney of Rawdon and their separate encounters with a bear. Charles Heney settled on Eighth Range, lot 21 in 1823 and sold it to my great grandfather George Parkinson, some years after he had received title in 1833. The farm is on Lake Morgan Road and is now owned by the Carroll family. The courage of Mrs. Heney and the fate of the bear is on updates page 1132.

Small changes and corrections have been made to updates pages 55-56, 57, 1098 and 1123. They are marked in the left-hand margin as placed on Dec. 2022.

What’s New Sept 2021

In June, I was contacted by Marc Dixon of Montreal. He is a great-grandson of Benjamin Dixon, who was the husband of Ellen Charlotte McGowan. I had reported their marriage date and that she died in 1882 and that I had not been able to find the couple on the 1881 census. Marc wrote that he found them at St-Liguori, indexed under Bagamain Dicson. We began to share information about the Dixon family, who arrived at Kildare in 1821, exactly two hundred years ago. Marc is delving into the history of the four Dixon brothers from County Carlow and their cousin, who were settlers at Kildare. Marc is also working on the William Gass family and has some great material in addition to what he has shared with UP TO RAWDON. He is an excellent researcher and would be pleased to hear from anyone following Dixon and Gass and the history of Kildare Township. marcdixon@videotron.ca. The Dixons have many connections in UP TO RAWDON, in particular to these families – Burns, Copping, Coulter, Gray, McGowan, Morgan, Rollit and Smiley; see text updates to pages 79, 146, 166-167, 168, 288, 616, 645, 828 and 856.

In the Spring 2021 update, I added footnotes to page 146 naming the children of William George Copping and Margaret Gray and the family of their son John (Jack) Copping. I have begun to do the same for George Wm. Copping and Mary Gray and their nine children. Because of connections to the Dixon family, and finding a photo of daughter Sarah https://www.uptorawdon.com/photo-updates#p146 (text at updates 826), I started a list, at updates 146, naming four of their daughters and links to photos of daughters Elizabeth and Mary in UP TO RAWDON, a well as Sarah.

Information for Jones, Kirkwood and Parkinson has been added on pages 430, 431, 485, 488-490 and 693.  A photo Identified as Susie Jones (from the collection of Neil Broadhurst), is in fact Susanna Neville Jones; see https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#p430. A photo of Fred Parkinson has been added to the gallery https://www.uptorawdon.com/photo-updates#p693. The photos are the paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother of William Parkinson of Hamilton.

In late July, Judy Clarke and I had afternoon tea and looked at her family photo album; we identified many of her great grandmother Jane Louise Copping Johnston’s family, with help from Neil Broadhurst’s photo inventory. There were two photos on the opening page of this beautiful album. Clearly one, by comparison to his earlier confirmed photographs, was Henry Copping and the photo underneath was his second wife “Fanny” Frances Harkness, Jane Louise Copping’s mother. One can see that she passed her good looks to her daughters, who are in a group on photo page 323 and Jane Louise is on 324. https://www.uptorawdon.com/photo-updates#p323

I found new information about William Orland Lindsay from the 1940s and have corrected what was posted on updates page 57. There is incorrect birth information in some registrations but there are matches to his baptism and I am confident that information I have posted is now correct.

A marriage date for James McLeary and Anne Johnston was found by Sonja Johnston and is at updates page 416. The reference to Ann [sic] Johnston McLeary at footnote 5 on page 403 should direct reader to page 416 not 404. See text updates to page 403.

A marriage date at updates page 1135 confirms that George Donogho [sic] is George Donaghey. The name was also spelled Donihean and O’Donohugh.

What’s New, June 2021

Something new for the website – a biography of MITCHELL SADLER. He came to Rawdon as a child with related families from Roscommon in central Republic of Ireland; he received Letters Patent on the Sixth Range when he was 16. As a churchman, his name was prominent in church registers and not just because he was the father of twelve. His determination to be a minister was a story that deserved telling. Carolyn Goddard of Red Deer, Alberta provided a photo that we believe is him but is still subject to verification. I am grateful to Carolyn for her assistance when researching the Reverend Mitchell Sadler “Endeared to All”. Click Sadler to read his biography. His full photo portrait is at https://www.uptorawdon.com/photo-updates#p551. We would like to see other pictures of him; can you help?

See new Sadler and Swift family information including a revised list of the children of Mitchell Sadler and Maria Mason on updates pages 543 – 545, 552 and 873

Random Parkinson photos added: 

Being a farm boy, I am interested in photos of long-ago farming practices. This shows threshing on the Parkinson farm in the Okanagan Valley in the 1920s.

Stan and Walter Parkinson, sons of George Parkinson and Jane Anne Copping, are pictured harvesting at Hullcar, British Colombia. See them reaping at https://www.uptorawdon.com/photo-updates#p689 and see text updates page 689.

Three children of Fred and Dora (Copping) Parkinson are added https://www.uptorawdon.com/photo-updates#p693.

Bertram Parkinson, https://www.uptorawdon.com/photo-updates#p695 son of George Parkinson and Maggie Burns made a gift for my mother see his loving gift on updates page 695.

I made a gift for my family last Christmas; a short history of our Brightlook farm at Waterville, Quebec. It included many old photographs including a few that should have been in Jerseys and Genealogy in chapter two of UP TO RAWDON and when the story was originally published in the Canadian Jersey Breeder in 1997. I have added a photo of our cows from around 1921 to updates page 1151.

Michael Watters family

Michael Watters was the father of my great great grandmother Jane Watters Smith. The Watters family have long intrigued me. In the 1990s, I had the good fortune, by persistent inquiries, to contact descendants of Jane’s sister Alicia Watters Herbert. The update of footnote 3 on page 329, clarifies its original wording and mentions someone who greatly helped in my early research.

I have confirmed and added a birthdate for Elizabeth Watters, daughter of Abraham Watters, Misinformation on the 1881 census led me to doubt that she was their daughter, which she was. Details are on update page 964.

I located William Hamilton Watters (born 1847) the third son of Michael’s son Patrick Watters. He was a brick layer, with four children (census 1891) and had married at Carleton Place, Ontario, updates page 966. 

Thomas Jones

There are good things in Ancestry, such as this photo of Thomas Jones https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#p430. It is not a great scan but shows Thomas in late middle age; he died before he was 60.  He married Mary Jane Herbert, a grand daughter of Michael Watters. See text updates, page 330 and the children of Thomas and Mary Jane Jones are named on updates, page 430. I do not know who to credit for the photo because it is on ten or twenty “public” sites. I have risked that the photo is legitimate – there is much misinformation in Ancestry’s public trees.; I am usually wary if there is no verifiable source. 

Mary Eliza Butler wife of J. Henry Pigott had her photograph added to the Gallery by John Resler Swift https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#p023 and text update page 23.

What’s New, Spring 2021

1950s Family Visiting: descendants of Jane Louise Copping Johnston at Sutton, QC
Jane’s children * – in front:  Eva Ritchie Johnston and Walter* Johnston, Laura* Johnston, Jack Clarke.  Behind: Judy Clarke, Victor* and Ella Chatwin Johnston.  See details at updates page 324.

In January 2021, Judy Clarke yduj@sympatico.ca of Toronto wrote that she had found her great grandmother Jane Copping Johnston in the UTR Photo Gallery and would I be interested in additional family pictures; many in her album were unidentified. Judy shared a lovely portrait of Jane Louise Copping Johnston, plus a family group with Jane’s husband John Johnston and their children and more at https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#p324. They pictures are in the Harkness chapter – Jane’s mother was Fanny Harkness and her mother Ellen Rocheford was godmother to a child of neighbour Margaret Green (read about Green family, below). 

Rawdon in the 1920s and 30s was a vacation destination for Montrealers; the husband worked in town, while spouse and children were “summer boarders” in the country. My Aunt Aggie Morgan hosted holidayers, for many years. Marjorie Johnston met Jack Clarke whose family vacationed at Chertsey and later at Rawdon. The two courted at dances and summer events in Rawdon, where she and her mother summered. Judy has letters from Victor to Ella; in 1922 the address he used was c/o Mrs. Alice Morgan, who had a brick house on Metcalfe opposite the church and on another occasion c/o Mrs. William Burns. They also visited at Boscobel, in Shefford County, with Joseph Copping. 

Judy Clarke sent an “unidentified” photo of a young militia man – the same photo Bev Prud’homme had shared that I used on page 1112. Because Judy and Bev are both from the Henry Copping family, we think he might be too. See https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#p1112. Can anyone identify him? 

Bev has identified the other two militia lads on page 1112 as Joseph Copping and his older brother, Henry Copping. Information is added about other young Copping men who were in the militia in the 1880s, see text update pages 494, 1111, 1112. 

Greenan and Green in Rawdon and Area is a new essay of 6500 words of revised information and photos. The chapter Greenan of Rawdon posed problems because there were so many with similar names – who was related to who and how? Gary Diorio sangar@teksavvy.com, whose brother Derek I once met at a viewing of Linda Blagraves’ paintings at Rawdon, offered access to his private Greenan tree in Ancestry. It was a huge boost and I did some new research in Drouin Archives. The article names the eleven children of Bernard and Alice Greenan and the eight children of Hugh and Ellen Greenan. Some of this is also found on update pages 312, 410, 1047, 1126 – 1130. 

In the photo gallery https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#p309  are Hugh Greenan and Ellen Markey and Mary Sarah Greenan (sister of Hugh and wife of Henry Shields); four of Hugh and Ellen’s five daughters. Also, two photos of Greene family visiting: shared by Heather Henry hamh46@hotmail.com  of Dundas, ON – Heather and her grandmother Sarah Ann Greenan Hannan and aunt Margaret Jane Green Murphy (daughters of Hugh) at Rawdon 1940s and from Derek Diorio, family visiting at Chertsey in 1962.

Thank you Krystin Parkinson for introducing me to Shaun Jackman and his mother Agnes Jackman, I have added new information to page 146. Footnote A: the children of William George Copping and Margaret Gray and Footnote B: the children of John Copping and Mary Frances Burns and Margaret Frances Job.  Agnes sent me recollections of her grandmother Lillian Copping Dunn and she remembers visiting Rawdon as a child, staying in a house with Lillian at 15^th and Queen and swimming with her maternal second cousin Evelyn Parkinson who is my paternal second cousin. 

Also, updated page 75 has the birth of Mary Frances Burns.

Wayne Franks found Sarah Jane Norrish, the daughter of William Norrish and Mary Ann Holtby, in an Ancestry public tree with many descendants named there. I have added some information at updates page 678 about Sarah, her marriage and her children. She was last known in Canada in 1871 and married at Berlin, Worcester Count, Massachusetts in 1884.

Maureen Savell contacted me with information for the chapter “English John Mason”; his son George Mason who is incorrectly named George Albert on Find a Grave. His stone in Christ Church Cemetery and all other sources give only ‘George’. 

Some public trees in Ancestry have named his parents as Arthur Mason and Elizabeth Smythe; they were Irish, Roman Catholic settlers at Rawdon (pages 1130 and 1131, Part Two of UP TO RAWDON. They arrived years before John Mason and were not his parents. One needs to weigh carefully what appears on Ancestry trees; it may not be correct and should be verified from original sources. If it appears in ten trees, it often means nine people copied wrong material without verifying. There is incredible information about Arthur Mason, in UP TO RAWDON (pages 1131-1135) that is legitimate and was given to me by the late Patrick Wohler of Ottawa.

Maureen gave me information from Montreal Gazette obituaries about George Mason’s second son John Sidney Mason and his family that I have added at updates page 568. Thank you, Maureen.

A photo of the John Marlin family monument at Greenwood Cemetery, Waterville, Quebec has been added. https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#p527

Brian McGowan brianmcgowan@xplornet.com found errors in what I had posted about the Margaret Moore Steele family. We did additional research and the corrections and additions are at updates page 995. Thank you, Brian, for continued sharing with UP TO RAWDON.

What’s New January 2021

The history of the Michael Smith farm, at Sixth Range Rawdon, Lot 8 NW, is recounted at update page 843. It has been traced from the original deeds that Sandra Oswald Pike gave to Beverley Prud’homme, who has been interpreting them and sharing her work.  Sandra is a great grand daughter of Michael Smith and Mary Manchester and her grandmother ‘Millie’ Smith Oswald is pictured on page 844 of your copy of UP TO RAWDON. Further revisions may appear to reflect other changes through the decades.

Correction: update Page 1134: Bernard Murphy was at 6 / NW 8 and Peter Murphy was at 6 / SE 8.

Corrections and additional data for the Booth, Marlin, Knox and Stafford families are on update pages 31, 526, 527 and 565, thanks to a query I received from Helen Booth of Kingston, Ontario. She has shared photographs of John Edward A. Booth and other members of the family including herself and her sister Margaret, in 1955, as children with him. https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#p031

In November, David Charles Gibbs of Boise, Idaho phoned me; he had found Joshua Gibbs Family, Immigrant Years in Lower Canada at UP TO RAWDON in September. He told me “the research work on Joshua is awesome”. He is a direct descendant of Joshua’s youngest son Solomon. He sent me his research, recording Joshua’s service during the American Revolution and a photo of Solomon Gibbs and his wife Rebecca. Read the revised text at Gibbs Family; their photo is at https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#p266 . Part Two, that was to be published in QFHS Connections in September 2020, will now appear in the spring issue of the magazine.

I found another daughter of Dorothy Gibbs and Patrick Molloy, added at Updates Page 265 and the death of Patrick Molloy in 1843. If the Molloy four daughters remained in Quebec and have descendants, they would be Joshua’s only kin in Canada.

John Swift of Mesa, AZ is a loyal UP TO RAWDON follower and has shared some more photos with us; this time two of his grandmother Eliza Pigott, born at Rawdon in 1844 see https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#p028; she married Robert Swift and may be seen with him and her nine children in photo gallery https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#p863

My eldest first cousins, Wilfred and Clarence Young, were born in 1907 and 1909. Children of Reg and Annie Parkinson Young. Photo of them on steps of there new home in Winnipeg in 1912. https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#p968

Please write to me with information or photographs that might be suitable for sharing at UP TO RAWDON. I will be pleased just to hear how you are and that you are enjoying the site.

September 10, 2020

In the early twentieth century, men and women loved to be photographed with a favourite horse. In this update, there are four ‘man with horse’ pictures added to the photo gallery, Sam Blagrave, Johnny Tinkler and two of Walter Parkinson.

To the right is Cis, a favourite mare of Jim and Aggie Morgan, see how her coat is shining. Uncle Jim was known to dislike posing for snapshots. This time he is, mostly, out of view.

In the addendum of text updates, you will now find the date they were added in the first column, beside the page #; one may see at a glance when changes were made.

Alan Kirkwood of Erin, Ontario telephoned in June 2020; he is a descendant of William Kirkwood, the eldest brother of John and Andrew Kirkwood, settlers at Rawdon in 1820. Alan was able to tell me that the family reached Quebec in May two hundred years ago with their brother William and his large family, his father-in-law and others who then continued past Montreal to find farms at West Caledon, Peel County, Ontario. There is new and corrected information about the Kirkwoods on pages 483, 484, 486, 487 much of it has been taken from an old local history, The Rockside Pioneers that Alan gave me; I made a copy for Bev Prud’homme to share with Kirkwood descendants in Rawdon.

A photo of James Addison Kirkwood of Rawdon (grandson of John Kirkwood) with his wife Hattie Parkinson and their four eldest children, in 1909, is added at https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates#p485. Jim’s granddaughter Doreen Copping Menard lives at Rawdon and is 93. Her five children ensure that the Kirkwood line has not disappeared from Rawdon. (Thanks, Bev, for the photo.)

Joshua Gibbs Family, Immigrant Years in Lower Canada, Part One was published in QFHS Connections in June 2020 and Part Two was to appear in the September 2020 issue but is delayed by QFHS until June 2021. Read the complete story now at https://uptorawdon.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Joshua-Gibbs-Family-revised.pdf. A link to these early immigrants is at updates pages 261 and 1050.

Thanks also, Bev for photo of Sammy Blagrave. Read about him and the Way family and their connection to the Morgan family there are several
updates on pages 647 to 653 and connected footnotes.

Walter Parkinson, my bachelor uncle, was a quiet presence throughout my childhood and youth and set a standard for hard work, for his nephews. When we knew him, he was of a retiring nature but had been a town councillor at Waterville. This photo honours him when in his
30s (we never knew him with a full head of hair) with a young mare, Dolly. Also, on this page is Walter and his brother Elton Parkinson (my Dad) in a photo taken before their youngest sister Inez Parkinson married Christian Gundesen in July 1924. I gave the wedding photo of Inez and Chris to her granddaughter Diane Steinc and daughters Amanda and Emily, my cousins in Texas.

Photographs from 1940 of Emma Louise Holtby, Mrs. G. Walter Tinkler and her daughters Marjorie, Bessie and Eva with their husbands have been added.

Added to photo updates, from the albums of the late Agnes Parkinson Morgan, are her nephew and two cousins:  Cecil Lawrence Parkinson and John (Johnny) Edmond Tinkler were friends and second cousins and worked at the grain elevators when young men.  Their great uncle, George Holtby was grain elevator supervisor for the Montreal Harbour Commission, after he retired from Grand Trunk Railway. Their stories are on pages 693 and 918 and their photo at https://www.uptorawdon.com/photo-updates#p918 Also,there is one of Johnny with a one-horse shay.

Keith Holtby Borrowes who enlisted at 18, in 1915, and survived the Great War: page 923 beside the photo of his brother-in-law and
nephews. I gave Keith’s photo to Carole Harrison of St-Amable, QC. Keith’s sister Mabel is her grandmother.

Slavery in Lower Canada: Frank Mackey of Montreal shared information about the return of Mrs. Sawers’ slave, Phillis; we know little about her, perhaps she was American-born because her “owners” were Loyalists. Phillis was a brave woman to run away and she spoke out about
her ill treatment. I salute her courage 222 years later. The entry about her escape at updates page 1046 is revised to include her capture..

CORRECTION of the third paragraph of page 1081; Margaret Tucker (not Ann Rea Sandford) was the wife of James Sawers. Her maiden name was Macpherson, (thank you, Frank Mackey).

CORRECTION made to error on page 691 – John Richardson Parkinson died in 1918, in the Spanish influenza pandemic, not 1917.

CORRECTION made to error on page 1074 – the entry for the John Turner family has been updated and information about Ephraim Sandford and family added on updates page 1075.

June 8, 2020

In this time of pandemic and isolation, I am reminded that my great grandfather William Smith contracted small pox after a business trip to a neighbouring town and died. His widow and children were spared but we know they would have been quarantined at their grist mill on the Ouareau River. I imagine that his daughter Jane poured her grief into this sampler and in study, because eight months later she received from the Board of Examiners of Montreal, a 2nd Class Elementary School diploma – qualified to teach English in eleven districts of Quebec. She was 15 and the grandmother I never knew 1858-1937, my father’s mother. https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#841

UP TO RAWDON mourns the loss of two good friends. 

Louis Prud’homme of Rawdon died January 13. He was a great source of knowledge about the families of Rawdon whether Irish, French or English and the loyal husband of my cousin Beverly Blagrave.

I was saddened by the death of Mary Burbidge Helleiner on 4 March 2020. Mary gave great support to UP TO RAWDON; we had extensive correspondence in the 1990s about the Wiltshire origins of the Burbidge family and their time in Canada before they settled at Rawdon. Finding the Burbidges & Connecting to the Brights in Part One owed a great dal to her work and enthusiasm.

Joshua Gibbs Family, Immigrant Years in Lower Canada, Part One will be published in QFHS Connections in June and Part Two will appear in September 2020. They were immigrants from the USA in 1792. It expands what I had written about Orimill Gibbs in UP TO RAWDON and in https://uptorawdon.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/From-Union-Jack-to-Union-Blue.pdf.  I will add both parts of the Gibbs family story to this website late in 2020.

When researching the Gibbs story, I corrected information about some Gibbs family weddings in the last paragraph of page 264. Four weddings in 1833 were recorded in a register associated with Berthier; see text updates 264. 

The file on marriage, births and deaths at St-Felix and the areas east of it, where many Loyalist families settled has been updated. The church registers are very interesting reading; families had baptized their children in the local Catholic churches in the absence of a Protestant alternative and in 1821 and 1822 these persons received into the Church of England when a church for Rivière du Loup district was established.  Go to Protestant Settlers in the St-Felix .

I am working on a project about the history of my HOLTBY family to connect them to other Holtbys who came from Yorkshire to North America before 1910 and possibly to the family Marmaduke Holtby who was a figure in the English Civil War. His name was also that of my earliest Holtby ancestor but there is a gap of about 100 years between the two. The Holtbys in my line were staunchly Protestant, the other were Recusants, Catholics who stayed or returned Catholicism after the reformation, at great personal cost. It is a fascinating period of history and I would love to hear from anyone interested. 

William Holtby was the name of the father and grandfather of my Rawdon immigrants. We have never found the older man’s death and burial at Rawdon. There was no minister at Rawdon keeping a register between May 19, 1833 and July 6, 1834 and I assumed that William died at this time. Recently, a transaction by Notary François-Hyacinthe Prévost of Montreal came to light on Ancestry (from BaNQ). Notarial Act Number 640 records a sale on 19 July 1836 “par William Holtby à William Holtby son père”. I was unable to find it at BaNQ to determine what was being sold. One might assume that it concerned the transfer of the title of the father’s portion of Lot 18, Seventh Range to the son but the notary’s phrasing suggests to me that the father was living in 1836.

There is a correction of text on page 323; Mary and Elizabeth Copping are daughters of Jane Cook, the first wife of Henry Copping.

Reuben Copping and Eliza Jane Mason are mentioned on pages 324 and 540 with photo at https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#324

Thomas Armstrong Mason and Elizabeth Gray were omitted from the text but added later at updates of pages 283 and 541. A photo of their sons at https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#541

There has been confusion in the text and errors about waterfalls and the mills associated with them. I am not a Rawdon native and do not have a strong sense of the locality. The names of Falls always reflected the current owner of the mill and proprietors changed as they aged out or sold. It is very confusing and I am indebted to Beverly for helping me to look more closely. I am supplementing the image on page 840 with https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#840 which Linda Blagrave, years ago confirmed as the Boyce Mill. It was once operated by Charles Grant and purchased by William Smith and his family in 1867 and later owned by Richard Boyce until he left in 1905 for Milby in Compton County. The photo on text page 840 is, we believe, the nearby sawmill of Charles Magnan.

Feb 14, 2020

The UP TO RAWDON redesign was released in October 2019 and I have confirmed all links to photo updates and to the supplemental files that are referred to in text updates. If you find an access problem, let me know and the links will be corrected at the next update.

I have received much information in recent months from friends who wished to share.

Jocelyn Bernier has been researching the Borrowes family for my third cousin, his friend Carole Harrison. We found that at the marriage her grandmother Mabel Borrowes, my grandfather Eddie Parkinson was a witness; they were first cousins. I noted this at page 924 of Text Updates.

Jocelyn also sent me some Rawdon land registration files mostly routine transactions but one gave insight into how casually things were done in 1839. George Drought, in his haste to leave for Wisconsin, did not give Henry Borrowes a deed of sale or receipt, or perhaps it was lost.  I made a note at Text Updates page 924 – Borrowes wrote his own receipt for the purchase from Drought of the south half of lot 11 in the Ninth Range.

I have added details concerning the original Richard Blagrave farm at page 19 Text Updates.

The McNown family did not have their own chapter in UP TO RAWDON and instead were folded into two chapters with families they were connected with by marriage. When I researched and wrote From Union Jack to Union Blue in 2014 – 2015, I discovered this interesting Irish family, from the Isle of Man. The stories were published by the Ontario Genealogical Society in Families in three installments and covered twelve Rawdon families whose men or sons or grandsons had served in the union forces 1861- 1864. I have revised  them as a single essay From Union Jack to Union Blue. Share the on-line article with friends, it is free, but I hope you will encourage people to buy the UP TO RAWDON e-book for the rest of the stories.

An inquiry from a reader asked about the connection between the McNowns who were at Rawdon and the McNown family at Ormstown. A summary of the family of William McNown senior and his wife Frances Norris is new at text updates page 339, footnote 13. I have updated texts about John McNown and William McNown, junior of Rawdon and some information about the Ormstown family at text updates page 16 and mentioned John’s sons Robert William and Isaac Adelbert McNown with links to their recently added photos.

After reviewing  From Union Jack to Union Blue, text was added to Robert McNown attext updates page 185 and William McEvoy at text updates page 828 with photos of them and of John McNown; the Drought family at text updates pages 180, 181, 187 including about Frederick W. Drought who had a high-profile job in Montreal in 1842. The Craine family are featured in From Union Jack to Union Blue and are found at pages 14-15 of UP TO RAWDON. Also, profiles of Thomas Ash, Jonathan W. Smiley and John Werley Drought in text updates pages 184-186. Others are Haslem Edghill (p. 211) John Rourke (221-222), Samuel Rogers (744), Christopher Lewis (962) and Cornelius Henry Brown page 50. There is a new photo of his sister Jane Ann Brown  (and her granddaughter) at www.uptorawdon.com/photo-updates#p050 with thanks to John and Gloria Weafer, of Kitchener for the photos.

The Joshua Gibbs family were in two locations in UP TO RAWDON. See text updates with new information about their origin at pages 261 and 1050 and read about a grandson Orimilll Gibbs, born at Seigneurie d’Ailleboust, who is in From Union Jack to Union Blue. I am writing about the Gibbs for publication in QFHS Connections, June 2020

Arden Wade has made a comment about William Wade and his eldest son George Wade at text updates page 951. Thanks, Arden.

Bill Clayton has been checking some dates and details and sent us corrected information for members of the Boyce clan – see text updates for pages 19, 41 and 42; for the Burns family pages 75, 79, Tighe pages 277, 911, 912and Marlin /Purcell page 527. Thank you, Bill.

Carolyn Goddard of Red Deer, Alberta is a third great-Granddaughter of John Veale and has kindly shared her research with UP TO RAWDON and added a photograph of Elijah Veale to photo updates page 878 with corrections about the Veale Family at text updates pages 877, 878, 880, 881.

I have added this link on the Rawdon and Kildare research page: All Saints Cemetery, St-Félix de Valois http://www.cimetieresduquebec.ca/lanaudiere/st-felix-ramsay/

Dec 1, 2019

Willie McManus and his mother, Jane Louisa Lindsay may be seen in a photograph on page 633 of UP TO RAWDON. I had been told that perhaps Willie had lived in Texas but could not prove that in 2013. I used a hint from Lisa McIntyre and discovered many details of his life now available on Ancestry; they are added on pages 632 and 633 of Text Updates.

Additional information about the Thomas Moore and Margaret Steele family of Rawdon and West Garafraxa is posted on page 995 of Text Updates.

Photographs of Henry Copping and nine of his children are at  https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates#p323 and https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates#p324. See Text Updates page 323 about the eldest and youngest sons, George Copping and Reuben Copping, and for his six daughters, two are by Jane Park and four are daughters of Frances Harkness. In checking the dates for these individuals, I found some incorrect information in Public Trees on Ancestry. Beware! Henry’s second son, Henry Copping and his wife Mary McClatchey and a note about their sons Clarence and Augustus Copping are at Text Updates page 324. 

Information about Copping family on Text Updates pages 142, 146, 148, 811, 817 and photo of William S. Copping, known as ‘Yankee Bill’ https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates#p811

Mary Law an attractive young woman with James Copping, her first husband, is at https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates#p531 and text update page 531. James is mentioned in an update to his parents at page 146. Mary and James immigrated to New England and lived at Arlington, Vermont, which was a hive of Rawdon migrants for many years. She died in New Hampshire, as widow Mary Gendner, living with her niece, Rawdon born Margaret Frances Law Bradley and family who are identified on Text Updates page 529.

Photographs with thanks to Neil Broadhurst of Calgary. The late in life photograph of Cornelia Boyce Orr https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates#p041 is Neil’s maternal grandmother.

Oct 11, 2019

UP TO RAWDON celebrates October with a bright new look and layout under the guidance of Wesley Johnson of North Bay, Ontario. I hope visitors to the site will like it as much as I do. Items of interest have been added since the update of January 2019.

CORRECTION of a major error. The photos on pages 517 and 843 of UP TO RAWDON text were wrongly identified. They are not Mr. and Mrs. Michael Smith but are William Boyce and Melinda Seraphina Lindsay.  See Text Updates, page 41 and https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#p041 . The photocard was identified incorrectly by my uncle more than 50 years ago. Neil Broadhurst of Calgary recently sent me over 130 photos scanned from originals that were identified by the late Linda Blagrave, a granddaughter of William and Melinda. I defer to Linda and apologize for my serious mistake.

In the future, I will post photos from Neil’s collection of members of the extended Copping and Mason families who are mentioned in UP TO RAWDON. Thank you, Neil.

Melinda’s s father, John Lindsay was a farmer of “Kildare, District of Montreal” when he married Elizabeth Brown of Lot 28, Seventh Range, Rawdon. We do not know where he was located in Kildare but the east side of Lot 28 borders Kildare Township. Lisa Lindsay McIntyre reminded us of this; she is determined to find if John was born in Ireland or in Scotland and wonders what readers may know. Summary of facts is at Text Updates, page 56. 

Information was added to the To Russell Township section of The Wade Family at Rawdon, page 953 of Text Updates. From land records and relevant censuses, Arden Wade has identified the French-speaking farmer who walked to Russell Township, Lanark County with William Wade, in 1855. Well done Arden.

Susan Baird of Toronto reached me in January about the Catherine O’Rourke and John Johnson family who left Rawdon in the 1850s for Maniwaki, Bouchette Township, in the Gatineau Valley of Quebec. The O’Rourke farm purchased from Ann Hogan, after the death of her husband Andrew O’Rourke, was the source of stone for the building of St. Patrick’s Church. Susan has much information and many photographs; some is now shared at Text Updates pages 427–428 and page 1098 and photos of women of these families, born at Rawdon in the 1840s are at https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#p428 . Contact susanbaird@sympatico.ca for more about these families.

Pam Baker of West Halifax, Vermont discovered the UP TO RAWDON site and wrote to me about the Parkinson family of Plattsburgh, New York, the descendants of John Albert Parkinson (pages 523-524 and page 692 of the text). John Albert left Rawdon to work at Sunderland, Vermont in 1885. Information about his children has been added at Text Updates page 692. The Plattsburgh Parkinsons held a reunion at Plattsburgh in August 2019.

Brian McGowan  brianmcgowan@xplornet.com tried to confirm the origin of the Henry McGowan family in County Antrim. See Text Updates to footnote 10 of page 608. He has corrected the birth date that I published for William Henry Lucas husband of Julia Britton in the Text Updates to pages 610-613. Please contact Brian if interested in the descendants of Ann McGowan and her siblings or the results of the research he commissioned in Northern Ireland.

Jim Whitton whittonjim07@gmail.com has generously contributed a photo of Rawdon born Sarah Ann McGowan with five of her children and new grandson https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#p613 Details at Text Updates page 613.

Linda Wright of Nepean, Ontario is not a great grand daughter of Margaret Brown (granddaughter of Margaret Eveleigh Ross) as she had thought and has no connection to the Rawdon Eveleighs, page 231 of Text Updates. Despite this, Linda has enjoyed her Rawdon adventure and has been a helpful correspondent. 

Elaina Ennen and Douglas Moon, descendants of Thomas Hamilton and Catherine Powell, are 4^th cousins who connected and shared stories using UP TO RAWDON. Text Updates page 556.

Bill Clayton has found the Manitoba death registration for Mary Tighe, see Text Updates page 912.Jocelyn Bernier is helping Carole Harrison and Keith Harrison, first cousins who connected after Jocelyn found UP TO RAWDON, when researching at Rawdon City Hall. Text Updates page 923 is about their parents, the sons of Mabel Ethelwyn Borrowes and Thomas Samuel Harrison https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#p923. I have rescanned the Robert and Ophelia Borrowes family group on page 922 https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#p922 who were Mabel’s parents and siblings.

Jan 28, 2019

I received a snowstorm of excellent photo scans on a sunny, January day. They will interest those with the names Bannerman, Boyce, Copping, Gray, Holtby, Kirkwood, Knox, Parkinson, Scroggie, Sharp, Smiley, Tighe and Wilcox amongst the ancestors you follow. Most of them came from albums that belonged to the late Ruth Parkinson of Rawdon. Her son Dudley Parkinson gave them to his aunt Lillian Evans Parkinson and they have reached me through the grace of Beverly Blagrave Prud’homme who put them into beautiful quality scans. The baby in the photo in this column is Ruth’s father, William Thomas Parkinson and many years later Ruth’s mother Lillian Jane Purcell took the time to identify many of them, marking the names clearly and we are very grateful for her effort, today. The parents and Parkinson grandparents of W.T. (Ralph and Esther) are among the new additions. New photos are on pages: 384, 684, 685, 686, 687, 688, 689, 690, 691, 694, 824 and 913 of the Photo Gallery, which now includes an index. There is a comment about each in Updates.

You are welcome to suggest new photos for the Photo Gallery. My first choice is pictures of those born at Rawdon before 1900. You may copy an image from the Up To Rawdon Gallery into your tree on Ancestry or other genealogy venue but please, help to promote the site, and acknowledge that you found it at Up To Rawdon

I had written about Thomas Tighe and Mary Knox in the December 2018 Update and a month later was excited to receive the handsome picture of him now at page 913 of the photo gallery.

An adjustment has been made to the text concerning Alexander McCauley, son of Matthew McCauley and Rose McFall that I posted in December 2018 at pages 576-578. Thank you, Barbara Shreeve of Deep River, Ontario.

A lot of information concerning the Farrell family was added in previous updates prompted by the work of Jane Miller and Chantal Demers, see pages 888 to 891. It has become clear to us that the brothers James and John Farrell came to Rawdon separately and a note related to their immigration has been added on page 883 plus clarification of the longer text.

I have added information about Rawdon native Robert Sharpe at updates page 403. He lived in Montreal and was the father-in-law of Rawdon veterinarian George Smiley whose photo was added and is updated at page 824.

Karen Townsend found the missing birth and baptism of Elizabeth Law in the Drouin Index. It had been hiding as “Lan”. Update pages 528-529 has the details; we are sure, now, that she is the daughter of Hugh Law and Jane Marlin.

Elaina Enna of Minnesota contacted me through the Quebec Genealogy Facebook page. She contributed a photograph of her great grandmother Susan Frances Hamilton Sheldon who was born at Rawdon, see update page 556. Elaina has photographs of most of Susan’s thirteen children and would be pleased to hear from you (email Elaina).

Dec 14, 2018

Thomas Holmes and Mary Ann Jackson of Caledon, Ontario are the old couple at the centre of this photograph with their four daughters and four sons, in 1887, at Mono Mills, near Caledon, Ontario. None were from Rawdon. Mary Jane Novak discovered their interesting passing connection to Rawdon. She shared the story of her ancestor George Jacksonwith me, years ago, and allowed me publish it in Families and subsequently in my chapter about settlers from Rawdon in Simcoe County, Ontario (page 1034 of Part Two). George settled in Adjala Township of Simcoe and married; his eldest daughter Mary Ann Jackson married Thomas Holmes, a native of Garrycastle in King’s County. Thomas was a younger brother of Robert Holmes who farmed at Rawdon for ten years. You will find updated details about his family at Updates page 361.

Added to the photo gallery, this month, are charcoal renderings of photographs of James McCauley who was born at Rawdon in 1841 (son of Matthew McCauley and Rose McFall) and his wife Isabelle Hannah Coleman. The images came from a great granddaughter of James and Hannah who also sent McCauley family descendant reports, with interesting documents. I have made many additions and revisions to what I had published about the McCauleys. See updates of page 571 and 572 and the family of John McCauley and Margaret Steele on pages 573-576 and for Matthew and Rose updates pages 576-578. If you would like to know more about the McCauleys, I will send your contact request to my correspondent.

An interesting series of letters from Kathy Smiley Campion of Illinois began a day or two after the October update. The photos of the missionary Sisters of St. Ann reminded Kathy of her grandfather’s sisters who it is thought might have been missionaries. This family was staunchly Methodist with two brothers who were Protestant clergymen. This prompted a search for information about the sisters and resulted in a large update of information about the remarkable family of John Smiley and Caroline Hayward Dixon (update pages 830-834).

Recently, Nancy Cherry contacted me because what I had published about the daughters of John Knox and Eleanor Allen did not make sense to her. She was right; I had confused their names. Revised and new information about their family is now on updates page 6. Nancy’s husband is a descendant and related through his mother to Winters and Gass at Kildare and Tighe at Rawdon. I involved Bill Clayton, who contributes regularly to UP TO RAWDON, in the revision and was able to connect the Thomas Tighe family pages 913 and 914 and at updates page 6.

Bill Clayton, in helping with the Knox story sent some pages of a book about Manitoba history that verified the tale of Thomas Tighe driving cattle from North Dakota. They were Texas Longhorns for his brother-in-law John Knox and the bloodline endured in the Knox herd for decades – updates page 913. The book was Browsing Through the Years, Plumas and District 1876-1976.

Oct 15, 2018

This woman was born at Terrebonne and never lived at Rawdon; however, she had a profound effect on the community, especially on Irish-Catholics whose daughters attended the Convent of Saint Anne. She is Blessed Marie-Anne Blondin (née Marie Esther Sureau Blondin) and the foundress of the Soeurs de Sainte-Anne who began teaching at Rawdon in 1865.

I am grateful that Carey Pallister, Province Archivist, Sisters of St. Ann Archives, Victoria, BC has sent information about the Sisters, Updates pages 1139-1140, and has provided photographs of two Sisterswho were prominent in the early work of the congregation in British Columbia from the Lane and Rowan families. Also, she named members of the Daly, Rowan and Skelly families who were Sisters of St. Anne and a Rowan grandson who was an archbishop in Regina.

In May 2017, I shared a photo received from reader Carol Jess on photo updates. It had been identified as Mr. and Mrs. James Mason by her grandmother, Bertha Schadel Lindsay. Unfortunately, Bertha had cut around the picture, which made the note on the back unclear. Neil Broadhurst who is collecting an archive of Mason photos (which we hope to see on Up To Rawdon one day) found an image of this woman in another photo that was clearly identified as Mrs. William Mason, who was daughter-in-law of James and Mary Mason. He contacted Carol who agreed: “You are absolutely right about the photo;” it is of William Armstrong Mason and his wife Mary McNichol. That photograph is now properly identified.

Bob Holtby of West Kelowna, BC is the son the late Reverend Gordon Holtby who I met when I lived at Langley, BC c. 1970. I was able to introduce Gordon to my Mother when she visited me there and they corresponded, Mum helping Gordon to understand his Rawdon connection. Bob inherited a devotional book, The Life of Christ, that had been passed to Gordon from his father and grandfather – who were both named William – that included a record of family events for William Holtby and Ann Suggitt. It is now in the keeping of Brenda Touet of Lethbridge, AB, Bob’s second cousin. They are my third cousins once removed. An update on Updates page 367 and images here.

Bob has a family photo on Ancestry of his great grandparents William Holtby and Mary Copping of Armstrong, British Columbia celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in July 1917 and has shared it here.They were born at Rawdon as were eight eldest children, their four youngest daughters were born in Minnesota. In the photo are three sons, two sons-in-law, five of daughters, a daughter-in-law and thirteen grandchildren. Three sons died in infancy and a daughter and son-in-law with five children were unable to attend, living in Saskatchewan.

I discovered an error in the Up To Rawdon listing of the children of William and Mary Holtby. Alfred (Sydney) Holtby, the eighth child is omitted from my text. See update page 384.

I have been examining the Ships Lists records of passengers travelling from Québec to Montréal. I saw that D. Manchester travelled up the river on July 20, 1821 and I wondered if this was David Manchester and what he might have been doing at Québec. from previous research in the National Archives (see page 513 of Up To Rawdon), we know that he was trying to get a lot in Kilkenny Township. To my mind, this is a brief view of David’s busy life imagining him travelling back to his mill and farm at Lac Waro. I have added this to the Updates file.

Mary Jane Novak has again sent interesting information; especially, if you are a fan of old Hollywood stars. A contact recently purchased the personal collection of photos related to Doris Drought dating back to the 1930s and up to the 1960s. Some are autographed to her and others are of people she may have worked with as an editor and script supervisor on films for example – Elvis Presley’s autographed photo thanks Doris for her help on the movie Flaming Star in 1960. The Rawdon connection? Go to page 181 of Up To Rawdon where I wrote about her grandfather E. S. W. Drought and included his photograph. His father, Frederick William Drought, was at Rawdon in 1824 and his first wife was buried, by Mr. Burton at the School House on the Second Range.

July 21, 2018

In the Supplements to book section of the website, I have added a supplement to the chapter Christ Church Rawdon: Early Days (which is in Part Two of Up To Rawdon). It is called An Irony of Rawdon History: Did Burton’s Church become Presbyterian? It is in answer to the question I posed on page 1063 “Was There a Church at Burtonville?” I have used the image of James Edward Burton in this column to illustrate the article. He was a missionary to the Rawdon settlers from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the first clergy to reside in the township. The chapter Burton of Burtonville, I believe to be one of the most informative in Up To Rawdon. Read about the memento portrait on page 90. Jane and Hamilton Slessor own this silhouette which has been used recently on the Christ Church website for which we are grateful.

Mitchel Sadler came to Rawdon as a lad of ten in 1825; there is a footnote about him in later life in An Irony of Rawdon History. I have added his death date on updates pages 551-552 and a note about his youngest daughter Maria Eleanor Sadler Green on Updatesentry for page 545.

How many people have a trunk from their family’s immigration? Two descendants of William Nightingale and Susan Payne (Jim and Marjorie Scott) have two of them that are at least 190 years old. The first belongs to Marjorie and a photograph is in your copy of UP TO RAWDON; the second pine trunk from the Nightingale ‘home’ in Clonminch, King’s County may be seen hereand was shared by Jim Scott of Mississauga, Ontario. Do you have a trunk picture to share? The story and photos of my grandmother and her trunk are at UP TO RAWDON page 472.

You may recognize the name Pam Rasmussen of Brandon, Wisconsin, an early friend of UP TO RAWDON; we still work together updating material on the several Rawdon families that are in her heritage. She wrote “I am proud my people spent two and a half generations in Canada. My great-great Gramma Eliza Nightingale and her grandfather Robert Magowan have always pulled at me… those two have my heart.” Pam has contributed a lot to this issue Including the new photograph of Mary Ann McGowan Nightingale Latch that she received from Evelyn Nightingale Scott (who in her lifetime had both the Nightingale trunks in her home). Mary’s death date in Iowa has been added. At updates page 610, see information about the inn Mary Ann and her second husband Theodore Latch owned at Belwood, Ontario. Pam has added a date of birth and death for James McClanaghan from his Michigan death registration on page 598. We have revisited the mystery of a Catholic baptism for John son of Henry McGowan and Eliza Moore. We think this was their son David. I have added a detailed review of the Edward Britton family (husband of Ann McGowan) on pages 610-613 and an image of the military pin from Edward’s regiment.

I receive many encouraging letters of appreciation and comments from readers about my updates to the website. Mary-Jane Novak was recently in Ireland where she visited her Jackson cousins; she has been in touch on Ancestry with a descendant of Harriet Ellen Drought and George Wm Jackson. I have posted on Addendum pages 177 and 180 some notes confirming Drought information that she has shared. Also. George Drought is mentioned in An Irony of Rawdon History as is noted at updates page 183.

In May, I wrote about the Roach family in Ste-Julienne; I heard from James LaVerdure about his Rithier dit Laverdure family in St-Liguori. If you have forgotten why these parishes are part of Rawdon history, it was covered in Up To Rawdon, Part One, Introduction, page xiv. “The family biographies presented here… trace the history and geography of the original Rawdon Township. Its dimensions were larger than present day Rawdon and included substantial parts of the later established parishes of Ste-Julienne and St-Liguori.” You can see on the map on page xx of Introduction where they lie in relation to Rawdon municipality. If you have Catholic ancestors your may find births, deaths and marriages in their parish registers.

May 28, 2018

Photos from family albums, sent by friends of this site, add excitement to the column each time it is published. These great ones were kindly shared to Up To Rawdon by Kali, John and Brooke. Thank you.

Exciting new information about the Nightingale family and their Irish county of origin has been provided by Jim Scott of Mississauga via Pam Rasmussen of Brandon, Wisconsin. Jim told me:

“I bought your book a few years ago after Pam had told me about it. It inspired me to dig deeper into the family history and pick up where my Mom left off. It’s like a giant puzzle with missing pieces – some you find in the most unlikely places. I have become the keeper of our family history.”

See the Nightingale update on page 659.

Pam Rasmussen and Jim Scott are distant cousins drawn together by their love of their shared family. Pam has been a stalwart supporter of Up To Rawdon and a wonderful friend for some twenty years – some day we will actually meet. See page xviii (paragraph 5) of my Introduction and her name in footnotes and credits in three chapters.

Pam Rasmussen has shared some interesting information from the 1842 Montreal census, the Thomas Johnston and Henry McGowan families are side by on the same street. Thomas was Henry’s son-in-law. See updates on pages 607 and 613.

“A” a new footnote for Some Irish-Catholic Settlers has been added on page 1123 regarding Christopher Roach who settled at Rawdon on the 4th Range, Lot 12 South around 1824; also, information about some of his descendants and photographs of them. Thank you to Kathleen Kali Baker of Morro Bay, California whose grandfather James Cornelius Roach was born at Ste-Julienne in 1873. Kali visited Rawdon in early May and called on Bev Blagrave Prud’homme and received a lovely tour of Rawdon including Dorwin Falls and the Catholic Cemetery.

I had forgotten some of my own research when I wrote about the 1870 Rawdon Volunteer Infantry. A correction has been made about Francis P. Quinn, the captain of the First Company. He is mentioned on page 1109, fn. 39 and in the 1851 Rawdon Census.

John R. Swift from Arizona has added a photograph of his twice great grandparents James Swift (1819-1899) and Rachel Veal or Vail (1816-1893). They moved to Sauk Center, Minnesota around 1888 to join family members. Rachel’s obituary says she was a resident there for five years. The photograph was taken in Montreal before they left Rawdon. We thank Marilyn Uhlenkamp for this and for her work on the Gray-Swift Cemetery at Ashley, Minnesota, which is the final resting place for this couple and other expatriate Rawdon folk and their families.

In April 2018, I mentioned Brooke Skelton’s story in Families and her Rawdon-born great grandmother Edith Delahunt Findlay who was alive in 1867. Brooke (bskelton@wlu.ca) has contributed two photos of Edith. I have improved the accuracy of pages 478-479, 479. 480 and 1004 concerning Delahunt and Kirkby families; thank you Brooke.

Have you any pictures you wish to share on this site?

Apr 24, 2018

This “Fenian Raid” medal, or one similar to it, was awarded to the men of the Rawdon Volunteer Infantry who served in Montreal or La Prairie between May 24 and June 4, 1870; each medal was inscribed with the man’s name and rank and “Rawdon Infantry” Let me know if anyone has one for a Rawdon man and I will publish a photo and a feature on the medal holder. My great-grandfather James Parkinson received one but I do not know its whereabouts. The one pictured here I found on the internet and is available for purchase for $800.

I recently accessed two interesting photographs; the first is of Thomas Odlum Rourke who is posed in a quasi military uniform with his rifle and powder horn. It is believed that Tom was in the militia around 1871 at the time of the Fenian Raids. More on that follows. Tom, like all men of the community, would have been part of the militia but was not on active service on those dates and so did qualify for one.

Tom, as the husband of Elizabeth Parkinson, is mentioned briefly in Up To Rawdon, I have updatedpage 700 with the names of their children and their spouses. This should have been in the original publication but in the squeeze for space, they were omitted. For this I apologize and for the long-delayed update.

The second photo is of Agnes Evelyn Eddington (Mrs. Kenneth Charles Fraser), a granddaughter of Thomas and Elizabeth Rourke. The two photos were shared by Bruce Codère whose grandmother was Agnes’s sister-in-law Pauline Fraser Smith.

I have added new research file Rawdon Volunteer Infantry, 1870 which names 34 men who I found had applied for a bonus in 1912 in recognition of their special service in the militia in 1870. This was a time of crisis in Canada, when Irish rebels and American supporters planned to invade Canada to force Britain to withdraw from Ireland. I have written an introductory essay to explain about the medal – not all who applied were granted the bonus – it was only for those men who served at Montreal and La Prairie and who were living and applied in 1912. They had each, previously, received a service medal inscribed with their name and regiment similar to the one at the top of the column.

I had mentioned a few later militia officers on pages 1110 – 1111. I know, now, (from the 1886 Canada Gazette) that the Rawdon militia was with the 83rd Joliette Battalion (not the 8th as in my book heading). St-Elisabeth was #4 Company and Rawdon was #5 Company. Lieutenant James Henry Burns was to be Captain because Thomas Blair was “permitted” to retire, James C. Mason, was promoted to Lieutenant and James C. Norrish to be Second Lieutenant. From the Fenian Bonus applications, I learned that Thomas Copping was a gold medal marksman. He worked his way up to be a captain as did James C. Mason. See Updates, pages 1110 and 1111, and appropriate sections of updated text for each man.

I really appreciate the followers of the website who inform me of the things that need to be corrected. One of those friends is Blair Rourke of Verdun, Quebec, who I acknowledge as the most knowledgeable person today on the five children of the Michael and Mary Rourke family who settled at Rawdon. Blair recently brought some matters to my attention.

First, an omission: I thought that I had published an update with the date of death for James Rourke, the last of the family to immigrate from Annagharvy. He settled at Chertsey in 1859. His burial, aged 54 in 1863 was witnessed by his son Thomas Odlum Rourke, details are at here on page 14 and at Updates pages 750-751, footnote 17.

Blair suggested looking again at Isabella Gray who was also known as Isabella Rourke. We believe she used both names. I have added new information to the update entries on pages 294, 299 and 301 about her and her family members. It is confusing material and I hope it is now clearer.

Lisa McIntyre, who shared information about the children and grandchildren of James B. Brown and Euphemia Felker in the March 1 update, wrote to say “I am from London, Ontario and am Canadian through and through.” I mistakenly said she was from North Carolina.

When I researched the early Rawdon settlers, at Library and Archives Canada, the land documents were not digitized and available on line, as some are now. I have been going back to look at what I may have missed or misunderstood. It is easier than a trip to Ottawa. From some recent checking, I have added source details for William Byrne [sic Burns] at update page 74 and clarification about William Findlay [sic FInlay] who is mentioned on pages 225 and 233.

When writing the chapter about the early Loyalists at Rawdon who were given location tickets before settlement began, I used the spelling SAWERS for one man because it was what was used in original land documents at Library and Archives Canada (there are nineteen collections of documents mentioning him). The spelling SAWYERS was used by the priest at his interment and other places. He is mentioned at Up To Rawdon on pages 1046 and 1075. There is updated information about James Sawers / Sawyers and his wife at update page 1046.

I am a member of the Ontario Genealogical Society and enjoy their quarterly Families and have published more than a dozen stories there since 1993. I approach each issue with interest and in February 2018 there was a story by Brooke Skelton Findlay about her ancestors who lived in Ontario in 1867. One was a Edith Delahuntlater Findlay, her great grandmother born at Rawdon and last seen there in 1851 aged two. What I had written about Edith’s father William Delahunt is updated at pages 478-479 including, with his exact birth date.

I contacted some researchers who had posted trees on Ancestry of my Smith and Watters families. I had a response from Peter Sherlock of Melbourne, Australia who is among many other things “a cultural and religious historian with particular interests in early modern Europe and Australia”. He is a purchaser of Up To Rawdon. He is a descendant of Catherine Smith Davis, a younger sister of Rawdon immigrant and my ancestor Henry Smith. Her husband was William Davis of Clonaslee, Queen’s, County; it is not far from Henry’s home, Annagharvy. I wonder if William Davis could be a relative of Ann Davis who was lured away from her parents in Queen’s County to Rawdon by Michael Rourke. That is a story one can read in Rourke letter 6 at page 752.

Mar 1, 2018

Anyone remember collecting hockey cards? This is one of the big stars of the Detroit Red Wings in the 1950s. His grandfather was born at Rawdon and his father was one of the earliest goalies in the NHL. Read on and find his name if you do not recognize him.

Lisa Lindsay McIntyre wrote to me about the family of early Rawdon settlers John Lindsay and Elizabeth Brown, in particular concerning their youngest child, James B. Lindsay. He used the ‘B’ on special occasions but never with a full name attached. One imagines it was for Brown, his mother’s family. He had a brother Robert Brown Lindsay. James B and his wife Euphemia Louisa Felker are at  https://uptorawdon.com/photo-updates/#p057 as are others mentioned in the next paragraph.

Leslie Bertrand (Bert) Lindsay was the eldest of their four sons (two died as infants). Hockey fans will be interested that Bert was a goal tender at McGill University, 1903-1906, and in various Canadian leagues and teams for the next twelve years including the NHL, with the Montreal Wanderers in 1917 and then Toronto Arenas in 1917-1918. Bert married Mary Maud Louise Villemere and had nine sons and daughters – the youngest was Robert Blake Theodore Lindsay who, known as Ted Lindsay, joined the NHL as a Detroit Red Wing, aged 19, in 1944 and had an illustrious playing career as well as being a founder of the NHL Players’ Association. Lisa’s father is Otto Alexander Lindsay, who was Bert and Maud’s seventh child.

Sheila Lamb has improved the photo images that were published on January 6, 2018. After correspondence, we concluded that the photo named as Susan Lucinda Rourke cannot be her. It came from an album of Henry Warren Rourke family photographs and is possibly her mother Catherine Nightingale Rourke – see photo, page 664 with H. W. If anyone can verify or correct this identification please contact me or Sheila.

The birth and baptisms for Catherine Gray at Updatesentry for page 296 now agree with the correct information found in the text of Up To Rawdon. Thank you, Barb Vogel for pointing out this disparity.

Many thanks again to Gloria Weafer for her persistence in the story of Jane Ann Brown. She has located the 1845 first marriage at London Ontario, which has been added in the third paragraph of the lengthy addition to Updates, page 50. The interesting story of Jane Ann’s step mother, Olive, whose second marriage took place in Jane Ann’s home is continued in the update to Updatespage 52, footnote 10. Why the marriage registered in Prince Edward County is a mystery to Gloria and me.

When investigating her Johnston family from County Sligo, Sonja Johnston located registrations pertinent to the Johnston, Gray, Morgan and Scott families of Rawdon. Sonja is not related to them as far as she can tell and from a different Johnston line from that part of Sligo but has generously shared the information with Up To Rawdon. She found the death registration for Francis Johnston and births for three of his children, see Updates entry for pages 400-401.

From Sonja, dates of birth for two children of William Morgan and Ann (Nancy) Scott who were born at Carrowpadin, a son, Thomas Morgan (not previously identified) and Rebecca Morgan (updates, page 647).

Sonja found (Church of Ireland) marriage bonds from Killala & Achonry Diocese, we now have a marriage year for these four couples:

• Alexander Gray page 274 and we learn Catherine’s maiden name was Gray
• James Gray and Catherine Cook on page 277
• James McLeary and Anne Gray on page 416
• George Sharp and Mary McAdam on page 809 – their marriage bond and their marriage date and place from other Church of Ireland records which identify Mary’s home parish.

I have corrected the footnote for the birthdate of Ann Gray; Updates, page 278 fn. 12. I am persuaded that the birthdate for James Gray (updates, page 278 fn. 15), may be legitimate for the Rawdon settler. I rejected it, originally, because it comes after his father had arrived at Rawdon. Something is fishy and one wonders if someone posed as his father on his behalf to get the ticket of location before he came out.

Jan 6, 2018

Jerry Rourke has recently published The Rourkes of Annaharvey, his summary of Rourkes who settled at Rawdon and with emphasis on his own family, the descendants of Michael Samuel Rourke (1842-1903). I was pleased to share with Jerry what was published in Up To Rawdon and in on line supplements. This is a large book, 576 pages, and beautifully presented. You can order it by cheque or e-transfer; it is $50 plus $15 shipping. e-mail suebrown@amtelecom.net or jrourke1@shaw.ca519-371-2253. Cheques to Jerry Rourke, 519 Mckinnon Drive NE, Calgary, AB T2E 6A4.

I have made a clarification to page 664 concerning Henry Warren Rourke sometimes identified as Henry Charles.

With thanks to Sheila Lamb, I have added photographs on page 664 of her maternal grandmother, Susan Lucinda Rourke, Mrs. Jonathan “Jack” Hindle and what we believe may be Henry Warren Rourke with his first wife Catherine Nightingale and one on page 666which is possibly, Ellen Nightingale, his second wife. Also on page 664 are two handsome young men who are probably John Henry (Jack) Rourke and William Edwin Rourke unless one of them is the youngest brother James Delbert Rourke. If anyone can confirm or refute these identifications Sheila and I would be pleased to hear from you.

Chantal Demers is a descendant of John Farrell and Jane McEvoy and has often contributed to Updatesabout the Farrell family (see pages 888-891). Chantal, with Jane Miller, determined that (mother) Ann Hamilton Farrell came to Canada and settled in Montreal. Chantal was intrigued to learn that Ann was a market woman in Montreal and was inspired to write about her, with journalist Marcel Marois, in a 3-part article on British influence on Christmas traditions in Montreal. It was published in the Gourmand section of LaPresse on 2 December 2017. The first part included Ann’s story and her recipe for sponge cake as recorded by her granddaughter Emily Farrell.

See a photo of Ann Farrell’s memorial stone in Mount Royal Cemetery (taken by Marcel Marois) in my September 2016 entry. Pictured are John Miller (descendant of James Farrell), Chantal Demers (descendant of John Farrell) and Jane Miller.

Corrected biographical material about Thomas Porteous, husband of Elizabeth Cain has been added on pages 888-889 of Updates. There was another Thomas Porteous in Montreal at this time and we are now certain we have identified Elizabeth’s husband correctly. Elizabeth was a granddaughter of Ann Hamilton Farrell. Thank you for this, Chantal Demers.

The children of Jane Emily Smith and Louis B. Livingston have been added at updates page 843. For this, I thank Pat Widdifield of Comox, BC who has helped me enormously with her father’s family and contributed the images at page 843. She has a public tree at Ancestry.ca. The pictures include her father Archie Curtis Livingston at his first business, a photo studio in Aberdeen, Washington when he was in his teens and photos of Archie’s parents and his siblings. He returned to Canada in 1916, because he was disappointed that America was not engaged in the effort, and enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and served in World War One. Pat‘s two half brothers were born 40 years before she was; her father was an interesting individual.

I have never met Pat Widdifield, she is a third cousin. Our grandmothers were both born more than 80 years before we were and were not known to us. I have added a photograph of my grandmother Jane Ellen Smith on page 841. She was a first cousin of Jane Emily SmithLivingston and I was struck by the strong family resemblance between the two women.

Aug 30, 2017

The lead article in the June 2017 issue of QFHS Connections was ‘A Future Quebecker at Waterloo’ by , Rodney Heather and is about Sergeant Robert Heather and his role on June 18, 1815, in the Battle of Waterloo. He was a native of County Armagh and from a military family, his father and brother were Sergeant John Heather, senior and Sergeant John Heather, junior. Robert was with the 1st Battalion of the 4th (King’s Own) Regiment in Captain Anwyl’s Company No. 2. Their role at Waterloo Rod has ascertained from battle outlines and other accounts. Sergeant Robert Heather, with his father and brother and another brother Wilford, settled in Kildare Township, Lower Canada in 1822. You may read about the Heather family in Part Two of Up To Rawdon. Rod would be pleased to hear from you if you are interested in the Heather family or the Battle of Waterloo; contact him at rod_heather@hotmail.com.

Many military and some naval veterans were amongst the early British settlers at Rawdon. I devoted a chapter in Part Two ‘And the Boys Are At the Barracks’ to the militia and to tracing which settlers had a military record. Additional information has been added to Updates.

With help from Debbie Hill of Toronto and her public tree on Ancestry and some additional research, I have updated the story of Hugh Law and Isabella Marlin on page 529 and William Law and Matilda Wilson and their children on page 530. From Ancestry, I have added images of their daughters Jennie Law and Mary Ellen Law Parker on page 530.

I have added information about John Wilson and Ann Morrison, late arrivals from Ireland c. 1845. They are noted as parents of Matilda (Law) on page 530 but more information is found on pages 635 and 636. I have added evidence that they moved to Randboro, Newport Township, Compton County, Quebec before 1890, which is where they died c. 1900.

Margaret (Peggy) Burbidge of Ottawa has done a tremendous job locating the children and families of William King the eldest son of Emily Charlotte Burbidge, born at Rawdon in 1857 (see Part One, page 383). If this family is of interest, I can put you in touch with Peggy. Most of William’s family lived in the area of Windsor, Ontario.

Mrs. Patrick Mason (Margaret McGee) died at the home of her son, Jackson Mason, Waterville, Quebec on 4 May 1913 (from Sherbrooke Daily Record), See Updatesentry for page 564.

May 22, 2017

The latest addition to my home office is this painting by Linda Blagrave. It is the Ouareau River as it flows down to Rawdon with the Boulevard Pontbriand / Route 341 bridge in the background. My cousin Andrea Watts Hiebert gave me this lovely scene. We are descendants of James Parkinson and Mary Holtby. Andrea’s grandmother, Hilda, and my mother, Llewella, were lifelong friends and it gives us joy to meet occasionally and remember them.

Neil Broadhurst of Calgary sent new information (after my March 2017 update) concerning Alexander Brownand Susannah Lindsay. We can add two little girls, to their family – both died as infants. All the children are named in the Updates entry for page 54 with some additional information, not in the book. Neil also sent a death registration for Suzanne Brown (she was named for her mother’s sister Suzanne Brown Parkinson and known as Suzannah and Susan); she died at Madison, New York where she lived with her daughter Maud Bensted in 1940. See registration (source: Ancestry, Morrison / Brown Family Tree).

Carol Jess of Toronto has kindly contributed a photograph of the very early Rawdon settlers James Mason and Mary Armstrong that was taken at an unknown location, in their later years. There is a great deal of interesting material about this couple in the chapter Burton of Burtonville. Mary was Burton’s ward and the story of their own family is traced in Mason, Sadler, Hamilton and Associated Families and in To Huron’s Shore.

Carol Jess has shared her “Lindsay / Devlin” tree at Ancestry.com; she is a direct descendant of James Mason and Mary Armstrong through their fifth child William Armstrong Mason. You will find additional information about William on updates pages 541 and 1028.

I have added new details about James Mason, the eldest of James and Mary’s children, on pages 539 and 1027 and their unmarried daughter Joanna Mason on page 541 from Carol’s Lindsay / Devlin tree.

Mar 22, 2017

Mike Holtby of Denver, Colorado surprised me in December 2016. He entrusted to my care the framed map of Rawdon Township used by our 3X great grandfather William Holtby when he was Township Secretary-Treasurer. When researching Up To Rawdon, I had used photographs of it to find locations of settlers, see Introduction, page xviii. I have made the map available to you as a research tool. Click to enlarge and scroll through each range. Although it is 175 years old and there is damage from folding, it is an amazing resource for us today. Thank you, Michael and the Holtby family, for keeping it safe and for sharing it with us.

Mike Holtby with the map in 2015. Mike has travelled our planet and photographed its wonders for many years. Visit his website and see some of his work.

By coincidence, in February, Karen Fadden of Waverly, Minnesota contacted me about John T. Holtby. He is the man who took the map from Rawdon to Minnesota, probably when his father Alfred (see photo) died. John used his skills a cabinetry to craft an altar table and pulpit for the Waverly Presbyterian Church, where Karen was a member. She sent me photographs and Waverly newspaper items about the Holtby families there. See: Holtby – Letter from Minnesota to a Dying Brother in Ottawa.

If you visited Rawdon some years ago, you will remember the Canadiana Village that has, sadly, been closed for a long time. The Toronto Star published an article about it on March 18. 2017. It includes an interview with Bev Prud’homme who many of you know. The site and all the buildings are for sale! How can a heritage site be for sale?

For those with a Copping in their family tree, go to the Boscobel Cemetery for information about the history of Boscobel, Quebec and the St John the Divine Anglican Cemetery; there is a detailed surname list. This is a lovely site created by Joan Oborne.

A copy of the 1873 marriage certificate of Thomas W. Parkinson and Abbie S. Knight and his 1876 US citizenship as Thomas William Parkinson may be viewed here. Thank you to their great granddaughter Peggy Gaver of Maryland for sharing this.

I found the death of Isabella Lindsay Robinson, which has somehow evaded me for many years in Ontario deaths. It was 13 September 1925, in the home of her daughter Elizabeth at 465 Gerrard Street East, with whom she had been living for 3 years. (This is a small distance from where I live.) See updates to Isabella’s father, John Lindsay, on page 56 and for Isabella at Raising a Family on page 731.

I have been revising and improving my data base using Find a Grave and from time to time adding material. I can recommend it. Check the updates and corrections that I have made for the family of Cornelius Francis Brown page 55. He left Rawdon as a young man and eventually owned a farm and raised a family in Isabella County, north of Grand Rapids, Michigan in the 1880s.

Dec 5, 2016

This c. 1911 postcard reminds us of how folks went up to Rawdon for the Christmas holidays or wherever home was. Mary Parkinson, my father’s older sister, was in nursing school in Vermont when she received this nostalgic card and would return to the farm at Waterville by train for her holiday.

Earl G. Turner of Saskatoon has kindly shared two photographs from the Edmund Hiram Holtby family of his grandmother Hazel Holtby Turner, with her brothers and their mother Sarah Coulter. They are shared on page 170 and referenced on Updates pages 170 and 377. The first photo is very touching because we know that Ed Holtby died of nephritis on September 15, 1901 and that Hazel, the infant daughter on his knee, was born January 14, 1901; she was sturdy and alert and under nine months. The photograph must have been taken only days before Ed died and includes their four youngest children. Norman Keith Holtby, the eldest, was pictured separately with his father and may be seen on Up To Rawdon page 377

Peggy Burbidge of Ottawa has shared her recent work on the family of Ann Sarah Holtby and Charles Burbidge from on line Ontario birth, deaths and marriages. I have posted details of the death registration for their eldest daughter Emily Charlotte Burbidge and for her husband James King on updates page 382. Peggy has given me some new information on their nine children and promises more on others.

An update about the Chertsey Church and Cemetery is found on pages 380 and 1068 from a petition to the Bishop of Montreal from the Anglican minister, William W. Seaborn and Thomas Holtby to informally consecrate the church and cemetery at Chertsey. It is dated 29 September 1870 and describes “a plot of land eighty feet in width and ninety feet in depth on the Chertsey village road … bounded on the north and west by the lands of Thomas Holby [sic Holtby] and on the north and east by the lands of James Rorke [sic] was transferred and made over … for the Church Society of the Diocese of Montreal by donation dated the twelfth of June eighteen hundred and sixty eight. That a portion of the said land now forms the site of a church … [and] as a place for the interment of the dead.” (Montreal Diocesan Archives).

This information confirms, what is known from the 1861 Census, that James Rorke lived at Chertsey. His death and burial, which must have occurred before the 1871 census, when his wife Rebecca was a widow, but has not been found. The record keeping of the minister, Mr. Seaborn is suspect because of the frequent blank and partially filled pages at this time. The cemetery where James was surely buried adjoined his farm property. We know that this church later became St. George’ s Wexford when it was moved to Mount Loyal. It is claimed on many public trees on Ancestry that a man name John James Rourke who died in 1855 in Geashill, Offaly, Ireland is the James Rourke whose family settled at Chertsey. I dispute this because of the census at Chertsey and the donation of land for the Chertsey church and cemetery. Furthermore, there is no record of James ever using the name John; he had a brother named John. Also, it appears that James Rorke signed the church register in March 1870 (see next paragraph).

James Rorke [sic] infant son of Michael Rorke [sic] of Chertsey and Diana Blagrave) was buried June 17, 1869 at Chertsey. This is found on page 79 of the Christ Church register (Diocesan Archives, Montreal); his baptism is probably the incomplete Rorke entry on page 76. James Rorke, who was a witness for the burial, may be the brother of Michael. James, the son of James and Rebecca, was only 13 years old at this time. Isabella Rorke [sic] was another infant of Michael and Diana and was born and died in March 1870; (see Updates page 19).

Ellen Mason was the wife of James Rorke [sic] who was a son of Michael and Ann Davis Rourke. Her death and burial are confirmed at Updates page 541.

Samuel O’Rourke – A Boxing Champion has been added to the Supplements page of the website. I had suggested that this sports star from the early 19th century may have been Samuel Rourke, a cousin to the Rawdon Rourkes (Footnote 27 Pages 752-753). I now feel this is doubtful but it is an interesting story contemporary to the early settlement of Rawdon.

Oct 9, 2016

Drop me a Card was published in QFHS Connections, Volume 39, Issue 1, Autumn 2016. It used family postcards to give a glimpse of life at Rawdon and Montreal, circa 1910. It is dedicated to my Aunt Aggie Morgan; she was the eldest sister of Edwin Parkinson, my maternal grandfather. I have a large archive of interesting and beautiful postcards from both sides of my family and look forward to sharing more of them here.

Material has been added to the Hamilton Index about Alicia Hamilton McCurdy and her sister Susan Irena Hamilton thanks to a question from Jane Miller. Go to the Supplements to book page for this information.

Jane Miller and I have been assessing what is known, and what has been said, about James Farrell and we think that he could be the unidentified child with the John Mason family on the 1831 Rawdon Census. See update to pages 545 and 888-889.

Sept 23, 2016

Farrell family research by Jane Miller of Haliburton, Ontario and Chantal Demers of Laval, Quebec continues. A burial card in Mount Royal Cemetery files for Elizabeth Cain Porteous places her birth at Rawdon (new information) in 1842 which is earlier than previously thought. Chantal and Jane and John Miller met for the first time at Mount Royal this summer, when the Millers were on a trip to Cape Breton. The reunion of families that have drifted apart through the passing of years is a joy. John, Chantal and Jane are pictured beside the stone of Ann Hamilton Farrell, the grandmother of Elizabeth Cain and ancestor of John and Chantal. Revised paragraphs about Elizabeth and Ann are in the Updates to pages 888 and 889.
(Merci à Marcel Marois pour le photo.)

In my June 21, 2016 update I wrote: The village of Rawdon was built on land that had been cleared of trees for farming. Beverly Prud’homme has very correctly pointed out that the ten-acre village lots, although cleared by the owners and tenants to grow crops for themselves and their livestock, were not farms.

Jacques Latendresse found notarial contracts at BANQ Montreal related to the construction of a church on Lot 16 of the First Range in 1829 and for which his ancestor Paschal Joubroux dit Latendresse had been hired to make shingles. He contacted Beverly Prud’homme this summer; it confirms the anecdotal evidence from Mr. Naylor in Up To Rawdon, pages 1064-1065 about a church built by Burton. It replaced the schoolhouse and preceded the village church. We are studying this and other material that relates to the two earliest Anglican and Presbyterian churches in the village and I will clarify and correct what I published in 2013. A long essay will, in due course, be added to the Up To Rawdon website. Nous sommes reconnaissants à Jac pour partager ce qu’il a trouvé.

What became of the first Rawdon graveyard at the Forks and how many were buried there? A note on update page 1065 quotes Hannah / Annie Truesdell, the daughter of Hannah Dugas who had attended the Forks school.

The 1836 date for the building of the village church (Marcel Fournier in his Rawdon book without documentation) is doubtful. Research in the Montreal Diocesan Archives makes it clear that in 1834 the church, stables, parsonage, a well and a bell were planned. Mr. Copping and family attended church in the village in January 1836 ergo construction was in 1835 but it took several years to complete. Preliminary correction is on update pages 1065 & 1069.

I added facts from the documents we have studied to the Updates pages. George Drought was a Rawdon church commissioner in 1829. Details are on Updatespage 183.

Noted from Vestry minutes of 1835 (Diocesan Archives, Montreal) concerning Solomon Cook page 284, John Griffith, page 317 and Hiram Bateman footnote 13, page 514.

This did not come to pass: The Vestry meeting of 25 December 1834 recorded that the “Village known as Village Lands of Rawdon to be known henceforth as Charleston in token of the esteem entertained towards Right Reverend Charles James Stuart Archbishops of Quebec.” (Diocesan Archives, Montreal)

June 21, 2016

The village of Rawdon was built on land that had been cleared of trees for farming; it was a very hot place in summer. It came to be known as the Village of Sunshine and visitors spent holiday time in boarding houses in the early to mid twentieth century. Today, there are beautiful, shady streets but not so at the beginning of the last century. This old post card suggests a bleak and dusty place.

New and revised information about Mary Susanna (Millie) Parkinson and William T. Brownell from searches in Ancestry has been added at pages 523 and 692.

The recent death of Mary Copping Parkinson has been noted on page 695.

Chantal Demers is a wonderful researcher and has used Lovell’s Montreal Directory to find about the lives of Ann Hamilton Farrell and her daughter Sarah Farrell Cain. New material has been added to the chronology on pages 888-889. Chantal has learned that Ann, a widow, supported herself and lived independently of her daughter and son-in-law who were close by. Why Sarah, an Anglican, baptized her sons at Notre Dame Church after the death of her husband remains a mystery. Felicitations et merci beaucoup Chantal.

Jerry Hooker of Wolverine Lake, Michigan has written to me with information about the Hooker family who were immigrants from England in 1832 to the De Ramsay Seigneury. They were neighbours of the Reade family; there is a chapter on the Reades in Up To Rawdon. William Henry Hooker died in 1842 of a heart attack at De Ramsay while chopping wood. His widow, Ann Whittall, took her six children to live at Ormstown, Quebec where she had family.

I received a wonderful gift from John Swift of Tucson, Arizona of a book he has printed for his immediate family. It has pictures and material about his ancestors including the Swift and Gray families who left Rawdon for Sauk Center, Ashley Township, Stearns County, Minnesota. They were staunch Anglicans and founded a church and cemetery in the community. John has shared data from family files and documents on Ancestry and Find A Grave. Selected material from his research corrects or supplements what I have written. See Updates, pages 28, 292, 293, 296, 300, 708, 860, 81, 863, 864, 865, 888, 867, 868 and 871.

April 11, 2016

Co-operation with others and the sharing of genealogical research has brings wonderful rewards. Recently, I reviewed the extensive work that Blair Rourke of Verdun, Quebec has been doing on the children of Michael and Mary Rourke, who settled at Rawdon, and whose descendants have spread across the continent. It has spurred me to make corrections and revisions of Up To Rawdon and to find and add additional data from church files. There will be more on Rourke research in the months ahead.

The Supplements file Rourkes of Annagharvy has been improved with these updates:

• new information concerning John (Jack) Rourke, of Chertsey, son of Michael Rourke and Ann Davis, has been added as Appendix footnote 29. His wife Ellen / Elaenor was born in the USA according to 1881 and 1891 censuses. John was about 35 and she around 18 when their first child was born. It is not known how Elaenor came to be at Chertsey and to marry Jack. Information about their children has been added; consumption doomed one daughter and may explain the short life of her brother and their mother.
• In the section about the children of James Rourke and Rebecca Odlum:
  – the death date for Sarah Rourke Neville has been corrected
  – dates of death have been added for Catherine (Kate) Rourke and Rebecca Rourke Smith. These sisters are identified in the Christ Church register as natives of Annaharvey, Tullamore. We know that the family home was at Annaharvey (or other spellings) but that Tullamore was a different community nearby and the parish, where they were baptized, was St. Mary’s Geashill. The reason for the family naming Tullamore in the register may have been clear at the time but confuses us today.
• A death date has been added for Eliza Rourke Herbert who is buried in the Rawdon United Church Cemetery and marriage dates added for Thomas Odlum Rourke and Susan Rourke Copping.

Isabella Gray Rourke was named, on the 1881 Rawdon Census, with the children of William Rourke and Rose McCurdy. See Updates Page 299 for an explanation of her identity.

Detail about the Smith family property in Annagharvy, from the research of Blair Rourke, has been added at page 837.

A death date has been added for Esther Brennan Rourke at Updates page 846. The church register states she was “about 90” but in fact she was 81.

Correction of birth date from 1901 Census for Elvina May Blagrave – see page 850.

There is a follow up to what was posted in March 2016 about the Blair-Keo family on Updates 1010. They left Rawdon c. 1851 and were recorded on 1852 Wellington County, Peel Township Census (Ontario). They went to nearby Elma Township in Perth County, in 1854. On the 1871 Census, Ellen, who had remarried, was a widow for the third time and lived there with her three sons and three step children. James died in 1854 and Ellen in 1881; they are buried in Trowbridge Cemetery, Elma. This, and information about sons John and William, is on Updates page 442.
I was able to get Reveries of a Pioneer by Vera Ernst McNichol from the Toronto Public Library. It is a fascinating collection of pioneer stories about this community that opened for settlement in 1848. A bit quirky, as much of it was written in verse, but lots of information about shanty building, rail fences and stage coaches to name a few topics.

Further research regarding Thomas Blair and Esther Marlin and their family is on page 523 and on the death of Jane Marlin Purcell on page 525.

Death dates for Joseph William Holtby and his wife Lillian Helen Davis have been added on update page 383. A mother’s memory is more to be trusted than a father’s: a clarification has been made concerning the infant sons of John Thomas Holtby and Maria Copping (through the kindness of Gary Peterson, a volunteer at Find-a-Grave) to Footnote 5 in John Holtby’s Letter from Minnesota to a Dying Brother in Ottawa.

In writing the chapter Rogers Report I managed to overlook the birthdate of the youngest son, Samuel Rogers. See updates page 744. I was contacted on behalf of Bart Armstrong, a researcher and historian of recipients of the US Medal of Honor; Samuel Rogers was a recipient. Bart is working to have him recognized as a Canadian. (Sam is considered by the U.S. military as being from NY because he enlisted stating he was “from” Buffalo.) We have lost touch with Cathy Edwards who was a principal informant when I wrote this chapter. If anyone can help us to reconnect with Cathy please contact me.
If you are interested in Canadian Medal of Honour winners, Bart has in interesting website. Our Rawdon-born hero is in his blog for April 8, 2016.

Chantal Demers has persisted in the search for the death of Sarah Farrell Caine. Brava. It was under our noses but registered as Cane. See Updates entry for pages 888-889.

Mar 4, 2016

We had a mild early winter in Toronto then a couple of weeks ago the thermometer dipped and a few days ago we had seven inches of snow. Nothing like an old‑fashioned Montreal winter though. This card c. 1905 was when drifts were high and men dressed in style – no toques or hoodies. The Rawdon connection is in the background – St. James Methodist Church. My Holtby ancestors Alfred Holtby and Susanna Norrish married there in 1840 but not in this grand building, a national historic site, built in 1889. I sang in the church choir there in 1968.

Biographical data and a photograph of Maria Copping, Mrs. John T. Holtby of Waverly, Minnesota has been added at Updates page 377. The image is from a postcard sent by John Holtby to his niece, Agnes Parkinson Morgan, in Montreal about 1907.

A photograph of a map of Rawdon Township, held by Michael Holtby of Denver, Colorado, has been added. The map was used by William Holtby, who is Mike’s and my 3X great grandfather, who was once Rawdon’s Secretary-Treasurer. I used photographs of this map, made by Mike’s father Ken, to find the locations of many of the early settlers.

For a couple of weeks I have worked closely with two eager researchers (Jane Miller and Chantal Demers) on the two lines of the Farrell family who left Rawdon before 1850. One family left for Ontario and the other moved from the Laurentians to the lush farmland of Chambly County on the St. Lawrence south shore. We have established a third line – Sarah Farrell Cain, sister of James Farrell and John Farrell. She did not live at Rawdon, as far as we know, but it is an interesting story of family ties. See Updates page 880.

Chantal Demers has donated a photograph of Enoch John Farrell and his wife Annie Chrow; it may be seen with his sisters Sarah and Emily Farrell.

Footnote 1 on Page 217, mentions that some have misread the inscription on the tombstone of John Eveleigh in Woodlawn Cemetery, Listowel. The stone has been well-cleaned and the word Wexford is now legible. Rod Lee of Guelph, Ontario shared this photograph and ones of Elizabeth Eveleigh and William J. Lee, and of two of Elizabeth’s siblings Daniel Eveleigh and Catherine Eveleigh Cosens. The photographs are of three of John Eveleigh’s fourteen children and of his son-in-law. Rod is a descendant of John Eveleigh and of Elizabeth and William Lee. See the photographs at John Eveleigh, junior and Mary McGie: Appendix & Summary, in the Supplementsto book section of the website. Thank you, Rod, for the marvellous contribution to Up To Rawdon.

Alex Rome of Welland, Ontario wrote with information about George Keo and his family. He identified Robert Wilson, who had previously been only a name on page 11 of the research file – see correction at 1831 Rawdon Township, L’Assomption County Census. Alex brought forward information about George’s wife Catharine Gross Bonner who lived at Rawdon 1827 – 1838. She was unique among Rawdon settlers because she was born in Canada; her parents had married in Montreal in 1791. Details are added to page 440 in Updates. There is also information about Eleanor Keo, the daughter of George and Catharine, who with her husband, James Blair and their family, including George Keo moved to Peel Township in Wellington County in 1852. It was a destination for many Rawdon settlers. This latter information is also on Updates page 1010. I am very grateful for all this interesting material. It was very satisfying to learn more about George Keo and his family.

I have been doing research on Rourke and O’Rourkewith friends Blair, Jerry and Patty. Sometimes the two versions of the name are used in one family. Some families only used one spelling; some used mostly one but not always. Sometimes one indicated Protestant and the other Catholic but not all the time. This is fascinating and confusing without mentioning the many spellings for Rourke. Our research to determine if Samuel Rourke / Samuel O’Rourke was one man or two or quite possibly three continues. At present much is still unresolved. I hope to publish about this in the Supplements portion of this website in the future.

If you are on Facebook and interested in the Rourke family find Jerry Rourke and ask about joining Rourkes of Annaharvey 1956-2016 Reunion Page.

Here is something that I did find while searching in Ancestry. The home county of Chelsea pensioner Andrew O’Rourke (Updates page 1098) and his daughter Catherine O’Rourke was Queen’s County (Laois) and her husband John Johnson was of County Tyrone (Updates page 427). All from the marriage register for Catherine and John at Notre Dame Church in Montreal on 3 March 1835.

Feb 4, 2016

Jaime Huston has corrected the death date for Elizabeth Dawson Huston; he feels the tombstone date of 28 February is more accurate than 1 March, which is the date on her death registration. I had misread the year from the photograph of her tombstone inscription; it should be 1901. See Updates entry for page 1017.

The Henry Dawson and Elizabeth Huston family (see page 1019) was large and interesting. They could have had their own chapter; however, most of their children were mentioned in chapters relating to other families they were connected with. 
Henry Dawson came to Canada with the 70th Regiment; see his photo and a brief biography on page 1090. Henry and Elizabeth were married at Sorel, Lower Canada in 1823 and we know of twelve children born to them. Their first child Jane Dawson died August 5 1825 and was buried the following day at the Garrison Church in Montreal. Other known children are Elizabeth Huston at York, U.C. in 1826 (page 1090); Mary Jane Norrish in Kilkenny, Ireland in 1828; William 1832 in Kilkenny (page 1029); Matilda 1833, Jane McEwen in 1835 at Kildare, Lower Canada (page 592, footnote 15); Henrietta Rolph 1837 at Kildare, Lower Canada (page 1021); Henry 1839 at Kildare, Lower Canada (page 1021); Samuel 1841 (page 1022); Isabella 1843, John 1845, Robert 1848 – the four youngest born at Rawdon. This family summary is also on Updates entry for page 1019.

Gloria Primeau of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario wrote with information about Richard Mason (pages 541 and 1027). She sent a scanned photograph of him in his later years and one of his sons James Henry Mason and Richard Mason junior; see photograph. Richard lived at Keppel, Grey County in 1901 and may be found with family members on the census for Portage la Prairie, Manitoba in 1906 and at Lawrence, Dauphin Rural Municipality in 1916. Richard died at Lawrence on 13 December 1916. His wife, Jane McNichol, died between 1901 and 1906, probably in Manitoba. Their children, known to me, are named on page 1027.

Correspondent Jane Miller provided information and photographs last year about the family of James Farrell; see photographs. Jane has connected me with Chantal Carmelle Demers and Bernard Demers, from Laval, Quebec who are direct descendants of James’s brother John Farrell and his wife Jane McEvoy. Chantal has shared information (updated page 890) and photographs of her ancestor Sarah Farrell Chevalier Sims, their daughter. See photograph of Sarah and one of her sister Emily Farrell.

Correction: In reviewing material on the Marlin / Law / Asbil families I found that I was unhappy with what I had written about James Marlin junior. On page 524, I said that he was born c. 1812 and his wife Elizabeth Dixon c. 1811, which I had estimated from their ages on the 1852 Rawdon Census. However, in September 1828 James was a tailor living in Montreal when their first known child was baptized. James signed the register and Elizabeth marked with an X. The census ages, if correct, would mean that they were 16 and 17 when their daughter was born. I believe that they were at least ten years older and as evidence, it was recorded that Elizabeth Dixon Marlin died, at Rawdon, 10 April 1887, at 84 (or born c. 1804). No age was recorded, at his 1872 burial, after James had been “accidentally shot”. However, the May 1871 census declares that James and Elizabeth were both 66. This seems more accurate and I believe they were born c. 1805.

I attended the Induction and Installation of The Very Rev’d Andrew Asbil as Rector of St. James Cathedral and Dean of Toronto on January 31, 2016. The homily was given by his father The Right Rev’d Walter Asbil, a retired Bishop of Niagara. Verna Asbil-Ngem of Rawdon was one of the many family members who gathered for the occasion. Walter and his sister Verna were born at Rawdon where Verna still lives. They have been generous sources of inspiration and information about the Asbil family (page 534 of Up To Rawdon).

Jan 11, 2016

Hamilton Slesssor of Toronto has discovered a post about the mausoleum of Sir Richard Francis Burton, at Mortlake in south west London. He was the illustrious cousin of Rawdon’s Reverend J. E. Burton. Hamilton Slessor’s wife Jane is a direct descendant of J. E. Burton’s daughter Frances Maria Burton Heward. The link includes a dashing portrait of the famous explorer that is more glamorous than the one I used on page 92 in the chapter Burton of Burtonville.

Hamilton Slessor completed an assignment, in August 2015, to produce a year-long series of daily postings of his regiment, The Royal Montreal Regiment, to mark its 100th anniversary – This Day in RMR History. It tells of the regiment’s 1914 founding, its movements and its personnel, officers and men with events that were a part of their daily lives. Hamilton is now working on a nominal roll of the 6,200 men who passed through the regiment during WWI.

Following email correspondence with Jaime Hayes in Switzerland, as reported in the November 6, 2015 update, I went to the Diocesan Archives in Toronto to see if there was more concerning the birth of Elizabeth Dawson than what is reported on page 1017 of Up To Rawdon. The baptism was 13 August 1826 in the register of the Fort York Garrison Chapel and with date of birth possibly (damage to register) on 14 July.

It has taken many years to get a better image of Alfred Holtby and Susanna Norrish than the one I used on page 678 in William Norrish: Survivor. Thank you Mike Holtby in Denver for nudging me and hurray for cell phone cameras and a good friend to help with a tricky shoot. The original (which hangs in my upstairs hall) is paper on a thin lead sheet. Has anyone else seen photos mounted in this way? The couple, as you can see, still look youthful and without gray hair. They married in 1840 aged 20 and 21 and Susanna was 45 when her 14th child was born in 1864. I am guessing this was taken about 1860. Comments are invited.

William Joseph Brown was a Montreal grocer and is found on page 53 of Up To Rawdon. His store front appears on this advertising postcard for his business. The address was 888 Ste. Catherine West on the south side near McGill College Avenue; this is currenlty the number of Reuben’s Delicatessen in a new building.

The card was sent to his second cousin Agnes Parkinson Morgan on December 12, 1910. The bottom front of the card states “Perfecto Coffee is a winner – Pansy Tea now the Family Tea (Reg.)” The suppliers of these brands may have paid for the cards to be mailed out. Note the bananas in the entrance way and what are the strange gold balls on the bench to the left of the door? Armour’s Solid Extract of Beef must have paid for the marquee and sign on the outside side wall. Mr Brown, from his appearance, was a very successful grocer.

Nov 6, 2015

Some Canadian census reports use the word “shanty” to describe the dwelling place of the head of the household. The 1851 Census gave the enumerator the following choices for types of houses: “brick, stone, frame, log, shanty or other kind of residence”. I suspect that a “shanty” was constructed of logs, maybe of boards, but less substantial than a log house, of a temporary nature, even a lean to. A well-built log house was a permanent structure and meant to last. Many log houses still stand 150 – 200 years later although perhaps now covered with siding. Perhaps a shanty was not on a foundation, did not have a wood floor or did not have a proper roof beam. I am guessing. Shanty comes from the French word chantier meaning a work site – logging camps were known as chantiers and housing there was temporary as the lumber camp was perhaps needed only for a season.

In October 2015, I added information about the family of Zerena Chamberlain Bagnall. Her niece was Mary Ann Whittaker also spelled Whitaker and the wife of Robert Knowlton, a one time Rawdon settler. There is no proof that Mary Ann lived at Rawdon but she must have visited there. Zerena’s brother-in-law, Robert Bagnall owned Lot 15, Seventh Range beside the Knowlton property and William Bagnall, it appears, purchased the south half of 7 / 14 from Robert Knowlton. I have had correspondence with Elizabeth Cohoe of Kingston whose husband is a direct descendant of Robert Knowlton and have made a substantial update and correction of the chapter Knowlton: Father and Son. It is possible that Samuel and Robert were brothers or related in some other way. I still hold that they were father and son but would love to find a proof of their relationship. See Updates entry for page 499.

Jaime Hayes, a correspondent who lives in Switzerland, has contacted me with interesting material on the Huston and Dawson families. As a result, there are corrections and new material on pages 1017, 1018 and 1019 of Updates, which include links to some Manitoba sources. Additional information for William Dawsonand Alice Eveleigh family is on page 1020.

A link to Jaime’s website has been added to my page of helpful links and note the correction to footnote 6 on page 1091; it should read “his” website. Other new links have been added and one has been corrected.

I have reorganized some material on the website. The Protestant Settlers in the St-Felix area and Baptisms, Marriages and Burials of St. John’s Anglican Church, Kildare and the copy of an 1821 Map of the original Rawdon Township, drawn by Surveyor Joseph Bouchette were until now on Supplements to book page and are now found on the Research files page.

Oct 5, 2015

On September 16, 2015, cousins Patsy McGuireHolland of Bismarck, North Dakota and Linda McGuireKnutson of Polson, Montana made a trip to Rawdon accompanied by Patsy’s husband Jim and brother-in-law Lew Holland. They had visited in September 2014. Linda and Patsy are the great-great granddaughters of John and Hester Bowen McGuire. Bev Prud’homme gave the visitors a wonderful Rawdon tour; they later came to me in Toronto before beginning a Canadian bus tour. Here are Linda (left) and Patsy (right) on Rawdon’s Tenth Range somewhere not too far from where John and Hester raised their family before emigrating leaving, c.1872, for Sauk Center, Minnesota.

Donald MacKay, in his 1990 book Flight from Famine: the Coming of the Irish to Canada, reported on 1840 ship arrivals at Quebec as follows. “From the Nicholson from Sligo, a few families of about thirty persons have gone to their friends in the township of Rawdon, Lower Canada.” Thanks to Beverly Prud’homme for spotting this item.
It has been claimed by descendants of John Gray that he immigrated to Rawdon in 1840, at the invitation of his cousins and uncles and who we know were from Sligo. The Nicholson immigrant group of thirty could have included him, Mrs. Francis Johnston (Rebecca Scanlon) and her (at least) four children who were known to be from Sligo and came out to join her husband’s brothers’ families at about this time. We know that James McLeary and his wife Ann Johnston(sister-in-law of Rebecca) arrived sometime shortly before 1842; their eldest child was possibly born in Ireland. There could have late-arriving members of the Morgan and Sharpe families although we know that most of those families settled before 1840. It is possible these emigrants from Sligo were Catholic; however, I have not come across any Catholics at Rawdon from that county.
Many people ask, “Why did my family go to Rawdon?” John Gray, in joining his family, was typical of many who settled there. In my investigation of Rawdon families, there are few where kinship did not play a major role in bringing additional family to Lower Canada and their subsequent resettlement in Upper Canada and the United States. In 1832, 700 people died of cholera in the City of Sligo and its citizens fled into the surrounding county spreading the disease. This was a good reason to leave Sligo and the system of tenancy that kept so many in or on the edge of poverty.
For others, not wanting the long journey to Upper Canada, it was a relief to find a place in the new townships near Montreal. McKay’s book helps explain the reasons for leaving Ireland, which differed over the decades and were often dependent on religion and social / economic class. It is full of personal accounts of emigration and much useful and interesting background information. The book is a worth reading.

Dr. Glenn Cartwright contributed this link to the documents of the Royal Institute for the Advancement of Learning at McGill. It is an abstract of a thesis by Réal G. Boulianne. The material relating to Rawdon is on the Up To Rawdon website in a transcription of correspondence concerning the first Rawdon school. I used this data in the chapters Burton of Burtonville, Gibson: a Difficult Settler and William Gordon Holmes Schoolmaster as well as in the family chapters where a child was recorded as attending school or a parent was a commissioner before 1829.
For anyone interested in Kildare Township, the Boulianne thesis will be helpful. Thomas Dixon donated land for a school at Kildare Lot 10, 8th Range on 2 March 1827. School Commissioners in early days included Horace Gibbs, John Sullivan, and George Dixon. There is a much of interest and the controversies of that township are recorded.

Zerena Chamberlain Bagnall: I have corrected and expanded entry for “page 14, footnote 17” in Updates. Zerena may have had two sisters living in Shefford County, near Granby, Quebec and both married to men named Payne. I looked at some public family trees on Ancestry and some Quebec church registrations. A grandson of Zerena’s sister and others of the family were prominent in the Pennsylvania coal industry and lived in Schuylkill County and in New Jersey.

Sept 1, 2015

Neil Broadhurst of Calgary has located more information about another child of Gawn Brown and Margaret Finlay. This should have been included in my July update but was set aside; I apologize for this; thank you, Neil. Richard Brown (by baptism) used his maternal grandfather’s name and was known as Richard Finlay Brown. He migrated to California where his family prospered. Refer to Updates entry for “page 50: Brown”.

Gloria Weafer has added a daughter for Jane Ann Brown and her second husband John Goudie: Johnanna Eliza Jane Goudie. Gloria is tracing the family of her husband John Weafer and Jane Ann Brown was his great grandmother. This infant died before her mother immigrated to Missouri (page 50). From the Goudie family, Gloria has learned that Jane placed the farm for sale in March 1868 and we assume from this that John had died. Refer to Updates entry for “page 50: Brown”.

Thank you to Chris Goudie who is the wife of a descendant of John Goudie’s son Joseph; she found this announcement in the Fergus News Record of 8 January 1869 and shared it with Gloria and me – “Married: By the Rev. Mr. Millican, at the house of Mrs. Gowdie [neé Jane Ann Brown], Mr Mathew Stewart, to Mrs Olive Brown, all of Garafraxa, on the 24th [December 1868].” In the 1871 East Garafraxa and 1881 Arran, Bruce North Censuses, it is recorded that Olive Stewart was born c.1824 in the United States. Jane Ann’s stepmother, we know from Wisconsin Census records, was born 1819-1822 in either New York or Massachusetts and we feel quite certain of this identification. There is a typographical error on page 52, footnote 10. Olive Brown was 28 in 1850 not 38. We cannot explain how Jane Ann’s stepmother found her way from Wisconsin to Garafraxa or where her two sons were living. The elder is possibly the William Brown, 22, living alone on a farm in Rock County, Wisconsin.

Blair Rourke has written regarding my recent comment on the English origins of many Irish-Protestant families. “Yes, I think that unlike many of the other Irish-Protestant settlers at Rawdon, the Irish roots of the Rourkes are strong and consistent, that is, Rourke being an Anglicized version of the Irish Gaelic “O Ruairc”.

Jane Miller of Haliburton, Ontario has sent marvellous scans of James Farrell and Catherine Tansey and the nine of their children who survived adolescence. They are her husband’s family and a handsome lot. They appear on her Farrell / Stewart Tree on Ancestry courtesy of collaboration with “kenhatch179”. There are some trees in Ancestry with incorrect information linking the Rawdon and Bruce County family to a James Farrell who died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Catherine as the second wife of James Farrell who died in Indiana. Jane has correct information. I have tried for accuracy and clarity and posted some of the photos and additional information about James and the children on Updatesentry for “pages 888-889: Farrell & Tansey”.

New material has been added to the Supplements Section; there is a new footnote 17 to the Hamiltonappendix. It concerns Samuel A. Hamilton whose photo is Updates entry for “pages 888-889”. with his wife Alicia J. Farrell.

Significant additional material about John Thomas Holtby and his life at Wright County was contributed by Sue Claessen a present day resident of Waverly, Minnesota and is found on pages 2, 7 and 8 of Holtby – Letter to a Dying Brother..The chronology of Holtby immigration to Minnesota has been clarified; John, it appears, accompanied his uncle, William Holtby, and family to Montrose in May 1880 joining James D. C. Holtby who had emigrated in 1878.

Bill Clayton of Abbotsford, BC has pointed out that I refer to Mary Morgan Tighe as Mary Ann on pages 643, 644, 645, 648, 777 and 910. She was only Mary on the registrations of the baptisms of her children and was Mary on the census in 1852 and in 1871. However, the index of the Mount Royal Cemetery names her Mary Ann Morgan Tighe. Further documentation of Christian name Mary Ann would be helpful if any one has that. On page 645, footnote 9, Margaret Pearso should read Pearson.

Arden Wade of Ottawa continues to track the descendants of William Wade and Margaret Taceyand has provided more information on their daughters Ann Wade and Mary Ann Wade (page 952) and their connection to his family. Arden is a descendant of their only surviving brother Robert Wade.

July 27, 2015

July 11 was sunny with a fresh breeze that kept visitors to the Rawdon Family Fair from overheating. I enjoyed meeting the people who dropped by and have taken the liberty of adding their addresses to receive updates. This included meeting or being reacquainted with several Parkinsons and Rourkes and many others as well. The photo below is Irene Parkinson Clayton (1911-1998) as a child on her father Fred’s Rawdon farm (Up To Rawdon p. 693). I was able to show it to her children Shirley Clayton Rourke and Neil Blair Clayton and others of her family.

At the Family Fair, I met Louise Marsan, a descendant of immigrants Andrew Keogh and Suzanne (Susan) Burns (Byrne / O’Byrne). See Updates, page 442. We had a long chat about whether the two Burns families were related. Most of the Hannah Pierce Burns line claimed their origin in County Carlow but we know nothing of about the “other” John Burns family from which we believe Suzanne Keogh stemmed. Louise confirmed that Andrew Keogh was born February 1, 1805 in Rathvilly, Carlow. This village is located on the River Slaney near the border with County Wicklow. This makes it possible that there was a pre marriage link to the Burns families. The question remains did these people first meet at Rawdon or were they acquainted back in Carlow?

On Canada Day (July 1), this Toronto Globe and Mail article featured old summer homes at Rivière-du-Loup and Cacouna. One summer resident mentioned in the story and photographed was Hilda Thomson, 89, of Vancouver. Her “great-grandfather, William Collis Meredith, one of the founding judges of the Quebec Superior Court and chief justice from 1866 to 1884, was among the original St. Patrick summer residents.” W. C. Meredith is featured in the Burton of Burtonville chapter of Up To Rawdon and was a stepson of J. E. Burton.

The name John Swift will be recognized by those who read this column because of his generous contributions to the Updates page. John and Vicki were in Montreal and Rawdon in late June to visit cemeteries and collect photographs and were kindly assisted by Al Parkinson and Brett Parkinson. On July 1, John, Vicki and I visited Toronto’s Distillery District near my home and on the perimeter of the Pan & Para Pan Am Games site. It was a pleasure to meet them as they head back to Arizona. I think we had great day even if I forgot to take them to the site of where the Upper Canada Legislature was burned in 1812 that prompted the burning of the White House.

John sent me this 1896 map of Ashley Township, Minnesota. All the McGuires and Grays named are directly connected to Rawdon. The Kinsellas, if I remember, are relatives of the Rawdon family. Note the church at the centre of the Township. This was St. John’s Episcopal Church (Anglican) and was built by the Rawdon settlers. It is no longer there and worshipers, from Ashley, attend the Church of the Good Samaritan at Sauk Centre. The church yard cemetery that once known as Ashley Cemetery, is now known as the Gray Swift Cemetery in honour of the many from those families who are buried there.

Pierre Emond of Lac des Deux Montagnes, Quebec has generously shared this scan of a painting by Linda Blagrave of the Joseph Neville homestead, which was on the Ninth Range, Lot Six. It is presently the site of Québécamp. Pierre received it from Clifford Neville, as a souvenir of his days spent working on the Neville farm when he was young. It is one of several that Linda did of this typical Rawdon farm scene. Joseph Neville is referred to on page 755 of Up To Rawdon, in the chapter The Rourkes of Annagharvy. For more on Neville see Rourkes in the Supplements section.

Lucy Bowler at the headstone of her 5th great-grandfather Henry Peyton 1787 -1874 and her 5th great-grandmother Mary Ann Finlay Peyton 1798 – 1868. Both born in Ireland and died in Rawdon, Quebec, with the stone of a great uncle, Cornelius Finlay on her left. The chapter in Up To Rawdon on these families begins at page 233. The second photograph Lucy poses beside the stone of William Burns 1796 – 1881, another of Lucy’s fifth generation great grandfathers (see page 74 of Up to Rawdon). Lucy visited Rawdon in mid June with her grandparents Peter and Melanie Plumb of Whitinsville, Massachusetts. Lucy wrote of her visit.
“I came to Rawdon with my grandparents for genealogy research. We thought that we had some family buried there. When we got there we met with a wonderful woman, Beverly Prud’homme. She was a terrific help, and showed us all the cemeteries in Rawdon. She even took us sightseeing to the waterfalls there. She was an excellent guide and we talked to her for a long time. The next day my grandparents and I found all the ancestors we had been looking for. The cemeteries are in great shape. Our relatives’ (some of whom died in the 1880’s) gravestones were in very good shape. Everyone we talked to in Rawdon was very helpful. Thank you Rawdon for a very successful trip!”
– Lucy Bowler, Age 12

June 9, 2015

I will join the Rawdon Historical Society for the 20th Annual Family Fair at Rawdon, Quebec on Saturday, July 11, 2015 from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. The fair brings together family members and friends to enjoy exhibits, food and games in the Anglican Church Rectory Gardens – Rectory Garden Road off Metcalfe Street. For detailed directions, google Rectory Gardens Rawdon; everyone is welcome.

I am honoured by the invitation from the Rawdon Historical Society. I will meet and discuss families and all aspects of Rawdon history, informally, with everyone who comes by. I will bring some photographs, my lap top and try to answer questions. Up to Rawdon is mainly about the early families who arrived in there from Ireland, England, Scotland and America between 1820 and 1850. If you cannot be at Rawdon Family Fair, you may always send comments via email.

I recently heard from Earl Turner of Wiseton, Saskatchewan. He is a descendant of Rawdon natives Edmund Holtby and Sarah Coulter, who settled in Ottawa but lived at Casselman (Prescott / Russell Counties) and Cobden (Renfrew County) in Ontario before marrying. When widowed, Sarah moved with her sons to Saskatchewan. Around 1920, Sarah took her youngest daughter, Hazel Edith Holtby, on a trip to Rawdon. Earl Turner is Hazel’s grandson. Their destinations included Sarah’s sister-in-law Mary Holtby Parkinson who is my great grandmother. My mother lived as a child with her grandparents and remembered the occasion because of Hazel’s beautiful thick, wavy hair. Sarah took Hazel to the Cultra / Coulter place on the Tenth Range, Lot 28. Hazel is said to have remarked “How did Daddy ever find you out here in the back of beyond.” An expression that was apt and often quoted. Today some of this area has returned to wilderness and seems even more isolated, which has been the fate of so many of the pioneer farms. Take a look at Richard Prud’homme’s beautiful photographs for some current Rawdon views.

Marsha Newton Lett, my dear friend and cousin, came from this branch of the Holtby family. In my early days of genealogy, she was a prime resource and provided me with copies of old family photos made from originals by her brother Gregory Newton (several appear in Up To Rawdon). It saddens me to write that Marsha died on March 16, 2015; see here for obituary and photo.

There is a Rawdon connection to the upcoming Toronto Pan Am Games. Lucinda Nowell of Kanata, Ontario is part of Canada’s group rhythmic gymnastics team. Lucinda is a granddaughter of my dear friend, the late Richard Mason who was one of my early supporters in the publishing of Up To Rawdon. We worked closely on his book about his great aunt: Cyclone Days: Plowing, Planting & Partying, the Journals of Sarah Alice Mason Copping 1899 – 1925. I would love to hear if there are other Pan Am athletes with Rawdon connection.

April 5, 2015

Correspondent John Swift brought to my attention tombstone postings from the Gray Swift Cemetery in Sauk Center, Minnesota, on Find a Grave. The cemetery was started by the families from Rawdon who built and attended St. John’s Episcopal Church at Ashley and, later, belonged to the Church of the Good Samaritan at Sauk Centre. Marilyn Uhlenkamp of the Historical Society in Sauk Center lives across the road from the cemetery, on a farm that was once owned by the Grays. She and her husband are the cemetery caretakers. Marilyn wrote she “can’t wait for the grass to green so I can walk over to take pictures” of the gravestones. Thank you in advance, Marilyn.

I used the Find a Grave search engine to find burials in the cemetery for the Gray family. Some of the postings include obituaries taken from local papers; however, the papers are not identified by name or date nor do they say if the material has been edited in any way.

New or corrected information, from these sources, about the English Gray family and Catherine Lewis has been added on pages 295, 296 and 303 and about Rachel Vail and the Swift family on pages 861, 866, 871 and 878.

In Find a Grave there is a stone at Calvary Cemetery, Sauk Center for Mary Kinsella, with dates 21 March 1821 – 14 June 1904. This is Mary Delaney, wife of John Kinsella, born in Ireland; she is mentioned in footnote 3 on page 458. Two paragraphs of family information have been added in a footnote update.

Up to Rawdon was placed in the Victoria Genealogical Society library, Victoria, British Columbia. The copies had belonged to my dear friend, Leonard Woods, who died at Langley last autumn and is mentioned on the dedication page of Part One and Part Two. His nephew and executor, Peter, kindly placed the books with VGS. I am thrilled to learn that Leonard is to be awarded a posthumous honorary doctorate at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, British Columbia, on May 20, 2015, in recognition of his role as one of the five founders of the Langley School of Music.

March 8, 2015

Church of Ireland registers for County Carlow can be found at http://ireland.anglican.org/about/160; they are indexed here. In the register of Barragh Church is information about children of Major Beauchamp Colclough, who was Crown Agent for Kildare Township (1822). His older son, Captain Guy Carleton Colclough, was the Crown Agent at Rawdon (1823-1825). Both were British military officers (Yeomanry) from County Carlow. I found data about these men and their families in a number of sources, including a connection to Sir Guy Carleton, the first governor of Quebec. (See Colclough in Supplements.) A clarification about Guy Colclough is made on page 505, footnote 2 of Updates. In the register of St. Fiaac’s Church, Clonegal there are a number of DIXON families and in the records of St. Mary’s Church, Newtownbarry there are many records for RALPH. They may be of interest to anyone connected to the Kildare Township families who reported to be from Carlow on the 1852 Census and in other sources.

Blair Rourke has been working on his Rawdon ancestors and has reviewed Up To Rawdon entries in his research. His fine-tooth comb collected some nits, which are corrected in updates. Michael Samuel Rourke was born in 1832 according to his baptism; see page 19. Correction of page 430, footnote 3, which should say the pictures of St. George’s, Wexford appear on page 1068 above footnote 18. Clarifications concerning the Rourke family have been made to the text on pages 1025 – 1028. Thank you, Blair, for your attention to detail. The Irish-Protestant settlers at Rawdon appear to have been almost all of English origin; although, Blair wonders if the Rourke family were actually Irish and has been giving it some thought. I have been reading about Cromwell and the clearance of the native Irish in To Hell or Barbados, the Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland by Sean O’Callaghan (Brandon 2000). The first English settlers in Ireland arrived in Elizabethan times but the majority were settled after 1653-1654. The mainly Catholic Irish nobility, gentry and leading proprietors and any Protestant Royalists, if not executed or transported, were transplanted to the poorer parts of Connaught as their properties in Ulster, Munster and Leinster were required for the English planters. Ploughmen, farm labourers and the working classes remained in these districts to provide support. I have found the English origins of only a few the Rawdon Irish-Protestants and wonder if others have been more successful in identifying when their families went to Ireland.

When listing the children of James Mason and Mary Armstrong, page 541, their son John Mason was omitted and his death was conflated with text for his brother Richard Mason. Blair brought this to my attention. In an earlier update, the omission of the youngest son, of James and Mary, Thomas Mason, was corrected. Thank you to Blair Rourke and Neil Broadhurst.

February 5, 2015

When readers write about Up To Rawdon as many of you do, I am truly pleased and especially when you post reviews on Lulu. (Have a look at the most recent.) When I was working and researching the material, somewhat blindly it seemed, I was, without really knowing it, thinking about future readers. When I receive messages, I immediately think of the sender as a friend, which is very satisfying. It is somewhat magical to realize that our ancestors have drawn many of us together to ponder about those long gone times.

Heather Bell Alexander of St. George’s, Newfoundland and Labrador is a great grand daughter of Robert Roarke and Mary Ann Blagrave, page 20. Heather has provided photographs of them and with their five children, which may be seen in the update section. Robert’s family turned away from the usual Rourke spelling. Heather was born in Montreal but brought up there and at Rawdon and says that when young she would start school in the country, transfer to a city school for the winter and back to Rawdon in the spring. Needless to say, her family used the expression “going up to Rawdon” and she clearly identified with the use of that expression for my title.

I had published conflicting information and I have clarified that George Swift and Naomi Dawson Swift, page 859, are buried in the Methodist (now United Church) Cemetery at Rawdon.

January 14, 2015

This tombstone, in Christ Church Cemetery, Rawdon is for Robert Brown and Margaret McMullen and commemorates one of the earliest burials in the yard of the original frame church (Robert Brown in 1831). It was erected later, some time after Margaret’s death in 1846. The first photo gives a view of the shady, well-kept grounds, in the centre of the village. The second photo marks the meeting last summer of Rawdon resident Beverly Blagrave Prud’homme and John Weafer of Kitchener, Ontario. Bev and John are fourth cousins, once removed and are descendants of Susanna Brown Parkinson (page 59) and Gawn Brown (pages 49-50 and on line updates at 50), children of Robert and Margaret. Thank you to John’s wife Gloria for the excellent photos.

Lori Harvie has added more details on her Burbidge family on page 493 with a great photo of her grandfather William Burbidge and his older brother, Edward Burbidge.

I want to thank Julie Baker who has posted a book review, which brings the total on the Lulu site to ten – nine are under Part One heading and one for Part Two. Julie belongs to the Robinson family who may be explored at pages 715-730 of Part Two.

Claudia Ellsberg inquired about my chapter on the Payton family, page 240. She is a descendant of Reynolds Peyton who immigrated to the USA; she asked “Can you tell me where you came up with the ‘a’ most of the time? I realize that in the 1800s, and before, people never spelled their names the same, but because the descendants use the ‘e’ I think it would be best if you also used Peyton.”

Payton / Peyton was a choice I had to make early on and did not know any family members to consult. I opted for Payton because family members used that spelling when signing their names in early records. Clergy were inconsistent but were always unreliable when spelling was concerned. In the earliest records, it seemed to me Payton was the most used. I did not do a statistical survey. I was aware that in later generations Peyton was used by some of the family but not all. I did use the Peyton spelling when it had been used in church registrations but I see I was inconsistent in adding [sic] to so indicate.

I am grateful to John Swift of Tucson, Arizona who is a great grandson of Robert Swift and Eliza Pigott. He wrote on Christmas Eve 2014 that he and his wife had recently visited the Mesa, Arizona cemetery where Robert and Eliza were buried 101 years ago. They died, a week apart, of influenza. Robert and Eliza settled at Blackburn, Elmwood Township, Saline County, Missouri. They came to Mesa, Arizona to visit their son Samuel, caught the flu, and died a few days apart. John’s email brought to light some errors in my text but he has also provided a wonderful archive of material and photos. See page 28 and page 863 for corrected and additional text with a lovely photo of the nine Swift children and their parents in Blackburn, Missouri.

Correction: Page 910, Footnote 14 – Henry Tighe was baptized at Christ Church, Rawdon. Thank you, Bill Clayton, for bringing this error to my attention.

November 27, 2014

The book index, to the right of this column, contains the Table of Contents for Up To Rawdon, which is now searchable. Put in the desired surname and find the chapters where that family is discussed in detail and some of the places where they are mentioned as in-laws or witnesses at events. To find every miscellaneous instance one would search in an e-copy. Be careful with spelling – Burbidge not Burbridge and Rourke not Rourk or Roark, Smith not Smythe for instance.

Two new reviews appear on the Lulu site this month. They were placed by Pennie Redmile (former QFHS librarian) and Brenda Turner of Ottawa; thanks for the kind words.

Clarification of Bill Sprague’s address is on page 357 footnote one; a space was omitted.

Blair Rourke of Montreal has been a generous correspondent over the years and is presently working on a detailed presentation on the Rourke brothers and sister who settled at Rawdon. I have enjoyed reviewing his file. New information, clarification of material in Up To Rawdon and inevitably the correction of some details came to light. On page 19, the dates for Michael Rourke should be 1832-1905, which agrees with his birth date on page 753 (footnote 29). The death of Ellen Mason, wife of James Rourke is on page 541, as is his second wife Esther Brennan [sic]. She is the same as Esther Brannan [sic], page 846. On pages 749, 751, 752 and 754, of the chapter Rourke of Annagharvy, there are references to a man named Robert Fox who Blair Rourke has identified as a teacher and family friend. I have added a note about Fox on page 749. Fox was a Catholic, he might have a connection to the man mentioned in footnote nine, of that page but there is no evidence to support this. Rourke Letter #7, on page 754, I had attributed to Mary Rourke but it was likely from her son-in-law John May. The post script on that page 754 may be from Letter 3.

Blair has been using Supplements to book on the website and pointed out some errors in the footnotes on page 7 of Rourkes of Annagharvy: Appendix of census and other data, includes Neville. Corrections have been on page 7 and the footnotes are now accurate. There were at least three men named William Rourke – father, son and nephew. The younger men were born 1830 and c. 1842 and I confused them in the footnotes and on page 294, which Blair had corrected for readers previously. The update to 294 now states clearly that this William was the son of John Rourke and Ann Eveleigh.

There is new information about this couples’ second son, John Rourke, born 6 January 1832. He immigrated to Wisconsin, served in the Civil War and died 9 July 1866 in Juneau County. He settled there through the influence of his childhood friend George Craine who left Rawdon c.1850. See my article: ‘From Union Jack to Union Blue’ Part One, OGS Families November 2014, Vol. 53, # 4, page 25. The deaths of John Rourke’s brothers James Rourke and Joseph Rourke and of Joseph’s wife Jane Manchester (from Ontario Death Registrations) have been added at page 1025.

Lori Harvie of Riverside Estates, Saskatchewan has sent details about her grandfather William Henry Burbidge collected and confirmed for a family history, by her mother. This adds to the brief mention of William on page 493. He was the third child of Frederick Albert Burbidge and Isabella Kite and reached Saskatchewan via Minnesota. Also on page 493, I have added information about Frederick and clarification and information about the youngest child Harold Walter Burbidge as well as baptisms of his sisters May and Ida.

October 29, 2014

In June, I met for the first time my third cousin Michael Holtby in Denver, Colorado. He is the proud owner of the 1840s Rawdon Township Map, which his great grandfather took to Minnesota c. 1880. It had belonged to our 3x great grandfather William Holtby when he was secretary-treasurer of the Township and includes the eleven original ranges. It is first referred to on page xviii of the Introduction to Up To Rawdon, Part One. It was a tremendous resource for me in locating where families settled if they did not have Crown Grants or if they had additional locations.

Here is Michael with the map.

Research and writing of the chapter Burton of Burtonville in Part One, about the missionary priest and his second wife, involved endless hours of fascinating work. Recently, I read Good-Bye To All That, the autobiography of the poet Robert Graves, and realized that Graves was a direct descendant of the Reverend Thomas Graves, a brother of Richard Graves, the father of Elizabeth Maria Graves Meredith Burton. Robert Graves was not fond of his Irish ancestors and described them as “thin-nosed and inclined to petulance”. Elizabeth’s children were noted for their Roman noses – see page 116, fn. 92.

The section on Gawn Brown and Margaret Finlay, page 50, has been revised and greatly expanded. I have done more research on James Kirkland and Ellen Brown and identified their family. It would appear that Gawn Brown was deceased after the birth of a son c.1857. His second wife Olive lived alone at Janesville, Wisconsin with her two sons. Her stepsons were not at Janesville.

I love coincidences; recently I was reading Willa Cather’s My Antonia, about the settling of Nebraska. At the same time, I found that James and Ellen Kirkland had pioneered in Clay County, Kansas in 1870 and that their grandson lived in Red Cloud, Nebraska when he married in 1914. Red Cloud was Cather’s home town.

Brian McGowan of Edwards, Ontario has been working on the several names associated with Ann Topping, Mrs. David McGowan. See page 617 and her daughter Mary Jane McGowan, page 618.

For those who belong to the Ontario Genealogical Society, the November issue will include From Union Jack to Union Blue, Part One. This is the story of a number of Rawdon men, or their sons, who served in the American Civil War. There are three sections and the story is continued in the February and May issues. The magazine is only available to OGS members.

Surnames of the soldiers featured are Ash, Bagnall, Brown, Craine, Drought, Edghill, Gibbs, Jackson, Lewis, McEvoy, McNown, Rogers, Rourke and Smiley.

August 29, 2014

Patsy McGuire Holland, who I visited in June in North Dakota, has sent this photograph of herself taken in the Jardine Cemetery, Sauk Centre, Minnesota (below). The memorial stone is for Patsy’s great great grandparents, Rawdon settlers John McGuire and Hester Bowen who died within weeks of each other in 1889 and 1890. Their photographs are on page 621. Patsy and her husband Jim Holland will be in Rawdon on September 20 and 21

In clearing out old paper files, last month, I discovered material that had slipped out of sight and should have been included in Up To Rawdon. It has been added to Updates.

A second marriage for Samuel Wheelock Holmes, son of Schoolmaster Holmes, came from Jean L. Lee of Vercheres, Quebec and is added to page 364. I found a letter about Jane Marlin and her husband John Smith, which I updated with references to the 1870 and 1880 Rensselaer County, New York Censuses – see page 521. I also found the marriage of Denis Dohertysent to me by Diane Dougherty of Nepean, Ontario in 2002 – page 886, fn. 14.

I received an appreciative letter from Jo Ann Nelson of Carbondale, Illinois. We had been in touch many years ago about the Neville family. She sent me a photocopy of an 1875 letter from Henry Pigott junior to her ancestor John Neville, son of Joseph Neville and Mary Rourke. They had grown up together at Rawdon and then travelled all over North America as miners. Henry remained a rambler but John married and settled down. John had been involved with the brothers Henry and James Pigott at Sunshine Colorado. The Sunshine Mine was established in 1874 and was source of Tellurium, a somewhat toxic chemical element. See page 27.

John Neville was a son of Joseph Neville and Mary Rourke and born at Rawdon on March 11, 1838 and baptized at Christ Church on January 10, 1840; witnesses were Abraham Watters, William Bagnall and Ellen [Watters] Lewis who signed their names. Some information about the Neville and Rourke families is at www.uptorawdon.com/Rourkes.

John Neville had a farm at Pine City, Pine County, Minnesota and had married Mary Klos, a German girl. Jo Ann said that the story passed down in the family was that Mary didn’t speak much English when John asked her to marry but she said she would if he bought her a farm, which he did. The 1900 Census records that they married in 1881, the year she arrived in the USA; John had immigrated in1863. In 1900, they owned their farm and had had eight children with seven living; all were in school except the youngest. John’s birth was reported to be January 1843 [sic], which made him five years younger.

July 16, 2014

My review of Sustainable Genealogy: Separating Fact and Fiction in Family Legends, will appear soon in the OGS quarterly Families. In this useful book, the author, Richard Hite, tells how he questioned seemingly reliable, long-standing data and proved that what was believed to be fact in his own family tree was actually fiction, often from an entirely different family. The use of logic, questioning and comparison should be used to assess data, especially from internet postings, to find if it could possibly be relevant.

I have added the death of Joseph Marlin, which I found in Ancestry, on page 520 of the Updates section. It illustrates one of Hite’s chapters that questions the reliability of the informant on death registrations. In this case, Joseph Marlin’s widow, an American, registered the death and because she knew very little about her husband’s family, she had identified his mother as born in Scotland, instead of County Down, which is known from various reliable family sources. In this case, the death registration, which many would call a primary source, is incorrect, as to this particular information.

Canada’s Forgotten Slaves: Two Centuries of Bondage by Marcel Trudeau (1960 and 2009) is available in a translation by George Tombs, published in 2013. Slavery was not finally abolished in Quebec until 1833. It had waned from 1791 but the Legislature failed to outlaw all aspects despite the efforts of the courts that upheld habeas corpus and released jailed slaves. In the 200 years he covers, writing of New France and Quebec post 1759, two thirds of the enslaved were Amerindians, known as Panis. Some Panis were Pawnees but dozens of tribes mostly from what is now the American Middle West were represented. The French received the Panis as gifts or purchased them from their Indian allies. The majority of Black slaves in New France, before the American Revolution, were captives taken by Indians in New England. Later, Loyalist families brought their Black slaves with them. Slave owners in French Canada included, governors, intendents, at least half of the seigneurs, bishops, priests, nuns, merchants and tradesmen – almost all residing in Montreal, Quebec and Trois Rivières.

For Rawdon connections see page 1046 of the Updatessection about the Widow of James Sawers, of Sorel. On page 1074 reference is made to John Turner, senior, a slave keeper in Montreal. He was the grandfather of Henry Leonard Turner, of Rawdon and Montreal.

On June 7, I stayed overnight with Patsy and Jim Holland in their lovely home in Bismarck, North Dakota (left). See Patsy’s great, great McGuire and Bowen grandparents on page 621. The Hollands plan to visit Rawdon and Montreal in September.

Two days later, in Casper, Wyoming I met Phil and Donna Johnston (right). The Johnston chapter begins on page 399 and Phil is a great, great grandson of George Johnston whose brother Robert’s cabin is on the covers of Up To Rawdon. George, after his marriage, lived nearby before heading west to Maryborough, Wellington County Upper Canada on the barely habitable 11 / S24 . I have added an Updates on the Johnston property at page 402, which Robert acquired from Patrick Tighe, of Killala County Mayo. Killala is also in Sligo – could this be a clue to the Johnston’s Irish origins? The Sharpes, other near neighbours were from Kilglass, Sligo. The Grays and Morgans, also neighbours at Rawdon, were reputedly from Easky [sic Easkey]. Comments are invited.

While in Denver, I met my third cousin Michael Holtby who owns the much-referred to map of Rawdon Township (see Part One Introduction, page xviii). A picture of Michael and the map will be in a future update. We got acquainted over lunch after years of correspondence. Michael is newly retired from a psychology practice. I introduced him to my nephew, Cameron, who plans to study in that field, when he attends university.

May 10, 2014

Note that the Rawdon Loyal Irish Volunteers 1837 – 1839 are now in alphabetical order instead of by rank as when posted initially.

I have continued to investigate the members of families, featured in Up To Rawdon, who served in Rawdon Loyal Irish Volunteers. See these pages in the Update document, for my comments: Asbil 532, Barber 239, Brennan and Pearson 846, Connelly 134, Delahunt478-479, Eveleigh 230, Fairley 550, Doherty, Farrelland Tanzey 884, Gracey 799, Scott 777-778, Hamilton 1106, Hobbs 1106, Kerr 443 and Sinclair816. The Mason men are found at 538, 567 and 1130-1131; the Torney men are on 926 932 and 1095. More about the Watters on page 960.

Links to Up To Rawdon may be found on Cyndi’s List. She has many good sources that I used in the early days of my research.

April 14, 2014

More new material has been found on the Gawn Brownfamily, see page 50. There is a correction concerning Agnes Holtby on page 387 and two ‘new’ John McGowans are discussed on page 607. Speculation about the Tighe brothers is on page 905.

I have started to compare the militia list with what is presented in chapters about the various families. My conclusions are on the Updates pages. See Allen page 3, Bagnall page 7, Corcoran on 157-158 and Coulter on 165-166.

It is known that the Booth (page 29), Payton (pages 240 & 244) and Finlay (237-238) families were intermarried and from Counties Leitrim and Cavan. The Finlays had marriage connections to the Fitzpatrick(page 1104) and McMaster (page 1098) families who were possibly from one of those counties, which share a long border.

An update concerning the Burns brothers Militia service is on 1103-1104. Go to 514 fn. 13 for information about Brace, to 628 for Bowen, to 63 for Burbidge and to 924 for Borrowes. Two Cassidy families are on 152 and 716 and the Copping men are on 145. Captain George Drought was listed as a private; my explanation is on pages 183-184. My assumption about Dugas and the Rebellion may be incorrect; see page 1105. On page 357 the John Holmes family, Lavery on page 740, one may find Swift on pages 861 & 871 and Vail on page 878. For all the Gray families look at page 273 and Cook on 284-285 and Wade on pages 947-948.

March 16, 2014

As my research about Rawdon families continues, new information from census reports and from generous readers has again been posted on Updates. For Asbilgo to page 50, for McGowan page 610 and Nightingale on 667.

Updates posted in January 2014 – on page 50, Jane Ann Brown (with photographs) rediscovered; a photograph of Rebecca Irwin Marlin and family, on page 520, footnote 4 and on pages 632-633 there are corrections to data about James Edwin McManus and his son Charles Bernard McManus. I found Isabella Lindsay Robinson, in 1911 and 1921; see page 734. On page 845 there are photographs of the original Henry Smith homestead, Rockville Farm. New information about James Henry Swift is found on page 863.

Militia pay lists from Library Archives Canada have been added to Research files for the Rawdon Loyal Irish Volunteers, 1837-1839 (421 names) and the Kildare Sedentary / Volunteer Infantry 1838-1839 (67 names for a 65 member company)’. This information updates the chapter “And the Boys Are At the Barracks” as it adds dozens of names of men aged 16 to 60 many of whom were not previously catalogued. It determines the families who were at Rawdon and Kildare at these dates and in some cases narrows the field as to when they may have left. I will try over the next weeks (or months) to update individual chapters with information from these pay lists.

Jan 27, 2014

As my research about Rawdon families continues, new information from census reports and from generous readers has again been posted on Updates:

• On page 50, the Gawn Brown family rediscovered, including photographs of Jane Ann Brown and her daughter Ella Cornelia Goudie.
• A photograph of Rebecca Irwin Marlin and several of her family, at Ascot Township, QC, is on page 520, footnote 4.
• Pages 632-633 contain corrections to data about James Edwin McManus and his son Charles Bernard McManus.
• I located Isabella Lindsay Robinson, page 734; she lived with daughters in 1911 and 1921.
• On page 845 are photographs of Rockville Farm, the original Henry Smith homestead; one image includes Jane Watters Smith, Robert Smith and Susanna Boyce Smith and their newly adopted on George Kinsey.
• New information about James Henry Swift is found on page 863.

Forward this news to family and friends who may find it of interest, especially if they haven’t invested in copies or an e-book. Thanks!

Nov 6, 2013

Here are some recent updates and corrections. I am very excited to have photographs of James Rourke and Rebecca Odlum (page 750) who still have descendants living at Rawdon. Rebecca was a half-sister to Sarah Bagnall Blagrave, who also has family at Rawdon. Their mother, Dinah Patterson in Ireland,was the second wife of Isaac Bagnall. Some corrections and additions have been posted regarding the Asbil family (pages 533-534). I was thrilled by Elizabeth Lapointe’s very encouraging review of Up To Rawdon in the November 2013 issue of OGS Families magazine. I hope to comment further on both these topics in my next update.

Oct 3, 2013

Recent additions to Author’s & Readers’ Updatesinclude the correction of the identity of William Rourke, first husband of Rose McCurdy Rourke Gray (page 294) and the burial place of William Rourke, senior (page 360). A son of James Mason and Mary Armstrong who was previously omitted (page 541). A photo of John Rourke (page 747) and images of James Rourke and Rebecca Odlum (750 footnote 17). Tighe brothers leave Quebec City (page 905). The correct spelling of the name of William Dunbar and additional information about him is posted for pages 1045-1046. With thanks to contributors as noted in the text.

Aug 21, 2013

1921 Canadian census images can be browsed online at ancestry.ca without a membership; it has not yet been indexed. For more information see postings by Ontario Genealogical Society.

The history of the Wexford and Chertsey missions, which are part of Christ Church Rawdon, in the last paragraph of page 1068, has been clarified. A more accurate explanation of relationship of the Heather, Job and McGowan families on page 1141 footnote 2 has been posted.

July 27, 2013

New information for the James Mason / Mary Armstrong family for their son Thomas Armstrong Gray and his wife Elizabeth Gray is available. See update for pages 283 and 541. See page 16, footnote 19 for my latest thought concerning relationship of Mary Coulter Scroggie to Samuel and James Coulter. See 1821 map on supplements page.

April 28, 2013

I will be in Rawdon on Saturday, June 1, 2013 and hope to meet people who are interested in talking with me about Up To Rawdon. The Centre d’interprétation multiethnique de Rawdon (CIM) is running a display of work by the late Linda Blagrave, the artist whose painting makes the covers of my books so attractive. CIM, or in English, the Multicultural Centre has generously given me access to their facility. It is at 3588 Metcalfe Street in a lovely, old, white frame house in the centre of the village. CIM is only open on weekend afternoons and I will be there Saturday, June 1 from 1:30 to 4:00.

Due to a computer problem, I have been unable to add to the Author’s & Readers’ Updates section of the website since April 10 but will to do so again as soon as possible. Thank you to all the friends who have emailed with comments, pictures and kind words. Doing this book and website has expanded my world in a wonderful way.

Daniel B. Parkinson

Jim Whitton whittonjim07@gmail.com has generously contributed a photo of Rawdon born Sarah Ann
McGowan with five of her children and new grandson www.uptorawdon.com/photop613 Details at Text
Updates page 613.
Linda Wright of Nepean, Ontario is not a great grand daughter of Margaret Brown (granddaughter of
Margaret Eveleigh Ross) as she had thought and has no connection to the Rawdon Eveleighs, page 231
of Text Updates. Despite this, Linda has enjoyed her Rawdon adventure and has been a helpful
correspondent.
Elaina Ennen and Douglas Moon, descendants of Thomas Hamilton and Catherine Powell, are 4 th
cousins who connected and shared stories using UP TO RAWDON. Text Updates page 556.
Bill Clayton has found the Manitoba death registration for Mary Tighe, see Text Updates page 912.
Jocelyn Bernier is helping Carole Harrison and Keith Harrison, first cousins who connected after Jocelyn
found UP TO RAWDON, when researching at Rawdon City Hall. Text Updates page 923 is about their
parents, the sons of Mabel Ethelwyn Borrowes and Thomas Samuel Harrison
www.uptorawdon.com/photop923. I have rescanned the Robert and Ophelia Borrowes family group on
page 922 www.uptorawdon.com/photop922 who were Mabel’s parents and siblings.