Margaret McFarlane Bennett Brown (1826-1909) Scotland to Lower Canada to Michigan, USA

Ayshire, Scotland
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Margaret McFarlane, my second great grandmother, was born on March 10, 1825, in Scotland, according to her death certificate and several censuses in Canada and the U.S.  I have some discrepancies, though, on who her parents may be. Her death certificate (information supplied by her youngest son, James – remembering that the information supplied is only as good as the knowledge of the person supplying it, in a time of grief) states that her parents are James McFarland and Jeanette Braiden, both also born in Scotland. But the marriage record for her second marriage (which, frankly, already has one significant error that I know of – which I will get to later when it is relevant) states that her father is Andrew McFarland and her mother is unknown. Although I’ve seen some other family trees which indicate that her parents should be Thomas McFarlane and Ann Miller, they haven’t turned up in my research at all and I’ve yet to find a family tree containing them that doesn’t source that connection with anything but a reference to another tree. On the other hand, AncestryDNA has put me, my Dad, his brother, and both his sisters in a DNA Circle along with 22 other people, stating that “Mary Jane Bryden” is my third great-grandmother and another saying that my third great-grandfather is Andrew McFarlane. It’s easy for me to see how Andrew McFarlane can become McFarland. I can also see how Bryden could become Braiden, when dealing with Scottish accents coming down to later Michigan generations, and how Mary Jane could become Janet or Jeanette, especially since every reference I’ve found to Andrew McFarlane and Jane Bryden call her Jane (I’ve not yet found her birth record, but I found the marriage record and several birth records for their children, and the 1851 Canada East Census). And then there’s the matter of the name of Margaret’s oldest daughter, Mary Jane. For these reasons, I’m currently accepting that Margaret’s parents, and my 3^rd great grandparents, are Andrew McFarlane and [Mary] Jane Bryden/Braiden.

Andrew McFarlane and Jane Bryden were married on June 19, 1825, in Ballantrae, Ayr, Scotland. While I haven’t found Margaret’s birth record, her brother James Carnochan McFarlane was born on June 4, 1830, and baptized on July 2, 1830 in Girvan, Ayrshire, Scotland, suggesting that the family lived in the Ayrshire [although the McFarlanes were historically a Highland clan, the clan fell out of favor with the government in the 17^th century and clan lands were sold to pay off debts, causing clansmen to move out of the traditional clan lands around Loch Lomond]. Ayrshire is in the lowlands of Scotland, on the southwest coast. I discovered when looking into emigration from Scotland in the early 18^th century that while Scots from the Highlands were mainly forced out of Scotland during the Clearances, or eviction of tenants from land in favor of sheep farming by the landlords, those leaving from the lowlands of Scotland, such as Ayrshire, largely left voluntarily in an effort to improve their economic status, and in response to advertisements the British government had made in the papers and on posters and via the lecture circuit, enticing people to move to British American colonies in order to help settle the country and preserve the borders against the United States of America. Moreover, many Scotsmen already had relatives in the area as the Scottish had been moving to the British American colonies for two centuries.

Map of Beauharnois Twp, Huntingdon County, Canada East, 1861
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I have not been able to find out exactly when Margaret and her parents and her brother James moved to the Beauharnois Seigniory in Lower Canada (Quebec), but I know they were there by 9 October 1834 because her next brother, Andrew McFarlane, was born in Beauharnois Canada on that day. Additionally, military payroll records show that her father, Andrew McFarlane, served with Margaret’s future husband in the Beauharnois Loyal Volunteers, during the uprising of 1838 in the Beauharnois Battalion, 1^st company, Georgetown on the side of the British (for more of an explanation of the uprisings see the entry on William Bennett.) This means that they arrived before the severe economic depression began in Scotland, and were thus likely middle-class farmers or tradesmen when they left Scotland. Andrew and [Mary] Jane Bryden/Braiden had five more children born in Canada, based on the 1851 Census of Canada East, and baptism records: Elizabeth Ann Cowans “Lizzie”, born 20 March 1837; John, born about 1839; Helene, born about 1844; David, born about 1848, and Peter, born about 1849.

Birth and Baptism Record  in Beauharnois Siegniory in Lower Canada for Andrew McFarlane (1834 - ?)
Lower Right
Found at Ancestry.com
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When they first arrived they would have lived in a rough shanty, as those were the homes first built upon arrival while the clearing the land on the frontier. The History of Huntingdon and of the Seigniories of Beauharnois and Chateauguay by Robert Sellar contains several fascinating contemporaneous descriptions of life on that frontier in approximately the same time frame as Margaret’s family came to the Beauharnois Seigniory. A woman who had come to the area as a child with her parents in approximately 1830 described the described the normally simple chore of bread-making in those days as having “its own particular difficulties, the greatest of these being the obtaining of flour. Even if we had a bit of land cleared, there was a small, wee, tiny red worm that would eat the kernels out of the wheat and leave the fine long straw standing erect. Even when we had wheat, there was no mill to grind it nearer than Chateauguay basin fit to travel. The canoe had to be used. Sometimes we got a barrel flour from Montréal. There were no hops, but some neighbor would have a bit of leaven, that is, a small piece of the last baking covered up in the flour. This we would put into water a while to sweeten it before setting the bread. When the bread was risen, we would add a teaspoonful of saleratus (sodium bicarbonate) for there was no baking soda. We had no stoves, only square tin boxes for baking, that cost $2. We got nice hemlock bark and made a good fire, and when fit we put our loaf in the chaudron and buried it in the hot coals and ashes, which we heaped also on the lid, and let it bake. When ready the bread was fine was well raised and sweet too.” She continued “for light we had cruises, or just a saucer with some grease and a rag and it; they burn fine..… We made our own tablecloths, towels and trousers for the men out of flax. We sold the flax, then pulled it by hand and let it stand and bundles to dry a little; if we let us stand too long it spoilt the flax. Then we put a lot of nails through the end of a board, kneeling the other end to a block and, pulling the straw against the nails stripped the seed off by handfuls. Then we tied the straw in bundles and put in the water at the side of the river for nine days, afterward spreading it on the grass to bleach, turning it occasionally. At first, we heckled it (preparing the fibers to be spun and removing the fibrous core and impurities by pulling it through heckling combs), but that was hard work so we got a contrivance made to break it for knives underneath and three on top with a handle to lift the top one. That did more quickly. Then we scutched it (beat it) over a board and it was ready. We spun the tow (coarse broken fiber) and so make our thread and towels.” [If you wish to see this process here is a YouTube video of making linen out of flax using 19th century methods: Making Linen From Flax, from the 19th Century Daily Living Series.] They also made wool clothes entirely by hand, starting with shearing the sheep. Life on the frontier was not easy.

The McFarlane lot in North Georgetown was two lots down from the Bennett lot, where William Bennett, Margaret’s future husband lived, according to the settler's lists in Sellar’s History. In order to survive on the frontier, neighbors had to work together, and help each other, so Margaret and William probably saw each other frequently. In the 19^th century marriages were often arranged to best suit the business alliances of the parents. I don’t know if their marriage was initially arranged by Margaret’s parents or whether it was a love match.

As William was 20 years older than Margaret it is possible that he was married before. I don’t know.  I do know that they were together at least as of early 1845, as their oldest daughter, Mary Jane, was born in the Unified Province of Canada on October 28, 1845. However, they did not or were unable to marry until ten months after their third child and first son, Thomas, was baptized on January 21, 1849.  William was originally Catholic when he emigrated to Lower Canada, while Margaret was Protestant (the Church of Scotland). The Catholic Church in British Canada did not like marriages between Catholics and non-Catholics, and the priest may have refused to marry them. The Church of Scotland was less stringent as to mixed marriages in that time so it is possible that they married in the Protestant church after giving up on being able to be married in the Catholic Church – after the birth of their first three children. Living on Canada’s frontier, they also probably had to wait for a traveling pastor to come through the area.

By the mid-1840s when William and Margaret started living together, Mr. Sellers’ said in his History, “the revolution that has taken place in the conditions of the habitants has been such that it has been a complete revolution. With rare interruptions their houses so close were they formed continuous streets on both sides of the St. Louis from the 4^th concession to Beauharnois. They were invariably of wood, one story with an attic, divided into rooms, the larger serving as kitchen and living room, the other the bedroom, a big Three Rivers double stove set in the partition, heating both. The children climbed the ladder to sleep in the attic: when the weather was warm the barn was used as a sleeping place. In winter, buffaloes were spread on the floor where the younger members slept. Houses and barns were thatched with straw; in front of each house was the V-shaped oven, perched on a wooden table and beside it a sweep well. Outwardly the houses look trim, being kept whitewashed, in the inside they were clean and bare of furniture. Madame did her cooking with few conveniences. On the stove was kept the big pot and a smaller one served for extra needs. There was no necessity for more, for the menus were simple, consisting mainly of bread and milk in the summer and when the cows went dry bread with cupfuls of peas soup dipped from the pot-au-feu kept simmering on the stove. Pork was the chief meat and the fatter the better. Every habitant had a few sheep, kept more for the wool the family spun and got woven into cloth or blankets than for their flesh. So few were there wants that each family was sufficient in itself; excepting molasses nothing in the grocery line was bought and of dry goods what was traded was for Sunday wear.”

William and Margaret had eleven children that I know of:  Mary Jane (bn 28 October 1845 in Canada East, married John Young on 12 July 1870, and died 15 July 1923 in Brown City MI); Charlotte Marguerite (bn in 1846 in Saint Martine, Canada East, married Charles Gray on 19 October 1873, married Joseph Bone on 20 November 1897 in Clark, Washington, and died 16 February 1916 in Portland OR); Thomas (born about 1858 in or near Ormstown, Canada East, married Margaret Cody, and died on 24 June 1934 in Reed City MI); Elizabeth (born 29 February 1852 in Canada French near in or near Beauharnois County, married William Henry Lewis on 18 August 1880, dd 23 September 1914 in Osceola MI); Dorothy (born about 1855, married Robert Watson on 25 December 1875 in Saginaw MI, and died in Battle Ground WA  on 31 December 1927); Andrew (born 26 November 1858, married Anna Gregor on 10 April 1885, and died 30 January 1920 in Brown City MI); Sarah (born about 1858 – ?), William (born about 1862 in Canada, married Teresa Tracy on 6 July 1884 and died after 1940), Janet (born 15 July 1863, married on 13 October 1886, and died 28 March 1932 in Flint MI); John Edward (born in September 1865, married Emma Masters on 28 October 1889 and died in Maple Valley MI on 2 March 1935); Lucretia (born in or about 1868, married William H. Baker, and died after 1905); and James (born in April 1871 in Michigan, married Martha Wengert on 27 January 1892, and died in 1958). Margaret gave birth over 26 years (she had to love that man). She had children born in each of four decades! So in addition to cooking, cleaning, laundry, gardening, sewing, quilting, farm work, etc. -- all without electricity or running water, or central heat or air conditioning – she always had kids around to raise, care for, and love. That’s a strong woman.

In the early years of their marriage, the couple lived in the southwest corner of what became Quebec in Beauharnois township. I found William and Margaret and their first four children in the 1851 Canada East census, for Beauharnois Township, living in a French-speaking area of Canada in a one-story brick house. Margaret’s parents and seven of her siblings are found on the same page, 26 entries above (also in a brick home).

Bennett's and McFarlane's on 1851 Census Beauharnois County Canada East
{Page 1 of the 3 page census}
Found on Ancestry.com
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In or about 1869, the family immigrated to Lapeer County in Michigan, USA. They may have been attracted by the excellent farming on land that had already been logged by the Michigan timber companies, and/or may have been enticed to move there by entreaties of family already there as both the Scots and the Irish tended to move in family groups (I’ve not yet sorted out who might already have been there, but there was a large Scots settlement in neighboring Sanilac county and my own family tree shows several generations of mixed Irish and Scot stock living in Lapeer and Sanilac counties in Michigan). They lived in Burnside Township of Lapeer County, Michigan, until William’s death at age 84, on 27 December 1890.

After her husband’s death, Margaret initially lived with her youngest son James, who was 18 at his father’s death, on the family farm, according to William’s obituary.  But by June 18, 1894, according to the 1894 Michigan Census, she was living in the household of, or it appears, perhaps, next door to her son John and his wife Emma and their three young children James, Albert, and William. That may be because James got married in 1892 to Martha Wingert.

Six months later, on 19 December 1894, Margaret married John Y. Brown, who was also born in Scotland. He had never been married before and was a peddler at the time of the marriage (thereafter he became a farmer). The registrar made a significant error in the ages of the couple in the marriage record saying they were both 54. A comparison with later documentation assures me that the marriage record is for my Margaret but that the age listed for her should have been approximately 68 (Margaret may have shaved 4 years off her age for the event but I strongly doubt she shaved off 14 years!).

Marriage record Margaret McFarlane Bennett to John Y Brown 19 December 1894
Third Entry
Found at FamilySearch.org
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The 1900 Census shows Margaret (74) & John (60) Brown living and farming next door to Margaret’s son James’ family (James and Martha now have 3 sons and 2 daughters, ranging from 7 years to 8 months old (and two doors down from son Andrew’s brother-in-law, Anson J. Bentley, which confused me for a while since I knew I knew the name but couldn’t find a daughter married into that name – I finally went back to my actual tree software and traced the name to son Andrew’s wife’s sister Grace Gregor Bentley’s husband Anson. This genealogy stuff is starting to make me think in webs!)

Margaret was widowed again when John Y Brown died on 6 February 1909 of Oedema of Organic Heart Lesion (which appears to mean a swelling caused by a buildup of fluid in the tissues of a narrowing of the arteries going into the heart, or, essentially, heart failure). The more personal information was supplied by Margaret’s son, James, who didn’t know his birth date but said he was 67 when first married, and that he was a cabinet maker. He reported that John Brown’s parents’ were John Brown and Jeannie Young. (As I’ve mentioned before, the information on death certificates, other than the date and cause of death filled out by the doctor, is best taken as clues rather than facts, as it is only as good as the knowledge of the person giving that information.) John was buried two days later in the West Burlington Cemetery in Clifford, Michigan.

Margaret died eight months later on 15 October 1909 at age 87, 7 months, and 6 days. Her cause of death was listed as Old Age. James supplied the information for her death certificate too. It appears that She was buried four days later in the Deanville Cemetery, in Lapeer County, Michigan, which is the cemetery in which her first husband, William Bennett, was buried.

If anyone reading this is related to Margaret McFarlane or William Bennett or their parents/siblings or children, and would be willing to share any information or stories or pictures they have with me, I would love to see to speak (or email, probably email) with you. If you wish to dispute any of my conclusions, I’d still like to hear from you – maybe together we can figure it out. (I’m also interested in John Y. Brown.) Please leave me a comment below or email me at the address on my Contact Me page.

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I’d really like to find out more about William and Margaret’s early years: where they were born, more about their families of origin, how they got to Canada and when, when they met, how they lived, etc.

I’d also like to find out more about how they lived in Canada and when and why they decided to move on to Michigan. I’d love to know how they made the trip, and how they lived after they got to Michigan, where the farm homestead was, what it looked like, etc.

And I’d really love to see pictures of any or all of them!

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Much thanks to Judy Wilcox for her help with information regarding Martha Wengert, James Bennett, and the Wengert family and James and Martha's family, and the Findagrave.com links for William Bennett and Martha Wengert, and her encouraging emails. (I’m related to her husband twice!)

“McFarlane” History, https://www.scotweb.co.uk/info/macfarlane/; https://www.scotweb.co.uk/info/macfarlane/ ; https://www.scotsconnection.com/clan_crests/MacFarlane.htm; http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/higherscottishhistory/migrationandempire/migrationofscots/emigrationandsociety.asp; Transcribed militia pay lists for companies in the Beauharnois Battalion during the Rebellion of 1838, http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~qcchatea/1838pay.htm#first; Ancestry.com. Quebec, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc., 200 - Original data: Gabriel Drouin, comp. Drouin Collection. Montreal, Quebec, Canada: Institut Généalogique Drouin; 1851 Census of Canada East, Canada West, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia; transcription of the Cadastre Abrege for 1854,http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~qcchatea/cadastre/ngeorge3.htm ;  The History of Huntingdon and the Seigniories of Beauharnois and Chateauguay, From Their First Settlement to the Year 1838 and Revised to the 1900s by Robert Sellar, (150^th anniversary edition, the Gleaner, Huntingdon, Québec, June 1975; originally published by Huntingdon, Québec, the Huntingdon Gleaner Incorporated. 1888.); Courtship, Love, and Marriage in 19th Century English Canada, by Peter Wald (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993); U.S. Federal Census for 1870, 1880  and 1900; Michigan Death Records; Michigan Death and Burial Index.

William Bennett (about 1806-1890), Revisited, Part One: Ireland to Lower Canada to Michigan, USA.

Map of Ireland, 1830
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William Bennett is one of my second great-grandfathers on my father's side. In this post, I will tell you about his life, and the historical context in which he lives, to the extent that I currently know it. I’m hoping that someone who reads this who might know more about him than I do can help me fill in the blanks, fix the mistakes, and/or point me in the direction of how to find out more. I’m also writing this post as a partial replacement of a prior post on both William and his wife (this time I’m going to write about his wife in a separate post) in order to add in some more details that I’ve found, and to correct some things I got wrong in the last post on him.

Before I start, I ask any Canadian readers for their forgiveness of any errors I commit in Canadian history. I found out that my ancestor was involved (in a minor way) in a part of pre-Canadian history of which I knew nothing about – which likely means the rest of my family-readers don’t know much about it either. So I knew I had to explain it in the post, succinctly, if possible. That’s when I discovered that there are entire books, multiple academic articles, and various magazine articles and blog posts, written on the Rebellions of 1837 and 1838, some of which contradict each other. This is where my attack of perfectionism kicked in (perfectionism is a leading cause of getting nothing done), and I finally had to decide to just stop reading the articles and books because this is only going to take up a few paragraphs in my post on William’s life. So if I screw anything up, I’m sorry. (I’m open to correction on the historical bits too, since I like to learn and it will probably help me in further research on  William and other ancestors living in that area and timeframe.)

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Map of Ireland with provinces and counties named
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William Bennett was born in about 1806 in Ireland, according to several censuses in Canada and the United States. I don’t know where he is from in Ireland, for certain. His obituary states that he was born in the northern part of Ireland about 1808. I’m not entirely sure that is correct. I have a theory about that I will discuss in my second post this month on William Bennett (William Bennett, Revisited, Part Two: Weighing Direct Evidence, Circumstantial Evidence, Scientific Evidence, and Historical Context in Consideration of a Hypothesis.). His obituary also states that he came to Canada as a young man. I now think that he moved there in 1830 (this will also be discussed in Part Two), although I haven’t been able to find him on any ships lists yet.

While William left Ireland well before the Great Famine, he would have been leaving behind an Ireland that was in the midst of an almost two-decade depression following the end of the Napoleonic wars. This economic depression was exacerbated by a series of natural catastrophes. In 1816-1818, bad weather destroyed grain and potato crops, and smallpox and typhus killed over 50,000 people in Ireland. The potato failed again in the province of Munster (a southern province) in 1821, and people starved to death in counties Cork and Claire. After further crop failures in 1825-1830, famine was averted only by the importation of large amounts of Indian corn meal from America. Emigration out of the country was on the rise.

 Illustration of travel in steerage
from the Illustrated London News, May 10, 1851; in the public domain
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Initially, many of those moving to North America went to British North America, rather than the United States, because the cost of passage to the States was prohibitively high. The initial wave those emigrating from Ireland to the British colonies in North America was largely constituted of artisans, shopkeepers, professionals, and better off farmers from Ulster (a province in the north of Ireland) who were people who could better afford the passage fares; but by the 1830s, this had begun to change. Despite the continuing high fares, more and more of those leaving were from the laboring classes, the poorest, who somehow managed to scrape up the money for the passage. Similarly, the religious make-up of those leaving was changing and more and more Catholics were now leaving, some assisted by such programs as that briefly implemented by the British government in 1823-25, which provided free passage and land grants to over 2,500 Catholic smallholders, primarily from north Cork. The biggest single spur to such emigration came in 1827 when the government repealed all restrictions on emigration; between 1828 and 1837, almost 400,000 Irish people left for North America. Up to 1832, about half of the emigrants still came from Ulster (the north), but after that date the three southern provinces contributed the majority. 

William would have left Ireland in search of a better life for himself than he could have look forward to there. William’s family would likely have encouraged him to leave, both because it would mean one less mouth to feed at home, and, in the hope that he would be able to send money back to help support the home folk.  He would have traveled to Montréal in steerage in the returning ships that brought Canadian timber to Ireland; steerage was below decks, crowded, dark and uncomfortable, and he would have been required to provide all his own food for the 6-to-8 week voyage. William emigrated Lower Canada, eventually settling in the Seigniory of Beauharnois in the southwestern portion of Lower Canada (now Quebec), below Montréal. [The seigneurial system was left over from when that area belonged to New France. A seigneur was granted, or bought, large tracts of land from the King along the St. Lawrence River, and recruited settlers, or habitants, to come and live on the land, clear their lots, and upkeep the road that crossed it. They paid the seigneur rent as a portion of their income and in the form of food and produce, worked three days a year without pay, paid a tithe to support the local church and priest, and paid a tax if they sold their lots. They were considered co-owners of the land with the seigneur even if they bought their lot. The seigneur built roads, a milk, and oven, and periodically held the court to settle disputes. The system was supported by the Catholic Church because it received land grants from the seigneur which gave the church the right to collect rents from their tenants.] Many of the Irish immigrants who arrived  in this timeframe were poor and unhealthy, and accommodating them until they became well enough to work placed severe short-term strains on the Seigniory’s resources.

In moving to the Seigniory of Beauharnois, William probably would have first found work as a farm laborer helping on someone else’s farm for pay or perhaps joined with family in working the land on their own farm. In British North America, those who went inland to Montréal and beyond at that time were amongst the early pioneers in the country. Farmers were on the front lines of clearing and civilizing the country. When a farmer obtained land, it was not what we think of as a farm, but rather, uncleared forest land. The farmer had to cut down the trees and pull up the stumps before being able to plow up the land and plant; but the logging brought in extra income because the trees, once cut down, could be sold to the timber companies and ships back to the home countries.

Map of Beauharnois Twp, Huntingdon County, Canada East, 1861
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In moving to the Beauharnois area, William moved into an area that was largely populated by Scots who had emigrated there over the course of the past 20 years; a settlement of Irish was started in 1830. The influx of Scots and Irish from the British Isles had made the original settlers of French origin a minority in what they considered their homeland. This fed into the growing tensions between the British province government and a reform/revolutionary movement in Upper Canada (now Ontario) and Lower Canada (now Québec) called the Patriotes who, encouraged by the American Revolution, were seeking concessions towards a more representative government from the British.  The reform movement was supported by the local French-speaking populace, while largely, the English-speaking Scots and Irish supported the home country, or the British government (in spite of the concurrent reform movement in Ireland at the time).

Life was hard in Lower Canada in the 1830s. For approximately four years in a row, there were bad crop failures and ongoing outbreaks of cholera. This added stress was exploited by the reformers in their speeches and written tracts. In 1837 and 1838 there were uprisings in Upper and Lower Canada, which were quashed by the British militia augmented by the Scots and local militia. Nearly all men between 18 and 60 were in the local militia. William Bennett served as a private in the Beauharnois Loyal Volunteers, during the uprising of 1838 in the Beauharnois Battalion, first company, Georgetown (as did the father of his future wife).  He was paid one shilling a day (or about $.20 a day). This means that he fought on the side of the British, not that the local militia did a lot of fighting during this time but they did aid the British forces and the Glengarry Scots unit which was brought in from Upper Canada for the fight on the British side. He served under Capt. Henry Wright.

The next time I find William in any records, he and Margaret McFarlane, his wife, and my second great-grandmother, are a couple; she is of Scots origin, not Irish. As William was approximately 12 years older than Margaret it is possible that he was married before (the reported age gap between the two varies a bit in the censuses). I don’t know. I do know that they were together at least as of 1844, as their oldest daughter, Mary Jane, was born in the unified province of Canada, on December 20, 1844. However, they did not or were unable to marry until ten months after their third child and first son, Thomas, was baptized on January 21, 1849.

 

Baptismal Record of Thomas Bennett, 21 January 1849
found at Ancestry.com, from the
Drouin Collection, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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Transcription of birth/baptismal record, Thomas Bennett:

On the Twenty-first day of January, one thousand eight hundred and forty-nine we the undersigned first baptized Thomas born ten months before the lawful marriage of William Bennett farmer and Margaret McFarlane of this parish: the sponsors were James McAndrews and Anne Abbott, the former of whom as well as the father signed with us. (Signed) William Bennett.

It is possible that they had to wait years for a traveling pastor or priest to come through the area, or for a pastor to start a church in their area, as there were not enough clergy to go around on the frontier. While people could gather to worship God without an official from the church, things like marriages and baptisms were usually delayed, without disgrace, until an ordained pastor or priest came through the area. [There is another possibility as well, which I will discuss in my next post on William Bennett  (Part Two.)]

William and Margaret had 13 children. I know about the existence of Irish naming patterns and Scottish naming patterns (patterns of naming the children by gender and birth order after particular ancestors), and I know that the two patterns are not quite the same. What I wonder now is, with an Irish father and a Scottish mother, whose naming pattern prevails?   If I knew which naming pattern applied I could learn a lot of ancestors’ names – although, an Irish genea-blogger friend warned me that the naming patterns were not always followed.

William and Margaret’s children were as follows:  Mary Jane (20 December 1844 in North Georgetown in the County of Beauharnois, Canada East, married John Young on 12 July 1870, and died 15 July 1923 in Brown City MI); Charlotte Marguerite (born June 1846 in Canada East, married Charles Gray on 19 October 1873, married Joseph Bone on 20 November 1897 in Clark, Washington, and died 16 February 1916 in Portland OR); Thomas (abt 1849 in or near Ormstown, Canada East, married Margaret Cody, and died on 24 June 1934 in Reed City MI); Elizabeth (born about February 1852 in Canada East, married William Henry Lewis in Osceola, MI, and died 23 September 1914); Janet “Jennie” (born 9 July 1854 in Beauharnois County, Canada East, married James S. Richardson in Imlay City, MI, and died 28 March 1832 in Flint MI);  Dorothy (born about 1855, married Robert Watson on 25 December 1875 in Saginaw MI and died in Battle Ground WA  on 31 December 1927); Andrew (born 26 November 1856 - died 30 January 1920 in Brown City MI; he 
married Anna Gregor on 10 April 1885; Sarah (born 24 March 1859 - death date unknown), William (born 6 July 1861 in Canada, married Teresa Tracy on 6 July 1884 in Osceola MI and died after 1940), John Edward (born 1 September 1865, married Emma Masters on 28 October 1889 in Mt. Clemons MI and died in Maple Valley MI on 2 March 1935); Lucretia (2 April 1868 in Canada, married William H. Baker on 27 September 1885 in Burnside MI, and died 14 June 1942 possibly in WI as she was buried there); and James (born in April 1871 in MI, married Martha Wengert on 27 January 1892, and died in 1958.)

In the early years of their marriage, the couple continued to live in the Beauharnois Seigniory. I found William and Margaret and his first four children in the 1851 Canada East census, for Beauharnois, in the French version, which indicates that he was living in an area that was considered French-speaking. It indicates that William was Irish, a farmer, Catholic, lived outside of the city limits, would be 38 on his next birthday, and that the family lived in a one-story brick house. It shows him living with his wife, Margaret McFarlane, and his first four children: Mary Jane, Margaret, Thomas, and Elizabeth. By 1854, William owned 20 arpents of land (somewhat less than 20 acres by our measurement) in North Georgetown in the Seigniory of Beauharnois, in the Third Concession, old lot #p22, according to an English transcription of the Cadastre Abrege for 1854 for North Georgetown. He had been sufficiently successful since emigrating to be able to buy his own land; that had to feel good.

Lapeer County, Michigan
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In or about 1869, after the births of all of their children except James, the family immigrated the United States, moving to Lapeer County in Michigan. They may have been attracted by the excellent farming in the land that had already been logged by the Michigan timber companies, and may have been enticed to move there by entreaties from extended family already there as both the Scots and the Irish tended to move in family groups – although I’m not yet sure who may have already been in the area, I do know that they lived down the street from Margaret’s brother’s family (Andrew) at the time of the 1870 census, in Burnside Township, Lapeer County, Michigan. The 1870 census indicated William (50) and Margaret (44) lived with seven of their children at that time. William and 22-year-old son Thomas showed their employment as "farm laborer" while the youngest six children were at home: Andrew (14), Sarah (12), William (10), Janet (8), John (6) and Lucretia (2). The 1880 census showed that William (64) and Margaret (53) lived with five of their children. William was listed as a farmer and Margaret is keeping house. Their son William (18) was at home, as was their daughter Janet (16). The youngest children attended school: John (14), Lucretia (10), and James (7 – born after they arrived in the United States).

They lived in Burnside Township of Lapeer County Michigan, until William’s death at 84, on 27 December 1890. William was buried in the Dean Hill Cemetery, in Lapeer County, Michigan. His obituary appeared in the Imlay City Times on January 8, 1891:

Died at his home south-west of Deanville, Mr. William Bennett, Sr., on Dec. 29, 1890. Mr. Bennett was born in the northern part of Ireland about 1808. He emigrated to Montreal, Canada, while quite young, where he remained until 1869, when he moved to his farm near Deanville. He has raised a family of 12 children, all of whom have left and established homes of their own except the youngest, who still remains with his mother on the homestead. He was respected by his neighbors as an honest upright man and will be missed, for he always had a pleasant word for everybody.

I love that they said, “He was respected by his neighbors as an honest upright man and will be missed, for he always had a pleasant word for everybody.” He sounds like such a nice man. That is a great way to be remembered!


Please also  read William Bennett (1806-1890) Revisited, Part Two: Weighing Direct Evidence, Circumstantial Evidence, Scientific Evidence, and Historical Context in Consideration of a Hypothesis.

Gravestone William Bennett, Deanville Cemetery MI
found at Findagrave.com Memorial #14863074, taken by Jack Vander-Schrier.
Used with permission.
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I’d really like to find out more about William’s early years: where he was born, is family of origin, how they got to Canada and when, when he and Margaret met, how they lived, etc.

I’d also like to find out more of how they lived in Canada and when and why they decided to move on to Michigan. I’d love to know how they made the trip. (There’s a reference in their grandson’s book about his ancestors arriving in Michigan in a sleigh.)

I’d also like to find out more of how they lived after they got to Michigan, where the farm homestead was, what it looked like, etc.

And I’d really love to see pictures of any or all of them!

If you have any information about William Bennett or his family that you would like to share with me, or any corrections to make to anything I have written herein, please feel free to either leave a comment below, or contact me at the email address listed under the “contact me” tab above.

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Much thanks to Judy Wilcox for her help with information regarding Martha Wengert, James Bennett, and the Wengert family and James and Martha's family, and the Findagrave.com links for William Bennett and Martha Wengert, and her encouraging emails. (I’m related to her husband twice!)

Ancestry.com. Quebec, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1967 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc., 200 - Original data: Gabriel Drouin, comp. Drouin Collection. Montreal, Quebec, Canada: Institut Généalogique Drouin; 1851 Census of Canada East, Canada West, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia; U.S. Federal Census for 1870, and 1880; Imlay City Times, January 8, 1891; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Quebecers; http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/magazine/emigration/pre-fam.htm ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Canada_Rebellion;  "From Ireland and Québec 1822-1839" by Mary Haslam (from The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, Vol. 33, No. 1, Ireland and Québec/L’Irlande et le Quebec (Spring 2007), pp. 75-81;  “Irish Radicalism and the Roman Catholic Church in Québec and Ireland, 1833-1834: O’Callaghan and O’Connell Compared” by Maureen Slattery (in the CCHA, Historical Studies, 63 (1997), pp. 29-58; The Patriots and the People – the Rebellion of 1837 in Rural Lower Canada by Allan Greer (University of Toronto press, 1993); The History of Huntingdon and the Seigniories of Beauharnois and Chateauguay, From Their First Settlement to the Year 1838 and Revised to the 1900s by Robert Sellar, (150^th anniversary edition, the Gleaner, Huntingdon, Québec, June 1975; originally published by Huntingdon, Québec, the Huntingdon Gleaner Incorporated. 1888.);  Transcribed militia pay lists for companies in the Beauharnois Battalion during the Rebellion of 1838, http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~qcchatea/1838pay.htm#first ; transcription of the Cadastre Abrege for 1854, http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~qcchatea/cadastre/ngeorge3.htm ; Canada in 1849 – Pictures of Canadian Life; or. The Emigrant Churchman, by a Pioneer of the Wilderness, edited by the Rev. H. Christmas, M.A., F.R.S., F.S.A. (Richard Bentley, London, publisher in ordinary to Her Majesty, 1850);http://seekingmichigan.org; http://www.archaicmedicalterms.com; http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/decompensated+heart+failure; http://amhistory.si.edu/onthewater/exhibition/2_3.html; http://findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=14863074

William Bennett (1806-1890) and Margaret MacFarlane Bennett Brown (1826-1909), Revisited. Preface.

In addition to being serially ill this winter/spring, and generally exhausted after work, I think part of the problem I have had in generating new posts is that I had found some new bits of information about one of my sets of second great grandparents, William Bennett, and Margaret MacFarlane, on my father’s side that I knew I wanted to write up, but I wasn’t sure how I wanted to do that, and then  I had an attack of perfectionism, which prevented me from writing anything at all since I was afraid it wouldn’t be perfect. So, I kept researching. In the end, I’ve decided to simply rewrite their entry as three separate entries and put a link at the top of what had been the old joint post [which I will delete], directing the reader to these three posts that on William and his wife. This is partially because I’ve discovered in the course of doing “more research” that I got some things wrong in the last post, including a whole extra kid (and consequently line of descendants), who doesn’t belong to this family, and I don’t want to leave the old post containing the misinformation up at all. (This exacerbated the attack of perfectionism).

The three new posts will be (the links to the new posts will go live as they are posted):

1 - William Bennett (1806-1890), Revisited, Part One, will address William’s life to the extent that I currently know it, including newly discovered information leading to more explanation of  the historical context of his early life in Canada (and removing the inaccurate information).

2 - William Bennett (1806-1890) Revisited, Part Two: Weighing Direct Evidence, Circumstantial Evidence, Scientific Evidence, and Historical Context in Consideration of a Hypothesis, will address why my tree on ancestry is different than anyone else’s following this particular Bennett line up, and address my current hypothesis as to who are his parents, and why I think so. This particular post may constitute “thinking out loud” or, at least, “thinking in print, publicly,” but I want to put it out here so that I can get feedback on my hypothesis (whether you may be related or not).

3- Margaret MacFarlane Bennett Brown (1926-1909), Revisited, will address Margaret’s life to the extent I currently know it. As such, there will be some crossover information, but the post was getting way too long when I tried to write about them in one post as I did before since I have some new bits of information about her as well (and removing the inaccurate information).

The first post, William Bennett (1806-1890), Revisited, Part One, should go up in the next two days (it was supposed to go up last week but life intervened again and it didn’t get written. I have, at least, now begun writing it.)  The second should go up by the end of the weekend, and the third will be delayed to the second half of May as I have to get caught up on some continuing education credits for my day job  by mid-May instead of writing blog posts.