An Ontario search

 

                                                               The interior of an early Ontario church

I'm still on the trail of Margaret Clark, the Mrs. Angus Clark, daughter of Donald McPherson, named in Alexander Matheson's letters. As I checked through the Ontario records I hoped to find something to prove that Angus Clark's wife had been born Margaret McPherson but Ontario records before vital registration were hard to find.

As I checked the censuses, it was a boon to have an idea where Angus Clark and family had lived from the letters. I'm pretty confident that I now have copies of the correct family in censuses for 1861, 1871 and 1881. The first two census entries were for Puslinch, Wellington County and the 1881 census was for Kinloss in Bruce County. So far I've been unsuccessful in finding any entries for the prior or subsequent censuses.

In an effort to speed things up, I plugged the names of Margaret McPherson and Angus Clark into the search boxes on Ancestry to search for their marriage. Maybe, just maybe, they had married in Ontario. I came up with some results. No, the records I found weren't for the marriage of Angus and Margaret. Once vital registration began, the parents of the bride and groom were recorded. What I found were later wedding records for two of their daughters. Both daughters gave the names of their parents as Angus Clark and Margaret McPherson. I finally had documented proof that the Margaret I had searched for on the censuses was a McPherson. What's more, the marriage of Christina Clark on the 14th of January, 1885 took place in Kinloss and the marriage of Elizabeth Clark in 1898 happened in Owen Sound. The places in which the events took place mirrored the family moves given in Alex's letters. Now my search needs to take me back further to see if I can find a link between this Margaret Clark nee McPherson and Donald McPherson who Alex named as her father in his letter.

Sources:

Ancestry.ca searches for census and marriage information in Ontario  

Easy to find but is it right?

 

                                                     The sign on Leith Church indicating when it was erected

Research these days is much easier and faster than it was when I started. Back then facts were gleaned by scrolling through microfilm straining your eyes hunting for elusive ancestors. Now everything or almost everything is available with the click of a mouse. But is it right?

My recent trawl through the Public Member Trees on Ancestry reminded me of the sketchiness of some of the information provided. I'm still on the hunt for my McPherson connection to take my matrilineal line back another generation before Ann Ross, the wife of Kenneth Matheson. It is the data available for Ann Ross, most specifically the online records about her death, that reminded me how false information can creep in.

Information from Alexander Mathison's letters indicated that his mother, Ann Ross, died sometime around 1854 after the birth of a child who only lived a short time after she died. The letters also confirmed the family was living in Puslinch at that time. I've know the story of Ann's early death for a long time and a few years ago I was tracking down her burial. About 5 years ago, I was encouraged to find a listing for her on FindAGrave. Could this be the breakthrough I was looking for? A further check of the listing showed her supposed burial in the Leith United Church cemetery where her husband, Kenneth Matheson, was memorialized in stone.

How could this be? The information I had pointed to the fact that she had died far away in Puslinch. I contacted the person who had submitted the information to the FindAGrave website to point out the error. I based my reasoning on the moves that I followed Kenneth Matheson and his family through on the censuses after Ann's death. A more recent Google search on the history of the Leith Church Cemetery brought up the information that the graveyard was opened in the 1860s, too late for Ann Ross to be buried there.

Recently I searched for Ann Ross on the FindAGrave site for Leith Church Cemetery. There were no hits. But the information about Ann Ross's burial had been out there for long enough for others to pick it up. The listing of her burial in Leith was captured and used as source evidence on at least one Public Family Tree on Ancestry.

The modern day dissemination of misinformation isn't the only trap waiting for the unwary on the research trail. False data can be seen in the historic records as well. In a previous blog post about Alexander Mathison I commented on how fast and loose he was with his place of birth on the various forms where it was recorded. He had truncated the information about his origins and once even gave his place of birth as near Hamilton, Ontario. I have his birth record from Portree, Isle of Skye, Scotland. I have the Scottish record of his sister Margaret's baptism as well. That baptism took place in Kilmuir which is also on the Isle of Skye. Later census records for Margaret record her place of birth as PEI but, although her younger sister Catherine was born on PEI, I didn't find a record of Margaret's birth there. I have a suspicion Margaret was also fudging the account when it came to her origins and she truly was the child born in Scotland to Ann Ross and Kenneth Matheson rather than a child with the same name born after the Scottish Margaret died and the family settled in PEI.

The uncertainty of the information found on censuses and other records is something to bear in mind as I continue my search on the McPherson line. I'm still on the track of another Margaret, Margaret Clark nee McPherson. From the variety of birthplaces I've found for her on the census, I've a suspicion that she was born in Scotland too.

Sources:

Ancestry Public Family Trees

FindAGrave for Leith United Church Cemetery: https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/639436/leith-united-church-cemetery

The history of Leith Church: https://leithchurch.ca/history 

In search of missing links

                                                                 Early Ontario log house

Translating the information in Alexander Mathison's letters into clues as an aid to finding records to search for the McPherson family is proving more difficult than I thought. I'm looking for the first name of Mrs. Angus Clark in an effort to connect her to her birth family. According to one of Alex's letters, she was the daughter of  Donald McPherson. I was hoping for some short cuts. The thought was that I would be able to plug in the names of Angus Clark with a spouse with the last name of McPherson and search under marriages, Ancestry would deliver the record and I'd be off the the races. That didn't work.

So, I went back to the source letters to see what Alex wrote about the elusive Mrs. Clark. In one of the first batch of letters he wrote in 1895, he wrote "Moving must have been a great task for Mrs. Clark at her advanced age." That puts a new complexion on things. I had begun my search for a younger woman, one who married after 1869 when civil registration in Ontario began. But the information in the letter shows that she was old in 1895, although old can be a relative term based on the speaker and the times they lived in.

I decided to take a different tack and start by trying to find a likely family of Clarks by searching censuses in Ontario. In the 1881 census one entry looked particularly promising. It was for Angus Clark age 70, his wife Margret age 60 and eight children ranging in age from 26 down to 17. The family was living in the district of Bruce South, sub district of Kinloss. In his letter of June 21, 1895, Alex mentions sending a letter to Mrs. Clark in Lucknow. When that letter finally got to her she told him that she hadn't lived in Lucknow for 20 years. While the years between 1881 and 1895 don't add up to that length of time, 20 strikes me as more of a good round number grabbed out of the air to denote a long time and, according to Wikipedia, Lucknow, Ontario is in the township of Huron-Kinloss.

In 1871 and 1861 what looks to be the same family with Angus Clark as the head was living in Puslinch, Wellington County which was where Alexander Mathison and his family were living in 1851. According to his letters, Alex was in Puslinch until 1855 so it's quite possible there was an overlap with the Clark family who showed up on the 1861 census for the area. That also means that the Clark family, and more particularly, Margaret Clark, were likely there when Alex returned to Puslinch in 1858 or 1859 to find his family gone.

That part looks plausible but now I have more questions. I need to find out if Margaret Clark's maiden name was McPherson. A marriage record would come in handy but where did the marriage take place? The censuses consistently record Angus Clark's birthplace as Scotland but that of Margaret Clark as a dash in 1881, O in 1871 and the name of Angus's wife in 1861 was recorded as Ms or Mr with a birthplace of P.E. Island. Was the person recorded in 1861 even the same woman? It looks like more research is needed. 

Sources:

Ancestry.ca census searches

Wikipedia post about Lucknow, Ontario https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucknow,_Ontario

Clues for Scottish research

 

                            Maybe the National Archives of Scotland have some information about the Mathison family

As clues the family related statements in Alexander Mathison's letters leave a lot to be desired. The statements are vague and assume reader knowledge. That's knowledge that may be hard to come by at this late remove from events, but I'm determined to see if the information he wrote down will take me further back in my family history search.

I'm particularly interested in the maternal side for Alex. I know that his mother was Ann Ross but that's where I'm stalled. Ann Ross is the furthest back that I can get my matrilineal line, the one that mitochondrial DNA comes from. I'd like to be able to push this line further back. It's a search complicated by the fact that women's names were often hidden behind those of their husbands, although that was not as much of a problem in Scotland. Skye records also seem to be less readily available but maybe I need to look beyond the regular sites such as Ancestry and FamilySearch. Now though further research will come later after compiling the letters' clues.

Alex credited one person for connecting him to his sister, Margaret, who he tracked down after 40 years. That person he called Mrs. Clark, only giving her the first name of Mrs. Angus Clark. A Sarah A Clark also merited a mention but closer scrutiny confirmed her not to the Mrs. Clark I'm looking for but a relative. Intriguingly Alex stated at one point: "Mr. McPherson was Mrs. Clark of Owen Sound's father. She is our second cousin." So it looks like researching Mrs. Clark's line would actually be widening my own family line.

The letter holds further clues in that Alex stated that Donald McPherson, who he named as Mrs. Clark's father, came to Canada a year or two after the Mathison family. I presume that this refers to their migration from Prince Edward Island rather than the longer voyage across the ocean from Scotland. The McPherson name also echoes a clue I found earlier.

On a visit to Ottawa years ago, research in the National Archives of Canada yielded information from the Thomson family papers. Included were interviews done in the 1930s with Tom Thomson's sisters. Among the family reminisces from one of the sisters, Minnie Henry, she dropped the information that her grandfather Matheson's mother was a McPherson and her father, a Dr. Wm Ross. My notes have a question mark after the Dr. so that may not have been clear.

Minnie herself, merits a mention in some of Alex Mathison's letters as she was his niece and one of his correspondents once contact had been re-established with his family. Her interview adds to the family story I'm attempting to piece together from his letters. It's information that will strengthen the basis of this family story. It's also confirmation that I'm on the right track as I commence research into the McPhersons as a way to take the line of Ann Ross, my 2 x great grandmother, back further. 

Sources:

Letters of Alexander Matheson, 1895 – 1920, personal family papers

National Archives of Canada – Tom Thomson papers