Ellen Wilson

Ellen Wilson is another of my brick walls. She is one of my second great grandmothers. She was born in Ireland and immigrated to Canada as a young girl. What I know about her was hand written on the top of a typed pedigree chart. This was part of my father’s collection of family stuff. It said that Ellen came to Canada at the age of 12. She was from Enniskillen, County Fermanagh. The trip took 6 weeks. When they arrived in Canada, they settled on Concession VII, lot 5 in Edwardsburg.

I have accumulated several documents from Canada that relate to Ellen. The first was a copy of the marriage record. Eleanor Wilson and Daniel Baldwin were married on the 3rd day of January 1833 in Mountain after the publishing of banns. Witnesses were Samuel Gainsey and James Nettleton. Signed by Ezra Healy, minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The couple settled on Concession IV, Lot 18 in Mountain Township, Dundas County, Upper Canada (Ontario was not in existence yet) and started a family. Ellen was a farmer’s wife and I am sure worked hard all day long.

She was enumerated with her family in the Canadian censuses in 1851, 1861, 1871 and 1881. By 1881, farming duties had been assumed by their youngest son, William, my great grandfather, and Daniel and Ellen were able to enjoy their grandchildren. Ellen died on 16 February 1891 at age 83. Her death was duly registered by her daughter, Sarah Van Camp. She was buried with her husband and a beautiful tombstone was erected by the family. The information on the tombstone agrees with the information on her death certificate.

From the information I have, I calculate she was born about 1808 and she came to Canada about 1820. This was a time that the waves of immigrants were just beginning. The Napoleonic Wars ended in June 1815 and a period of economic hardship followed. The market for grain collapsed because there were no more large armies to feed. At the same time, blights hit the Irish crops several years in a row so yields were down significantly. The ads for cheap land in Canada must have been appealing. All it took was the price of a ticket on a sailing vessel and you could be off to your new life.

The fact that we have a township, concession and lot number where Ellen and her family settled makes looking up land records very easy. Edwardsburg Township in Grenville County was one of the first ones surveyed and settled by soldiers in Jessup’s Corps after the American Revolution. So there should be records in Grenville County, now Leeds and Grenville County, dating back to the original crown land grant. I decided to see if I could determine if Wilsons lived on this lot in the mid 19th century. McGill University has digitized old county maps that have the landholder’s name printed on them. You can access their database at http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/countyatlas/. The 1861 atlas for Grenville County showed an N. Wilson on lot 5, concession VII. I went to the Canadian census for 1861 and located a record for Newburk Wilson living in Edwardsburg with a wife and seven children. Wow! Could this be Ellen’s brother, or cousin?

I ordered the film for Grenville County land records indexed by concession and lot from the Family History Library. I was disappointed to find that the first entry for anyone named Wilson occurred in 1910 when Newbuck Wilson’s son John Wilson, granted land to his son Royal Wilson. So by 1910 John Wilson owned at least the East one half of the East one half of Lot 5 (about 50 acres) if he was able to transfer it. How did he become the owner? There are no transactions listed any earlier. This is not too unusual since in the nineteenth century no one considered it important to register a sale until they themselves were going to sell it. Often you will find a sale registered in say 1851 but the date on the document was 1820. I tried to find the film where Book U transactions were filmed so I could look at the actual document but I could not find any film entry listing Book U. So that’s where I stand. Sometimes genealogy can be very frustrating. Sigh!