Maria Winegard, Smashing a Brick Wall

     Most of us have lots of female ancestors without maiden names. That is one thing I like about researching my Dutch and Flemish ancestors - the woman keeps her maiden name for life. I think we should all do that. Imagine how much easier it would be on all us genealogists if we didn’t have to scramble to find a woman’s maiden name and birth family. 

     I had one such female ancestor, Charity Winegard. Charity married Reuben Van Camp about 1854. Since this family was Methodist, outside the official church, the Church of England, they were probably married by the Methodist minister in South Mountain, Ontario. He would have reported the marriage to the Eastern District office and it would have been copied into the marriage register.(On my to-do list!) The Winegard family was enumerated in the 1851 Census of Canada in Mountain Township, Dundas, Upper Canada. The family consisted of the following:

         

          John Winegard, carpenter, age 50, born in

            United States, Episcopal Methodist

          Mariah, age 44, born Canada

          Charity, age 18, born Canada

          Abraham, age 17, carpenter, born Canada

          Amy, age 15, born Canada

          Polly, age 13, born Canada

          Mary J., age 11, born Canada

          Mathias, age 7, born Canada

          Isaac, age 4, born Canada

     I got a hint on one of the message boards that Mariah was a Barkley (or Barclay). So I went to the Web and looked at family trees to see if I could find a Maria Barkley married to a John Winegard. Bingo, a plethora of family trees showing a family for Maria. According to the consensus, Maria (or Anna Maria) was the daughter of Mathias Barkley and Margaret Cook (or Kock). This sounds good. Maria named one of her sons Mathias. I was able to find an 1830 US Census return for John Winegard living in Westerlo, Albany, New York. In this household were 1 male under 5, 1 male 30-39, 1 female under 5, 1 female 20-29. So it looks like there were at least 2 children older than Charity.

     This opened up the whole Barkley clan. Matthias’ father was Heinrich Adam Barkley, born in Baden-Wuerttenberg, Germany. His father was Eberhard Buercklin. Eberhard came to Philadelphis in the 1750’s with his wife and 6 sons, He moved to the Rensselaer plantation in the Albany, New York area and farmed there until his death on 1788. His wife died in 1797. Three more sons were born in New York. According to some reports, all but one of these sons were Loyalists and fought with the British. One son, Michael, served in the New York militia and received a pension from the US government in the 1830’s. I know that Andrew, Christian, Everhart and Peter Barkley all received land in Canada for their service from the British government.  After the end of the war, all sons went back to Albany and were enumerated in the 1790 census. I think they went back to support their parents and did not permanently move to Canada until after 1800.

     Heinrich (or Henry) died in Albany about 1800. Two of his sons moved to Canada but did not apply for any land as a child of a Loyalist so I am not sure if Henry served in a Loyalist regiment or not. (More things on my to-do list.) Mathias and his wife, Margaret, had 13 children. The first 3, Jacob, Johan and Anna Maria (my direct ancestress) were born in the United States and the rest in Canada. So this family moved sometime between December 1808 and January 1811. The Winegard family followed them but not until after April 1841. All of the Winegard children from Charity through Mary, stated many times that they were born in the United States and specified New York on various US Censuses.

     John Winegard died in 1858 and I was lucky enough to find that his wife remarried in 1860. There was an index only record of the marriage on Ancestry. I believe it can be found in Eastern District Marriage Registers since in the 1861 Census of Canada, Maria and her new husband, William Taylor, state that they belong to the Church of Scotland. In this record, Maria says she was born in the United States and that her parents are Matthew and Margaret Barkley. I think I have some good evidence that I am climbing the right family tree.