Ancestor # 66

Mehitable McKay (1735-1801)

Mehitable McKay (McCoy) was born in western Massachusetts or Connecticut about 1735. She was the daughter of Elkenny and Abigail (Rood) MacKay. She married Samuel Buck, as his second wife, on 1 July 1762[i] in New Milford, Fairfield, Connecticut and died before 25 July 1801 in Grenville County, Ontario, Canada.

Mehitable is one of the many strong women who came before me. Samuel and Mehitable originally settled in New Milford but sometime before 1775, they moved to Arlington, Bennington, Vermont. Here Samuel bought a town lot and established his blacksmith business.

When the American Revolution started, Samuel joined Jessup’s Rangers and fought for the British. He left his wife and children in Vermont to deal with the Committee of Correspondence. On 23 April 1778[ii], Vermont officially confiscated their property. At this time the household consisted of Mehitable, her stepdaughters, Eunice, Molly and Phebe, and her children Sally, age 11, Daniel Dayton, 9, Mary, 8, Daniel Anson, 7, Stephen, 5, and Samuel, 3. After confiscating their property and evicting the family, Vermont hired a driver to drive them to the British lines. Before the Bucks left their home, daughter Molly died on 20 May 1778[iii] and is buried in Arlington. Phebe decided to stay in Vermont and marry her second cousin, Lemuel Buck. Lemuel joined the American forces and had a distinguished military career before settling down to farm. Eunice went to Canada with the family.

They were refugees in Canada without many of their belongings. What could they have taken with them on that wagon that took them to the British lines - probably not much, clothes and a few cooking supplies and eating utensils. Everything else would have remained in Vermont. Perhaps Phoebe was able to take the furniture and household items with her into her marriage. We do not know where this family went after reaching the British lines or how they managed but by 1781 they were in the Montreal area.

Samuel received a small plot of land along the river in Sorel, Quebec[iv] while the British Government made plans to settle all the Loyalists flooding into Canada. Samuel was placed on the list of Loyalists and removed, reinstated in 1791, only to be removed again as his wife and children discovered when they made application for a land grant. Mehitable, on 3 July 1798[v], again requested her husband be reinstated on the Loyalist list. After this was done, she applied for a 200-acre land grant on 16 October 1798[vi] as the widow of a United Emperor Loyalist soldier. She died sometime between this application and 21 July 1801[vii] when her daughter Mary applied for a land grant and stated that both of her parents were deceased.

I have DNA matches where the most recent common ancestral couple is Samuel Buck and Mehitable McKay. All three of these matches are through son Daniel Anson Buck’s eldest daughter Marie Louise who married Jean Potvin. I have matches through 3 of her descendants, one of which is a single segment of 56 cMs. My relationship to these matches is either 5^th cousin once removed or 5^th cousin twice removed. Since these are all Ancestry.com matches, I am unable to tell which chromosomes are involved.

Children of Samuel and Mehitable McKay Buck:

i.                     Sarah “Sally” Buck, b. 25 Oct. 1767 in New Milford, d. after 1861 in Mountain, Dundas, Ontario, Canada, m. John Faddle (or Farrell) on 28 Sep. 1788 in Sorel, Quebec.

ii.                   Daniel Dayton Buck, b. 31 Aug 1769 in New Milford, d. unm. in Sorel, Quebec and was buried at Christ Church (Anglican) on 12 Nov. 1791. The parish register lists cause of death as consumption.

iii.                 Mary Buck, b. abt. 1770 in, d. 1839 in Ontario, m. Andrew Liddle (or Liddell) in 1801 in Elizabethtown, Ontario.

iv.                 Daniel Anson Buck, b. abt. 1771, d. 8 May 1814 in Sorel, m. Louise Fortier, in Sorel on 11 Dec 1797.

v.                   Stephen Walker Buck, b. abt. 1773, d. aft 1823 in Canada, m. 11 Aug. 1823 in Sorel, Brigette Antaillon.

vi.                 Samuel Miles Buck, b. 1774 in Massachusetts, d. 1856 in Edwardsburg, Grenville, Ontario, m. (1) abt. 1800, Mehitabelle (?) and (2) Fanny (?).

vii.               Asenath Buck, b. bet 1778 and 1784 in Sorel, bap. 28 Jan 1789 in Sorel, d. abt. 1825 in Matilda, Dundas, Ontario, m. abt. 1803, John Baldwin, b. in Mansfield, Conn. in 1774, d. 26 Sept. 1846 in Mountain, Dundas, Ontario, son of Joseph and Elizabeth (Porter) Baldwin.

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[i] “Connecticut Town Records, pre-1870 (Barbour Collection)”, Buck-McKay marriage, 1762; digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 3 May 2016).

[ii] Mary Greene Nye, editor, State Papers of Vermont, Volume Six: Sequestration, Confiscation and Sale of Estates, (1941.), p. 16.

[iii] “Vermont, Vital Records, 1720-1908”, digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com: accessed 3 May 2016), death of Molly Buck, 20 May 1778.

[iv] Norman K. Crowder, “Early Ontario Settlers”, (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1993), p.95.

[v] “Land petitions of Upper Canada, 1763-1865” database and digital images, Library and Archives Canada (http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca : accessed 6 April 2016), Mehitable Buck, 1798, Vol. 31, Bundle B4, Petition 13, microfilm C-1620; RG 1 L 3.

[vi] “Land petitions of Upper Canada, 1763-1865” database and digital images, Library and Archives Canada (http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca : accessed 6 April 2016), Mehitable Buck, 1798, Vol. 31, Bundle B4, Petition 30, microfilm C-1620.; RG 1 L 3.

[vii] “Land petitions of Upper Canada, 1763-1865” database and digital images, Library and Archives Canada (http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca : accessed 6 April 2016), Mary Liddel, 1807, Vol 285A, Bundle L8, Petitons 25 and 50, microfilm C-2125 and C-2126; RG 1 L 3.