More
in the Moving series! Most of us family historians are basically after trying
to learn, understand and explain how we got here ourselves. Among the questions
we look for answers to are:
·
Who were our ancestors?
·
What were their lives like?
·
Where did they live?
·
When did some of them move closer to where
we were born?
·
Why did they pack up and move?
·
How did all of the lines finally come
together to produce us as individuals?
In
posts I published last summer about Moving, I showed how and when some of my
direct ancestors (the McDaniels,
the Keiths
and the
Mayfields) moved to and across the US.
In
another post about Old
Homes and Homesteads in 2014, I described when my great-grandparents,
Newton Isaac and Margaret Mary (Anderson) Thompson, ended up in Alberta. Both
had been born in Ontario or Upper Canada as it was known then. Both had immigrated
to North Dakota, the Thompsons in 1879 and the Andersons in 1880.
This
piece is about the Anderson family first coming to Canada and the US. In future
posts I will describe the routes taken by other ancestors and then try to bring
them all together to show how my roots go back, at least in North America. Maps
are a great way to show where the ancestors lived and how they moved about. A
couple more are attached here.
Robert and Susan Anderson, my 2X great-grandparents, with my great-grandmother,
Margaret Mary, and other of her siblings, settled in Eldred Township, Cass
County. My great-grandfather, Newton Isaac Thompson had also moved to Cass
County with some members of his family. No doubt Newton and Margaret met, as
farming couples often do, at a social event, possibly in the town of Mapleton.
It was there where they were married in 1884.
Further
back in time, Robert Anderson’s parents, Gilbert and Margaret (Maitland)
Anderson, had come
to Canada around 1832, settling near Hopetown, in Lanark County, Ontario.
Seven children of their 13 were born there although two died as infants. By
1851 the family had moved west to Stanley Township in Huron County. Both died
there: Gilbert in 1871; and Margaret in 1886. Several of their children
remained in Huron County after my 2X great-grandfather, Robert had moved to the
US.
Robert
met and married his wife, Susan Phillipo in Brantford, Ontario in 1854. The
John and Mary (Manson) Phillipo family had come to the area from England around
1836, just after Susan’s birth. Susan and another brother and sister had been
born in England; four younger children were all born in Brantford between 1855
and 1873. I am still trying to track down this line in England. Their story
about coming to Canada is worth researching more.
All
eleven children of Robert and Susan were born in Huron County between 1855 and
1873. My great-grandmother, Margaret Mary Anderson, was born in Goderich in
1857. Robert and Susan and their children, except for one married daughter, moved
to the US in 1880. That daughter came in 1889 with her family.
It
is possible that the family travelled to North Dakota by railroad, connecting
through Detroit, Michigan and Chicago, Illinois, and across Wisconsin and
Minnesota, possibly with the Duluth & Winnipeg Railroad although we cannot
be sure as we have uncovered no documents to that effect. Rail lines had started
to be built into North Dakota in 1871 opening up large tracts of land for
farmers. Details about the development of the region can be read on the
webpages, North
Dakota Studies. The “Great
Dakota Boom” took place between 1878 and 1890 when the population of the
region increased from around 16,000 to over 191,000. The Andersons were part of
that story.
It
was not long after the Andersons settled in Dakota Territory that my
great-grandparents met and married and began their family there. More to come
on them again later!
Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four
parishes in Devon, England. He has published a
number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is the Editor of Relatively
Speaking, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Genealogical Society.
Wayne also provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated.
