Continuing my determination to gather up and tell the stories of all of Achan Lavoy and Mary Ann Mackay’s children, here is my second installment in a series of posts on the stories of all those other Leavoys.
Hannah Lavoy was the second child born to Achan and Mary Ann. Census records date her birth as June 20, 1844, somewhere in the province of Quebec. Hannah would have lived in the Renfrew-Arnprior region of Ontario in the early years of her life, while her father farmed for half of the year and laboured with the lumber camps in the winter months.
Sometime around 1860, she met and married Enoch Taylor, an immigrant from England. He arrived in Canada in 1849 when he was a boy of 9 years old, so one can imagine that he was well settled as a Canadian citizen when they met. Their first child whom I have record of from Canadian censuses, Rachel Taylor, was born in 1862 in Quebec. Therefore, my assumption of the marriage date wouldn’t be that far off.
Hannah and Enoch settled in West Toronto sometime before the census of 1871. They resided in St. Patrick’s Ward, where Enoch (sometimes listed as “Amos”) worked as a painter. This career would have barely fed and housed himself and Hannah, their 7-year-old daughter Rachel, and their 6-month-old baby William. Looking at the neighbouring families on the census, there is a sense that the diversity of St. Patrick’s Ward at the time would have made for the company of many others trying to get by as actors and shoemakers and labourers.
In the 1881 census, the family still resides in Toronto West (St. Patrick’s Ward), surviving on “Enos“‘s earnings as a painter. They now have another child for Hannah to care for, Frederick, who is 4 years old. Rachel, 18, is probably helping her mother care for Frederick and William E. who is 10 and is attending school. One year later, Rachel moved out and married a man named Albert Edward Moore, a scale maker from Kingston, and they moved into their own home in town to have a family.
After another 10 years went by, I found that the Taylor family stayed in St. Patrick’s Ward, making it an official home (they’d now been there for more than 20 years). It isn’t known to me whether or not they kept in touch regularly with the Lavoy side of the family. Looking at the 1891 Canadian census reveals that Hannah‘s husband, “Enos” likely had some difficulty paying all of the bills as a housepainter. They allowed a lodger into their home, who would have helped out and paid some rent to the family. A gentleman of 56, I wonder whether he would have had enough of an income to pay the Taylor family his dues, but this is simply speculation. As Rachel and William had grown up and moved out of the home, the extra body wouldn’t have taken too much additional space. Frederick Charles was now a growing adolescent of 14 years and another daughter, Lena A. (4 years old) would have been a growing handful.
In the 1901 census, Enos (62) and Hannah (57) are middle-aged. While Enos continues to work, they have settled on the additional income of a lodger and now have a 58-year-old woman from India living with them. Frederick has moved out on his own and married to a woman called Anna Smiley in 1899, and the couple is left with their youngest, Lena who is 14. The beauty of this census record is that it gives dates of birth for each of these individuals. Lena married three years later to a clerk named Wallace Goodfellow.
The last census record available for this family is from 1911. Here the address of their dwelling is given: 71 Vanauley, now the site of a tavern and live performance venue in a lovely tree-lined square. Enos (70) and Hannah (66) are living again with Lena Alberta (21),whose husband recently died. They had only been married for one year before Typhoid killed him at such a young age. Now all three of the Taylors are living together, unemployed. There is no lodger in the home, and they must have found it difficult to survive at their age.
Enos died 2 years later on June 25, 1913 while they still lived at that address. He was 75 years old and appears to have simply passed from his long years of labour. Hannah lived for many more years, until the age of 89. On January 14, 1934, she died of stomach cancer which she had been treated for by her physician for about a year. Her death record shows that she had been living with her son Frederick at his home for 16 years after the death of her husband, at 764 Shaw st. and he was the informant of her death. She is buried at St. James Cemetery.
Oh What a Tree 