Author Archives: Eryne Donahue

About Eryne Donahue

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Eryne Donahue is an Artist, Communications professional and outdoors lover living in New Westminster, BC (Canada). She divides her time between a dizzying number of interests including art-making, community engagement projects and sharing her love for BC flora and fauna.
July 12, 2011

What About All Those Other Lavoys?…Mary Jane Hogg

By Eryne Donahue

I’ve taken a hiatus from my research for a few weeks to enjoy the summer sun that has just arrived in Vancouver, and to contribute to another one of my blogs. Today I realize that I have much work ahead of me if I am to complete the small task of writing the story of each of Achan & Mary Ann’s children. My focus for this chapter in the Leavoy story is Mary Jane Hogg.

According to several Canadian census records, Mary Jane was born in the year 1848, in Pontiac, Quebec along the Ottawa River where her family had first lived and logged. A date has been produced by other family members for her birth (8 May) although none of my records verify these particulars. I will need descendants to provide a source for this information before I stand behind it.

On the 10th of March in 1870, a Methodist wedding was held by Peter H. Lindsay in Arnprior for the 21 year old Mary Jane and her suitor. William Hogg (29), a Millwright from Nepean, son of James Hogg and Ann Jane Hobbs married the daughter of “Etienne Lavoy” (note the spelling) and Mary Ann Mackie. The wedding was witnessed by William H. Cone (Mary Jane’s brother-in-law, married to her elder sister Nancy) who was living in McNab township at the time.

One year after her marriage to William, Mary Jane Hogg was documented on the 1871 Canadian census. She and her husband are living with her parents and siblings. They have had their first child, a daughter named for her grandmother, Mary Ann Hogg, who at the time was only 2 months old. This means that she was conceived not long before the wedding (and possibly this spurred the marriage). What interests me about this census document is the fact that her parents are listed as illiterate, while Mary Jane and William are able to read and write. Also notable on this record is that Mary Jane’s elder sister Nancy Cone and her family live next door. This was likely a tightly knit and financially interdependent family group.

Within the following decade the Hogg family moved into a home of their own in the “unorganized territory” of North Renfrew (meaning that it had not yet been divided into townships), which they would have purchased on a Millwright’s salary. By this time William (40) and Mary Jane (33) were supporting 3 children: Mary Ann (now 12),  William Jr. (8), and Louisa (3). I am still trying to define what type of Millwright William was: I know later from his death certificate (read on further for this) that he operated a mill himself. Along the Madawaska River there were many mills where entire towns were built around them. For example, Arnprior proper was originally centered on the shop, grist mill and saw mill, in the early 1830s. By the 1870s, Arnprior had become one of the largest shipping points of lumber in Eastern Ontario (pg.6, Town of Arnprior Downtown Heritage Conservation District Study). There are still examples of some of these old mills in existence, such as the McDougall Mill Museum which I visited with my classmates as a child.

Despite the family’s apparent relative prosperity, it was not to last. Mary Jane Hogg, a 32 year old woman, died giving birth to their 4th child, Mary, in the following year.  The informant of her death was Mrs. A. Lavoy, who might have likely been Agnes Lavoy (my great x 2 grandmother, married to Mary Jane’s brother Peter). Sadly, despite the successful live birth of the baby girl on February 1st, 1882, she died 5 days later as a premature infant.

And so, the Hogg family of four was left without a wife/mother and feeling the loss and emptiness that came with the death of an infant. It would have been a devastating blow, as the children were all quite young. After Mary Jane’s death, the family moved on in separate directions.

I’ve been unable to successfully track her widower William Hogg through the 1891 census, although he may have been living with a brother in Lanark county (this needs verification). He eventually moved to North Bay as his children also did. He died on March 30, 1898 in Nipissing District from congestion of the lung. The record of his death confirms that he was born in Nepean, Ontario and that he was a mill owner.

On the 28th of January, 1891 the first child, Rachel Hogg (who then claimed to be 21), married a 28-year-old locomotive engineer and widower called Charles Edward Stewart. Born in Brockville, he would have moved out to North Bay  as the Leavoys and Hoggs had done for work. They stayed in North Bay as long as work was available, but moved westward with the family they raised. By 1901, Rachel (29) and Charles Stewart (40) were living in Brandon, Manitoba neighbouring a John Lavoy (39, Hotel Manager) and his family. This was likely a cousin to Rachel, although I have yet to place him. They had a family of three children: Charles Jr. (17) and Florence (16) from Charles’ first marriage and William (7) born to Rachel and named for his grandfather. Eventually Rachel ended up out in Hanna, Alberta where she died at age 58 on September 2, 1929.

The older children, William Hogg Jr. and Louisa also moved to Nipissing as their sister and father had done. The brother (27) and sister (21) can be found living together in the 1901 census, surviving on William’s $900/year salary as a lumberman. The fact that the two stayed together is somewhat reassuring as it seems that the family may have dissolved somewhat with the death of their mother some two decades prior. By this time their father, the mill owner, had passed away too, and their older sister was now married and in Manitoba. This is the last I have found on the siblings, and would love to know what became of them.

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June 12, 2011

Time travelling with the help of a caulking iron

By Eryne Donahue

There are many descendants of the man called Achan Lavoy. They may know him as Ecan or Aken or Edward or Etienne, but regardless of the spelling, most individuals seem to be aware of his mythic appearance in Canada from France. I have written of his work as a cook for the lumber camps during the winter months, but one thing I have not written much of is his life in the boat building industry. A valuable skill during the 1800s in a region that was heavily logged, this was also passed down to his son, my ancestor, Peter Leavoy.

Descendant, Lanney Lavoy has kindly contacted me regarding this aspect of Achan’s life. He has been fortunate enough to inherit some relics through the generations: objects that allow us the opportunity to time travel and imagine the life of our ancestor in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Lanney seems to have grown up in the seat of some prime Leavoy territory, Carlow Ontario.  William Lavoy and James E. Lavoy, sons of Achan, and their families lived in Carlow and were buried in the cemetery there. This descendant first tipped me off to his own family’s immediate connection to Achan with an exciting comment:

“My grand father, Edward Andrew (Ned), grandson of Achan, told me Jim Mackey (Achan’s father in-law) was a ships carpenter. I have a caulking iron that came down through the family [and] there was also a ship builders adze but the where abouts are unknown at this time. […]The history of that area at that time was very interesting and ship builders and carpenters would have been a much needed trade.”

With Lanney‘s permission, I have decided to post photographs (left) of the one relic he was able to find and document. These images are of the caulking iron: an object whose worn texture can transport us to a time 300 years ago. Achan Lavoy was in possession of this tool and it quite possibly even came from his father-in-law, Jim Mackey. Achan and/or Jim would have used this 12 inch long iron with a mallet to drive tarred rope into the joints between wooden planks on a boat. The hammer marks that are clearly visible on the tool suggest that it was hand forged. These images, however small, give us all an opportunity to imagine an era and a lifestyle that we are only a few generations removed from today.

Thank you to Lanney Lavoy for sharing these photographs.

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June 2, 2011

What about all those other Leavoys?….Harriet Kerr

By Eryne Donahue

Harriet Lavoy, or Hariot as her name is often recorded in census documents, is a difficult woman to trace. As such, this record of her life will be somewhat incomplete. I urge any descendants of this woman to reach out and fill in the gaps where they can.

The third child of Achan Lavoy and Mary Ann Mackay, Harriet was born on the 28th of January 1846 in Onslow, Quebec. Onslow (or The Quio as it was often called at the time) was a small settlement:  it was not yet established as a municipality, did nt yet have a local church built, but was simply where the lumbermen of the region would come to buy food. Some of the land had been bought up, logged, and farmed with potatoes, oats and cattle by 1840.

Ten years prior to Harriet’s birth, the Chats fur trading post off of Lac des Chats, which was central to the region, closed down. The Indians whose hunting grounds were located around Onslow were displaced from the area, and it went from a region of fur trade to shipping and lumbering of White Pine. Two saw mills on Pontiac Bay, just upstream, made the area an ideal location for lumbermen to work, as her father Achan would have done. Pontiac Village became the first real settlement to grow up in the area, and this, or the nearby Eganville, is likely where the family lived. The growth of this settlement was largely due to the traffic on the Quio and Ottawa rivers that had increased when a 3 mile long horse drawn portage train was built beteen Pontiac Bay and Lac des Chats. (This information comes from the Onslow and Quyon History)

An early survey map of Onslow, made the year prior to Harriet's birth.

I haven’t yet found the Lavoy family documented until 1871, long after Harriet left home and married. With research done by family historian, Robin Murphy, and from descriptions in The Wilfred Ronald Leavoy Autobiography by Garnet Leavoy, I can imagine how her childhood may have been. She would have stayed in the Onslow area of Quebec until roughly age 16, when her father moved the family across the Ottawa River to follow the logging into the Sand Point area around Arnprior. Her father would been gone for 5-6 months a year with his crew out in the snowy forests as the camp chef. Her mother would have been left to tend the children on her own. The Lavoy children were purported to be some of the first white children born in the Pontiac area, and it would have been a rough and lonesome space for children.

When she was 19 years old, Harriet met and married a 27-year-old farmer named James Kerr. On the 10th of April, 1865, the couple said their vows somewhere in Pontiac. Historical records show two possible locations for their marriage in Pontiac: St John the Evangelist church, which was built in 1855, or the Onslow Mission (Methodist), built in 1859.

My first record of the new Kerr family is in the 1871 census, placing them in the community of Ross in North Renfrew. The other Lavoy family members also resided in Renfrew at the time, so James (32) and Harriet (24) may have followed her family in that direction. Having been married for about 6 years, the couple had three sons: John William who was born within a year of their wedding and was now 5, Andrew who was 3, and baby James Jr. The family farmed and belonged to the Church of Scotland.

The family stayed in Ross for the following 20 years where they continued to farm. I have located them on the census of 1881, which is badly faded and nearly illegible. Despite this, it clearly shows that the family has hardly changed in its dynamics: it has merely aged. James (40), “Hariot” (31) and their 3 sons: William John (15) who works with his dad on the farm, Andrew (13) and James Jr. (11) all still live in the same location ad attend the same church. It looks as though James and Harriet had no more than their 3 children, quite a change from the Lavoy generation before.

In the census of 1891, the household has enlarged with the addition of the eldest son, William‘s new Scottish-born wife Jennie into the home. They had a Presbyterian marriage in Renfrew on April 10, 1899 witnessed by both sets of parents. There is also a young lodger who may have helped on the Kerr farm or paid rent to the family. Other interesting details on the census include the  birthplaces of James (53) and Harriet (39). He is listed as being born in Scotland, whereas previous documents point to Ontario. She is listed as an Ontarian by birth as opposed to Quebecois. The other sons are now adults and also likely helping their father in his labour.

The following years brought dramatic change in the life of the Kerr family. The two other sons were married in the summer of 1892. On the 20th of July, Andrew, the 2nd son, was married to Harriett Ellen Thomson in Horton, outside of Arnprior. Their marriage was witnessed by James Kerr Jr. and Harriett’s sister Sarah. Then, only a few weeks later, on August 10th, the youngest son James Jr. married Jennie Frood in Horton. Sadly, the growing family was hit hard on October 15, 1894, when Jennie McConnell who was only 24, died of consumption, leaving William a young widower only 5 years after his marriage.

William met another woman and did remarry: Charlotte Wilson, a woman 13 years younger than he and from Bagot, became his bride on the 23rd of March 1904.  The three sons and their wives all followed in their father’s path, continuing to farm the land in the Arnprior area.

Thank you to Deb Lavoy for answering my questions about William.

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May 26, 2011

What About All Those Other Leavoys?…Hannah Taylor

By Eryne Donahue

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.

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May 25, 2011

What About All Those Other Leavoys?…Nancy Cone

By Eryne Donahue

Today, much to my excitement, I noticed two different references to this website on both rootsweb and ancestry.com regarding the Leavoy family. This made me realize that I don’t yet have many postings on the other descendants of Achan Lavoy. I am determined to gather up and tell their stories, but will need the help of other descendants…this is where YOU, yes YOU reading this, decide to drop me a message!

I make note on my page about Achan and Mary Ann that they had six daughters and three sons: Nancy Cone/McGoon, Harriet Kerr, Hanna Taylor, Peter Levoy, Charlotte Parker, Mary Jane Hogg, William Leavoy, Etta Walker, James Edward Lavoy, and Amey Emma Brown. There are so many other Leavoy lines here that have yet to have been described. In this post I have decided to begin the long-winded story of the extended Leavoy family with the first of the children. Below is the beginning of a series of posts on the stories of all those other Leavoys.

The first child in the family was a daughter, Nancy Lavoy. According to census records, she was born on May 1, 1842, likely in McNab township (Arnprior, ON) where her parents were living and where her father farmed. At the time of Nancy’s birth, Arnprior was small and largely deserted. This is because the Scotsman who founded the town, Archibald McNab, lost his settlement rights in 1840. It wasn’t for another 10 years that development really progressed, and this is when large scale lumber operations on the Madawaska fueled the local economy. This means that while the Lavoy family was living hand-to-mouth early on, it was partly a matter of circumstance, based on where they lived. Nancy’s childhood would have been simple at best, and bleak at its worst.

Nancy appears to have been married twice. With the confirmation of Deb Lavoy (see comment below) through email correspondence, I’ve been assured that originally Nancy married to a John McGoon. This first marriage needs documents to fully confirm it, however there are several clues as to when she might have first married. As Deb has pointed out, in the 1871 census (the first that I’ve been able to Locate Nancy and her family in) there is a 5 year difference between the last two children, Hannah (9) and William (4). The eldest child would have been born in 1858, which means that Nancy’s first marriage would have been sometime around that year.  This means that Nancy would have married and had her first child at the tender age of 16.  She would have also been widowed as a 21-year-old. More research is needed on this short lived relationship to verify dates and parentage of Nancy’s first 3 children.

At age 23, Nancy married another American man named William Henry Cone. He was about 10 years her senior, born July 3 1832, and had moved up to Canada in 1839. It wasn’t until 1850 that he became a naturalized citizen of Canada, however, and he had been living and working with his younger brother David in Dalton, Michigan as a lumberman.

It was likely the development of the lumber industry in Arnprior that brought William Henry into town and into the life of Nancy Lavoy. While I have not found their official marriage record, I have traced the couple and their family throughout the 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901 Canadian censuses, observing their story over four decades.

In 1871, William Henry (who went by the name “Henry” at the time), a mature man of 39, worked as a carpenter in McNab township. He and Nancy, lived next door to her parents Achan and Mary Ann and six of her younger siblings. Eventhough Nancy was only 29, the couple already had a family of four children: Annie (13), John Alfred (11), Hannah Olive (9) and William Henry Jr. (4). The ages of these children reveal Nancy’s previous marriage left her with 3 children. Some of Nancy’s siblings who lived next door would have been around the same age as Annie, Alfred, and Hannah Olive Cone, and they likely played together.

By 1881, all but one of Nancy‘s siblings (the exception is the youngest, Amey) had moved out of her parent’s home two doors down, and her own family had burgeoned to 10 people. Four more children were added to the mix: David Saunders (8), Charlotte “Lottie” Grace (5), Harriet Louisa (2) and baby Frederick (10 months). Annie Cone, who would be 23 years old, no longer lived at home. The eldest, Alfred (20), helped out with the cost of living by working as a labourer, possibly alongside his grandfather Achan.

Elgin St., Arnprior 1900.

In the census of 1891, the family is now aged: William Henry is 58 and Nancy is 48. They are living with David Saunders (17) who works as an electrician, Lottie (Charlotte) who is now 15, Louisa (12) and Frederick C., who is 10 years old. The other older children have moved on, as have their grandparents: Alfred married a woman called Emilie Coram, and they and their family settled in Renfrew where he continued to work as an electrician. William Henry Jr. had married a woman called Mabel Louise Thompson from St. Catherines, they had already had 3 sons and were now living in Toronto. Sadly, this year William and Nancy’s daughter Hannah Olive Young died on August 11 of some form of illness. Her husband Alex Young, a blacksmith, reported and signed off on her death.

CPR Locomotive, North bay 1900

The last census where I find the Cone family in is that of 1901, where they have moved to Nipissing, North Bay as many other Lavoy family members did. The mining industry overtook the boom of forestry, and the Cone family had a second wind with the introduction of their grandchildren, the Young family, into the home. William Henry, by this time was a senior (68), but still worked as a pumper for Cor W Works (an Iron Works company), earning $640 per year. He and Nancy lived with their son Frederick who was now 20 years old and a machinist by trade. He brought home an additional $600 per year, which would have been helpful in feeding, clothing and schooling grandchildren Frederick (14) , Garnet A. (12) and Lottie Young (9). Also living in Nipissing were two daughters who followed with their new families whom they’d both married 5 years prior:  Charlotte “Lottie”, and Louisa.  Charlotte’s husband George Campbell, worked as a machinist, like his brother-in-law Frederick, to support his wife and three year old daughter. Louisa’s husband, Walter Evans, was a conductor for CN Railways and they lived with their son Milton.

William Henry Cone died at age 77 on March 27, 1908 of dementia. Nancy would have helped to care for him during his 3 month illness. I have found evidence that she lived with her daughter Charlotte and her family in Winnipeg where they moved with George Campbell’s work. Incidentally, Louisa and Walter Evans also lived in Manitoba at the time, so it appears that the family tried where they could to stick together. Frederick Cone stayed in Nipissing and his mother Nancy finally rejoined him sometime before her death in 1918. He married a woman called Norah James 8 years later.

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