Tag Archives: History

December 1, 2011

What about all those other Leavoys?…a look at Henrietta Webber

By Eryne Donahue

Henrietta Lavoy, or Etta as she was commonly known, was the 8th child in Achan and Mary Ann Lavoy’s brood. She was born on July 6, 1856 in Sand Point, and grew up on the farm in the Renfrew area. While I’ve yet to have found her record of birth, the date is given on later censuses and is documented by other family members.

I have found her on the 1871 federal census of Canada at age 15, where she is listed as attending school along with her younger brother James (12), sister “Amie” (10) and being supported by the labours of her parents and older siblings Annie (21), Peter (17) and William H. (17). This is the only census record I have currently located where Henrietta is living with her parents in Canada.

About 8 years later a marriage record signals her independence from the family. On the 30th of July, 1879, Henrietta (22) married a young bachelor named Francis O McDonald (21), son of Charles and Elizabeth McDonald. He was a “stove filter” from Toronto, likely doing heavy physical labour as her father and brothers had done. I wonder if his job might have been mis-spelled on this record…should it be “stove filler”? If any of my readers have an idea of what this job was or what it entailed please comment! Their marriage record lists “Stephen” (this is the second time I have seen Achan called “Stephen”) and Mary Lavoy as her parents.

Thus far in my research on Henrietta, I have been unable to find her until 1900. This ghost woman’s 20 year gap can be somewhat filled with information found on the United States Federal Census in Detroit (below). A little over one year after her marriage to Francis McDonald, Henrietta gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Emma McDonald (December 1881). Her second child, James E. McDonald, was born in August of 1883.

Whether or not Henrietta and Francis planned on growing their family we will never know. Francis disappears from the history, and my assumption is that sometime between 1883 and 1885 he died. I am still looking for his death record or any indication that he lived beyond this time. What I do know is that in 1885 Henrietta and her two children moved across the border to Michigan and that she remarried in 1897.

The above document shows the great transformation that took place after 1883 in Henrietta’s life. Here, she is three years into her second marriage with a patched-together family. She has been living in the United States for 15 years now, which means that she moved not long after the birth of her son James McDonald.  She rented a house at 1391 Hastings street with family, an area that is now in this century a dilapidated industrial part of town, filled with abandoned warehouses and overpasses. Here she lived with her new husband, her two teenage children from the previous marriage, and a baby girl named Gladys E. Webber from her new marriage. Her second husband, Morton Webber, was born in Massachusetts and is much younger than she (only 29!). His work in the trades as a Wood Turner, and her daughter Emma’s labour (18) as a “wire worker”, supports the family of five. Again, I am unclear of what this work as a “wire worker” would have entailed, but in my searches I have found this title in both the jewelry trade and in the production of barbed wire.

This wasn’t the first major move for Henrietta and her family: in 1910 they had moved to Chicago, Cook County, Illinois. Morton (45) works in a chair factory to support his wife, Henrietta (now 48) and their daughter Gladys (11).

Where did Henrietta’s children Emma & James McDonald end up?

Emma likely married and started a family, although I have not yet tracked her down. Henrietta’s son, James, certainly did. He married in 1907 to a woman called Katherine and they stayed on Mornaby street in Wayne, Michigan. His job as a “laborator” in an auto factory supported the family: son Francis E. McDonald (named for his deceased grandfather) who was born in 1909 and daughters Lillian W. McDonald (born 1912) and Violet A. McDonald (born 1914). He may have had a larger family, but I have since tracked him only until 1920.

The lot where Henrietta Webber once lived (1920)

I have found the Webber family, again in 1920, living in Chicago at a rental home (number 544 North Kedzie Avenue). The house no longer stands (see photo, left), but it looks like it was a blossoming neighbourhood in 1920 where immigrants from Italy & Germany neighboured many others from Michigan. Morton (50) and Henrietta (56) are now living off his income as a cabinet maker in a nearby factory. Their daughter, Gladys (19) still lives at home and helps to contribute by working as a office stenographer.

Henrietta (70) and Morton Webber (60) stayed in Chicago. What is a more interesting turn in the story is the living arrangement that they had with daughter Gladys. The census reveals that the family is now 3 generations living under one roof for a monthly rent of $65/month. Gladys E. Webber (28) is married and has a daughter named Henrietta (2 years, 6 months old) for her grandmother. Gladys’ husband is her half cousin, William Lavoy (43) who recently came to the USA in 1920. This means that Gladys then became a Lavoy, like her mother!

At this time, Morton still made cabinets and furniture, and Gladys continued to work as a stenographer for an insurance company. William Lavoy was a general carpenter and may have worked alongside his father-in-law. They must have lived this way, with their daughter, son-in-law and grandaughter, until the end of their lives. Henrietta (76) passed away on April 18, 1838, and was buried at Woodlawn cemetery in Proviso, Cook County. On her death record her parents are listed as “Aiken” and Mary Ann Mackay. Morton (66) followed soon behind, and in on December 3, 1940 he was buried at her side.

I would love to find the descendants of this family. If you know of them or you are a member, please don’t be shy to comment!

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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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