Research and compilation of our family tree was introduced to me by my cousin Shirley (Wilson) Sims. I became interested recently and am compiling information she had and will continue to update it. I want to acknowledge too the great amount of help I’ve received from Keith Thompson of the Lanark County Genealogical Society.
Click on the Help button above for instructions on navigating through the tree.
Following my paternal branch ( with yellow backgrounds) by clicking on Thomas => Robert => Thomas => William => Lennox will take you through 7 generations.
Further generation can be followed by clicking on Lennox or my cousins.
The family which emigrated from Ireland were Presbyterian Scots ( Scotch-Irish); John Wilson was born in Ballymena, County Antrim, Ulster Province. He was a linen manufacturer and merchant in Belfast. He and Jenny Trimble were married in 1786 and had 12 children; two, the first Thomas and the first John, died in infancy. By 1800 the linen trade which had been strong in Ireland was declining along with most industry throughout the British Isles.
One member of the family, Anne, married and moved to Canada in about 1814. In 1817, after the father John's death, the family (with children ranging from 29 to 2 years of age) immigrated to Canada. At the end of the 9 week ocean voyage, Molly, the eldest, died of typhus upon landing in Quebec, a common occurrence resulting from conditions aboard ships at the time. (They did however come before the Potato Famine and the terrible conditons awaiting the Irish immigrants after 1847 at the quarantined island of Grosse Ile). The remaining family then continued on to Perth, Lanark County Ontario.
The area North of the St. Lawrence River and below the Rideau River in Upper Canada had been settled largely by United Empire Loyalists not having supported the American revolution. At the end of the War of 1812 with the USA many British soldiers were discharged and deeded land near Perth, north of the Rideau in an area not yet cleared for farming or travel. The area was opened up for the many Scotland and some Northern Ireland immigrants, fleeing conditions in their homeland. An Army supply post was set up in Perth, and this was the situation greeting our family ancestors in 1817-18.
In 1829 Thomas at the age of 33, had married Sarah Walker of Perth and they had 2 children, John and Daniel (named after father and older brother). He received a land grant in Lanark Township and moved with a group of other (Presbyterian)Irish immigrants* to pioneer near the Ramsay centers of Clayton and Union Hall. He acquired 84 acres along 12th concession of Lanark Township, the east half of lot 14 (recorded in Lanark County register instrument B22 26 Mar 1862). The property was separated into an east and west half by an existing diagonal pioneer road cut through the bush (still used today as the Old Perth Road).
Brother Daniel was 39 and mother Jenny probably about 60 at that time and all the younger members of the family had left home (see below).
It is not clear what they all had been doing in the intervening 12 years and we can only speculate until we obtain more information. Certainly they needed a place to live and a means of support. They would have been eligible for 150 acres near Perth as it was being newly offered at the time of their arrival. Two possibilities: (1) I would speculate that Daniel obtained land in Perth and he and Thomas worked to support the rest of the family until they all left home. Besides farming there was ample work available in the building of the Rideau Canal, beginning in 1826. At that time the land around Perth had been mostly allotted due to a large influx of Scottish immigrants so that Thomas and his new family struck out into the wilderness to the north. (2)Another speculation by others is that Daniel and Jenny went with Thomas and family to Clayton, that Daniel never married and that both are buried in the Wilson Family Cemetery on the farm. Records should be available to shed light on all this.
A younger brother John died along with 286 others in 1860 on the Lady Elgin when she was rammed and sunk by the Augusta during a storm out of Milwaukee, off Winnetka heading to Chicago. See details here and complete stories are here .
Younger boys, Robert , George and William upon maturity moved to Oakville, Ontario and all became sailors and ship captains on the St. Lawrence. Clicking on their names, above, will begin to take you through all we currently know and will continue to update about their descendants.
Robert's son Thomas was a guide and planner for the CPR passage through the Rockies. He is credited with the discovery of Lake Louise, and in 1886, attended and arranged John A MacDonald's ceremony in Duncan, British Columbia upon the opening of the railway through to the coast. More details here
The homestead in Lanark Township was transferred to Thomas' second son Daniel upon the latter's marriage in 1856. Thomas reserved for his own use the west half of the property for the rest of his life. I know that Thomas' oldest son John also lived near Clayton, presumably having married and struck out on his own earlier. (I met two of John's sons in the early 1940's still living near Clayton. All of John's 4 children were unmarried.)
Recently I have received a very detailed account** of Daniel's family compiled by his grandson Robert Phillips of Saskatoon Saskatchewan and this will be updated here as time permits.
The history of the Wilson pioneer farm was:
02 Apr 1829 property granted to Thomas
26 Mar 1856 registered in Lanark township
and transferred to son Daniel
25 Jun 1894 Daniel died, property left to son William
20 Jan 1916 Property sold by William (unmarried) to Thomas James
Thomas' direct line descendants down to and including myself all lived at one time in Ramsay or Lanark Township. Clicking on Thomas, above, will begin to take you through all I have currently recorded of his descendants. Thomas as well as Thomas' wife Sarah are buried in the Wilson cemetery on their land near Clayton along with daughters Jane Halpenney, Eliza Kellough and son Robert (my great grandfather). Robert and Mary's obituaries are copied here . Robert was a school teacher in Ramsay and Almonte and died at age 39, leaving 2 sons and seven daughters ranging in age from 16 to a few months. His older son Thomas brought up his family in Shawville, Quebec where he was as dry goods merchant. They moved to Ottawa in the early 1900's and my father (William) and his two brothers joined the army for service in WWI.
Upon leaving the army, and having been given a course in accounting/book-keeping my father was transferred by the bank he worked for to Watson Saskatchewan in the early 1920's where he met and married my mother Thelma Myers, who had just moved there with her mother and dying father from Dennison, Iowa. Her sister and brother-in-law and her brother had already pioneered there. My brother and sister were born there in 1925 and 1927, but a few years later, the Depression began; my father lost his job with the bank; and had to support the family as a farm laborer. At that inopportune time (1931) my mother became pregnant with me and with family help they moved to Quebec City. My Uncle Lennox got my father a night clerk job at the Chateau Frontenac and my siblings lived with relatives there. I was born in 1932 and my father lost the job at the hotel since he could not speak French. The family then moved back to Saskatchewan and my father rented a farm there until 1937, the year I started school.
Farmers in Sask. and much of the west of Canada and the US suffered crop failures and were in desperate straits by that time. We had reached the condition of not being able to survive the winter. At that time, my Aunt Jean bought a farm in Ramsay with the idea of being able to retire there, and we moved there to operate the farm in the late fall of 1937.
A 19th century map of the area showing some sites and buildings (which includes our farm in 1940) can be seen by clicking here
It was an old-fashioned farm; no electricity and no running water in the house. We farmed with horses, and used them for transportation as well. We attended a one-room school nearby (also shown on the map). Later we did get electricity installed. In 1942 after his first year in Almonte High School, my brother drowned when swimming with a friend; a real family crisis. Life on a farm was very lonely for children, and my brother was also my best friend in spite of a 4 year age difference.
In 1945 I finished my first year high school and we all moved to Woodbridge, Ontario (near Toronto) where my father managed a more modern farm. My sister had completed high school and had been attending University of Toronto at the time. I attended Richmond Hill High School and went on to the University of Toronto while becoming a Flying Officer, Navigator in the RCAF Reserve. Mary and I were married in 1958. I received a PhD in Aerophysics in 1959 and we moved to the USA to work in the Aerospace Industry. I retired in 1999 as a Professor Emeritus of Aerospace Engineering at Iowa State University. Mary retired as a nurse a few years earlier.
* page 66 A Pioneer History of the County of Lanark, Jean S McGill
**Our Families Vol. 4, Wilson & Halpenny Connections in North America, Bell Phillips Communications Inc.
