Descendants of
James HAMILTON Jr (1806)

This is my line. James Hamilton is my great great great  grandfather, born in 1806 in Ulster Ireland. He immigrated in 1824 at age 18 With his parents(james Sr. and Jane Egerton)  and 9 silbings according to the auto biography of his son Rev. Joseph .  Hamilton.  James Jr. married Matthew Hammond's daughter Mary in 1832 and the marriage was recorded in the Methodist church in Hawkesbury Ontario. We do not find James on the land in Gore at the time of the 1831 census, so we are not sure where he resided prior to his marriage to Mary Hammond. In the autobiography of James' son Joseph we found a record of his visit to his Uncle of the same name in Winchester, Dundas County Canada West in March of 1860. Joseph, James' son also mentions that James and his uncle Joseph and all their siblings and parents emigrated to Canada about 1824. However he fails to name them and tell us where they settled. This latest find of Joseph's Autobiography was in August of 2010 and it was found in the Vermont Historical Library in Barre Vermont. So my brick wall is to find the rest of the family and I am concentrating my search in the areas adjacent to Hawkesbury Ontario. The marriage Certificate of James does not name the parents either.

Matthew Hammond arrived in Canada in 1830 with his family from County Cavan Ulster Ireland. The Hammonds settled in the Gore of Two Mountains. In the 1842 census Matthew Hammond and James Hamilton are on adjoining sections.

The Gore is called now Gore Township, Argenteuil County, Quebec, close to Lachute and the Ottawa River. Lakefield is the where the township offices are located. Of  James Children we have found nothing of Thomas or William after the family arrived in Randborough Quebec. William was listed as a labourer on his father's farm in the 1861 census so maybe he stayed in the Gore and married. Not so, in 2007 we found William and 2 other Hamilton Boys working on the farm of Eugene Chase in Derby Vermont. Irene's mother's name was Elizabeth Chase and so we assume Eugene Chase and Irene are cousins but do not have a direct link we can follow. The other two young men are James age 16 and John age 24. They are not James children and they are not from his brother Joseph's either so there is another Hamilton Connection to discover here. Two of James sons we died as children in Gore prior to 1866, they are James Jr #1 and James Jr #2. Rev Joseph Hamilton's Autobiography sayd the following:- I was the fourth of 12 children, all of whom live to manhood or womanhood with the exception of two, the seventh child a boy died when seventeen days old, the tenth child also a boy lived to be fifteen years old when he died of Lack Jaw caused by a cut in his foot. In 2010 We found the death of William recorded in his Brother Joseph's autobiography in Wisconsin and in the census of 1880 for Wisconsin we found his family. So only Thomas is unaccounted for now.

In August of 2010 we found the autobiography of  Rev. Joseph Hamilton, James' second son, in the Vermont Historical Library in Barre Vermont. While we had hoped to knock down a brick wall we only succeeded in knocking off a few bricks. Joseph's account of a visit and 6 month stay with his Uncle Joseph in Winchester, Dundas County, Upper Canada (Ontario) led us to find him in the census records of 1851 along with his mother, Jane a widow at that point in time. Joseph tells us that both sets of grandparents and his father's siblings had emigrated to Canada in 1824 and during his youth the whole family was around him. However, he fails to name them or where they came from or where they settled. The only clue we have is Hawkesbury is mid way between Gore and Winchester on the banks of the Ottawa River and that maybe this is where they landed. James marriage to Mary is recorded here in the Methodist Church in1832. Using the information on James brother Joseph  we found his birth recorded in Clones, Monaghan Ireland and his parents are listed as James Hamilton and Jane Egerton both of Clones, Monaghan Ireland. So now we know my 4 x great grandparents.

This quote is from Joseph's autobiography and is the second paragraph of the book. My Grand Parents came from the North of Ireland to Canada about the year 1820 and  were of Scotch-Irish extraction. Both my Paternal  and Maternal Grandparents had families consisting of nine children each and the larger part of the children had reached the age of maturity when they crossed the ocean. They moved in the dense forest, built log houses and commenced to clear farms. The sons secured farms near their parents, cleared the land and raised large families. My Grandparents were devote Presbyterians and very devout. They had their family altars and the fire was kept burning on these altars as long as they continued to live,  and on their death it was still kept burning by their children, notwithstanding the fact that their church privileges were very limited.

In the next generation, one of the three son's of my great grandfather, Matthew  is not well covered. His name is Frank (Francis S. J.) and contact with that side of the family seems to have been lost. We know he was living in Boston and was working as a teamster there and that he met and married his wife Nellie Lake there. We know he returned to Canada in 1906 and lived in Sydney Manitoba for a time and then with his brothers homesteaded in Saskatchewan arriving in 1911.  We have the names of three of his children from the Census records of the USA and Canada, We know that Frank died young and his widow for a time ran a tea shop on the main street of Unity, but still do not know what happened to her after she was widowed. We did have an e-mail from a lady in Kitchener who said she was doing research for someone who believed she was a descendant of  Frank and had been put up for adoption at some point and was trying to find her family roots. No information was received back in exchange for the information provided.  In 2007 we found Frank and his wife Nellie F Lake in the 1900 US census for Boston. Then we found them in the 1911 census of Canada in Saskatchewan.

While I know something of the daughters of my great grandfather, Matthew Hamilton, Hattie Hamilton Greenlay, and Effie Hamilton Stanley, I do have current information on the Greenlay's and their descendants, but not for the Stanley's. As more resources become available on the Internet we seem to find more pieces to the puzzle.