Family Genealogy

       I am the Great Great Grandson of James Hamilton Sr, and in 2012 I will be  70 years old. I have traced my family back to the "The Gore of Two Mountains" in Quebec,(today this is Gore Township, the village of Lakefield, in Argenteuil County of Quebec) where James took up land after marrying Mary Hammondin  1832The marriage is found in Ontario church record for Hawkesbury Ontario. He and his family immigrated from Ireland to Canada about 1824 with his parents ( James Sr and Jane and siblings. today In June of 2011 I found out that they came from Clones, Monaghan country in the Old Ulster part of Ireland.  I also found his parents names, his father was James Hamilton Sr, and he married Jane Egerton and according to James JR's son Rev JosephHamilton there were nine siblings that arrived in Canada with his James Jr. and his parents parents in 1824. I have only been able to find one of James' siblings, his oldest brother Joseph, for whom his second son was named because there is a record of his visit to his uncle in his autobiography. His uncle was living in Winchester Dundas County in eastern Ontario just west of Hawkesbury, and I found his family in the census of 1851 census and found their mother as a widow residing with Joseph, but nothing of the other 8 siblings.  So the search goes on as I discovered another mystery. David Magahy (somtimes spelled Maghy)is named as a cousin of James Jr's second son Joseph,in his autobiography and that they attended school together in Lachute and later both become ministers in Vermont in the Methodist Episcopalian church . The mystery is we do not know how David is related to Joseph( we do not know which side of the family the relationship originates).

I  know James Jr.'s  wife was  , Mary Hammond, and her family came from county Cavan to Canada in 1832 and there were nine children in the family according to Joseph's(James Jr's second son) auto biography. of which we know only 8. I do not know if he knew his wife in Ireland, but I did discover that his father in law owned the adjacent farm in the "Gore" and their marriage was recorded in Hawksbury by Methodist Minister in 1832 James Jr's son John later occupied the original farm of Matthew Hammond. . The marriage is the first documented evidence of James presence in Canada that we have found. From a census record he stated that he arrived in Canada in 1824. He would have been 18 years of age, but we find nothing that indicates a family or siblings in the area of Gore. The first census we found him in was 1842 as head of household.  "The Gore" refers to Gore Township, Argenteuil County, Quebec (1830 - 1872). This region is just North East of Lachute and the center of this community today is the village of Lakefield. In 2010 we found a copy of the autobiography of JamesJr's second son Joseph who became a minister in the Methodist Church of Vermont. On page 4 he recounts a visit which started on the 19th of March 1860 to his uncle Joseph living in Winchester, Dundas County of Canada West. James' son hired out for 9 dollars a month to work for his Uncle. Following this he with his brother in law William Gordon travelled to Sawywerville where they met Stillman Rand who owned a sawmill in wilderness of Newport township of Compton County in the eastern townships of Quebec. Joseph purchased 50 acres here near what was to become the village of Randborough at $2.50( the dollar became the official currency of Canada in 1861) an acre. Later to be sold to his brother John. This was the start of the emigration of families from the Gore to East Clifton (today Clifton de St. Isadore) and Randborough near Sawyerville. The first home in Randborough was built by Joseph and Mr Rand for William Gordon, bootmaker, and his wife Eliza Jane, eldest sister of Joseph in 1861.

         From Gore my family migrated to East Clifton and Randborough, Newport Township, Compton County, Quebec (1861 - 1902), with many of their neighbours while others stayed in the "Gore". This region is South East of Sherbrooke right next  tto Vermont,where it meets New Hampshire, and Quebec borders .   From the Eastern townships they migrated to Bernardston Mass (1900 to present), this is Northern Massachusetts just over the Vermont state line close to where it meets the New Hampshire state line. Also from Randborough and East Clifton to Sidney Manitoba (1899 to 1911), just a few minutes West of Portage la Prairie, and then to Unity Saskatchewan, (1911 to the present), which is close to the Alberta border West of North Battleford. These are the ancestors and descendants of my family and their related families.

There are family trees here for :
Armstrong, Boyd, Cairns, Carr, Evans, Ferguson, Fewson, Gordon, Hamilton, Hammond, Jackson, Maunu, Montgomery, Morrison, Parker, Pierce, Waldron, Whittaker;

       My Wife Dora Savage is also interested in chasing her family roots. Her ancestors arrived in Ontario in the mid 1800's and to Saskatchewan in the late 1800's. Dora was born in Alberta and lived in Styal Alberta on the CNR line from Edmonton to Jasper. Cory's are from Cornwall in the UK along with Hadley and Oke. Fralick is from Germany via New York City in the 1600's and upper New York State in the early 1800's to Kingston Ontario and Wolfe Island, Orser is also from this route. These are the ancestors and descendants of my wife Dora's Family and their related families.

  There are family trees for:
Cory, Fralick (Frölich), Hadley, Oke, Orser (Aertse), Savage.

James Hamilton Family History

       James HamiltonSr. is my great great great grandfather and his line is my main interest. In getting involved in this research I quickly realized that the Hamilton story is not exclusive to the name Hamilton and that many families have become related to us to get us to where we are today. It interesting to note that Hamilton and Montgomery are the two founding family names of the Ulster Plantation settlements which occurred in 1607 in Ulster, Ireland and they are both found in my Family Tree. 

       James Hamilton and his family emigrated to Canada about 1824 settling in the Ottawa Valley near Hawkesbury, Canada West (Ontario). James married a girl from the Gore and the marriage was record in Hawkesbury in 1832 and they settled on land next to her father in the Gore near Lachute Quebec about 1832. The Gore of Two Mountains, which today is the area around Lakefield, Gore Township in the county of Argenteuil, Quebec. I know he came from Ireland and our guess is Ulster but where in Ulster? Did he come with his own family, Yes we now know that. Who were his parents? Well we do not know his father yet but we do know his mother was Jane as we found her as a widow in the 1851 census with Joseph a younger brother of James in Winchester, Dundas County Canada West (Ontario). These questions we have yet to answer. Who was his father and where were they living and who are James other siblings?

      The  Family Trees found here are not just my work, but the work of one or two individuals in each family tree and are as accurate as my sources have made them.

       I had collected over the years numerous pieces of paper in the form of notes or letters from my Mother to my cousin Julie, from my Aunt Miriam, Julie's mother and from my Grandmother Fanny Hamilton, who lived with Julie's family after the death of her Husband, and other members of my extended family. In 1997 I started using an excel spread sheet to tabulate the information that I had been able to piece together, but it soon became unwieldy and the information was transcribed to a genealogy program. We currently use Family Tree Maker as the major tool for recording all the information we have and then import the latest information in a "gedcom file" and export it to Family Origins to produce the raw web pages and then I customize the front end to link them together and to add the Hamilton Family Scrapbook to the Hamilton Family page.

       In the spring of 1999, I wrote a letter to the address of an uncle my mother had corresponded with. I got a reply from his son as my uncle was deceased. From him I got allot of information on Justin William's descendants. Justin was my Great Grandfather's brother and many of his descendants still live in the western Saskatchewan and Alberta. My Father was born in Unity Sask. and grew up there. He attended the university of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. I became interested in finding out more about my family after going through my parents papers after they passed on within 5 months of each other in 1991/2.  

       We started by searching the Internet for information. We found some information there and pointers to a lot more information on my Great Grandfather Matthew and his siblings. The tough part seems to be trying to find things like the name of the ship James arrived on and from where in Ireland and the names of his parents and siblings if any. Originally we did not know James wife's name and where she was born and where they were married. However, it was in the census records that we found her name and age as well as James age and birthdates and from that we had a better lead to other information we were looking for. In the 1842 census it states that James has been in Canada 18 years so that would mean he arrive at he age of 17 or 18. We now know he arrived with his family and know his mother's name, but still have not found where they settled, though we suspect around Hawksbury, Ontario as of September (2010).

       Well from the beginnings above, much has changed. Yes we did find James and family in the Census for 1842, 1851 and 1861, in 1871 (in 1871 listed as Hampton), 1881 and 1891. We found Mary as wife to James with more children than we knew about previously, but the names and ages for the ones we did know matched perfectly. New names were four sons William and James Jr. Thomas and a second James Jr. that we had not know about previously. We found the birth dates of all of James children and their ages. We found numerous mentions of members of the family in a history of Compton County written in 1896 and in the census of 1871 1881, 1891, and 1901 in this area. Then in 1901, 1906, 1911 and 1916 in Western Canada in Manitoba then later in Saskatchewan. Homestead documents for 1911 in Saskatchewan.

       In late December of 1999 we met a young lady on the Internet who helped us with the census of 1851 and the possible link between our two families through Mary Hammond, James wife. Mary's father was Matthew Hammond born in Co. Cavan Ireland and immigrated with his children to Canada arriving in June 1830. It is very likely that my great grandfather is named after Mary's father Matthew.

        During the year 2000 we visited Unity Sask., Lakefield, Gore township, Argenteuil County Quebec, East Clifton now know as Clifton de St. Isadore, Johnville, Randborough and Sawyerville, all in Newport township, Compton County, Quebec. These are the areas that my family lived in starting in 1832 in Gore, then 1866 in East Clifton and Randborough, then 1882 in Johnville, 1890 in Sherbrooke, 1900 in Sidney MB, 1911 Unity SK. The only location we did not visit was Sidney MB. In Sawyerville we met Mildred Waldron. She had done a lot of genealogical work on various families of Compton County some of whom we are both related to. Mildred died in the summer of 2008, but much of her work is still maintained by others in the Sawyerville Region.

       In 2001 we traveled to the Eastern Townships again chasing my roots and to the National Library in Ottawa photocopying many census records for further use. We also spent time in Mariposa Township of Ontario chasing my wife, Dora's roots. It has taken us three months to compile all the information we gathered and to update this site again.

        One member of my family and their descendants has gone astray over the years. Francis Samuel James Hamilton (known as Frank) is my Grandfather Hugh's younger brother and he along with Justin, the youngest of the three brothers, moved the family from the Eastern Townships where they grew up to Sidney Manitoba at the first of the 20th century and by 1905 the whole family was here including the two girls and their husbands and their father, Matthew with his wife, Irene and her Daughter by her first marriage Eva Mayo and Husband Egbert Cairns,  By 1911 the some of the family had relocated to Unity Saskatchewan. We believe Frank died here in Unity and while his name appears in the listing of the family burial plot in the Unity Cemetery there is no marker and no record of his date of death. It took me a long time to find his wife's name and a bit of information on his family. Sadly after his passing there is no record of where his wife went or what happened to his children. As my Grandfather Hugh died before I was born and I did not find out about Frank while Grandma Hamilton was alive their is little known to my generation. My first break through was in the census of Boston of 1900 where I found Frank working as a teamster with his wife, Nellie Lake and one child Alice, plus his sister Effie and Mother in Law Julia Lake a widow. We were able to trace Julia and Nellie back in the US census for Boston looking to find her father but instead we did find Julia's first husband and found they had immigrated from Nova Scotia to Boston in 1866. Wesley B Chase and Julia are shown in the 1870 census of Boston in 1880 Julia is shown as a widow and I did not find them in the 1890 census so not sure where the Lake surname originates whether Julia remarried at some point.

       In May 2010 I discovered the records of Rev. Joseph Hamilton were deposited by one of his daughters in the Vermont Historical Society Library, they occupy 6 inches of shelf space and include genealogy of the Hamilton and Packer families, his autobiography and other papers. Up to this point I had though Charlotte, Joseph's wife was a Parker, but discovered it is really  Packer, and this discovery opened up quite a bit of information that I found on the internet about her family. I visited the library in August of 2010 and obtained a copy of the autobiography and several photos. While Joseph adds a great deal of information to the puzzle he did not name his grandparents and where they lived but he did reveal an Uncle which lead us to his Grandmother, but while he mentions the rest of the family he did not name them.

 Henry Savage Family History

        For Dora we have information back to her great grandfather Henry Savage who was born and died in the UK. On her mothers side we have information back to her great great grandmother Christiana (Oke) Cory and well beyond to their routes in Devonshire England. There are 15 generations of Oke's in that tree. There is a lot of pioneer stock in our family background. Most of our ancestors came from the British Isles, England and Ireland in the 19 century or the early part of the 20th century and were settlers in the east or homesteaders in the west.

Ongoing Research

        In 2003 we visited Dora's family sites in Saskatchewan and Alberta and my families first place of residence after leaving Quebec at Sidney Manitoba. Her Grandfather Savage's Homestead near Star City and Tisdale in Saskatchewan, today just a quarter section of cleared land but we found the site of the home and much kitchen pottery debris in a small grove of trees near the road allowance. Also her Grandfather Hadley's homestead in Styal, Alberta. The barn was still standing on the site, but in poor repair. In Sidney we found My Grandfather's store and Great Grandfathers home and many of the other homes of the extended family which came here before him. Found a copy of the book "Footsteps in the sand" a history of the Sidney District.

         We have visited all know family places of our ancestors, in Canada, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. We have living relatives in many of these places plus the following states that we have met and corresponded with, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, California, Illinois, Iowa, Delaware, Alaska, Florida, Utah, Montana plus Australia England and we suspect Ireland as well.

If anyone visiting this page should happen to find a connection to these lines and can fill in any information we would sure like to hear from you.

We can be reached by e-mail at the following addresses.

Dora Hamilton
To e-mail Dora click here

Garth Hamilton
To e-mail Garth click here

We will continue to update this site as we find new information.