Samuel Bigelow and Susanna Barkwell

Samuel Bigelow and Susanna Barkwell Samuel Bigelow, b. 1808 1,4 in England, d. 15-Oct- 1857 1 in Hope Twp, Durham County, Ontario, bu. in Elizabethville Anglican Cemetery, Hope Twp, occupation Sawyer. He married Susanna Barkwell, m. 30-Jul-1832 2 in St John's Anglican Church, Port Hope, Durham County, Ontario, (daughter of John Barkwell and Elizabeth Wonnacott) chr. 31-May-1807 3 in Milton Damerel, Devon, England, d. 1844-1851 4 in Hope Twp, Durham County, Ontario, bu. in Elizabethville Anglican Cemetery, Hope Twp. Samuel Bigelow was born in 1808 according to the inscription on his gravestone. Nothing is known about his parents or the place of his birth. It is possible that he was born in the United States and is part of the huge Bigelow family descended from John Biglo and Mary Warren of Watertown, Massachusetts [see Appendices, The Bigelow Society]. The name Biglo or Bigelow does not appear in any early English records and first appears in Massachusetts with this John Biglo in the 1630 s. The only Bigelows found in later records in England were descendants of this early John Biglo, descendants who had emigrated back from America. Samuel Bigelow presents a problem in that, on the 1852 Canada West census, he gives his birthplace as England. His children on several records also consistently give their father s birthplace as England. Yet no record of a Samuel Bigelow around this time has ever been found in England. So it is equally possible that Samuel emigrated from England in the early 19 th century with a name similar in sound to Bigelow, and that it was recorded with this spelling from the time he arrived. It is interesting that the Barkwell, Bullied and Palmer families, who are linked to Samuel Bigelow and his descendants through marriage, all arrived in Hope Township within the same decade and were all from the same area in northwestern Devon, England. The family of John and Rebecca Bigelow in the neighbouring township of Clarke also gave on the census a birthplace of England, and their descendants claim they came from Parkham, Devon. While no relationship has ever been proven, the strongest possibility, then, is that Samuel himself was a native of Devon. Samuel first appears in the records of Hope Township, Durham County, Ontario in 1832, and it is probable that he arrived around that time. His marriage to Susanna Barkwell is recorded in the parish registers of St John s Anglican Church at Port Hope on 30 July 1832. In the record Susanna s name is misspelled as Beulkwell and Samuel s as Biglow. This illustrates the difficulties presented by authorities writing down what they thought was the correct spelling of a name. It is interesting to note from the wedding record that Samuel had gone to school, as he could sign his name. The Barkwells evidently did not receive the benefit of an education as they all signed with their marks. --------------- Marriage Record ---------------- St John s Anglican Church, 30 Jul 1832 Samuel Biglow of Port Hope, Yeoman, was maried [sic] by banns to Susannah Beulkwell of the same place, Spinster, this thirtyeth day of July, A.D., 1832. Rev. J. Coghlan, DDS Minr. at Port Hope This marrige [sic] was solemnized between us: (Signature of Samuel Biglow) (Mark of Susannah Beulkwell) In the presence of witnesses: (Mark of William Beulkwell) (Mark of Grace Beulkwell) (Signature of Cholott [sic] Johns) 2 Susanna was the third-youngest child of John Barkwell and Elizabeth Wonnacott, who were married 26 March 1786 3 at Holsworthy, Devon, England. Susanna s christening on 31 May 1807 is recorded in the parish records in Milton Damerel, Devon. The witnesses, William and Grace Barkwell, at Samuel and Susanna s wedding are almost certainly Susanna s younger siblings, born in 1809 and 1814 3 respectively. The third witness, Charlotte Johns, was also a recent immigrant from north Devon 5 and was probably a good friend of Susanna. Susanna Barkwell emigrated from Devon to Hope Township in the spring of 1832 along with her oldest brother, John Barkwell, his wife, Grace Hole or Hall, and their nine children. Included in 1

the party were also at least two other siblings, William and Grace. It is not certain whether another brother, Thomas, emigrated with them or at a later date. There are several sources which pinpoint quite accurately the time of their emigration. First of all, John and Grace s daughter, Grace, was christened at Holsworthy, Devon on 5 September 1831 3 so at that time they were still in England. Susanna, William and Grace were in Port Hope by 30 July 1832 for the wedding. John Barkwell in several sources 6 is listed as one of the earliest settlers in the hamlet of Elizabethville in Hope Township. His date of arrival from England is given as 1832. According to the obituary of John Barkwell s oldest son, also John, who died in 1899, 7 they traveled to Canada from England on the Priam in 1832 with Captain William Hooper. We do not have a direct account of the long journey across the Atlantic taken by Susanna Barkwell and the rest of her family in 1832. However, the diary of William Peters, a settler in Hope Township who arrived in 1830 from England, has been preserved and gives an interesting account of what would have been a very similar trip. Peters ship, the Friends, set sail on 3 May 1830. About 4 o clock this morning weighed anchor, soon got underway with a fair wind down channel where we soon, almost all passengers on board, got very sick. Lost sight of English land this day which perhaps I shall see no more. Most of the passengers remained very seasick for many weeks. Peters did not get his sea legs until after three weeks, after which he could write in his diary again. We saw the grampus fish spouting water and sporting in the sea, the devil fish with two heads, and some porpoises. On Sunday morning, an American schooner came by and spoke with our ship. A Spanish man-of-war brig, bore alongside and somewhat alarmed the Captain, and some of the passengers were attacked with fear. We exchanged a few words, and she then left us. Retired to rest happy and getting over seasickness. It was not until June 3 rd reached land in the New World. that they finally The wind blew fresh but fair and by Wednesday morning, 3 rd of June we saw land. Newfoundland on the north and Cape Breton on the south, 31 days after losing sight of old England. All hearts were cheered and our spirits enlivened, but we did not get up to land in the evening as we expected in the morning on account of a calm. 8 Their journey by ship took almost another two weeks to reach the mouth of the St. Lawrence River after which they would have continued on to Montreal, and then by land to Hope Township. Their voyage must have been a fairly comfortable one in comparison to the general run. There is no mention of overcrowding, fevers, cholera or deaths which were quite regular occurrences on most crossings. The celebrated early Canadian author, Susanna Moodie, wrote extensively about the pioneer experience and the hardships that new immigrants experienced. She and her husband immigrated to Canada from England in the same year, 1832, as the Barkwells and settled in the same area. Their first farm was near Cobourg, just east of Port Hope on Lake Ontario. The Moodies docked at Quebec City and Montreal at the end of August 1832 to find a dreadful cholera epidemic was raging. We can only hope the Barkwells arrived well before this epidemic had started. The Moodies traveled by stagecoach from Montreal to Cornwall, then on to Prescott, Ontario. At Prescott, they boarded a new steamboat, William IV, on Lake Ontario which took them to Cobourg. From there, they proceeded to their new home by horse and wagon. It is likely that the Barkwells made a very similar journey upon arriving in Canada. Before Susanna Barkwell emigrated from England, she had a daughter, Mary Ann, born 10 February 1829 3 in Holsworthy, Devon. Mary Ann was christened on 23 February 1829 3 in the Methodist Church in Holsworthy. Her christening record gives the name Mary Ward Barkwill and Ward is almost certainly the surname of her father. This belief is strengthened by the fact that Mary Ann s oldest daughter, Jane (Palmer) Scott, at the time of her marriage in 1874, 9 gave her parents names as William Palmer and Mary Ward. It is almost unimaginable for us to realize the hardships that the first pioneers faced in settling the bush of Upper Canada. Catharine Parr Traill, sister of Susanna Moodie, and a renowned writer in her own right, immigrated to Canada the same year as her sister. In her early letters to her family back in 2

England, she wrote of the difficulties. She and her husband could afford to buy a lot overlooking a lake and she talked about the satisfaction of having cleared a few acres around the house after a couple of years: A space of this kind in the midst of the dense forest imparts a cheerfulness to the mind, of which those that live in an open country, or even a partially wooded one, can form no idea... If we feel this so sensibly who enjoy the opening of a lake of full three-quarters of a mile in breadth directly in front of our windows, what must those do whose clearing is first opened in the depths of the forest, hemmed in on every side by a thick wall of trees... [S]o dense is the growth of timber that all beyond the immediate clearing is wrapped in profound obscurity. A settler on first locating on his lot knows no more of its boundaries and its natural features than he does of the North-West Passage. Under such disadvantages it is ten chances to one if he chooses the best situation on the land for the site of his house. This is a very sufficient reason for not putting up an expensive building till the land is sufficiently cleared to allow its advantages and disadvantages to become evident. Many eligible spots often present themselves to the eye of the settler in clearing the land, that cause him to regret having built before he could obtain a better choice of ground. But circumstances will seldom admit of delay in building in the bush; a dwelling must be raised speedily, and that generally on the first cleared acre. The emigrant, however, looks forward to some no very distant period when he shall be able to gratify both his taste and love of comfort in the erection of a handsomer and better habitation than his log-house or shanty, which he regards only in the light of a temporary accommodation. 10 The earliest settlers in Hope Township lived in log houses constructed from trees on the land they were in the process of clearing. The memoirs of Edmund Wilson, an early pioneer in the area who emigrated from England in 1841 with his parents and four brothers, give an interesting account of the building of their log house. Samuel and Susanna would have gone through a very similar experience. He had 6 or 7 people chopping that week... [they] cut down 5 acres. He then began to prepare for building a house after cutting the logs in proper lengths. On the 3 rd of July, our neighbours to the number of 20 or 30, came forward and assisted in raising them up. This is what neighbours do for every newcomer. Our house is 28 feet long and 20 feet wide and 10 logs high, each log about 12 inches in diameter. The round side of each log is hewed off in the inside and the crevices are filled with plaster which makes it pretty smooth. Our chimney is brick. Our floor is boards 7 inch in breadth and 1½ inches thick. We have 3 windows in the lower room. Each window consists of 12 squares of glass, 10 inch by 8 and 1 window in the upper room. The roof is very good and covered with shingles that is of split pine in imitation of slate. The cellar is 12 feet by 10 with board floor. 8 Susanna Moodie gave a much more colourful and negative account of building-bees and loggingbees: [Logging-bees] are noisy, riotous, drunken meetings, often terminating in violent quarrels, sometimes even in bloodshed. Accidents of the most serious nature often occur, and very little work is done when we consider the number of hands employed, and the great consumption of food and liquor.... People in the woods have a craze for giving and going to bees, and run to them with as much eagerness as a peasant runs to a racecourse or a fair; plenty of strong drink and excitement making the chief attraction of the bee. In raising a house or barn, a bee may be looked upon as a necessary evil, but these gatherings are generally conducted in a more orderly manner than those for logging. Fewer hands are required, and they are generally under the control of the carpenter who puts up the frame, and if they get drunk during the raising they are liable to meet with very serious accidents. 11 Samuel Bigelow was recorded on the Hope Twp. combined Census and Assessment Rolls for the years 1834, 1835, 1837, 1838, 1844, 1845 and 1851. The 1840 s rolls show the family living on Lot 5, Con. 2, Hope Township. Samuel was a sawyer, according to the 1852 census. Family tradition says that he owned and operated a sawmill; however, no evidence of this has been found in early records or in lists of early business owners. It is more probable that he worked for someone who operated a sawmill. Sherrell 3

Leetooze, in her history of Hope Township, says: Just east of Osaca [5 th /6 th Conc., Hope Twp.] was a sawmill, the sawyer being Joseph Littleton. Like most mills in the township at that time, it was water powered. There were three employees at the mill, one may have been Samuel Bigelow, but he may have worked at Elizabethville [J. W. McMurtry owned the sawmill there], or for William Thompson the sawyer just north of the village who employed two people. This mill was on the pond in Henry Maxwell s lot. 12 The Port Hope Guide in August 1853 reported that a survey of Hope Township had been made and that there are now in the Township 22 saw mills. The largest belongs to Edsale and Wilson and manufactures annually 900,000 feet of sawed lumber, and exports 750,000 feet. The smallest manufactures 200,000 feet and exports 100,000. 8 The parish registers for St. Peter s Anglican Church in Cobourg, Canada West record the baptisms on 27 Nov 1836 13 by Rev. A. Bethune of Samuel and Susanna s two oldest children, Samuel born 19 July 1833 and William born 27 Nov 1835. Susanna s daughter, Mary Ann, was again baptized at the same time. On this record, her birth date is given as 10 November 1829. Rev. Bethune was almost certainly a traveling circuit minister who performed baptisms, marriages and even funerals as he traveled and preached across the sparsely settled countryside. These rites would then have been recorded under his home parish of Cobourg. Samuel and Susanna had five sons born to them between 1833 and 1844. A daughter with the initial C is recorded on the 1852 census as well, born around 1840, but her existence has never been substantiated. Their second son, William, died sometime before 1 June 1844, when their youngest child, also named William, was born. In the early days, local newspapers would publish the names of settlers who had mail waiting for them at the post office. The Port Hope Guide listed S. Bigelow among those who had letters waiting in the 1848 issues of September 9, 16 and 23 and in the 1853 issues of June 11, 18 and 25. We wonder if these were letters from relatives overseas or perhaps they related to legal matters. By the time of the 1852 census, Samuel s family was living in a one-storey frame house. A quick perusal of the census for the area shows about half of the residents still in log houses and the other half in one-storey frame houses. Susanna died young, sometime between the birth of her youngest son, William Henry, in 1844 and 1852 when Samuel was recorded as a widower on the census. Samuel died 15 October 1857 at the age of 49 years. According to a family story which has not been substantiated, he drowned in his mill pond. This again is doubtful as no story appeared in the local newspaper and his name does not appear among the accidental death inquests. He is buried in Elizabethville Anglican Cemetery at Elizabethville, 10 miles west of Port Hope in Hope Twp. His gravestone bears the following inscription: In Memory of Samuel Bigelow Who Died Oct. 15, 1857 Aged 49 Years Neither love nor physicians could save His mortal body from the grave Nor can the grave confine it here When Christ shall bid it to appear 1 A small stone near Samuel s has the initials S. B. and this marker is believed to be for his wife, Susanna. 14 1 Gravestone of Samuel Bigelow, Elizabethville Anglican Cemetery (abandoned), Lot 29 Con 7, Hope Twp, Durham County, Ontario. 2 Parish Registers, St John s Anglican Church, Port Hope, Ontario, photocopy in possession of author. Original located at Anglican Diocese of Toronto, 135 Adelaide St East, Toronto 3 International Genealogical Index, Family History 4

Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints 4 1852 Canada West census, Hope Twp, Durham County. Samuel Bigelow is listed as a widower. Samuel and Susanna s youngest child was born in 1844. 5 Letter from Bessie Gannon to Betty Watson, 28 Apr 1996, photocopy in possession of author. 6 a) Harold Reeve. The History of the Township of Hope. Cobourg, Ontario: The Cobourg Sentinel-Star, 1967. A listing of British immigrants on pp. 283-4 lists John Barkwell with an arrival date of 1832. b) The Canadian Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p. 655. The entry for the hamlet of Elizabethville says that Francis Tamblyn arrived in 1830 followed two years later by his relatives the Thomas Oke, John Barkwell and Hunt families. 7 Obituary for John Barkwell, Weekly Guide, Port Hope, Ontario, 30 Jun 1899, p. 6 col. 3. 8 Reeve, The History of the Township of Hope. 9 Marriage Record for Jane Palmer & Alexander Scott, m 5 Jan 1874, Lindsay, Ontario, civil registration. 10 Catharine Parr Traill. The Backwoods of Canada. Toronto, Ontario: Penguin Canada, 2006 (first published by Charles Knight, London, England, 1836), p. 147. 11 Susanna Moodie. Roughing it in the Bush, or Forest Life in Canada. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1962, (first published by Richard Bentley, London, England, 1852), p.156. 12 Sherrell Branton Leetooze. Built on Faith and Fortitude: A Brief History of Hope Township. Bowmanville, Ontario: Lynn Michael-John Associates, 1997, p. 155. 13 Baptismal Parish Registers, St. Peter s Anglican Church, Cobourg, Ontario. Photocopy in possession of author. 14 Research by The Bigelow Society. 5