Update on X00055: The Nelson Township Papers

Still looking for more information on the marriage between George Miller and possibly Margaret Farriage (for details so far, look for X00055)

Now that the Township Papers are available on Family Search, I had a look through the Township Papers for Nelson Township to see if there were any papers that mention someone with a Miller surname or something close to 'Farriage'. I found this document, dated 1823, that is signed by both a Thomas Miller and a Robert Partridge.

Could this be a connection? Could Thomas Miller be connected somehow to George Miller? Could Partridge be Margaret's actual last name? It could be a clue.

Profile: Margaret Farriage

The next installment of the 52 Ancestors in 52 weeks challenge is "Challenge". For this one I'm choosing to profile one of my ancestors who is proving to be one of the biggest challenges to find anything on: Margaret Farriage.

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Profile: Margaret Farriage [? - about 1834]
4x great-grandmother

It's difficult to put together a profile for someone when you know next to nothing about them. The sources I have for my 4x great-grandmother are very few. You can read more about what I have and have not been able to find by searching for past blog posts using the X00055 tag.

Here's a brief rundown of what I do know about her:

• She married George Miller, carriage maker on Oct 25, 1832 in Toronto Township (now Peel Region). Church not known [D00800].
• At the time of her marriage was living in Nelson Township (now Burlington, Ontario) [D00800]
• The only source that I have found that gives her full name is from the Marriage Bonds of Upper Canada p 239 [D00800]. I have found no other occurrence of the surname Farriage in Upper Canada around that time. I have checked the taxation records for Nelson Township around that time and found no occurrences of the name. I suspect that the surname may have been incorrectly recorded by the scribe.
• She appears to have given birth to two sons, John born about 1833 and William born 10 May 1834. I don't have sources identified at this time to confirm John Miller's birth, it is more based on family lore. John and William may have been twins. William Miller's Marriage Records lists his parents as George & Margaret Miller [D01116]. No maiden name given.
• She likely died some time between May 10 1834 (likely date of birth for William Miller) and Dec 9 1835 (likely date when George Miller married Amelia Grant Munro). The family would have been living in either Nelson Township or Cooksville at the time.
• According to the 1891 Census, she is of Scottish origin [D00772] based on William Miller's information provided. That being said, this was several years after she had died and William Miller would have been very young when she died.

So, not much to go on. I have a marriage date, and a location of where she was living at the time. A date range for a date of death. But no date of birth and as mentioned previously, I'm not even entirely sure about the surname. It also doesn't help that this is a time period in Upper Canada from when there are very few surviving records.

My latest option that I am pursuing is that her surname was actually Farrier, as I there were a couple of families with that surname living in Nelson Township in the 1830s. But nothing positive yet. Solving this case may need to involve DNA.

Sources:
[D00772] 1891 census of Canada, Ontario, district 68, sub-district Owen Sound River Ward, Owen Sound, p. 26, family 107; RG 31; digital images, Ancestry.ca, Ancestry (accessed 14 Oct 2017).

[D00800] Canada, Upper and Lower Canada, 23: 2956, Miller-Farriage, 1831-10-25; digital images, Library and Archives Canada, Library and Archives Canada (accessed 11 Nov 2017).

[D01116] Ontario, Ontario County Marriage Registers, 1858-1869, Wellington County: 9, Miller-Hardy, 1857; digital images, FamilySearch.org, FamilySearch .

The genealogy sad dance

In my tree, I have a marriage between a George Miller and Margaret Farriage in Toronto Township in 1832 (October 25th, 1832 to be specific).


I was able to find a bit more information on George Miller - he was born 1809 in Poughkeepsie, New York - but not much on Margaret Farriage. It certainly doesn't help that the surname Farriage takes on a number of variations - sometimes there is only one r, sometimes e's replace the a's and sometimes there is no letter i.

I managed to find a Margaret Farridge through FamilySearch.org born May 1st, 1804 in Rothbury, Northumberland, England, daughter of William Farridge.



The name is close enough and the timeline is not outside the realm of possibility. As well, George and Margaret's second son was named William, so it all fits. But I was a little hesitant to make the jump that this could be the same person in both Nelson Township, Ontario and in Rothbury, Northumberland, England without more proof.

Now, this was back in the early days when I was just starting out in genealogy. I managed to get in touch with a distant cousin who had spent many years researching the Farriage line and she had the two as the same person, so I made the connection in my tree, figuring that I would verify it with my own research later.

So, fast-forward to a few months ago. I'm now getting around to verifying that line. There was a wavy leaf on Ancestry.com that led me to some other people who had Margaret Farriage in their tree. Most of them either had the same connection as I did or no date of death. But interestingly, two of them had a death date of 1809 with no source. I contacted them, but (like many people with trees on ancestry) neither of them know where the information had come from, and had likely copied it from someone else.

So, I ordered the microfilm reel for Rothbury and sure enough I found the burial entry:



It's blurry, but it's a Margaret Farriage, daughter of William Farriage died October, 1809, aged 5 years. It's definitely the same person.

So, the Rothbury Margaret Farriage born 1804 is not the same as the Nelson Township Margaret Farriage. I checked the Rothbury Baptisms to see if the family had named a later child Margaret, but didn't find anything. So, I now have to delink that branch of the family, and go back to square one as far as finding Margaret's actual birth date, place & parents. It's a bit of a genealogy sad dance, but finding out the truth is far better than wasting time researching the wrong family.