Matrilineal Monday – Mary Jane Hassan

Mary Jane Hassan was my third-great-grandmother, born around 1843 in Ontario to an Irish father and Canadian-born mother. She married Joseph Myers around 1861, and they had 10 children:

Mary Jane Myers (b. 1862 – d. ????)
Joseph F. Myers (b. 1865 – d. ????)
John Robert Myers (b. 1867 – d. 1905)
James Myers (b. 1869 – d. 1922)
George Ignatius Myers (b. 1871 – d. ????)
Charles Myers (b. 1873 – d. ????)
Wilhelmine/Wilhelmina Myers (b. 1879 – d. ????)
Ellen Elisabeth Barbara Myers (b. 1880 – d. ????)
Annie M. Myers (b. 1883 – d. ????)
Rosa C. Myers (b. 1889 – d. ????)

By 1901, Mary Jane was widowed, and lived in Toronto with three of her daughters. Wilhelmine worked as a dry goods clerk, and Ellen and Annie were dressmakers. Mary Jane died in Ottawa in 1911,

The Myerses are hard to trace, because they have relatively common first names and records variously list them as Meyers, Meyer, Mayer, Mayers, Myer, and Moyer. I admit to neglecting research on this line because of it. (I go with the Myers variation, because both my great-grandmother, and her father used that spelling.)

Matrilineal Monday – Mary Devlin

Mary Devlin is one of my third-great-grandmothers, and I don’t know very much about her yet. She was born in Ireland around 1830 and came to Canada sometime before 1840. She and her husband, William Lloyd lived in Mulmur, Ontario until the 1890’s, when they moved to Portage La Prairie, Manitoba. They had at least ten children (most of the birth years are approximations based on variances across censuses):

Mary Lloyd Ferguson Graham: b. 1855 – d. 1936
William Lloyd: b. 1858 – d. ????
Eliza Jane Lloyd: b. 1860 – d. ????
Margaret Lloyd Bannister: b. 1865 – d. 1931
Harriet B. Lloyd Leeper: b. 1866 – d. ????
John J. Lloyd: b. 1868 – d. ????
James H. Lloyd: b. 1869 – d. ????
Annie Sophia Lloyd: b. 1874 – d. 1892
Richard Victor Lloyd: b. 1876 – d. 1959
Martha Ellen Lloyd Solomon: b. 1877 – d. ????

As a bit of a wildcard, there are two more possible children I am trying to find more evidence for. The first is a daughter listed in the 1871 census. Her name was either Ama E. or Anna E., and she was born in July of 1870. I am fairly certain that this is not Annie Sophia, because every bit of documentation for her states a birth year of 1874. (I don’t have a birth record.)

The other is Emily S., who only appears in the 1881 census. Her birth year is given as 1872. She could be Anna E. or Ama E. maybe?

I’m still working on the Lloyds and Devlins, and hope to get them sorted a bit more in the coming months.