David Kerr and Margaret Hyndman are my 3X great grandparents through their son, John, his son, Harry, who I met personally in Gladstone, Manitoba and through his son, Wilfred, my grandfather. Although David has been quoted in a Gladstone Age newspaper interview in the late 1880’s as saying they arrived in Quebec in January of 1949, I have been unable to verify any Kerr/Hyndman crossing except a listing on the Leander from Limavady, Ireland to Quebec, Canada in 1847. Going with that provenance, David (b. 1827) was 20 years old when he and Margaret (b. 1933 and aged 14 years) arrived in Quebec. Given the horrible conditions on some of these “coffin” ships, it’s a miracle they survived the voyage, let alone the great potato famine. As there were no census records in Canada until 1851, I have been unable to track their journey to Ontario, nor have I unearthed a marriage record, so it is very likely they were “married but not churched” as they say. However, they were listed as David and Margaret Kerr, working as a labourer and domestic by that time in Manvers Twp, Durham County in the Bruce Penninsula and rather a large number of Kerr and Hyndman relations are also settling in this general area and shown on the census.
From there they moved to Arkwright in Arran Twp., Grey County, where they opted for a free land grant from the Crown if they cleared and settled on 100 acres of land and built and occupied a home within two years. David’s brother Andrew and several other Kerr/Hyndman relatives also moved to Arkwright at the same time and acquired the land grants. The next census, undertaken in 1861, notes that David and Margaret were married in 1847, were now living in a one-storey log home and revealed that although David was literate, Margaret was unable to read or write. This census very oddly required the residents to disclose the household members who were “deaf and dumb, blind, or lunatics and idiots” (and I’m happy to say none were reported).
It’s interesting to note that for the first five years of their marriage, they remained childless, and given their youth I can only ascribe this to possibly Margaret’s being so emaciated and unhealthy from the coffin ship journey that she could not conceive. However, once they got started, they were a force to be reckoned with, having twelve children by 1972, when David and Margaret realized they would be unable to provide for their many children if they continued trying to farm the rocky terrain. Perhaps the land in County Donegal was similar, so that they originally believed they could manage, but by now they knew the land wouldn’t support their growing family. An old adage of the Bruce Peninsula residents states that the early settlers were “more proficient at producing stones than potatoes”.
In any event, David and Margaret remained in Ontario through Canada’s Confederation in 1867, which opened up the Canadian West to new settlement. They sold their Ontario property and pulled up stakes in 1872 along with David’s brother Andrew and his family. David is 45 years old and Margaret is 39 at this time and they head for the fertile lands of the largely unsettled Canadian West, with two covered wagons and teams of horses which hold their children, the youngest of which is a boy born to David and Margaret, only 8 months of age. This baby boy dies on the arduous trek West, so that they arrived in Neepawa, Manitoba with eleven children and Margaret being five months’ pregnant with another. The trip took two months overland in Ontario, by ship across Lake Michigan and again by land across Wisconsin and Minnesota in the U.S. to Manitoba. It is a tedious, costly and harrowing experience for this large family. They had joined others in settling their quarter sections (160 acres) given free of charge by the new Confederation of Canada to anyone who settled the land within three years and another section for $1 if they succeeded. You can imagine the trials of having to live in your covered wagons while and building a log home and stables for livestock to last you through the first winter and the planting of crops in spring. According to the Gladstone Age news interview of David, their first three years of trying to grow crops were plagued by grasshoppers (locusts) who ate everything green in their path, such that the government furnished seed to many families for the 1976 crop to ensure a new beginning for the settlers. Our Family records state that Margaret was often visited by local natives, who would wait for her to make “tea” for them, although we’re not certain what this “tea” consisted of, as it can’t have been easy to get proper tea in the Canadian prairies.
On August 20, 1872 Margaret gave birth to her thirteenth child, who was the first non-native baby born in the district. She had two more daughters in 1878 and 1880 to complete the Kerr family of fifteen live births. Other than the infant who died on the trail West, there were the twin girls who succumbed to the terrible diptheria epidemic in their teens in Manitoba, their neighbours having lost three children within hours. It must have been quite a blow David, Margaret and their twelve surviving children.
In spite of all their hardship, our David and Margaret managed to maintain stoic resistance to troubles and a wonderful sense of humour which they’ve passed down to their progeny and remains one of the things that keeps us travelling to see each other from time to time though the generations. I love my Irish heritage!
| Additional Information | ||
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| Date of Birth | 22nd Jun 1827 | |
| Date of Death | 7th Jan 1897 | |
