I’m fascinated by the threads of history these new lineages offer, my own lines further back and further Ottawa Valley than I’d been previously aware. My third great grandfather on my birth father’s side: John Sullivan, or O’Sullivan, depending. Once he landed in Upper Canada, it seemed, the O vanished. Born circa 1777 in Doneraile, County Cork, Ireland of parentage unknown. John Sullivan, along with his wife, Margaret Buckley, born in 1796 in Churchtown, County Cork as the daughter of James Buckley, were part of the “Peter Robinson Settlers” that landed in what became Ottawa Valley. The passenger list from the Brunswick, which landed May 11, 1825, included John and Margaret Sullivan with children Jeremiah, Dennis and James, as well as a few hundred other Cork settlers, en route with the hope of a fresh start. A further son, John, was born in Goulbourn Township, Ontario, with their remaining three—Michael, Daniel and Mary—born in Lanark. This suggests some distance of time between landing, and when they finally arrived. Verna Ross McGiffin’s Pakenham: Ottawa Valley Village 1823-1860 (1963) lists that John Sullivan was offered a location ticket for the West half of Lot 16, Concession 7, Pakenham Township, Lanark. Both John and Margaret are buried on Huntley Road, in Almonte. As Howard Morton Brown’s Lanark Legacy: Nineteenth Century Glimpses of an Ontario County (1984) describes:
For the group migration of over five hundred persons from Cork and other counties of southwestern Ireland in 1823, the site of Almonte was chosen as the centre of settlement. After an ocean voyage of eight weeks and passage from Quebec to Montreal, the large party, including almost two hundred children under age fourteen, was transported up the St. Lawrence from Lachine to Prescott in twenty-two large bateaux. They were accompanied by five boatloads of provisions. Continuing inland, they approached their unprepared winter quarters in September by way of Franktown and Carleton Place. The selection of the emigrants in Ireland, the journey to their destination and other arrangements for their settlement in Ramsey, Huntley, Goulbourn, Pakenham and Beckwith townships, all were superintended by Peter Robinson. He had been elected in 1817 to the Upper Canada legislature and later became the province’s Commissioner of Crown Lands.
Hon. Peter Robinson (1785-1838) was a politician who served as Commissioner of Crown Lands as well as on the Legislative Assembly, Legislative Council, Executive Council of Upper Canada who organized two groups of settlers, over 2500 families, from the south of Ireland in 1823 and 1835. The settlers, many of whom were from County Cork, settled in what is now Lanark, Ontario, and the village of Scott’s Plains, which was renamed Peterborough in Robinson’s honour. I can easily say I know remarkably little about this side of the Ottawa Valley, my only true knowledge of Peterborough to do with the writers that emerged from there in the early 1980s, the “Peterborough Poets,” including Michael Dennis, Dennis Tourbin, Maggie Helwig, Ward Maxwell, Richard Harrison and Riley Tench, with Yann Martel in the background, working at the university bookstore. Should I know more than that? Dolores O'Riordan (1971-2018), lead singer of the Irish band the Cranberries, who married a Canadian, and moved to a waterfront home on Big Bald Lake, just north of Peterborough, as the landscape reminded her of her home county of Limerick.
Ruminating on how successful these particular Irish settlers may have been upon landing, citing a study by Guy Ferguson, Donald Harman Akenson, in The Irish in Ontario: A Study in Rural History, second edition (1984) suggests it “reveals both a high degree of continuity on their original farmsteads and a standard of agricultural achievement comparable to that of neighbours from other ethnic backgrounds.” He goes on: “Despite initial disadvantages, by 1861 the Irish Catholics had the same levels of capital accumulation and were as firmly committed to mixed commercial agriculture as their non-Catholic and non-Irish neighbours.” With the introduction of Irish and Scottish neighbours, as well, came some of the old conflicts. As Jean S. McGill writes in her A Pioneer History of the County of Lanark (1968), referencing Peter Robinson’s departure after those first rounds of settlers.
With Robinson’s departure some of the restraint was removed from the settlement and scenes of drunkenness and disturbance occurred at Shipman’s Mills. An Orange Lodge was organized in 1824 at Perth and this did nothing to improve feelings between Irish and Scotch. Mr. Shipman himself was a strong Orangeman which did not enhance his position amid the newcomers.
The Scottish settlers looked upon the immigrant Irish with some jealousy, for not only had their way been paid to the new land by the government, but a more liberal supply of rations and other necessities had been given to them. Also the Irish were coming to a land partially settled and had neighbours to assist in clearing and cultivating the land. The hardships the first pioneers had endured had greatly diminished with clearance of land and establishment of forest trails. It seemed unfair that the government should be more generous toward the later emigrants.
One always hopes anyone can leave behind the old arguments, the old battles. From John Sullivan to Daniel Sullivan to Theresa, who, along with Alexander Hamilton, are my great grandparents, both of whom were born 1878 in Lanark County: she, in Aston, he in Ramsay. Their marriage record for April 18, 1903 at St. Clare’s Church at Dwyer Hill, Goulbourn Township, writes: “After dispensing with banns and the ban against mixed marriages, marriage of Alexander Hamilton, a Protestant and son of age of Thomas Hamilton and Janet Aitken of St. Michael’s parish, Huntley, and Theresa Sullivan, daughter of age of Daniel Sullivan and Margaret Conboy/Convoy of this parish. Witnesses: Duncan Hamilton and Kate Sullivan.” I’m struck by the notion of a “mixed marriage” as a description of one between a Catholic and a Protestant. It’s easy to forget that these divisions were real. My mother’s father, George Page, for example, was a member of the Orange Order in Kemptville, Ontario. Wayne Johnson’s 1990 novel The Divine Ryans provided me, at least, a wonderful clarification of these conflicts I might not have otherwise understood. If you were in Ontario, for example, you were most likely Protestant, read the Toronto Star, spoke English, voted Progressive Conservative and followed the Toronto Maple Leafs. As my father once responded to my question, it didn’t matter which hockey team won, as long as it wasn’t the Montreal Canadiens. “Most of Fleming Street was Catholic,” writes Johnson in The Divine Ryans, a tale set in late 1960’s Newfoundland, “but there were a few Protestant families. In fact, one of the city’s staunchest Protestants and monarchists lived near the end of the street, her house just visible from Aunt Phil’s.” A bit further on, he describes how those tensions played out:
Despite the fact that the Ryans and the Barters had never spoken to each other, it had somehow become the custom that after each televised game between the Habs and the Leafs, the family whose team had won would phone the family whose team had lost, not to speak to them, of course, but only to let their phone ring three times—three rings, three gloating cheers. Just as the Americans and the Russians had the hotline, the Ryans and the Barters had what Uncle Reginald called “the knellephone,” their only cold war communication.