Samuel McCoskery, Matilda Howe 

and Mary Ann Shier Moore

 

 

 

At this point, the trail back to Scotland and Ireland is unclear for our great-great grandparents, Samuel Sr. and Matilda Howe. Paperwork places them in Canada and they indicate on census forms that they were born in Scotland and Ireland, but I haven't found a definite link to family or place in Great Britain.

 

In 2016, I received a message in Ancestry from Wes, a distance cousin in Dawson Creek, BC. He had information about the lineage of Margaret Moore, our great-grandmother (Fred's mother). Margaret's mother was Mary Ann Shier Moore and her father was Walter Moore. This information comes from Wes:

 

"Just a short word about Walter Moore. As you know, they arrived in Bervie in 1850, (from St. Marys, I think). After Christmas in 1854, Walter was either (1) away down towards Windsor, Ontario working at cutting wood or (2) he was in Goderich picking up some belongings that he had not been able to take on the last leg of their initial journey to Bervie. He had a loaded sleigh and was on his way home. Crossing the river there at Goderich, I guess he thought the river was frozen, but it wasn't hard enough (in March), and the horses, sleigh and himself were all lost. The very sad part was that his youngest daughter was born the following August. I can scarcely imagine how Mary Ann managed!"

 

In the 1861 Canadian census, Mary Ann Shier Moore is recorded as a farmer and a widow and she lived in a log home. Her children were 14, 13, 11, 9 and 7. She was a Wesleyan Methodist, she never remarried and lived to be 92.

 

Wes also sent me the lineage of the Shier family back to 1674 where they lived in the area of the Upper Rhine of Germany. The term Palatine describes one of a group of about 14,000 immigrants who fled their homeland in the area of the Upper Rhine during the period of May to October 1709 and the Shiers were part of this group. I suggest checking out Wikipedia for a complete history of these poor people. Everyone was after them and nobody wanted them. The Shiers ended up in Ireland, Protestants in a Catholic country, which didn't work very well. Some of the Palatines settled in Ireland after a time, but most kept hopping boats to Canada and the US. The Shiers were Wesleyan Methodists, converted probably by John Wesley himself in Ireland. From the journal of John Wesley, we read,

 

"In July 1760 I rode to Pallaskenry, which was a German settlement, but the poor settlers with all their diligence and frugality could not procure even the coarsest food to eat and the meanest raiment to put on, so that most of these, as well as those at Ballingrane, have been forced to seek bread in other places, some of them in distant parts of Ireland but the greater part to America."

 

Mary Ann and Walter were both born in Ireland and married in London, Ontario on January 13, 1845.

 

Our ancestors were tough people, men and women both, but I'm always taken with the women who were widowed young and ended up staying single and raising children in the wilderness. Matilda McCoskery and Mary Ann Moore lived in the same community and their children, Samuel G. McCoskery and Margaret Moore married. It was obvious the church was important to both families and I like to think Matilda and Mary Ann were friends surrounded by a loving church family.