Who is Hannah Meade?

If I could go back in time, one place I would go is Barriefield, near Kingston, Ontario in the year 1870.

My 2x great-grandparents John and Elizabeth Seale had 7 sons, 1 daughter... 
and a mystery lodger.

I would ask John Seale how it came about that he came to Canada with his first wife Sarah, and when she died what became of his son Theophilus and daughter Eliza that were born in Ireland? I would also love to see some of his carpentry work, a passion that he handed down through the generations to my father and my daughter.

But the more burning question I have is.... Who is Hannah Meade?

Hannah first turns up living with my Seale family on the 1871 Canada census of Ontario. There is John and Elizabeth, their daughter Anne, 3 of their sons, Mary Hunter (sister of Elizabeth) and Meade, Hannah age 9 (so born about 1862).  

According to the Seale's 1881 census Hannah is now 19 years old. No occupation.

In 1883 one of the Seale boys, William, married Louisa Alexander.  The marriage record lists the witnesses as A.H Seale (his brother Alexander) and Hannah M. Seale... ?

According to the 1891 census she is now listed as Hannah Seale, daughter age 25 (29).

Then Hannah drops from the face of the earth.  I found no marriage record, death record, or other censuses. From the previous censuses I learned that Hannah was born in Ontario (no birth record found), her father was English and her mother Irish. So I embark on a quest to find the answer.... who is Hannah Mead?

I decide the first step is to look at the 1861 Census to see if perhaps there was a Mead family in the area. There are some Mead families, one lives in Prescott, ON, over 100K away and others are more than 300K distant. But looking promising is one Mead family in the census living at Fort Frederick (& Hospital), just 2 miles down the road from the Seale property in Barriefield:
     M. Mead b1818, wife Jane b1829, children Charles b1856, Eliza b1857, and Mary b1860.

So next, looking up these children I find Charles - he married in 1884 and died in 1887. They had a daughter Jennie born 1887, the year her father died. The marriage record states his father is Matthew Mead and his mother is Jane Macauley. This fits with the 1861 census I found.
I find no records for Eliza or Mary.

Turning to the parents I find a Matthew Mead on the 1871 area census, a widow boarding at the place of James Gough, tavern keeper. He is also on the 1881 census living with his son Charles, a seaman. No more records for Jane. So Jane died between 1862 and 1871.

With some googling around I found a transcription of an 1854 Toronto marriage record for Matthew Mead, Pvt of the Royal Canadian Rifle and Jane Macauley.  I also found the Ontario Cemetery Finding Aid which lists a few Meads at Cataraqui in Kingston, including Matthew, Charles, Jane and Mary (wife of Rev Godfrey Shore)... aha!! Mary got married!
And Hannah Mead.

My next step is to contact the Cataraqui cemetery to see if they have dates of death. They are very helpful there, as are the people at most places I contact for information.
So I wait to hear from them.

Sure enough, my contact tells me that Jane Macauley Mead died in January 1865, when Hannah was just 2 or 3 years old.  At that time the Seale children were 15 - 26 and Elizabeth would have been delighted to take in a baby girl, after raising 6 boys and only 1 girl who was now 24.
The cemetery admin is still looking for Hannah Mead.

So I am convinced that this is Hannah Mead's biological family. It is not a stretch that John Seale, a military man, would have known Matthew Mead and his family, and they probably attended the same church .

There is no Eliza Mead at the cemetery with the other Meads which leads me to believe she has married. It will be difficult (although my contact at the cemetery says not impossible!) to find her.

Mary Mead Shore and her husband lived on the same street as John Seale Jr for a time.  Mary died in 1914, and her husband the good Reverend died in 1901. I have found no evidence of children and Mary never remarried.

I just got another email with a bonus from the wonderful administrator at the Cemetery - Hannah Mead is buried with her husband, George VanHorn and his family! (George's father Alex lived next door to and married Nancy McAdoo and Nancy's niece married into the Seale family).

Hannah and George were married in 1901, lived on George's family farm in Barriefield close to the Seale family, and had 4 children. But Hannah, like her mother, did not live to see her children marry or give her grandchildren, as she died young in 1907. She is surrounded by her family in death - her husband George, her stillborn baby girl and her son George Rodney.

I can now close the book on the mysterious Hannah Mead.

I hope Hannah has family that remembers her and passes on stories about her, so she is never lost or forgotten.

What about the Children?

All of us who have children worried when they were young about who would look after them if something happened to us, the parents. These days it is a less likely scenario than in our ancestor’s time.

In Britain when a father or widow died leaving minor children, relatives usually took in the children. Sometimes the court appointed a guardian or curator to look after the children’s interests until they were 21. If a child was under marriageable age (12 for girls and 14 for boys), guardianship was called "tuition." If the child was of marriageable age but under 21, it was called "curation." See Court of Wards and Liveries.

In Quebec when one parent died there was often someone appointed to look after the interests of the children of the marriage, especially if the widow(er) wanted to marry.  Some of these records are online at BANQ (link below) with images of the actual documents (in French). See instructions at the end.

In the 1800’s society didn’t know what to do with all the orphans running the streets or overflowing the orphanages, so they came up with a plan to farm them out – literally.  To ship them to farm families to help with the work. There are several websites that tell of the plight of these children.

I also found a couple of books you might enjoy. One is a book on child rearing from 1748.  The other is a book of children stories, that teach a lesson, from 1800.  There are 6 Volumes in the series.

Relevant Links:

Court of Wards and Liveries info

Stories of Orphan Train Riders

Orphan Train Info – Children’s Aid Society

National Orphan Train Complex – researching

British Home Children in Canada

The Duplessis Orphans (no database, most still living)

Index to orphan schools records Australia – 1817-1886

Delaware Orphan Court Records, 1680-1978 (Browse)

More links on Olive Tree Genealogy

A modern plan upon which the minds and manners of youth may be formed - 1748

The parent's assistant, or, Stories for children Vol 1 – 1800 (there are 6 at Internet Archives)

Annual Report of the Orphans' Home of Toronto

Quebec Court Records – Guardianships (see instructions below)

Note: To do a search in Quebec guardianship records at Banq, type in the word Tutelle and the surname.  Click on any of the results and at the top right click “Voir les images” and it has the number of pages. To download the images go to the icons at top of the page. There is a red X (close), then the print button, then the download (Téléchargement) button, then the Référence button, which when clicked gives you the source.