Margaret McCarron McGinnis and the Year 1861

It had to have been a difficult year for our great-grandmother. Her husband John died in February of the year leaving her with a family of six to support and none of age enough to have working skills of their own.  The oldest, her stepson Patrick, was sixteen and probably capable of finding some sort of minor employment in order to bring in a meager amount of support to help with the sustenance of the family.

I suspect it was a time of charitable giving and receiving coming from close family and friends in the community and the major sources of help certainly might have centered around the local Parish Church, St. Michael’s.  But what might have been the family situation following the death of the family breadwinner can only be speculated on.  What follows are some possibilities of what might have developed for the family as discussed and speculated on by myself and Molly McGinnis.  It is only conjecture for the census of 1861 only provides questions and no real substantial answers regarding Margaret McGinnis and her children.

John McGinnis Sr. was a cobbler by trade and at the time his trade was defined as a Cordwainer according to the only census entry found for him in 1851 in Chatham. Perhaps he was working out of his home or employed elsewhere in the village of Chatham.  By 1861 it very well may have been considered more than a village, more likely a small town, a small and prosperous town I suspect. 

The era of wooden ships was alive and thriving and the small town had an ample shipbuilding industry long established in the community.  The Cunard family being the principle owner of the apparently largest shipyard along the Miramichi River where so many of the wage earners of the local Irish community earned their salaries.  Other members of the Cunard family went on to form a successful shipping company originating in St. John’s, New Brunswick that still exists today.  The Cunard company was the major shareholder in the White Star Line, the company that eventually financed and commissioned the building of the the fateful ship Titanic.

Ten years before his death, in 1851, John Sr. practiced a trade of a cobbler or cordwainer, of which there were 20 in the overall population of 1700.  Obviously he passed his skills on to none of his sons for the evidence is that most followed the obvious trade of ship carpentry, a much needed skill in the shipyards.  Wood from the abundant forests along the upper Miramichi and the availability of such downstream in Chatham was the driving force behind the establishment of the shipbuilding industry that the small town became famous for.  The era of wooden ships by 1871 was being replaced by modern steel ships being built first in Europe during the emergence of the era of steel ocean vessels.  This transition can be directly attributed to the McGinnis family’s eventual migration out of Canada and to the United States.  The industry eventually died in their small town and employment prospects were much greater in the land to the south, the U.S, 

Margaret and her brood continued to strive on, obviously, following the death of the family head but apparently it was not an easy time for her.  The Canadian Census was taken later that year and Margaret and her family do not appear, at least as a family unit.  The entire family may have been missed in the count that year.

Searching through the census of 1861 there are possible entries for some of the family members suggesting that maybe some of the children were living with family and friends but nothing to date can really be pieced together in order to create a valid picture of just what the family was experiencing.  The entries that are found cannot really be established to be of Margaret’s family.  This leads me to suspect that Margaret may have been experiencing difficult times finding ways to support her children, a rather likely experience for any new widow with a large family.

Margaret’s oldest charge, her stepson Patrick, just might have been the redeemer of the family.  His personal enterprise as reflected in his later success in life suggests that he very well could have been assertive enough to step in and slowly helped the family financially, even at such a young age.  If there were employment possibilities for one so young then younger brother James surely soon began to add help for the family sustenance as well.  With her family coming of age in that decade it is easy to assume they all pulled together to keep the family intact.  But the few years immediately following the death of John Sr. had to have included some trying hardships for all to experience.

So the story of what transpired for the remaining McGinnis family for the next ten years, until the next census of 1871, is only something to be wondered about.  The 1871 census reveals that the family is together along with Margaret’s father and a sister.  The appearance of these latter two individuals suggests that times may have improved over that decade as the two new McCarron's in the household are certainly new immigrants for they do not appear in any earlier Canadian census in any province, at least not within any of my data searches.  Somehow, collectively I surmise, enough funds were put together to enable the two to book passage to Canada to join Margaret.  This alone establishes that some level of prosperity had taken place.  The possibility that the father and sister provided their own funding to emigrate out of Ireland is rather unlikely based strictly on the economy of Ireland during the period.  Possible I suppose, but to me rather unlikely.

So 1871 arrives and the economy of Chatham, New Brunswick slowly began to decline as the era of wooden shipbuilding began to die out.  The rest of the story plays out in the U.S. and it amazes me how they all ended up in Washington State still a family unit of extended family for many years to come.