2019: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 4 (I'd Like to Meet...)

During the past decade, my husband and I have moved back and forth across Canada three times due to his work.  The first two were arranged and paid for by his company while the last one was arranged by us and only subsidized by his company.  With each move, as our household and personal things were packed up and transported, I always wondered what prompted my ancestors to relocate - not just from one province to another, but across an ocean and without the modern convenience of air travel and professional movers.  One move took me back closer to my elderly mother and other family members, but two moves did take me away from my relatives.  With having experienced the pain and agony of leaving family, I again always wondered how my ancestors managed, emotionally, to leave family members behind in the homeland with the knowledge that they would likely never to see them again.

The ancestor I would like to meet is my Third Great Grandmother, Isabella Margaret (nee Greer) Bates McKee.  She was born about 1822 in Ireland and died in 1878 in Ontario Canada.  She married Thomas Edward Bates in 1843 in Ireland.  Their first son, my great-grandfather, William was born the following year in Ireland.  In 1846, the young family departed their homeland for Canada.  Although I have not been able to verify with primary documentation, folklore claims that Thomas died during the voyage aross the Atlantic Ocean and Isabella was pregnant with their second child who was born after the widow arrived in Canada.  She named that son Thomas Edward.

The young widow Bates was likely not totally alone with a toddler and newborn as her parents may have been emigrating with them at the same time.  As I have not been able to locate passenger or immigration records, I am only assuming that at this point in time.  The 1861 census for Canada West does show the two young Bates boys living with their maternal grandparents (William John Greer and Marthy Charleton) in Mulmur Township in Simcoe County.  I have not yet located any of the family in the 1851/52 census.  Isabella was not in the household in the 1861 census as she had remarried in the early 1850s to Robert McKee and was living with him elsewhere in Mulmur Township.

I would like to meet Isabella to hear her stories as to her experiences deciding to leave her homeland with husband and son only to arrive in her new land as a widow and about to give birth to her second child.  I can only hope that the family had indeed been travelling with her parents so that she had their support during that time.

I would also like to meet Isabella to ask why her sons were living with her parents rather than with her and their step-father.  What was her life like with her second husband?  Was he a controlling man who refused to have sons from his wife's previous marriage live with them?  Did circumstance find that the teenage boys were better off living with their grandparents?   The grandparents would have been in their 70s and would have benefited from having the teenagers living with them to do the farm chores, but the household also included a married son and his bride.  Or was it just a case that the Bates brothers had been visiting their grandparents at the time of the census?  The 1861 census also listed two granddaughters in the household.  They were daughters of another son, not the son also in the household.

I am interested in knowing Isabella's story.  Why did she make the life decisions she did make and what were her thoughts about how life treated her.  I feel that I am a strong, independent woman and the more I research my family history, I find that I am not unique in my family as my tree is full of woman who had to have been strong and independent to survive life in their times of hardship.  As I have not been able to locate much information on Isabella Margaret Greer Bates McKee, I would like to meet her to find out more about her life.