My Miller and Mather ancestors, their friends, neighbours and associates.
Settlement in Lanark County began following the war of 1812 when the military settlement at Perth was established in 1816. My ancestors were among the first military and Scottish settlers to choose lots as they were surveyed. I spent most of my life living in the community where my ancestors settled. Names linked to these settlers are quickly disappearing from the county. My goal is to preserve and enhance the knowledge of the early families of the county and to pass it on to future generations. My parents and grandparents left a rudimentary roadmap to follow when I began. My hope is to 'pay this gift forward' by helping others in their pursuit of family stories.
As a child, living on Tayside Farms in Glen Tay near Perth ON, I lived in a house shared by four generations of my ancestors. I lived within 25 km of homes where land patents were obtained by all my ancestors who arrived in the early 1800s. I was surrounded by farms known by family names, not by addresses. I began my research in the early 1970s, took a break during the busy family and farm years, and inherited my father's files after his death in 1997. In the 1980s I studied at Carleton University where I majored in Canadian Studies, a degree that encompassed courses in social, cultural, political, and historical topics and stimulated an interest in social history. In my work I pursue information about the families of spouses that married into my direct line and their siblings. As my work progressed over the years it became 'community' research. At one point my database was split and my husband now pursues his family, and I mine.
In 2018 I published “Tayside Memories: The Story of a Lanark County Lad”, my father’s memories and family photos of early Bathurst township. In 2021 I published a second book “Janet’s Legacy: Janet Millar Callander (1812-1895), A child settler to Dalhousie Township, Lanark County”. I regularly publish in books published by the Lanark County Genealogical Society and I am currently working on additional publications.
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The bones here are bones of my bone and flesh of my flesh. It goes to doing something about it. It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are today. It goes to respecting their hardships and losses, their never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family. It goes to deep pride that the fathers fought and some died to make and keep us a nation. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us. It is of equal pride and love that our mothers struggled to give us birth, without them we could not exist, and so we love each one, as far back as we can reach. That we might be born who we are. That we might remember them. So we do. With love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence, because we are they and they are the sum of who we are. So, as a scribe called, I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take my place in the long line of family storytellers. That is why I do my family genealogy, and that is what calls those young and old to step up and restore the memory or greet those who we had never known before. 'It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us. It is of equal pride and love that our mothers struggled to give us birth, without them we could not exist, and so we love each one, as far back as we can reach. That we might be born who we are. That we might remember them. So we do. With love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence, because we are they and they are the sum of who we are. So, as a scribe called, I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take my place in the long line of family storytellers. That is why I do my family genealogy, and that is what calls those young and old to step up and restore the memory or greet those who we had never known before.' by Della M. Cummings Wright; Rewritten by her granddaughter Dell Jo Ann McGinnis Johnson; Edited and Reworded by Tom Dunn, 1943.
Are you interested in one of these family names? Lanark County settlers and their families very quickly spread across the continent. I've found at least two that are listed as original Oregon settlers! Later generations are located in most US states and Canadian provinces. One branch of the family emigrated a second time, in the 1860s, and the Boyle family settled in the Fassifern Valley of Queensland Australia. One family, the McLeans, became distillers in Sydney, New South Wales. The first settlers left families behind, mainly in Scotland, Ireland and England. Many had relatives who preceded their emigration and are found among early American settlement records.
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