Message from Canada

Last week a reader from Montreal, Canada with ties to the Hughes Family left a comment. Can anyone help a neighbor to the North?

What a surprise. I am living in Montreal but I’am born in Gaspesie, in the province of Québec. I do genealogic research for many years but I can’t find information about the family of my great grand-mother family in Ireland. Her name was Rosann Martin and her father Patrick Martin and mother Mary Arthur. Rosann is born in Caplan but her father and mother in Ireland. They came in Bathurst NB around 1828 where an other daughter Helen, was born in 1829. The Martin family was with the Hughes and Hamilton. They move all in Caplan around 1830. They were close of William Hughes and Mary Martin and also Margaret Campbell. Do you have more information about them ? I’ll like very much to be in relation with some members of the Hughes Family. It’is possible? Thanks.

This comment was in response to a post from 2010 – click here to read the entry. For more, click here.

Please add a comment to this post with any information you might have. Thanks for your help!

The Hughes Family

A reader of the blog asked what we knew of the William Hughes family.  What follows is the entry in the 100th anniversary booklet from 1978:

William Hughes-Margaret Campbell Family History

Great Grandfather Paul Hughes and his wife, the former Mary Martin, lived in County Tyrone, Ireland.  They had 9 sons and 2 daughters.  Paul Hughes was a blacksmith and was killed by a horse and buried at Pomeroy, Ireland.  Later his widow married John Hamilton, a widower.  Her brother,  James Martin, was a poet and song writer who had left Ireland and gone to America.  He was employed by a steamship company to encourage people to emigrate to Canada and the United States.

He wrote “The Good Ship Caledonia” and “Farewell to Erin” and other ballads.  The older members of Great Grandmother’s family settled in Quebec, Canada, and later she and her husband, John Hamilton and Grandfather William Hughes, who was then 10 years of age, followed them to Quebec.  One of Grandfather William’s older brothers was drowned in the St. Lawrence River.

Grandfather William Hughes married Margaret Campbell in the Province of Quebec, Canada.  They had 9 children, 4 daughters and 5 sons when they left Canada to come to the United States.  The 2 oldest sons died of cholera en route – Henry on the Great Lakes, and Daniel in Chicago.

The family then came down the Illinois River to the Mississippi River and traveled up the Mississippi River to St. Paul on the immigrant steamer, The War Eagle.  They were urged to come to St. Paul by Grandfather William’s uncle James Martin, the poet and song writer who then lived in St. Paul.  Betsy, the oldest daughter, died at Greer’s Cabin in Dakota County before the family moved into their home in 1854.  They settled at Pig’s Eye and also lived at Pine Bend.

Ann Hughes married Ed McGinley and they had no children.  Ed McGinley served in the Civil War with the Union Army and was acquainted with the Minnesota area so he and his wife homesteaded in the township of Tara.  They encouraged Grandfather and Grandmother William Hughes and their son, John, to take homesteads in Tara, also.  Grandfather William Hughes and John each homesteaded 80 acres of land.  By building a house partially on each homestead, they were able to occupy the same home.  Grandmother William Hughes died in 1895 and Grandfather William Hughes died in 1903.  They are buried in St. Malachy’s Cemetery.

I find stories like this fascinating because you don’t come across detailed immigrant accounts like this very often.

Part II will continue with John Hughes and his family.  Check back tomorrow.