Angus Stewart

ID # 4345, (-1848)
MarriageAngus Stewart married Margaret Susannah Keachie, daughter of James Keachie and Elizabeth Buchanan, on 8 November 1838 at Dumfries Township, Gore District.
From First Presbyterian Church early marriages as they appear on microfilm GS2987. The pages and inks range from the legible to quite faint which has produced uneven results.

Nbr. 51
By license in Dumfries 8 Novr. 1838
Angus Stewart
Susannah Keachie both of Dfs (Dumfries)
Witnesses Wm McKenzie and John Scrimgeour.

(Rev. Strang's entry in the First Church marriage record is clear enough. The marriage was held in the township, Dumfries, and not in Galt. While we can't be sure, almost certainly the marriage would have been held at the home of the bride's parents.)

William McKenzie married Christie Stewart, sister to Angus, on 14 June of the same year. William is the brother-in-law of Angus Stewart.

The witness surnames, McKenzie and Scrimgeour, are quite readable; the given names are not. See transcription of First Presbyterian Church Marriages, Galt, 1834-1841, by Dan Walker and Fawne Stratford-Devai, Vol. 9, Pt 2, Wellington District Marriage Register, 1852-1857, Global Heritage Press/Global Genealogy.com, 2013. The authors have gone to the United Church of Canada Archives and extracted their transcription of this marriage from United Church microfilm reels LCM 30 & 31. The pages on these reels also won't be perfect. 'Wm.' and 'John' are almost certainly correct for the given names of the witnesses. They interpret John Scrimgeour's surname as Scrimgeous. Scrimgeour is correct (A later spelling of this family's surname was Scrimger.)

First Presbyterian Church in Galt was never in the Wellington District. Galt was in the Gore District. The available Gore District marriage register begins in 1843. It is believed that there was an earlier one that didn't survive. Galt very nearly bordered on the Wellington District, however, and First Presbyterian (later First United Church) did pick up on marriages of some residents from the Wellington District. This isn't a great argument for placing First's marriages in a Wellington District volume, but...it is good to have these early First Church marriages appear somewhere in this series. Certainly, the First Church marriages as extracted from the United Church reel LCM 30 and as they appear in the Walker and Stratford-Devai work picks up two 1834 marriages which do not appear on the GS2987 microfilm reel. This reel begins with marriage nbr. 4 in October of 1835.

Beyond this, the handwriting as it appears on the documentation is almost certainly that of Rev. James Strang. A course in 'creative reading' would probably be of some assistance in the decipherment of this clergyman's script.

A further note here: Library & Archives Canada has an index for Upper and Lower Canada marriage licenses. A license was issued on October 26, 1838, for Angus Stewart and Susannah 'Kahey'. This can only be Susannah Keachie.
 
DeathHe died on 5 April 1848 at Galt, Canada West. 
NoteFirst Church records show Angus Stewart's marriage to (Margaret) Susannah Keachie in Dumfries Township in 1838.

Angus Stewart appears on a rather mangled page of the 1842 census for Dumfries Township where he is described as a carpenter. The two header pages are torn off and the page on which Angus appears is crumpled in a manner which eliminates the possibility of making sense of the statistical information. Perhaps because the headers are missing, this enumeration is identified as being in St. Davids Ward in Toronto, which ignore. Unquestionably, this is Dumfries Township and Angus is listed under the section entitled Galt. In this record, he is obviously associated with other persons whom we may believe to be residents of Galt, so he will be such himself. Indeed, the enumeration appears to show him as owning his own property. (Town lots in this enumeration are unidentified.) Beyond this, at first glance it's difficult to find more in the way of solid information to do with Angus' life. We begin to find more when researching Angus Stewart's death.

James Young, in his Early History of Galt and the Settlement of Dumfries, has a chapter on St. Andrew's Church. At the bottom of page 85 is a footnote:

Messrs. Angus Stewart and Abraham Walker were the contractors for St. Andrew's Church. The former was killed, one summer evening in 1848, by falling from the limb of a tree on the hill south of Craigie Lea. etc.

Just what he was doing up a tree of a summer's eve, we cannot be sure, but since he was in contracting it's entirely possible that he was pruning and limbing a tree for purposes of using the trunk, possibly for a beam that might be used to support a roof. Were the tree a mature white pine, Angus could have fallen from some height.

Craigie Lea, variously spelled, was once the name for a Galt sub division, to use a modern term, and was in the Centre, Birch, Elliott, Henry and South Streets area of what was Galt and is now in the city of Cambridge. Young may be rather casting further back in time and it may not have been known as Craigie Lea in 1848 when Angus fell to his death. The moraine's edge is steep and was probably not previously clear cut for agriculture. If Young is correct in locating the place of death of Angus to the south of Craigie Lea, then it was probably at or near the west end of South Street or on the steep slope down to Moffatt Creek.

With time, more has been found.

We may further flesh out the tragic details of the demise of Angus Stewart with thanks to the Glanbrook Heritage extractions of death notices from the Hamilton Spectator for the year of 1848. The following is from the April 12th, 1848 edition of that paper.

The story tells that on Wednesday afternoon (5th April) in Galt, Mr. Angus Stewart, carpenter, of this village was employed in cutting some branches from a tall pine tree on the property of Mr. Andrew Elliot near the distillery when the branch gave way and he fell to the ground, a distance of some 20 to 30 feet. His wife, who was standing at her own door saw him fall as well as his brother, who hastened with others to give assistance. Angus received treatment from Dr. Richardson but he never regained consciousness. The story goes on to say that he left a wife and one child.

Just where the property of Andrew Elliot was located, or the distillery, is presently unknown. The Craigie Lea locale as mentioned in Young's book is probably correct if for no other reason than the original creation of Elliot (or Elliott) Street is in what we may refer to as the Craigie Lea subdivision. The Tremaine map of 1861 offers us a clue in that the property above the moraine and to the south of present day Concession Street is identified as the Elliott Survey. This does encompass what was once known (now long forgotten by most) as Craigie Lea.

We note that Angus Stewart is recorded as the husband of Margaret S. Stewart on her gravestone, but his burial there is not recorded and a stone of record has not been found. This would suggest that as of Margaret's death in 1870 Angus had a known grave elsewhere. Angus and Margaret were married in Dumfries Township, almost certainly by Rev. Strang, and so of course their marriage is recorded in First Church's record book of marriages. First Church had its own cemetery at present day High Park in Cambridge/Galt and it may well be that Angus was buried there (the church's book of death records does not begin until years later). The cemetery stopped receiving burials when the Galt Cemetery (later known as Mountview) was opened in July of 1868. In the 1880s, the cemetery was deemed to be run down and there was a 'dig' and stones and remains were moved to Mountview. If Angus was indeed buried there, it would seem likely that there would be some sort of record on a stone in Mountview (examples can be found for many other families), but there is no stone and no record on a burial card.

Norma Huber in her 1992 work Strang Cemetery and Miscellaneous Misplaced Stones makes mention of the digging of the foundation of an apartment building adjacent to High Park. This was the Cheviot House. Abandoned stones were uncovered and then carted away. Where they went is unknown. Norma was only able to record a very few stones that had been found in unexpected places. Certainly, it is known that not all remains were removed. Back in the 1950s, when an illuminated fountain was being dug in High Park, a friend of your researcher's father lived on Spruce Street behind High Park and one day came home to lunch to find his neighbour's son playing in the driveway. He asked the lad what he was playing with and was told it was an arm bone. The man took a good look at it and opined that it was indeed an arm bone.

We may certainly say of the First Church marriage that it was the Keachie church of choice and so the marriage, as recorded, was under the auspices of First Church. While Angus, as mentioned above, was a contractor for St. Andrew's Church, and there were Stewarts recorded as attending there, we may safely say that Angus and Margaret attended First Church if for no other reason than the fact that their son, James Keachie Stewart, was baptised there on May 12, 1844. (These baptisms are to be found at the United Church of Canada Archives in Toronto on microfilm LCM-30.)

A frustration relating to early First Church baptisms is that from the earliest listings of 1833 to 1852 only the name of the child is provided and not those of the parents. With James Keachie Stewart we are on safe ground identifying him as their son. There are other possible children, however. A Janet Stewart was baptised on September 8, 1840, and she may well be a daughter of Margaret and Angus. A William was baptised in 1845 and a John in 1847. It's entirely possible that the reason we have no later record for these children is that they may be deceased prior to our finding Margaret with son James in the 1851 census. If so, it's possible that Angus was buried with them. The point here is that if Angus and Margaret were attending First Church at the time James Keachie Stewart was baptised, which evidently they were, then Angus was likely buried in the First Church Cemetery at present day High Park in Cambridge/Galt. This was also known as the Strang Burial Ground.

Another note that indicates your researcher is getting a bit 'dated' is that High Park is now named Centennial Park.

(By way of recent research, it may be said that the above potential children of Angus and Margaret almost certainly weren't. Janet and William were certainly children of Thomas Stewart and his wife Hannah Smith. This is also certainly the situation for Elizabeth and Margaret baptized prior to the marriage of Angus and Margaret. John Stewart, baptized in 1847 at First Church is rather more questionable. Your researcher leans to the view that John was the son of Thomas and Hannah and that he probably didn't survive. Certainly, they had a son in 1851 that they named John. That a couple might have a child that did not long survive and then name the next one the same, while not common, is certainly not unheard of.)



Angus' year of death, 1848, is a bit before the time of the Dumfries Reformer. We are fortunate to have the record as it appeared in the Hamilton Spectator.

There is one thing to be said for Angus Stewart, quite in his favour. The marriage record for Angus and Margaret has their marriage in 1838 and so the Keachie family must have gotten to know Angus quite well. Margaret's mother, Elizabeth Buchanan Keachie was still, just, within her child bearing years when she had a son in 1843 and she and her husband James gave their newborn the name Angus Stewart Keachie.

An interesting work has come to your researcher's attention in the form of the book Stewart Family Records by J. Montgomery Seaver, American Historical-Genealogical Society, Philadelphia, apparently from the year 1929. It does provide some source material, though not necessarily specific for our purposes. Still, page 49 does tell that a 'Mr. Stewart' of Pitkerril (Pitkerro) in Perthshire, Scotland, had some children who went to America. Page 50 mentions a son, Alexander A. Stewart, 1733-1855 (typo?) who is said to have married Isabel McBean. They had several children, two of whom are of particular interest to this tree.

One was Angus Stewart who emigrated from New York to Galt and married Margaret Susannah Keachie. The other was Christine, or Christyann, who married William McKenzie and had three daughters. No dates are provided for Angus or Christie. As noted on their church marriage records, however, Angus was a witness at the marriage of Christie Stewart and William McKenzie and so was probably Christie's brother. William McKenzie was a witness at the marriage of Angus and Margaret and we may say was Angus' brother-in-law.

The McBean connection is of interest for Thomas McBean was one of the earliest settlers in Dumfries Township and James Young's book of the history of Galt and Dumfries states that he'd been in the township in early days assisting with the survey. We have no direct evidence, but it does seem likely that he was a family connection of Angus and Christie.

The following notes should be used with care.

Below the south slope of the Craigie Lea moraine is Moffatt's Creek, which in early years coursed through the Moffatt farm. The 1861 Tremaine map shows the L shaped property of Mrs. S. Steward (sic). This is just south of the Elliott Survey, but north of the Moffatt property. This makes it entirely possible that Angus' wife did indeed witness her husband's fall from her doorway.

John Scrimgeour was a witness at the marriage of Angus and Margaret (Susannah) and his property is shown on the 1861 map as bordering the Stewart property.

According to the Seaver book, Angus' mother was a McBean. According to the Dickson Papers, a Thomas McBean purchased the whole of lot 1 on the 8th concession of Dumfries Township in 1826. As of 1861, there was an Angus McBean present on this property. This would be rather irelevant to any argument here, but there is a family tale to the effect that when Alexander Buchanan left Galt for the township he only went a short distance and settled along Moffatt's Creek to the east of the Moffatt property and the Cheese Factory Road. He is said to have later traded this property for a McBean property and spent his middle years farming there. (This story has not been confirmed nor the other property identified.) The point here is that there was an old ruin of a house along the Moffatt's Creek (upstream from the Moffatt Farm) that could just be seen from the road and it was known as the McBean house. McBeans were not likely there at the time of Angus' death, but it may have kept some of the family in a cluster of properties.

Some land notes.

Your researcher has collected few of the North Dumfries abstract index pages available on microfilm at the Archives of Ontario. These appear upon Latter Day Saints reel GSU 169976. Recently, however (December of 2017) a website identified as onland.ca has made available images of the abstract indexes for many Ontario locales, including North Dumfries. While viewable, for the present these images may not be downloaded or printed and are only viewable during scheduled hours. So far as Angus Stewart is concerned there are a few items of interest.

Book 2A, North Dumfries, pages 1-299:

Image 146 C10-L7
On 29 June 1852 William Dickson sold to William Scrimger 75 acres of this 200 acre lot, cost of same not stated. The next entry, dated 2 July 1852, William Scrimger et ux (and wife) obtained a mortgage from Margaret S. Stewart for 250 pounds which was discharged on 8 August 1857.

Image 174 Township of North Dumfries Subdivision, lot nbr 2, East of Grand River on Con. 10.
On 31 March, 1846, Angus Stewart purchased the east part of this lot (100 acres - price not shown) from William Dickson. This is said to have originally appeared in book A, folio 225. This earlier book will have been a Gore District register (the Gore District was headquartered at Hamilton) and this information was then transfered to the North Dumfries abstract index page when the AIs came into being in 1867.

See North Dumfries book 2B, pages 300-541:

Image 98
Township of North Dumfries Subdivision (Subdivision then struck out), lot number not shown, but on Concession 10.
Sub titled Village of Galt, Miscellaneous lots.

Bargain & Sale 17 August 1835 Wm. Dickson to Angust Stewart 1 acre, original register I, folio 46.
Part of sub lot 3 being two town lots and a small piece between High Road and River.

Angus gets no further mention on this page with the last entry being dated in 1853.

('High Road' unknown to this researcher.)

Image 230

The family had a late interest in C10-L2 for a transaction is recorded in 1891 between the estate of William Dickson and 'Destamona' Stewart to do with 10 acres of this lot. 

Child of Angus Stewart and Margaret Susannah Keachie

Last Edited13 Jul 2022