Kenneth McDonald

MS248 reel 1, Vol. 4, page 83
Gore District Marriage Register

Extracted from a list of marriages solemnized by Rev'd Alfred Booker, Baptist minister.

Kenneth McDonald and Elizabeth McCrea, both of the Gore District
on March 28th (1848).

No witness names are given.

Rev. Booker's entries in the Gore District Marriage Register are in no sort of order, though probably recorded by the District clerk in the manner that he received them, perhaps an all in one, if disordered, list.

There are pencilled annotations to on the lists, mainly relating to the years, but also to the effect that Booker was a Baptist.

One transcription done by Dan Walker & Fawne Stratford-Devai, The Marriage Registers of Upper Caada / Canada West, Vol. 13, Gore District, 1842-1856, Global Heritage Press, 2000, shows the date of the McDonald-McCrea marriage as being in 1848 though a pencilled annotation suggests that it was in 1849. 1848 is the more likely year.

The 1851 census was begun in early January of 1852. The question asked for a person's age in this census was: How old are you on your next birthday. Since Kenneth and Elizabeth show a son William as age 4, presumeably on a later date in 1852, we must guess that 1848 is the likely year of their marriage.

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography places Alfred Booker at the Baptist Church in Hamilton. We cannot say with certainty that the McDonald-McCrea marriage was conducted there.

There will be a backstory as to Kenneth and Elizabeth's marriage being conducted by a Baptist clergyman. They do appear in the 1851 census as Presbyterian and in the 1871 census as well. The 1861 census (badly indexed because of the enumerator's poor handwriting) has them as Baptists. This is likely an error, for the Glen Morris Presbyterian Church's communion rolls has them as members in 1853. This does have a column for showing a date if someone left at a later time, but there is no entry as such for the McDonalds. They are still present at the Glen Morris Church in later years and are buried there. It seems reasonable to disregard the 1861 census on this one.

A final comment. As mentioned above, Booker's marriages are entered into the Gore Marriage Register in a very disordered fashion. What if they came on small pieces of paper? Could they have gotten mixed up with marriages performed elsewhere? The McDonalds do not appear in the marriage record book of First Church in Galt, not so far away. There were Presbyterian congregations in Ayr and Paris, all within the bounds of the Gore District. We show the marriage as performed by Rev. Booker, for that is how it is shown in the Gore District Marriage Register.

One last note about Rev. Booker:

Rev. Booker was one of the many who died on the evening of March 12th, 1857, in a train wreck at the drawbridge over the Desjardin Canal near Hamilton.