Unknown Coleman
ID # 942
| Marriage | Unknown Coleman married (--?--) Unknown. |
| Note | At this point of research, the parents of John and William Coleman are unknown to us. We may say that the Coleman brothers came from New Jersey, probably stopping in Pennsylvania en route to Upper Canada, but little else is known of their origins. It is tempting to believe that John and William were father and son and there is documentary evidence to support this. In 1817, William Coleman petitioned the governor, Francis Gore, for the lease of a clergy reserve in Beverly Township (this was for lot 2 on the 2nd concession). One of the letters of reference is from Titus G. Simons, Major of company 2 of the Gore Regiment. In it, he states: This may certify that the bearer William Coleman is the son of John Coleman of the Township of Beverly, etc. unquote. (See image 918, C-1740, 1817, C Bundle leases, Volume 145, available on line from Canada Archives.) The difficulty with this statement is that in Cornell's Pioneers of Beverly, the chapter entitled The Troy Letter, pages 22 and 23 of the Centennial Edition, reprint, must lead us to believe that Cornell is quoting Helen and Adam Misener. Helen was the daughter of John Coleman and Elizabeth Lawrason (her birth name may more correctly have been Elinor) and the paragraph in question refers to John and William as brothers. With conflicting information such as this it is difficult to be certain, but the Cornell book is likely the more accurate. Given the context, the information almost certainly came from the Miseners. Titus G. Simons was also no doubt correct in saying that William was the son of John, for, quite simply, Wiliam was raised as such. It's unlikely that Simons was interested in splitting hairs as to William's being a fostered son. If we choose to believe Cornell, and your researcher leans that way, then with an age difference of 32 years between John and William, we are left to believe that they were half brothers. The above mentioned petition provides us with some minor support for this concept in that William states that (in 1817) he is 25 and has resided in the province 'about sixteen years'. This would mean that he was about nine or ten when he came to Upper Canada and would date this to about 1801. It is difficult to see who else he might have come with other than John Coleman and his wife Elizabeth. We do not know just where the family was in their earlier years in the province, but John Coleman is in Beverly in 1811 when he petitions for a clergy reserve. This accords with daughter Sarah's obituary which says that the family was in the Copetown area for a time before moving to the Troy area. The only comment to be made as to William's math, above, is that the family wasn't reasonably in Canada much before 1807. Rachel Coleman, the last known daughter of John and Elizabeth claimed, in various census years, to have been born in the United States. Either William's strategy in the above mentioned petition was weighted for reasons unknown to us today, or he was numerically challenged. |
Children of Unknown Coleman and (--?--) Unknown |
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| Last Edited | 28 Nov 2017 |