The Grant Scrapbook

The Grant Scrapbook

Here's where we plan to post various articles and topics that might interest visitors. If you have any such information please don't hesitate to share. You may send articles, pictures, links,etc. to the webmaster for posting by clicking on the link below.

HELP FIND THE ANCESTORS!

All Grant detectives are asked to be on the lookout for historical documents that would positively identify our common ancestors,
N.B. Loyalists John and Elizabeth Grant. Due to the disruption of the colonial war and other migrations their origins are still unknown ---
no birth records, no marriage record, no death notice confirmed for Elizabeth's husband; No record of her maiden name nor, in N.B., of her son Lau(w)rence's marriage nor wife's family name. As the new colony of New Brunswick developed, reliable settlement, property purchase, church and census records appeared but those first two generations are still somewhat indistinct, shrouded in the fog of time.

Our Southampton family historian Ruth Winona Grant reconstructed the non-recorded generations as well as she could in the 1970's and 80's but recognized the record was incomplete. As she wrote me in March 1971 when I ordered her first book relating local history (Now and Then), "I hope you will make corrections in your book as you discover them and add new information on the margin."
In January 1971, as her personal Centenial Project book was being rushed along by the Woodstock printer, she wrote, "It was a huge undertaking for me alone and certainly too much for me. Actually I have regretted having done it at all. I often wonder if there will be that many folk who are interested......and if the nearly 400 copies will sell well enough to pay for the publishing.... Anyway it is done!" Nevertheless the history research bug had bitten and in the next paragraph Ruth writes of what would become The Grant Connexion in 1985: "Perhaps you know too that I am working on the Grant genealogies and have many names of these families. Just now I am anxious to trace the father of John C(olwell) Grant". She relates his 1832 link to Lockwood property and to an 1852 will bequest that "seems more than coincidental.. By introducing Ensign Peter Grant as the progenitor, everything falls in place much easier. However, I have nothing by way of family records to substantiate this. Only names and wills to indicate this could be possible! ..... You will notice that this reasoning does not altogether coincide with my deductions (in Now and Then) but one has to keep juggling what little information we have sometimes, hoping the jig-saw pieces will fit after awhile. No matter whatever seems to be indefinite in the book about the Grants anyway, only the descendants of the family will be really interested and they will inquire further on their own."
Note: In The Historic Present of 2001, she fitted in another puzzle piece, John C.'s father who she then believed was Peter's brother Lau(w)rence.

So let us, those family descendants, continue to inquire and be alert to information in family papers or sources that may open on the internet. Have any more family Bibles survived? Does some distant cousin have an account that mentions John and or Elizabeth? Where can the trail, or a dropped stitch, be picked up and retraced? Many Grants are still "really interested".

Mary Janet McCutcheon (30/01/'09)

GRANT ANCESTOR CLUE SUBMITTED
by Burns Hillman, Jr. (01/09)
This clipping might be of interest - maybe! It was in a local Maine magazine.
Saugus is some 30 miles from South Berwick, Maine, on the New Hampshire border.
(For more about this 1650 Battle see 3rd par. from the end of http://www.scotwars.com/html/battle_of_dunbar.htm)

SCOTTISH PRISONERS SHIPPED TO SAUGUS
My husband's Scottish ancestor, Peter Grant, settled in South Berwick after serving as an indentured servant at the Iron Works in Saugus. He was captured by Gen. Oliver Cromwell in the Battle of Dunbar and shipped to Saugus along with many other Scottish prisoners.
Letter to "Northern New England Journey" from Jeannie Grant of North Waterboro, ME.

Here's a poem that appeared in the "Loyalist Trails" - the United Empire Loyalist newsletter.

A Poem to Our Ancestors

Dear Ancestor
Your tombstone stands among the rest,
Neglected and alone.
The name and date are chiseled out,
On polished marble stone.
It reaches out to all who care.
It is too late to morn.
You did not know that I exist,
You died and I was born.
Yet each of us are cells of you,
In flesh, in blood, in bone.
Our blood contracts and beats a pulse,
Entirely not our own. Dear Ancestor, the place you filled,
One hundred years ago,
Spreads out among the ones you left
Who would have loved you,
I wonder if you lived and loved,
I wonder if you knew
That someday I would find this spot
And come and visit you

This was forwarded to me from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography On-Line from "Bob" N. Grant.:

FRASER, SIMON, fur-trader and explorer; b. at Mapletown (near Bennington, Vt) in 1776; d. on his farm near St Andrews, Stormont County, Canada West, 18 Aug. 1862. He was the eighth and youngest child of Simon Fraser, who was descended from the Frasers of Culbokie and Guisachan, a cadet branch of the Frasers of Lovat, and Isabella Grant, daughter of the laird of Daldregan.
Simon Fraser’s parents joined the noted migration of Highlanders, mostly Roman Catholics like themselves, who came to New York in the Pearl in 1773. After spending about a year in Albany the Frasers moved to Mapletown, where they settled on the farm on which the explorer was born. They soon encountered anxious times in Mapletown. The area was in dispute between New York and New Hampshire, and conflicting land titles cost them 60 of their 160 acres. Much more serious was the outbreak of the American Revolution; the Frasers were loyal to the British crown, whereas the community was strongly in sympathy with the rebel cause. In spite of abuse and persecution, Simon Fraser Sir was active in the loyalist interest. He came of a military family (two of his brothers had been officers of the celebrated 78th Regiment, Fraser’s Highlanders, and had fought with James Wolfe* at Quebec), and he determined to join the British forces at the first opportunity. This came in 1777, when General John Burgoyne* led his ill-fated expedition into the region. Simon Fraser and William, his eldest son, enlisted in July and took part in the battle of Bennington on 17 August, when the British were decisively defeated. Then or soon after Fraser was apprehended by the Americans and taken to Albany, where he was imprisoned under such rigorous conditions that he died in little more than a year.
When the war ended, Isabella Fraser determined to move to Canada. Captain John Fraser*, one of the brothers who had served in Fraser’s Highlanders, had settled in Montreal and had been appointed a judge of the Court of Common Pleas. In 1784, with his help, Isabella and her younger children were able to join her son William, who had taken up land at Coteau-du-Lac, west of Montreal.

Dec. 2008: Reported by Mary McCutcheon:

Important news: Descendants of two “lost” family branches found us on the Web.

PETER’s dau. Sophia Lockwood (Ketchum) (P3) had several grandchildren after her son Isaac went to Oregon via the Panama canal in 1878.

WILLIAM’s dau. Julia Ann (Bagley) (W13) who went West with the 1855 Mormon trek left many descendants. We now have their family histories thanks to Rand Palmer and Vicky Edwards Steenblik

Do you have any news to post?

Grant Gathering 2012, Southampton, New Brunswick, Canada