JRR Tolkein Part 1

Every once in a while this family tree throws a curve ball.  

According to WikiTree I have a 35 or a 32 degree connection through marriage to JRR Tolkien!  Yes the JRR Tolkien who wrote The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.  Why two differing degrees of connection...well I should have realised that nothing simple happens in my ever growing family tree!  It turns out I am related through marriage via Tolkien himself and his father; and also Tolkien's wife Edith Bratt.  The first part of my journey takes me to Canada where we meet one of the first settlers and also a man who was integral to the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Firstly...remember me talking about Robert and Edward Hunt (see the previous post). Robert Hunt married Elizabeth Tiplady who was my fourth great grandmother.  Elizabeth had a sister called Hannah (1801 - 1854) who married William Dryden (1801 - 1868).    Hannah and William's grandson called William Henry Dryden (1857 - 1930) would go on to marry Mary Teed (1861 - 1931).  All were born in Whitby and cording to the 1911 census there lived in Henrietta Street and William was a fisherman.

Mary's father was John Madgham Teed (1839 - 1900).  He was born in Wisbech and he was a Sea Pilot, and his main role was ensuring the safe transit of shipping in and out of a port.  John married twice; his first wife was Elizabeth Harland who was born in Whitby in 1840 and the second was Selena Lee born in Wisbech in 1843.  John's sister was Mary Rose Teed (1824 - 1898) and this is where the story moves across the Atlantic Ocean to Canada.

Mary was born in 1824 in Boston Lincolnshire and she married George Flint in 1842.  In 1852 Mary and George would leave England via Liverpool and move to Rochester in America, three years later in 1855 they would move on to Toronto Ontario in Canada.  George Flint married twice and his second wife was Eleanor Forsyth (1831 - 1904).  Eleanor's great grandfather James Forsyth (1738 - 1812) was born in Connecticut, America and in 1798 would be one of the early Ontario settlers when he received crown land on the Niagara River at the crest of the Horseshoe Falls.

Forsyth, James (1738-1812) was born to James and Mary (Mason) Forsyth in Groton, New London County, Connecticut on 2 Sep 1738. James Forsyth was born in Groton, New London County, Connecticut located at the mouth of the Thames River at Long Island Sound. During the French-Indian (Seven Years) War, James Forsyth was listed in the 1759 Payroll of the Twelfth Company of the Fourth Regiment under Captain Eleazer Fitch. He left Middletown after his father’s passing in 1768 and settled in the Susquehanna River Valley in the area of Wyalusing near Wilkes-Barr.

James Forsyth was loyal to the British cause during the American Revolution and took his family to the British post at Fort Niagara located at the confluence of the Niagara River and Lake Ontario. During the later years of the American Revolution Britain purchased land along the west side of the Niagara River from the native peoples and gave permission to some at Fort Niagara to cross and start clearings for farms to supply the fort. James Forsyth was among the early settlers in Stamford Township, Welland County. He received a grant of Lots 143, 144, 146 and part of Lot 145 Stamford Township fronting on Niagara Falls and running along the Niagara River from Ferry Street in the north to Dunn Street in the south. Drummond Road runs along the rear. Portage Road, the main shipping route from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie bypassing the falls ran through the farm. During James Forsyth’s life this area was entirely rural. Later, the village of Drummondville grew up along Ferry Street in the north part of the farm. Portage Road was renamed Main Street in the village. Today this is in the City of Niagara Falls.

James Forsyth’s home was on the present site of the Ukrainian Catholic Church at 6248 Main Street. He built the National Hotel on the south part of Lot 146 near the intersection of Main Street and Stanley Avenue. He sold the hotel to his son-in-law Christopher Buchner in 1799.

On 19 Jan 1802, James Forsyth purchased 400 acres of land originally surveyed as Lots 24 and 25 Concession 3, Barton Township, Wentworth County, but later renamed the Gore of Ancaster Township, Wentworth County and now the west end of the City of Hamilton. This runs north from Main Street to Cootes Paradise on Burlington Bay and includes the McMaster University campus, Forsyth Avenue (named for this family) and running as far west as Haddon Avenue. He later sold the lots to his son Caleb Forsyth.  Taken from https://sites.google.com/site/longpointsettlers/ontario-pioneers-genealogies/settlers-f

His son William became one of the most successful and aggressive businessman in Niagara following the war of 1812.  According to a personal transcript on the genealogy website Ancestry William was a small, thin scrawny man who had been involved in smuggling boats across the upper Niagara River to his home along the banks of the Welland River.  Seemingly he was known as the king of smuggling when the borders between America and the British were established.  He used the prophets from the smuggling operation to become the leader in the tourism industry and in 1817 he acquired Wilson's Tavern and renamed it Niagara Falls Hotel.  In 1818 William began the first river ferry service crossing the Niagara River below the Falls.  For more information on William Forsyth have a look at https://www.niagarafallsinfo.com/niagara-falls-history/niagara-falls-tourism-history/william-forsyth/

We now move on to William's Great Aunt Mary Forsyth (1722 - 1808).  Mary firstly married Ichabod Avery in 1735 and secondly Colonel John Bishop in 1751.  John was one of the original grantees of Horton, he and his cousin, George Dolbeare Bishop who came to Horton after 1783, purchased a great deal of land in Gaspereau.  In one of the old deeds Colonel John is spoken of as a carpenter. He was a clockmaker, and some of his work is still to be seen.  Colonel John was a Justice of the Peace, a land surveyor, and a Colonel in the militia. He prepared the plan of Horton Township in which the original grants are shown.  They daughter Amelia was born in Connecticut in 1754 and died in Nova Scotia in 1797.  She would marry Charles Edward Dickson in 1772 and would go on to have 10 children.  It is their last child Lavinia Dickson (1795 - 1860) who we are interested in.

Lavinia married John Burnyeat (1786 - 1843) in Nova Scotia in 1823.  John Burnyeat was a thirty-two-year-old university graduate and ordained priest of the Church of England when he was assigned as visiting missionary for New Brunswick in 1819 by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. From his home base at Sackville he made a seven-week visit to the Miramichi in the summer of 1820. During that time he held services at the courthouse in Newcastle and conducted baptisms and marriages. He also gathered information for a report, in which he stated that there were between sixty and seventy families on the Miramichi of Church of England origin and that subscriptions were being taken for a church.  Burnyeat's visit prepared the way for the arrival of the Rev. Samuel Bacon as resident priest some eighteen months later. In the meantime, Burnyeat was appointed visiting missionary for Nova Scotia. He lived in Truro for the rest of his life, as missionary until 1835 and then as rector of St John's Church until his death in 1843. 

Their grandson John Purves Burnyeat was born in Truro, Nova Scotia in 1855.  In 1870 he began working with the intercontinental railway survey as a chain man and by 1875 he was a clerk in the engineers department at Moncton, New Brunswick.  He remained there until 1881 when he was transferred to the Canadian Pacific Railway in British Columbia where he was engaged as an assistant on surveys.  John would marry Mary Gordon in 1882 and upon completion of the Canadian Pacific railway he entered into the private business realm as a land surveyor and civil engineer.  From 1890-1894, he was in partnership with John A. Coryell. He made extensive surveys through the Osoyoos Division of Yale District and the Similkameen. For a number of years, Burnyeat was the Okanagan's provincial road superintendent and engineer, but he relinquished this position in order to devote more time to his private business. During his professional career, Burnyeat lad out numerous roads throughout the Vernon District. In 1892.  The information relating to John Purves Burnyeat was taken from https://www.memorybc.ca/j-p-burnyeat-fonds which contains personal memories