Day: 20 February 2019

The first family who actually lived in our Clifton house at 1037  can be traced back to ancestors on a ship named Arabella that left England in 1630.

It seems there were two Lockwood brothers who came to Massachusetts Bay with the Winthrop fleet.  They came 10 years after the Mayflower, and were part of a 1630 flotilla of ships from England headed for what was to become “New England.”  This adventurous voyage continued what would be called the “Great Migration,”  by adding 700 or so more English folks to what would soon be thousands of new arrivals.  The interest in the families who were on this pilgrimage to Massachusetts Bay is very strong and research continues with casual amateur history buffs, bloggers, and highly trained historians alike trying to understand the distinguishing features of the families who came and their influence on the next centuries of North American history.

One example  has been highly praised by reviewers.  It is the  1988 Great Migration Study Project, conceived and directed by Robert Charles Anderson.  In a review of the resulting publications,  Lynn Betlock observed that “today’s descendants of Great Migration settlers are fortunate to have a wealth of resources to add to their knowledge of their ancestors’ lives. Using the Great Migration Study Project’s detailed individual sketches in conjunction with broad historical studies, genealogists can hope to capture some of the personalities and motivations of ancestors who lived nearly three centuries ago.”  So beginning with Robert and Edmund Lockwood, the Lockwood family in North America grew and spread, and some remained in the New England area for only their first  5 generations.

Then with the breaking from the British Empire, some Lockwood family members moved north as Loyalists to the British Crown. The Loyalist Lockwoods, beginning with Josiah, were first settled in Nova Scotia and then west in Ontario.  There they remained  for 5 more generations. Judith Hay of the United Empire Loyalists of Canada: Hamilton Branch has written a profile of this Lockwood migration to Canada.

Benjamin Lockwood

The Lockwood family in North America began when two brothers left England for the colony of Governor Winthrop. Over a hundred years later, before the war between the American colonies and England, Benjamin was born in New York.  After this war, he became a Loyalist refugee. Along with some family, his parents and others, he went first to the Maritime settlements of Canada. By 1794, he was at the “Head-of-the-Lake, now known as Hamilton. Here he had met and married Keziah Springer, whose Loyalist father had been killed during the war. They were living in Glanford when lands to the west, near London, became available for settlers. In 1820, Benjamin again left what was familiar. Soon the family was making a new home in Caradoc. Left behind were the three oldest daughters, now married and beginning families of their own. Within a few years even these three families had made the move to the Caradoc area.  On the 19th of January 1857, the long life of Benjamin Lockwood came to a close. Still alive to mourn his passing were his wife, Keziah, and 124 descendants. 

Five Lockwood Siblings Move to Saskatchewan

Of these 124 descendants, we will follow the members of one branch of the family who moved to Western Canada.  There were actually 5 siblings who came to the prairies early in the 1900s.   We cannot be sure who arrived first or last, but  it is likely that the oldest son came first.  Eventually they were settled as follows:  Robert Stenson Lockwood and his wife Melissa Catherine Johnson at Central Butte, Daniel Benjamin and his wife Jennie McRoberts at Chaplin, Keziah Fisher Lockwood and her husband Robert Hare at Boharm,  George Franklin Lockwood and his wife Mary Elizabeth Tilden at Tuxford, and William Wallace Lockwood and his wife Emily Christina Bateman also at Tuxford but also at a house in Moose Jaw.

So the Lockwood Loyalists and the Springer Loyalist family met up in Ontario and Benjamin Lockwood married Keziah Springer.  Unlike Benjamin, Keziah  came to Canada without her father.  You can see her  in the middle of the tree branch above.  She was born on October 24th, 1776 in New York. Her father, David, was 44, and her mother, Margaret, was 41.  Little Keziah was baptized on May 13, 1777, and  her father died in battle a few months later.

There are differing versions of how the widow Margaret Springer and her family escaped to Canada.  One version says she walked to Niagara-on-the-lake with her children. I thought of Margaret and Keziah  and their struggle to get to Canada as I sat in a peaceful little coffee shop in that touristy city this  recent January with  several  Saskatchewan friends.

Another version says Margaret was assisted by two of her sons who were with Butler’s Rangers.  What we know for sure is that she applied for a Loyalist land grant. (Information from Ontario Historical Society)

Benjamin and Keziah’s  grandson  George Lockwood (1831-1910) listed above married Aurilia Bartlett and they had 8 children together before Aurilia died in 1876 a few weeks after the last son is born.  She was 40 years old.  After 20 years, George married  again, this time to a young woman who died with her first baby.   George married a widow after that  and lived out his life in Ontario until 1910 when he dies.  But the majority of his children decided to move to Saskatchewan.

The first of George and Aurilia Lockwood’s 8 children had been born in 1858,  a son whom they named William Wallace Lockwood.  It is the story  of his family coming to Tuxford and Moose Jaw and Clifton Ave.  that will be told in the next post.