A Story of Emigration

Southeast Wicklow to Ontario

    Written by Anne Burgess and Joseph Kenny  / Chart research by Anne Burgess

(Please read to bottom)

    In his book, Surplus People, Jim Rees has described the program of assisted emigration that Lord Fitzwilliam initiated in the late 1840s to reduce the number of tenants on his estate in southwest Wicklow. Most of these emigrants sailed from New Ross to Quebec City, but few of them stayed in Quebec, where the population was for the most part French-speaking. Instead, they continued on down the St. Lawrence River to the province of Ontario (then called Upper Canada) and became part of Irish communities there. The following details the chain migration that drew them to two such communities.

                             Eastern Ontario

    The British government’s creation of the Rideau Canal in eastern Ontario (1826-1832) was accomplished with the labour (and in some cases, the lives) of many Irish workers from the Fitzwilliam estate in southwest Co. Wicklow.

    We know at least some of their names, recorded in an 1829 petition (the McCabe List)[i] to have family members join them: John Byrnes of Ballynultagh (family at Knockatomcoyle); James Byrnes (family at Muskeagh); William Hopkins (Coolkenna); Thomas Hawkins (Kiltegan); Charles Dowgard (?) (Tinahely); Daniel Murphy (Coolbeg (Killabeg?); Lancelot Jackson (Tullow, Aghowle); Matthew Dunn (Ballintemple).

     The Canal, intended to provide a navigable link between the Ottawa River and the town of Kingston, Ontario to the west, provided wage work for the labourers. It also provided them with an opportunity, at the time of the Canal’s completion, to acquire grants of land along the route.

      Thus, in the 1840s when Lord Fitzwilliam’s tenants began arriving in Canada, the Rideau Canal labourers from southwest Wicklow, now settlers, were the source of new Canadian homes for many of the emigrés.

    The 1851 and 1881 Canadian censuses document [ii] the presence of these new immigrants and their families, from Ottawa to Smiths Falls to Brockville to Kingston:

     A large number of Fitzwilliam émigrés from the Carnew area settled around Smiths Falls, many of them part of the extended family of Edward Balfe of Kennystown, and the families they were connected to by marriage.  This area around Smiths Falls includes the townships of Kitley, Lombardy,  North and South Elmsley, Bastard,  North and South Crosby, Wolford, Montague, Yonge, and Burgess.

 Edward Balfe had two relatives who had worked on the Rideau Canal: his brother, John Balfe (m. Mary Byrne) of Gurteen; and his niece’s (Mary Balfe) husband, Michael Shanks of Boley.  These early Balfes had acquired land in Kitley; it and South Elmsley, farming townships close to Smiths Falls, were home to a number of other Canal workers, as well.

 In the late 1840s, Michael and Mary Shanks offered a welcome to their Balfe connections from Carnew: John Balfe and Alice Dobbs (from Parkmore); Thomas Balfe and Sarah Kenny (from Kennystown); Nicholas Balfe and Catherine Kealey (from Kennystown); Michael Lowman and Mary Balfe (from Carnew), along with Michael’s brother, Thomas; James Foster and Margaret Balfe (from Carnew); Thomas Kenny and Eleanor Purcell (from Motabower); and Patrick Murphy and Julia Dobbs (from Parkmore). [iii]

 Edward Balfe’s daughter, Margaret, and her husband Michael Handrick, had left Kennystown a year before the group above, and settled just outside Ottawa, to farm in the Meech Creek area, as did John Beaghan and Ann Byrne (from Tombreane). Margaret and Michael Handrick’s  daughter, Mary (m. Denis Kehoe of Tombreane) settled in Bytown itself (as Ottawa was then known).

     Most of the Balfes remained near Smiths Falls, raised their families, and prospered. Thomas Balfe and his son farmed some 300 acres, and later took over another farm that was the future site of the Smiths Falls Golf and Country Club. In time, Thomas and his wife, Sarah Kenny, took on with Mary Balfe and Michael Shanks the care of those in need. 

  Nicholas Balfe and Catherine Kealey’s son, Nicholas Jr., founded the grain exchange in Winnipeg and became a millionaire.

Another family that left the Carnew area in 1851 was Thomas and Ellen Purcell Kenny, with their  family, which first settled in Kitley, then South Elmsley.  Their family had the lease in Kilcavan/Kennystown and have farmed the land, even to present day.  The Balfe family lived in Kennystown with this family and even for a short time, was granted the lease, which was later given back to Richard Kenny, which was Thomas' brother. On arrival to Ontario, they were in Kitley, where they lived in a shanty, later moved to South Elmsley where they had a small farm. The children were raised in South Elmsely and once adults, most had moved to Nasewaupee, Door County, Wisconsin, in the early 1870's. Thomas lived out his life in South Elmsley and is buried in the Catholic Cemetery, in Smiths Falls.

   Central Ontario

       The Kenny family of southwestern Carnew parish, and in particular Myles Kenny (who married Dorothea Briscoe Wilkie in Kennystown on July 10, 1829),  was the nucleus for a wave of settlers from the Fitzwilliam estate to an area north of Toronto, Ontario: the town of Barrie, and the surrounding farming communities of Vespra, Essa, and Oro.

 Myles Kenny and his family arrived there in the early 1830s, along with Peter Murphy (m. Margaret Ann Doyle) from Kilcavan (Murphy had been a British navy veteran who had petitioned for land in Vespra); Michael Kenny (m. Mary Doyle) from Parkmore; Bridget Kenny (m. Patrick Doran) from Kennystown; and Henry Murphy (m. Catherine Kenny) from Umrygar.

     Myles was their leader: he could read and write, where the others could not. The first school in Vespra was held in a log house on his property, where an older relative, Margaret Kenny (b. c1783) lived.

     Myles was also active in the early political life of the settlement. He was a member of the first municipal council, and he served as its Reeve (mayor) from

1837-1849. (Myles was a Catholic, and it is interesting to see his political prominence in this corner of Protestant-dominated early Ontario.)

     During the famine exodus years of 1847-1853, other Kenny relatives, and the families they were connected to by marriage, came to join Myles Kenny in the Barrie area: Martin Kenny (m. Catherine Toole) of Tomacork; Mary Kenny (m. Michael Byrne) of Kilcavan; Catherine Kenny (m. John Kavanagh) of Parkmore; Sarah Connors (widow of John Myers) of Carnew (she became Martin Kenny’s second wife); Margaret Doyle (m. Martin Murphy) of Parkmore; Ann Doyle (m. Patrick Shannon) of Hillbrooke; Margaret Doyle (m. William Byrne) of Coolfancy; John Heffernan (m. Sally Tompkins) of Coolroe; Sarah Heffernan (m. Patrick Moore) of Ballykelly.

    About 1856, John Balfe (m. Alice Dobbs) of Hillbrooke, and Patrick Murphy (m. Julia Dobbs) of Parkmore, [iv] (who had earlier settled near Smiths Falls, Ontario) having heard of the good land near Barrie, came to join their former Wicklow neighbors there.

    Myles Kenny’s story has a very sad ending, however.  In July 1838, nine of his children died in a single day from mushroom poisoning, and it is said that their coffins were constructed and set out on the Kenny farm’s front lawn. There was no Catholic cemetery in Barrie at the time, and the children were likely buried at the farm’s lot line, as was the custom at the time. Today, they are memorialized in a stone next to that of their parents in St. Mary’s Cemetery, Barrie.

    Myles Kenny died on January 11, 1874 in Vespra Township, Simcoe County, Ontario.

    Despite the terrible tragedy in Myles Kenny’s family, it is most consoling to uncover the web of family relationships in these two Ontario communities—relationships that made the emigres’ arrival in this country a bit less daunting.

For the most part, the lives of the people from southwest Wicklow who moved to Ontario appear to have been successful.  Many developed large farms and some became prominent in their communities.

     These successes are inspiring to report, as one reads that heartbreaking line attached to the Fitzwilliam emigration record for so many of their tenants:  “house to be pulled down.”[v]