The Roy-Apted Family History – A Part of the History of Canada

The genealogy research undertaken to date reveals that our Roy-Apted ancestors migrated to Canada over the past 400 years. Among the early pioneers were the Roy and the Hogue branches of the family tree who arrived in the mid1600s. During the 1700s, the Smith branch of the Family tree came to Canada as well as the Mumford branch. During the 1800s, the McConnell and the Latta branches arrived. Finally, the Apted and Duff branches of the family tree settled here in the early 1900s, shortly after the turn of the century. Evidently, the Roy-Apted family tree has very deep roots in Canada.

There are a variety of online portals that tell the story of Canada and its history. For example, take a look at Canada: A People's History - Official Site, A Brief History of Canada - Menu - Sympatico, Canada History in Videos, and Canada History Timeline, As well, refer to the Portal Canada – Wikipedia and the Portal History of Canada – Wikipedia, from which the following excerpts are drawn.

Canada Map (Click to Enlarge)

 Canada /ˈkænədə/ is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean. It is the world's second largest country by total area. Canada's common border with the United States to the south and northwest is the longest in the world.

The land that is now Canada was inhabited for millennia by various groups of Aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French expeditions explored, and later settled, along the Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces. This began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom. This widening autonomy was highlighted by the Statute of Westminster of 1931 and culminated in the Canada Act of 1982, which severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the British parliament.

Canada is a federation that is governed as a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state. It is a bilingual nation with both English and French as official languages at the federal level. One of the world's highly developed countries, Canada has a diversified economy that is reliant upon its abundant natural resources and upon trade—particularly with the United States, with which Canada has had a long and complex relationship. It is a member of the G7, G-20, NATO, OECD, WTO, Commonwealth, Francophonie, OAS, APEC, and UN.

Canada Symbols

Canada Flag

Canada Maple Leaf

Canada Goose

Canada Beaver

Latta Ancestry - Emigration from Ireland to United States to Canada (Stage 1)

Emigration from Ireland began as early as 1603, when people emigrated to areas such as continental Europe, the islands of the Caribbean, the British colonies, and other parts of the British Isles. Emigration increased during periods of civil or religious unrest or famine in Ireland as well as during various gold rushes in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States.

Throughout history, the Irish had many reasons for leaving Ireland (refer to the Family Search website under Ireland Emigration and Immigration). It is important to remember, however, that many among those remaining in Ireland would have emigrated but were unable to, due to poverty or impoverishment. Many Irishmen during the Great Famine years who did embark were in such sickened and critically weakened condition that death followed many while traversing the high seas to their new world home. The period of greatest emigration began around 1780 and reached its peak from 1845 to 1855, when between one and two million people left Ireland because of the potato famine (more information is available in an online history paper on Urban America).

 The Latta Family Tree has many branches with origins in Ireland and Scotland. In fact, extensive research has been done on Latta individuals (for example, refer.  to the online Latta Genealogy  at Wiki Tree and online Latta Databases). In addition, more than 50 Latta branches have been researched over the years (refer to the branch migration list on the Latta website at http://www.latta.org/Branches/branches.htm).

Our direct Latta lineage (Branch 13) begins with James Latta who emigrated from Donegal, Londonderry, Ireland in 1768 arrived at Boston, Massachusetts and settled in Albany County, New York, United States. Research indicates that James Latta was born on January 11, 1727 and may have come to America along with three or four of his sons about the time of the Revolutionary War (1776-1783). He settled at Wallkill, New York. James Latta was a merchant at Wallkill and New Windsor, Orange County, New York and a farmer at Seneca Ontario County where he purchased 1200 acres of land at $2.50 in 1789 from Phelps and Gorh. One of his sons, William John Latta also had a son, John William Latta who subsequently emigrated from the United States to Hastings County, Ontario, Canada in 1833.

Flag of Canada

The Latta family history unfolds in the life stories that follow in the posting Latta Ancestry - Emigrationfrom Ireland to United States to Canada (Stage 2).

.

Latta Ancestry - Emigration from Ireland to United States to Canada (Stage 2)

William John Latta (1761-1796) and Anne Jackson (1761-1847)

William John Latta was born in 1761 in Donegal, Londonderry, Ireland. At that time, his father James Latta (1727-1800) was age 34 (research has yet to identify William’s mother). The ancestry records indicate that he was christened on October 21, 1762 in Dalry, Ayr, Scotland. He emigrated to the United States with his father and siblings about 1768 at the age of 7 years, arriving at Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts.

On October 30, 1776, William John Latta enlisted in Captain John A. Bradt’s company of State Rangers, being discharged on January 23, 1777, as unfit for duty. His name appears on the rolls of the 3^rd Albany County Militia. In 1778, when he was 17 years old, he married Anne Jackson in New York. As their family tree shows, they had eight children in 17 years.

Family of William Latta and Anne Jackson

When their son, John William Latta was born on August 11, 1782, in Manhattan, New York, William and Anne were both 21 years old. The 1790 United States Federal Census shows that William and Anne, along with their five children, lived in Watervliet, Albany, New York. In the 1790 Watervliet Township census, William is listed as a lime maker by trade but educated for sea captain. William John Latta died in 1796 in New Scotland, Albany, New York, at the age of 35, and was buried there.

United States Federal Census 1790 (click to enlarge)

When Anne Jackson was born on May 15, 1761, in Tyringham, Massachusetts, United States, her father, Colonel Giles Jackson (1733-1810) was 28, and her mother, Anna Thomas (1740-1780) was 21. She married William John Latta in 1878. When William died, she remarried and had four sons and four daughters with David Manning (1759-1816). She died on August 5, 1847, in New Scotland, Albany, New York, having lived a long life of 86 years, and was buried in Broome, New York.

Family of Giles Jackson and Anna Thomas

Latta Ancestry – Five Generations in Canada

The Latta family lineage originates in Ireland with emigration in 1768 to the United States and then to Canada in 1833, as explained in the previous posting Latta Ancestry - Emigration from Ireland to United States to Canada (Stage 1).

Four Generations of Latta Men in Canada, c.1906

The above photograph (Four Generations of Latta Men in Canada, c.1906), presents our direct Latta lineage in Canada. Gilbert James Latta, the son of John William Latta, was the first in the Latta family tree to be born in Canada in 1822, almost 200 years ago. The stories of the following five generations of Latta men in Canada are based on family history and Ontario vital records (birth, marriage and death).

•  John William Latta (1782-1846).
•  Gilbert James Latta (1822-1906), seated.
•  James Gilbert Latta (1852-1938), left rear.
•  Walter James Latta (1873-1932), right rear.
•  James Cyril Latta (1901–1986) at 5 years of age.

The Ontario Birth Records indicate that James Cyril Latta was born on March 18, 1901 in Thurlow, Ontario. He was the first-born and only son of Walter James Latta (1873-1932) and Sadie Elizabeth Coulson (1881-1941). Cyril had only one sister, Marjorie Uldean Latta, who was born in Toronto, Ontario on April 28, 1905. Marjorie Uldean Latta and Harold William McConnell were married on January 9, 1924 in Campbellford, Ontario. At that point, the Latta family history became inter-twined with the McConnell family history (refer to the posting McConnell Ancestry in Canada – An Overview).

McConnell Ancestry – Emigration from Ireland to Canada in the 1800s

The family history records note that, during the summer of 1827, the McConnell family and several members of the Moncrief family sailed from Belfast, Ireland to seek better fortunes in Canada. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean was quite a test of endurance. In the Johnson/McConnell letters, a family member recorded that the hardships endured on the sailing vessels included crowded conditions, no facilities, very little food and no medicine. Many died of “the fever” and from scurvy. The deceased were buried at sea with little or no ceremony.

For those who made it to Canada, it was like jumping from the frying pan into the fire because, at that time, the Irish were thought of as the lowest form of mankind. Settlers walked from Montreal to Ottawa, then came down the Rideau River by raft to Kingston. From there, they took boats to Belleville and then walked or rode through the heavily timbered land to find their homesteads. They acquired the land but that was just the beginning. They had to build cabins and barns and then clear enough land to grow food. They were true pioneers!

Why did so many Irish emigrate? History records that, from 1820 to 1847, most people living in Ireland were trying to survive on a small piece of land in a crowded country, the most crowded one in Europe. In 1821, there were 251 people to the square mile. In industrialized Ulster, for each square mile of land fit for tillage or grazing there were 434 people trying to support themselves. More than 300,000 Irish farms had less than three acres. Under such conditions, the efforts to keep alive often did not last long.

For all rural Ireland in 1841 the average age at death was 19 and not a fifth of the population lived beyond 40 years of age. Famine and cholera appeared in the early thirties, and varying degrees of crop failure haunted the early forties, even before the total loss of the potato crop in 1845 and 1846. Emigration offered a way out. It was relatively heavy in the eastern counties of Ulster from 1815 to 1820. In most of Ulster during one three-year period in the early thirties, two out of every hundred people left the country.

Ireland County Map

Famine and fever made 1846 a year of wholesale agony. It brought death to about half a million people in Ireland. The survivors lived in a miserable confused state of economic dislocation Two-thirds of the population was “reduced to a state of pauperism.” The pressure of population, even in the thirties, had made one labourer in three an excess mouth to feed. The high unemployment, low wages and inflated rental costs swelled the ranks of the poor. After the famine, very few rents were paid and evictions were widespread numbering in the tens of thousands. People owed each other but couldn’t pay. So, most small tradesmen went bankrupt. From such conditions, 200,000 people fled as emigrants in 1846-1847. By 1849, in the little town of Antrim near Belfast, “Nearly every door is closed. The people can scarcely live in it.”

Roy Ancestry – How New France disappeared in 1763!

Virtual Museum of New France

Internet sites that address the history of New France are abundant. Lovers of history and professional historians, teachers and students alike, will find numerous avenues of further exploration and research. For example, the Canadian Museum of History list of useful links is lengthy but not exhaustive, and it is periodically enriched and updated.

The Canadian Museum of History provides an online Virtual Museum of New France. In the Heritage Section of the Site, it explains that New France disappeared in 1763, but its legacy persists to this day. The transfer to Great Britain and Spain of the territory occupied and claimed by France brought about a major political transition. The transatlantic networks which until them had animated the French colonies were reconfigured in fundamental ways. The French colonial population nevertheless remained firmly rooted. It did not overnight lose its religion, its customs, or its language. Colonial institutions were restructured, but many of them retained for many years to come the character they had acquired under the French Regime.

The heritage of New France is omnipresent today. The populations born of seventeenth and eighteenth century migrants continue to blossom, not only in Quebec, but through Canada and certain regions of the United States. With a little genealogical research, the gap between that era and our own is easily narrowed. The heritage of New France also shows through the particularities of the French language as it is still spoken in North America. French and Aboriginal place names, fixed by explorers and pioneers, etch traces of this founding epoch across the continent.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, New France has also been commemorated in more explicit ways. From the tercentennial of the foundation of the city of Quebec, in 1908, to the two hundredth and fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, in 2010, solemn ceremonies and historical re-enactments have abounded. Monuments to founding figures and events have proliferated. Many historical sites have been reconstructed and animated through the efforts of governments and devoted lovers of history. New France, as it turns out, has not entirely disappeared.

Portal of New France

A second source of historical information from 1534 to 1763 is the Wikipedia Portal of New France. It explains that New France is the name that France gave to its colonies in North America. The history of New France began with the first attempts at French colonization following the first trip of Jacques Cartier in 1534. From 1604 to 1760, the Kingdom of France gradually expanded its authority over lands inhabited and sometimes settled by Native American populations. Samuel de Champlain founded the town of Quebec on July 3, 1608. It is one of the first permanent European settlements in North American soil and it was the capital of New France for over a century and a half.

This vast territory spanned three distinct regions: Acadia, in what is now Atlantic Canada and part of North Eastern United States, Canada, then comprising only St. Lawrence valley, and Louisiana, which included the Illinois Country, comprising the Mississippi and Ohio river valleys down to the Gulf of Mexico. New France had a low population growth compared to the British American colonies adjacent to its eastern borders. Around 1730, the gap was considerable: the British colonies had about 250,000 people of European origin while there were only 30,000 people in New France. This, in addition to its geographical position preventing the expansion of the British colonies, triggered confrontations. Those became more frequent until the fall of Quebec on September 13, 1759. A year after its capital was captured, New France fell and was dismantled. Parts were ceded to Great Britain while the rest went to Spain.

New France ceased to exist in 1763 when France ceded Canada and its dependencies to Great Britain by signing the Treaty of Paris. Then in 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte returned the vast Louisiana region to France from Spain under the Treaty of San Ildefonso. However, the treaty was kept secret, and Louisiana remained under Spanish control until a transfer of power to France on November 30, 1803, just three weeks before the cession to the United States under the Louisiana Purchase. Today, all that remains to France of this once vast wilderness empire are the little islands of Saint-Pierre et Miquelon, located off Newfoundland, Canada.