OGS Toronto Branch Projects

Last weekend, I came across an interesting fellow in the records of the Toronto Necropolis. Let’s just call him “John” for now. The Necropolis register showed John, aged 39, drowned on April 24, 1855, and was buried the next day. He was born in England. The plot was owned by Jane, presumably John’s wife.

John’s surname was Treiblecock. Unusual, and as you can see in the image below, someone had taken pains to see that it was corrected from an earlier version.

John Treiblecock's name in the register of the Toronto Necropolis

Indexers working on both the York General Burying Ground and the Necropolis have seen many other variants of the surname—even as two words.

The Globe of Wednesday April 25, 1855 (page 2, column 7) supplied a few more details about John:

Coroner Duggan held an inquest yesterday forenoon on the body of a man named John Trebilcock, who was drowned a few hours previously in the river Don. It appears that a little girl fell into the stream and was being carried away by the current when the deceased ran to rescue her but his feet slipped off a log and he fell in and drowned. The child was saved by a person residing near the place. The deceased kept tavern for some time not far from the scene of the melancholy occurrence.

The census taken in January of 1852 shows John Treblecock, innkeeper, age 36, with his 23-year-old wife Jane, and children M-Jane (age 4), Elizabeth (2) and Joseph (1). John ran the tavern in a 2-storey brick house. (York Township, east of Yonge Street, District 42, Subdistrict 402, Division 2, pages 324 and 325).

So who made sure John’s name was recorded as “Treiblecock” in the Necropolis register? Was it his young widow with three small children trying to stay in control of one small aspect of her suddenly chaotic life?

I like to think so.

By the 1861 census, widow Jane Treiblecock had married David Mathers, tavern keeper, of Todmorden and two more children had been added to the household.

John Treiblecock is commemorated on the red granite Mathers obelisk (Lot D 201S) opposite the main gate of the Toronto Necropolis. The monument is much more recent than 1855—and unfortunately (in my opinion) records John’s surname as Trebilcock.

The red granite obelisk for the Mathers family (and Jane Mather's first husband John Treiblecock) in the Toronto Necropolis, Lot D 201S (photo © Jane E. MacNamara, June 2010)

Sources:

• Toronto Branch’s transcription of Toronto Necropolis burial markers
• 1852 and 1861 Census of York Township (see Researching Toronto for availability)
• Toronto Necropolis register image is part of an ongoing FamilySearch Indexing project to index the records of the Toronto Trust Cemeteries. When the index is complete, researchers will have access to these digital images so they can consider the “original scribble.” Indexing is done online. You can help.

We are presently working on the records of the Toronto Necropolis in the Cabbagetown neighbourhood where we’ve run across lots of interesting people including a Joshua Wilson of Yorkville who seems to have been 116 when he died of “old age” in 1861. (An understatement, don’t you think?)

Entry in the Toronto Necropolis burial register

While we resist the urge to research most of the names we transcribe—old Joshua deserved a second look. My first thought was a death notice in the newspaper. Surely dying at 116 deserved a note in the Globe. But although the digitized pages for the end of year 1861 were difficult to read, I didn’t find a notice for Joshua Wilson.

Joshua died on December 28, 1861, so I next consulted our Toronto Branch expert on the 1861 census, Pat Jeffs. Using a combination of her annotated transcription, and the images at Ancestry.com, Pat located a Joshua with a difficult-to-decipher surname that she had transcribed as “Wisbenon”. The name certainly didn’t look like Wilson, but this Joshua lived in Yorkville and was listed as 115 years old. He was also born in the United States, which matched our Necropolis entry, and was Wesleyan Methodist so burial in a non-sectarian cemetery like the Necropolis was logical.

Joshua "Wisbenon" in the 1861 census of Yorkville

So was Joshua a “Wilson” or some variation of “Wisbenon”? Had the census taker transmogrified the name, or was it the cemetery sexton?

Joshua lived in Yorkville, just outside the boundaries of Toronto in York Township, so the 1851/52 census returns survive. (Those for Toronto do not.) A quick search on Ancestry.ca located a Joshua WILSON in Yorkville, aged 106, born in the “States” and a Methodist. Clearly the same fellow, and confirmation of the surname Wilson.

Joshua Wilson in the 1851 census of York Township

The 1861 and 1851 census showed Joshua as a widower, living alone in a frame house. Both census returns also identified Joshua as “coloured”. So while we’ve managed to answer some questions about Joshua Wilson, I’m intrigued to know more about the circumstances of this African-American man.

Born in about 1746, nearly certainly into slavery, when and how did Joshua come to Canada? Was it as another man’s property, or as a Loyalist, or as a later refugee? He would have been an elderly man by the time the Underground Railroad was in full swing. In the months before his death, was he aware of the developing conflict that would lead to the US Civil War and the abolition of slavery?

Looking at Joshua Wilson’s life has also pointed out just how important the records of the Toronto Trust Cemeteries are, and why it will be so beneficial to have an index and the digital images available free online.

We’d love your help indexing these records. It can be done from the comfort of your home. All you need is a computer with a high-speed connection, and a little knowledge of Toronto communities. To find out more about the project, explore the pages of this web site. To sign up, please e-mail us at fsi@torontofamilyhistory.org.

You can also hear more about the Toronto Trust Cemeteries project at OGS Conference 2010. The “New Toronto Research Tools” session, on Saturday afternoon, will highlight four new online Toronto Branch projects, one of which is the Toronto Trust Cemeteries project, and another is Pat Jeff’s 1861 Census project mentioned above.

Toronto Necropolis © Jane E. MacNamara

As we sit comfortably in front of our home computers indexing the burial registers of the Toronto Necropolis, I thought you might like to see what the actual cemetery looked like on a rainy February 27, 2010. The photos also help to explain the reason for all the complicated burial location descriptions like “gore next to”.

In the first two months of 2010, we have indexed well over 10,000 names. But there are many, many more to go!

Guarded by Necropolis lions © Jane E. MacNamara

If you’d like to help, we’d be very glad of your assistance. Please see the Toronto Trust Indexing page to find out how to sign up.

Necropolis entrance and chapel (courtesy David Reed)

We’re making great progress on the York General Burying Ground, and we’ll soon be moving on to the Toronto Necropolis records. We’ll be moving east to the edge of the Don River valley, and forward in time—with a bit of an overlap with the York General Burying Ground. I’m sure we’ll recognize lots of families.

When you download your first batch of the Necropolis, you’ll want to reorganize the indexing fields to make the job easier. Here are the instructions:

ORGANIZE FIELDS
When you have the indexing page open, you’ll see a “View” menu at the top left. Choose “Organize fields” and you can easily hide the fields you don’t need for the Necropolis, and drag the others into the correct order using the arrows between the columns. Just highlight the field name on the left, and use the second arrow button to move it to the box on the right, or use the third and fourth buttons to shuffle it up or down.

Here’s a screen shot of what the “Organize fields” should look like for the Necropolis.

"Organize Fields" settings for the Toronto Necropolis