Letitia (DOYLE) McQuade (~1827-1881) Prince Edward Island

Question

Who were her parents?

She was born on Prince Edward Island, where she married James McQuade in 1849.  Her husband was born in Ireland about 1818 and was recruited by Father MacDonald in Glasgow to work the MacDonald feudal estate on PEI.  McQuade operated the inn and shipyard at Mount Stewart, PEI.

Did she and her husband inherit the shipyard from her father, who was of an appropriate age to have been one of the shipwrights hired to maintain the grand banks fishing fleet feeding the British army through the Napoleonic wars, as forests on the MacDonald estate were being cleared for conversion to agriculture? (possibly providing a source of lumber for shipbuilding)

Answer 1

Have you looked at the PEI PARO Master Name Index on microfilm or the card file for these two last names?  A useful thing to find would be a newspaper reference to their marriage, which might give the father's name. They weren't in Daniel Johnston's Newspaper Index, or the vital stats extracted from The Islander.

Comments

Thank you for checking those two indices.  I found no listing on the PEI PARO master name index.  Irish arrivals seem poorly documented in comparison to the Scottish immigrants to PEI.

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A passenger list to PEI is a lucky find - you have probably already discovered that there was no requirement for a list if the ship was travelling between two British ports.  Some of the companies made lists simply to keep track of who had paid, and some of the Scottish lists were put together more recently - like the Annabella in 1770.  I read somewhere that a  few years before his death in 1951, William Preston Ellis scoured what was available in the Charlottetown archives and other government files, basements and attics looking for, among other things, passenger lists. Who thought these would be wanted many years later - story is we only have PEI census records because a box or two fell off a truck on the way to the dump.  Individual researchers have found the odd list in Scottish or English archives.  Some people have mentioned finding this book useful: Exiles and Islanders describes Irish settlement in Prince Edward Island from 1763 to 1880 by  Brendan O'Grady.  I've used Peter Gallants three books to find death notices of some early settlers. I didn't see a Doyle with married daughter McQuade, or daughter Letitia  in Early PEI Probate Records 1786-1850 by Lind Jean Nicholson.

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I found O'Grady's book a fascinating glimpse into the time and place, but was unable to associate my family with any of the Doyles and Walshes he mentioned.