Tag: Lockhart

52 Ancestors #25: William Lockhart (1795-aft. 1871)

My father’s full name was William Lockhart Cooper. As a kid, I found his middle name amusing and wondered who had locked is heart and did my mother have the key? Dad’s middle name was the maiden name of his maternal grandmother, Clara Lockhart (52 Ancestors #7), who died when my grandmother was 7 years old. It was only when I started researching that line that I found his namesake in the tree – my 3rd great grandfather, William Lockhart.

William Lockhart was born about 1795 in Nova Scotia (exact location unknown). The Lockhart genealogy, “Lockhart families of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick“, says that he was possibly the oldest son of Timothy Lockhart and Elizabeth Teed of Sackville, New Brunswick. Those are the parents that most people have attributed to him in family trees.

The only problem is, Timothy Lockhart and Elizabeth Teed’s youngest son was also named William, born about 1812. While it’s not uncommon for people to recycle names, that’s usually done when the first person of that name has died. My William Lockhart was very much alive when Timothy & Elizabeth named their son William. So I’m highly sceptical that these are the right parents, but I haven’t yet figured out who else it could be. Maybe DNA will help unlock this mystery.

In 1829, William married Adelia Beckwith. At the time of their marriage, William was living in Moncton Parish. On the 1851 census, they were living in Salisbury Parish, Westmorland County with their 9 children, including my 2nd great grandfather, David H. Lockhart. I’m not sure what the H. stood for – perhaps this could be a clue to who William’s parents were. David had a son named John Harris Lockhart – could David’s middle name also be Harris and could that be a family name?

1851 Census William Lockhart

In 1861, William was widowed and was living in Havelock Parish, Kings County with his 3 youngest children, next door to his married daughter Martha Matilda (Lockhart) Mills. In 1871, William was living with his son John and his family in Salisbury. Note that Salisbury Parish in Westmorland County borders Havelock County in Kings County, so although he moved counties, he likely didn’t move very far.

Salisbury & havelock parishes

I have not been able to find William after the 1871 census. He presumably died before the 1881 census, but to date I have found no death record, cemetery record or obituary. Don’t you just love ancestors who just appear out of thin air, with no apparent parents, and then just disappear again at the end of their lives!

At least his name lived on.

52 Ancestors #7: Clara Lockhart (1875-1906)

I struggled with this week’s prompt – Valentine. I do have a person named Valentine in my tree, but he was the husband of an ancestor’s sister. I’d rather stick to my direct ancestors for now than branch that far out. So I looked for people who were born, married or died around Valentine’s day. But again, all of the possibilities were on collateral lines.

As nobody was coming to mind, I decided to skip the theme and just pick an ancestor I felt like writing about. Since my first six 52 Ancestors posts have been on my mother’s side, I figured it was time to venture over to my father’s side for this one. And then it clicked. Lockhart. Lock Heart. Close enough to Valentine! And can you get a more romantic name than Clara Belle Lockhart? But this won’t be a romantic story. Quite the contrary, in fact – no happily-ever-afters here.

Clara Belle Lockhart was my great grandmother. She was born in 1875 in Perth, New Brunswick, Canada, the daughter of David H. Lockhart and Annie Emma Morris. Shortly after Clara was born, the family moved to Moncton, New Brunswick, where David worked as a machinist with the railway. Clara’s mother, Annie, died of consumption when Clara was 13 years old.

Lockhart 1881 census
1881 Canada Census, New Brunwsick, Westmorland (33), Moncton (F-3), Pg. 24

Clara married Robert Sharpe on April 15, 1896 in Moncton. While Robert  worked as a painter at the time of his marriage, he later worked on the railroad, as a brakeman. They had four children: Beulah in 1897, Helen (my grandmother) in 1899, John in 1901 and Vera in 1905.

Marriage Robert Sharpe and Clara Lockhart
Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, RS141B7, Index to New Brunswick Marriages, Number 2683, Code B4/1896, F15581

In 1906, when my grandmother was only 7 years old, illness swept through the family. First came the death of 15-month-old Vera in August 1906. Three weeks later, Clara died, at the age of 31. Two weeks after that, 5-year-old John died.

Growing up, I knew my grandmother, Helen (Sharpe) Cooper – she died when I was 15. She always struck me as an unhappy person, but I knew nothing about early her life until I started exploring my family history, many years after her death. Losing her mother at the age of 7 clearly had a strong impact on her. She memorialized her mother in the names of her children. She gave her son (my father) the middle name Lockhart, and her daughter (my aunt) the middle name Clara.

So Clara Lockhart, who died at the early age of 31, lived on in the grandchildren she never knew.

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