Hugh and Ellen Peacock

Ellen Waggot was born in Monaghan County, Ireland on
December 23, 1837. She had a younger sister, Elizabeth. Their
parents were Samuel Waggot and Eliza Pogue who brought
their children to Ontario in 1848, a year after the peak influx
to Canada in the famine years.

The only other information we have about the Waggots is that
Eliza was widowed and living with her daughter, Ellen Peacock,
when she died in 1875 in King Township, north of Toronto.

Hugh Peacock was probably born in County Antrim, Northern
Ireland (source -oral history in his son Thomas' family) in June
of 1833 or 34. He arrived in Canada in 1849 when he was about
15 years old. It is not known what other family members, if any,
came with him. However, there is an 1849 death of a thirty year
old William Peacock in the burial records of St. James Anglican
Cathedral, the church where Hugh was married about seven
years later by a Rev. H. J. Grassett. (Interestingly, a Dr. George
Grassett died while treating the sick in the Emigrant
Hospital and 'fever sheds' of Toronto.) It is only speculation that
this William and Hugh were related, however, Hugh did name
his first son William, and it is quite possible that he emigrated
with an older brother, or his father (if the age in the burial
record was off just a few years.)

The Toronto Tax Assessment Rolls for 1853 show a Hugh
Peacock on Front Street in St. Lawrence Ward which was the
Protestant Irish area south of King and east of Yonge. This
might be our Hugh. The Protestant or “Ulster” Irish lived
south of King Street, called Cork Town because so many Irish
settled there after 1848.

Hugh and Ellen were married by license on May 16, 1856 at the
newly built Anglican Cathedral Church of St. James. (King East
and Church Streets). We don’t know where the young couple
was living at this time, but when Eliza, their second child, was
baptised in August, 1859 at Knox Presbyterian Church, they
were living at Craig’s Cottages west of Queen and Spadina on
Vanauley Street which runs north from Queen. He gave his
occupation as carpenter. They were still living at 1 Craig’s
Cottages when Hugh advertised his business as a ‘Carter’ in
Caverhill’s Toronto City Directory of 1859-60.

An opportunity to move out of the city arose and by January 14, 1861 when the census was taken, Hugh, occupation carpenter, and his wife and two young children, had relocated to King Township, north west of the city of Toronto. The census record states that they were living in a log structure on Lot 18 of Concession VII. The agricultural census for 1861 shows that a John McCaffray was living on the 46 acres close to the log cabin. The 1878 Atlas gives the owner of 45 acres (some discrepancy in size) as Cornelius O'Shea who might have been an absentee landlord.

A relative of Hugh's, Thomas Peacock, arrived from Ireland in
1866 and by the 1871 census, Thomas was living in the log cabin
and Hugh had moved to the forty-six acres which McCaffray
had held. Thomas and his family stayed in King Township for
five or six years and then moved onto Macaulay Township in
Muskoka by 1872. However, Hugh and his family stayed on in
King Township where eight children were born. By November,
1880 when their youngest child was born, they had moved on to
the Walkerton area of Brant County.

Their eldest son had already left for Manitoba and within a year
or so, Hugh and most or all of his family moved to the Rural
Municipality of Whitehead just a little west of Brandon,
Manitoba. Hugh registered the birth of his youngest daughter
in Ontario in February, 1881; therefore, their departure was
sometime after that. When the 1891 census was taken, they were
farming in Whitehead, living close to his two eldest children,
William and Eliza, who were both married to spouses also born
in Ontario.

By the 1901 census, after about twenty years in Whitehead and
when Hugh and Ellen were in their early sixties, changes
occured. Ellen and two of her unmarried children had moved
to Brandon and appear to be running a boarding house, for
they have four lodgers living with them. Hugh was a lodger in
a boarding house in Winnipeg and gave his occupation as
'caretaker.'

Hugh made a trip to the West Coast to visit family members in 1905. His border crossing by ship is recorded as follows:

24 July 1905 - Between Seattle and Vancouver, BC
Hugh Peacock, b. 1835, age 70, b. Ireland, Occupation - caretaker

In the 1906 census, both Hugh and Ellen were living with their son, Nelson and his family in Winnipeg. By 1911, Hugh had moved back to Brandon and
was living at 456 10th Street West with his son, William. Ellen was in St. Bonifice (Winnipeg) with her daughter, Mrs. Mary Jane Stanlake.

Ellen died in Winnipeg in 1918 and is buried in Brandon
at the City of Brandon Cemetery. Hugh lived until May 22nd,
1920 when he died of pneumonia at 86 years of age while in
Brandon Hospital. He is buried beside Ellen in Brandon.

Hugh's death record states that his last job was caretaker of
the Brandon Land Titles Office. At the time of his death he
was living in the Elviss Block and he had been in Canada
72 years and in Manitoba for 39 years.