The Grisdales Move to Michigan

Some of the Grisdales I write about have left no known descendants. Others have hundreds, even thousands. One of this latter group is Wilfred Grisdale (b. 1782 in Matterdale). He was an early pioneer settler in Canada. His numerous family were to spread throughout Ontario, into neighbouring Michigan and beyond. I wrote about Wilfred’s family’s arrival in Canada in 1816/7 in an earlier article, as I did about some of his descendants who moved to Thorold/Welland County in Ontario. Here I will tell of those who moved to Michigan. It might take several articles to do the subject justice. Here I’ll stick to the bare facts.

Jenny Hill, Matterdale. Where Wilfred Grisdale the Canadian settler was born and raised

We can begin with Wilfred’s third child, who was also called Wilfred. He was born in Carlisle in Cumberland in 1807 and baptized at Saint Mary’s Church on 30 June. He arrived in Canada with his family aged about nine or ten. With his siblings Wilfred spent the rest of his childhood in North Monaghan in the now County of Peterborough in Ontario.  In about 1829 he married the Irish-born Catholic Mary Maloney and the couple started to farm in Douro , only a few miles southwest on the other side of the emerging town of Peterborough. One significance of Wilfred marrying Mary Maloney was that, as was and is usual, he would have had to promise to bring up their children as Catholics. This the couple did and hence many of their descendants are Catholic to this day. The Grisdales had been Anglicans since the Protestant Reformation in England in the early sixteenth century. At least nine children followed over the next fourteen years: James (1830), Margaret (1834), Wilfred (1836), Edward 91839), John (1840), Catharine (1841), twins Ann and Mary (1843) and Ruth 1844.

In 1861 we find the family still in Douro. Twenty-three year old Wilfred (or Wilford as he is often now called in an Americanisation of his name) has become head of the family; father Wilfred having died in about 1844. He is farming 100 acres of wheat, peas, oats, potatoes and turnips. With him are his mother Mary, his brother John and his sister Ann. Sister Ruth is living nearby. Mary’s children James, Edward, and Mary had in the meantime died and daughter Catherine was living elsewhere. The farm was estimated to be worth $1,700.

Early Ontario Settlers

The Douro farming community was predominantly Irish and Roman Catholic. The Grisdales’ neighbours included dozens of mother Mary’s Maloney family and many families with whom the Grisdales would soon marry, such as the Griegs, Tobins, Torpeys, O’Briens and McCues. The family in fact soon started to marry. In about 1864/5 Wilfred married Eliza Tobin, Ann married John Torpey, Ruth married John Grieg and soon John married Ellen O’Brien. Catherine would marry London-born James William Couchman and move to Saginaw, Michigan.

For reasons that I for one do not know, the family decided to sell up in Canada and in 1877 moved to Deerfield Township in Isabella County in Michigan. The move involved siblings Wilfred, John and Ann (Torpey), their mother Mary, plus Wilfred wife’s mother, and all their many Canadian-born children. Sister Ruth had earlier moved with her husband John Grieg and their family to nearby Midland County, Michigan, while sister Margaret (Prendergast) would also move with her family to Union Township.

So in total all of Wilfred Grisdale and Mary Maloney’s children had made the move to Michigan.

It might have been that they had heard about the opportunities to claim new ‘homesteading’ plots from Wilfred the Immigrant’s other son James (1812-1884). James with his wife Jane Green and their children had already moved to the Bay City area of Michigan in about 1869 from Welland County in Ontario (where other members of the family had moved to too).

Deerfield Township 1879

With the money made from selling their Canadian farm Wilfred and his brother John bought plots of virgin land in the new Deerfield Township in Isabella County. We can see where they were from an 1879 plot plan of Deerfield (Click on the image and you can enlarge it. Wilfred’s (Wilford’s) plot is on the right two-thirds of the way up. John’s smaller plot is a little to the southwest). Unfortunately John was to die on 3 August 1880, aged only 40. He left behind a wife and several children who soon moved back to Peterborough County in Ontario.

Wilfred built a house there; a picture of which is shown below.

So it is this Wilfred Grisdale and his wife Eliza Tobin who are the ancestors of the Grisdales of Deerfield/Isabella County/Mount Pleasant. Wilfred, son of Wilfred, son of Canadian settler Wilfred Grisdale. And, just to confuse you more, the Canadian settler Wilfred’s father was also called Wilfred! He was an eighteenth-century Blacksmith in Matterdale. Wilfred like his father and grandfather was a farmer. He and his wife Eliza had twelve children of whom nine were still alive in 1900 and 1910: Jane (1865-1944), John (1865 – ), Wilfred Joseph (1870-1949), Mary (1872- ), Martin Joseph (1880-1955), Catherine (1882- ), Francis Joseph (1887-1952), Stephen (1889-1911) and Arthur Joseph (1894-1957).

Wilfred Grisdale’s house in Deerfield

Wilfred died of chronic hepatitis in January 1900 and is buried in the Mount Pleasant Catholic Cemetery. His wife, Eliza Tobin died in 1916.

Here I’ll leave things for now. I might write later about the experiences of some of these early Michigan immigrants.