When the Society purchased their new computer in 1998 from the profits of the East Flamborough book and decided to add E-mail and develop a web page as a promotional tool for the Archives, neither the Archivist or Directors anticipated what the response would be. Many compliments have been received regarding the contents and design of the Society’s web site that Technical Support Staff, Mr. Rob Hicks developed. The exposure of our small Archives to researchers across North America has resulted in a dramatic increase in queries. It is also changing the way how we research and answer such queries.
Early this year, an E-mail was received from a gentleman living in Pennsylvania who had seen the Society’s web page and was researching the Zimmerman family who had come to Canada and settled in the Niagara Peninsula, Halton County and East Flamborough. In this work he had found a related family – the Mount Family through an early marriage, and requested anything that might help his work in identifying the family and their origins in Canada. Material regarding the Josiah Mount family was forwarded to him, and the membership saw that, as it appeared in the last Heritage Paper. In February, little was known about the daughters born to Josiah Mount, only their birth dates were known and that one of them, Jane Mount had married Barnard E. Griffin of East Flamborough. This unfortunately was the connection that was really required by the American gentleman!
So the search began all over again all over again, but this time for a rather elusive East Flamborough resident with a famous surname! The final result of this query, besides the research that has gone into Society files, is additional information on Matthew Mount who left East Flamborough in 1867 from a lady in the Bruce Peninsula, contact with a gentleman from California researching the Page family of Mountsberg, a connection for Society member Mr. Ron Barrons of Hamilton and the possible connection of Barnard Griffin to Waterdown’s famous family – most of this work and the connections that have resulted have been accomplished through the use of E-mail! Mr. Laakso, the gentleman from Pennsylvania whose query began all this work presented copies of his research into the Zimmerman and Mount families to the Archives.
The card file index at the Archives provided the initial information on Barnard Emery Griffin. This was a reference to his marriage1 and a confirmation that Mr. Laakso in Pennsylvania had been correct in assuming East Flamborough was the place of residence of the couple. Unfortunately there was no mention of either the bride or the groom’s parents in the Marriage Registers of the Gore District at the Ontario Archives or in the newspaper announcement.
During the next thirty years, there are various references to the Barnard Griffin family in Census Returns and listings in County Directories. The family appeared to move quite frequently before finally settling in the Millgrove area of West Flamborough,2 where Barnard died on 21 November 1902. He is buried in the Municipal Cemetery3, although two of his daughters who died in 1863 are buried in the Methodist Church Cemetery, Mountsberg4.
The Flamborough card index also contained two marriage records for his children5, one of which suggests that his daughter, Marilla Jane married twice. These records were in the collection of Birth, Death and Marriage Records for the Flamborough area covering the period 1868-1910 that were rescued by members Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Hamilton of Strabane and given to the municipal office.
This was the extent of the Bernard Griffin records at the Archives. Certainly his famous surname was not in the index of Justus A. Griffin’s book on the Griffin family that is associated with Waterdown’s early history and which largely follows the line of Ebenezer Culver Griffin’s parents and brothers. So to answer the query, the speculation on who this elusive gentleman is begins. I am not a genealogist so the suggestions I make have to be regarded as such until they can be proven by documents.
Certainly Barnard Griffin was in East Flamborough Township at quite an early date. The date of his marriage in 1846 was at a time when the township was far from fully settled. So if he was not directly related to Ebenezer and Absalom Griffin who came to Waterdown from Smithville in the early years of the 1820s – were there any other inhabitants with the name Griffin in East Flamborough about the same time that he could be related to?
Records at the Archives suggest that there were other Griffin families in the township. Among them, Joseph Griffin of East Flamborough Township who applied for a grant of free land from the British Crown, was recognized as the son of a Loyalist and therefore eligible for such a grant, and was awarded 200 acres by an Order in Council on 2 June 1819. He was registered as the Crown Patentee of the 200 acres of Lot 9, Concession 3, East Flamborough Township on 29 September 1824. This property grant was adjacent to the property that brothers, Ebenezer and Absalom Griffin were assembling in Concession 3 (Waterdown) for their industrial development along the Grindstone Creek. Was it possible that two families with the same surname could end up being located side by side? Somewhere there must be a family connection.
Joseph Griffin is also listed as one of five people appointed as a Trustee for building a Methodist Episcopal Church in or near Waterdown. This little church had strong connections with the church in Nelson that Ebenezer Griffin was associated with for several years. It should also be noted that Barnard Griffin was married by a Methodist Episcopal minister as was customary by settlers of American origin, and not by a Wesleyan Methodist minister.
So it does appear that Joseph Griffin was a member of the large Griffin family which came into Upper Canada following the American Revolutionary War. In the Griffin Family History written by Justus A. Griffin in 1924, which details the family’s ancestors and descendents of the Richard Griffin Family from the time of the American Revolution, there is a possible link of Joseph to this family. An Edward Griffin (1764-1862), second son of Richard Griffin and Mary Smith, born in Duchess County, New York State, married to Deborah Wardell and died in Smithville, Ontario had a son called Joseph, born c.1798-1800 and a daughter, Catherine (1805-1867).
To conclude, Catherine Griffin, like Joseph, also came to East Flamborough as she married Thomas Wingrove of Mountsberg in 1834. The Wingroves and Mounts were neighbouring Mountsberg families and Huldah Wingrove, a daughter from this marriage, married Alpheus Mount, son of Josiah Mount and Mary Page and sister of Jane Mount who married Barnard Emery Griffin who was likely the son of Joseph Griffin!
© The Waterdown-East Flamborough Heritage Society 2000, 2023.
