This and the previous page are provided by Fenton MacHardy of Canada and are an account of his family tree, descendants of David MacHardy and Katherine Fenton, who emigrated to Canada from Scotland around 1842. His text is printed here in full, except for a few references here and there that, in the interests of personal privacy, I have edited out as they may impact living family members.
— Sandra
David MacHardy (1820-1898)
David MacHardy, tenth and last child born to James and Ann of Ordachoy likely left home at an early age and then lived for a number of years in Glamis, Strathmore, Angus, probably as a farm worker. There he met and married Katherine Fenton (1818-1898) before they both immigrated to Canada.
Katherine Fenton was the daughter of Alexander Fenton and his wife Anne Greer of Glamis who immigrated to Canada with some of their family in 1842. Alexander Fenton bought a farm in the Chatham area of New Brunswick that remained in family hands until recently. A daughter Mary (Mrs. Mary Perley), born in 1831 lived the last 93 years of her life at Chatham, dying there in 1934 in her 104th year. A grandson, James, farmed and ranched at Irma, Alberta. This property is still in the Fenton family, being farmed by his grandson.
It is not known whether David MacHardy and his wife Katherine immigrated to Canada with her father and mother in 1842, or whether they came shortly afterwards. In any case, they bought a farm on the Miramichi River across from Chatham, at Millbank, New Brunswick. (All of the place names in the Newcastle-Chatham region of New Brunswick were dropped in 1997 and the whole region is now known as Miramichi, New Brunswick.) This farm and house are still in the hands of descendants....
David MacHardy and his wife Katherine Fenton raised the following family in their home in Millbank:
Ann married William Simpson of Chatham, New Brunswick and they immigrated to Denver, Colorado in the 1870s, where their family was born...William and Anne retired in San Diego, where they died and are buried.
James, John, Mary and Margaret lived in the MacHardy home in Millbank all of their lives. Only John married. He and his wife Lillian raised three daughters...James, John and his wife Lillian, Mary and Margaret are buried in the family plot in Muirfield Cemetery, Douglastown, New Brunswick, together with parents David and Katherine.
Two others are buried in the MacHardy family plot. A baby boy was abandoned in or on the doorstep of the MacHardy family home in 1872. He was taken in by the family and was christened Charles MacHardy. He died of cancer in 1892. A Norwegian sailor, Charles Anderson, jumped ship in the Millbank area and was also taken into the MacHardy home. He died in 1914.
The MacHardy family home must have been a bustling place in the early days of this century, with James working in the Logie fish processing plant, John farming, and the four women looking after a household of seven adults and a growing number of children.
David Fenton (D.F.) MacHardy (1855-1941)
My grandfather, D.F. MacHardy, was the first son born to David MacHardy and Katherine Fenton of Millbank, New Brunswick. He grew up watching the last of the full rigged wooden ships and schooners being built on the various “banks” along the Miramichi. A carpenter, cabinet maker and ship model builder all his life, he probably learned his trade as a youth in the shipyards. As the ship building boom collapsed on the Miramichi, young people looking for employment moved to Ontario, or immigrated to the United States. At the age of 18, in 1873, D.F. MacHardy left Millbank for Denver, Colorado. He established a contracting business in Denver, a frontier town at that time, and for a time also owned a ranch on Running Creek, near Denver, in partnership with his nephew...He married Louise Stenger of Pennsylvania Dutch descent in Denver in 1888 and they raised three children: Mavis (1889-1972), Norman (1891-1981) and Flora (1900-1987).
Always a staunch Canadian and Briton, he attempted to join the rush to the Klondike in 1898. He had built and provisioned a covered wagon for the journey. Apparently a Denver neighbour, who headed North with a covered wagon, was stopped by a flood on the Missouri river— and got word back to my grandfather not to start at that time. By the next spring, the bloom was off the gold rush, and he waited until 1903 before heading North to assess opportunities in the Canadian North West Territories (part of which were to become the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan in 1905). The trip to the Northwest was possible by train from Denver east to St. Paul then north to Winnipeg, then west into the North West Territories. On reaching the town of Strathcona, (later to be amalgamated with Edmonton), he wrote in his diary:
Strathcona is a stirring little town of 1,500...They seem to be a God-fearing people. From our hotel we can see six churches... I do wish I had my family located here.
He moved from Denver to Strathcona about a year later to start a contracting business. His wife and family joined him a year later from Denver, arriving in January 1906, to what was now Alberta. He built a number of public buildings, churches and private homes in the years 1904 to 1915, many of which are still standing, including the home he built for his family at 10018- 86 Avenue, Edmonton.
In 1915 after the collapse of the building boom, caused by World War I, D.F. MacHardy followed his son Norman to Vermilion, Alberta, where he purchased a farm and also obtained a patent on a homestead quarter, NW34-48-7 W4. His wife and daughter Flora went with him to Vermilion. After the death of his wife Louise in 1932, he returned to the family home in New Brunswick, where he lived until 1940. He then returned to Vermilion, where he died in 1941.
His older daughter Mavis married Chester D. Martin of Strathcona, son of David Martin and his wife Margaret McGradie, who had a 320-acre farm just south of Strathcona. As the city expanded to include it, this property became known as the Martin Estate. Chester and Mavis continued to live in Edmonton. Their two children, Sylvia (1912-1976) and David (1917-1998), were born there. Mavis, with Sylvia and David, moved to Los Angeles after the death of her husband Chester in 1935. She and Sylvia died there. David died in Glendale, California.
Flora married Fred Connelly, son of William Connelly and his wife Rosanna Hodgins who farmed south of Vermilion...After farming in the Auburndale district where Fred owned and operated a steam threshing outfit, the family moved to Los Angeles in 1923. Fred worked in trucking and heavy construction, and later managed an apartment complex in Lancaster, California. Fred and Flora are both deceased...
Norman Valentine MacHardy( 1891-1981)
Born to D.F. MacHardy and Louise Stenger in 1891, in Denver, Colorado,...Norman moved with his mother and sisters to join his father in Strathcona, Alberta in 1906. Following the completion of high school in Strathcona, Norman worked for pioneer lumberman John Walters, as fireman, then engineer, on Walters' stern-wheeler steam-powered riverboat “City of Strathcona”. He then joined Alberta Government Telephones as a lineman, building rural telephone lines north and west of Edmonton. He then moved to Vermilion where he homesteaded on SE 4-49-7 W4 in 1913. In 1920 he married Sophia..., the youngest child born to Joseph ... and Sophia ... of Thetford Mines, Quebec. May ... came west as a school teacher to teach at Arcola, Saskatchewan where she lived with her sister Eva ..., and then moved to a farm at Vermilion to look after her father and brothers Dick and Vince who had come west from Quebec in 1915. Following May's marriage to Norman, her father and brothers Dick and Vince moved to Culross and Elm Creek in Manitoba where they continued to live until their deaths.
...
Norman and May farmed and lived in 4-49-7 W4 until 1958 when the farm was sold. They then lived until 1963 on a farm owned by [their son and his wife] at Claysmore, Alberta. In 1963 they retired to the town of Vermilion where Norman died in 1981, and May in 1983.
Throughout his farming life, Norman was active in farming and community organizations. He was a founding member of the Alberta Wheat Pool, an active member and officer of the United Farmers of Alberta, a rural school trustee, and for many years, a board member and lineman for the Sandy Lake Mutual Telephone Company. Norman was, to use a term phrased by John Kenneth Galbraith in his book The Scotch, a “man of standing” in his farming community.
It is hoped that this brief account of my direct MacHardy ancestors might be a start of a family history that can be continued by members of the next, and succeeding generations.
It is also hoped that it might provide information that could be useful to the families of brothers and sisters of my direct ancestors, in writing their family histories.
Fenton V. MacHardy
January 1998
Revised May 1999
Direct questions on this branch of the family to Carolyn MacHardy at
