John Bell's Parents - William and Esther - 
John's father, WiIliam, was born in March of 1822 (in Ireland according to the census records). He was married in New YorkCity on 10 June 1853 to Esther Wilson. William was about 31 and Esther was about 20 years old. She was also born in Ireland.
Possibly they were both part of the massive immigration from Ireland to the United States around the time of the Great Famine but I haven't yet found anything about where they came from and exactly when they left Ireland. Much of the information that follows was gleaned from William's Civil War Pension Record and his Military Record from the National Archives in Washington DC. Thanks go to Don Bell of Peterborough for the military discharge certificate that he found in a shoebox full of family papers that was left to him by Alec Bell. Without that certificate, it would have been very difficult to trace this information.

Unfortunately, there is no mention in these files of where in Ireland William or Esther were born. In an affidavit prepared for a widow's pension application, Esther gives details of their wedding, since she couldn't provide the marriage certificate to the pension office. They were married "by the Revd Mr Clements, a Presbyterian" Minister, in his rooms. There was there present Samuel Bell, Robert Irwin, Christopher Gibson, Maggie Law, Esther Scott, Theodocia Irwin, all of whom I believe to be now dead." In another affidavit dated 1900, she mentions Samuel Bell as having died "three years ago", so he may have been a relative with whom she maintained regular contact. William and Esther had three children during the time they were in
New York: John, born 31 May 1854, Isabella, born 16 February 1856 and Eliza Jane, born 2 December 1858.

Eliza Jane died at three years old, in April 1862, just after William had enlisted in the Union Army to fight in the War of the Rebellion (American Civil War). 

Willliam enlisted in Company E of the 79th Regiment of Infantry, New York Volunteers on 18 February 1862. This regiment was known as the Highlanders and at first they wore tartan trews, later switching to the Union Army dark blue. This suggests that William might have had Scottish ancestry. As a Presbyterian, he was almost certainly an Ulster Protestant. When he enlisted, William was described as "age 39, height 5'6", eyes brown, hair black. Born in Ireland. Occupation Labourer." William served for three years in Companies E, B and A and was discharged from Company A on 16 February 1865. According to his military record, he was sent to Beaufort, South Carolina, on the SS Natanzar on 26th February 1862, and arrived in early March but was hospitalized duringMarch and April. He saw action at James Island, South Carolina, June 16 1862. By September 1862, he was again sick and for three months thereafter was on detached service to the Divisional Headquarters at Pleasant Valley, Maryland, serving with the ambulance corps. He stayed with the ambulance corps until sometime in Mayor June 1863 and then took part in the siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi, from June 8 to July 4 1863, and the siege at Jackson, Mississippi on July 17 1863. He ended up in the convalescent camp at Nicholasville, Kentucky, in July and
August of that year and was later re-attached to the ambulance corps. The 79th fought in the repulse of Longstreet's assault on Fort Sanders, Tennessee, on November 29 1863. He returned to the ambulance corps until February of 1864. He fought at Spottsylvania, Virginia, on May 9 1864. From September to November 1864, he was hospitalized once more. He returned to the regiment on December 13 1864, and was mustered out at the expiration of his term in February 1865. Given the fact that four times as many soldiers were lost through sickness as on the battlefield during the Civil War, it's tempting to say that William spent most of his time at the "real battlefront" of the war.  He was very lucky to survive. According to the pension affidavits, He suffered lifelong health problems as a result of his Civil War service.

Sometime after William returned to New York in 1865 and before the end of 1867, William,Esther, John and Isabella left New York and came to live in Marmora Township. Another affidavit in the Pension Record, this time from William Lough, tells how they and their children "stopped at the house of my father until they got a house to live in oftheir own." There was alot of mineral exploration at that time. The Eldorado Gold Rush happened around 1866 and 1867 and the iron mine at Blairton attracted American capital in 1866 when a syndicate was established to amalgamate the Cobourg and Peterborough Railway Company and the Marmora Iron Company. Perhaps this was the reason for William and Esther's family relocating to Marmora. If that was their original reason for coming to the area, it didn't "pan out". William, like most people, didn't strike it rich. Instead, he took up farming.

By 1871 (according to the 1871 Census taken on April 21 of that year) William (age 45) and Esther (age 39) had settled on 100 acres on Lot 21 of Concession 7 in Marmora Township. This property was on the Shannick Road (the concession road that ran between the 6th and 7th concessions. Although the agricultural return shows their status as 'owners', the land registry abstracts for that period show that it was owned by the Canada Company. (The Canada Company was a land company set up in 1824 to sell land in the Huron Tract. John Gait is the best-known of the people connected with the Company. Much land was originally sold to settle damage claims resulting from the War of 1812. The Canada Company was active in land dealings innewly opened areas and operated until as late as 1950.)

William and Esther did farm this land and the census agricultural return shows that by 1871 they had improved 15 of the 100 acres. They produced 3 tons of hay, 80 bushels of potatoes, 4 bushels of buckwheat, 6 bushels of peas, 8 bushels of oats, and 6 bushels of wheat. They owned two oxen. In that year, their two milkcows produced 100 pounds of butter. Their other livestock consisted of two homed cattle and three swine. That year, they slaughtered two swine and cut 10 cords of firewood.

In the Canada Company records of "Improved Lots Leased without Option of Purchase", the ledger shows that William Bell paid rent on this lot from November 1886 until the lease was cancelled on 24 April 1899 (shortly before his death). It must have been quite a culture shock for John and Isabella to move to the relative wilds of Marmora Township from the City of New York, but I don't expect they had much time to think about it. According to the 1871 census, John was still in school at the age of 16 although Isabella was not. They must have put in long hours feeding pigs, churning butter, cutting wood and getting in the hay.

In 1884, when he was about 61 years old, and again in 1891 at age 69, William applied for an invalid's pension for his Civil War service. From his file, it looks as if his second application was successful and he received this pension until his death .  In July of 1899, Esther bought Lot Number 10 on the East Side of Hayes Street in Marmora Village from Hannah Eastwood for $125. On 7 November 1899 at the age of77, William died of a cerebral haemorrhage. Esther applied for and received a widow's pension from the US Government. When she died on 30 March 1915, she was receiving the sum of$12 a quarter or $48 a year. The house on Hayes Street was transferred to John Bell in January 1908 and
eventually sold in December 1920.

Isabella did not marry until she was almost 30 years old on 5 January 1886. Her husband was a widower with two children, Thomas Downard. They had three more children (Samuel, Minnie and Eliza). Thomas and Isabella eventually left Marmora. She was living in Cobalt at the time of
John's death in 1941. 

John Bell was about 12 or 13 when his family moved from New York to Marmora. On October 30, 1878, at the age of 24, John married Catharine Bailey. (See right)

John Bell's wife, Catharine Bailey,  was one of a large family of Baileys who had settled in the Beaver Creek District of North Marmora Township.  

The original Bailey settlers were James Bailey (Catharine's grandfather) and his wife Jane Leggett. They were from County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland. According to a letter written in 1837 stored in the Township Papers at the Ontario Archives,
"James Bailey has an improved farm on the east half of lot number five in the eighth concession of this (Marmora) township upon which he has constantly resided since the year 1823." According to the Crown Land Records, they received a gratuitous grant of 50 acres and then an additional 50 acres through the Land Board. This land seems to have passed out of the family sometime in the mid-1860s since it was sold for taxes in 1868 but James Bailey had leased the mineral rights prior to abandoning the property and moving to Harold.  The Baileys later purchased 400 acres at Harold in Rawdon Township. (For more on the Harold Baileys,  see below)

James Bailey (the elder) and Jane had four sons and a daughter that lived to adulthood.  It seems there were two children that died very early (an infant and a son named Max 1828-1830) and a daughter Nancy died at the age of 21. The eldest son, James, born in 1821,  married Isabella Quin and stayed in Marmora, probably because his wife had land of her own.     Samuel, the second son born 1825, ended up living at Harold. Their son,  John, born 1832,  lived first at "Pancake Hill" in Huntingdon and later at Harold.    Samuel and John married two sisters, Caroline and Jane Tucker.  They also had a son, Allan,  born 1826,  and a daughter, Matilda.

Isabella Quin (Catharine Bailey's mother 1823-1899),  was the only child of Catharine and James Quin (1794-1832), who  had immigrated to Canada from Killinchy in County Down, Ireland. In the summer of 1822, when James Quin was 28 years old, the Land Board of the Midland District of the Province of Upper Canada issued him a Ticket of Location for 100 acres on the east half of lot 15, concession VI. This is the lot just south of the old Marmora Cheese and Butter Company for those who are familiar with the area.

People in those days commonly got "location tickets" allowing them to homestead and, if they showed evidence that they had improved the land, eventually they received the Patent from the Crown. James paid 4 pounds 8 shillings and eleven pence as the first instalment for his ticket of location. They settled on and improved the farm. James was also one of the first men to be employed at the Marmora Iron Works. But James Quin
died in 1832 within a few days of preparing his Last Will and Testament on April 11. The Crown Patent had not been issued but James' wish was for his wife Catharine to have the use of his property during her natural life and then for his only daughter to inherit this property after Catharine' s death.

There is a letter dated 1842 in the Township Papers, from an Adam H. Mayers to the Surveyor General pointing out that 30 acres had been cleared and a house and barn built on the property. He had also seen James Quin's will and spoken to one of the witnesses to corroborate the fact that the farm had been left to Catharine Quin and then left "in fee" to his only daughter, Isabella.

By then Catharine Quin had remarried James Crawford who had the adjacent farm and was subsequently known as Catharine Crawford and Isabella Quin had married James Bailey and was known as Isabella Bailey. James Crawford had gone to some lengths to clear his wife's title to the land with no success but eventually, in 1847, the case was heard by the Heir & Devisee Commissioners.  At last, in 1853, the Patent was issued in the names of Catharine Crawford and Isabella Bailey "in fee". The Heir & Devisee proceedings contain a copy of the will, as well as the Ticket of Location and several affidavits.

The crossroads in North Marmora on the centre line of Concession VI at lots 15 and 16 was known for many years as Baileys Corners and the Bailey family was a.prime mover in the area. They gave land on the north west corner and helped to build Holy Trinity Church, which has since been demolished. The Marmora Cheese Manufacturing Company was also built on their land (north east corner), as well as the school known as SS No 2. It's interesting to note that when the land for SS #2 was transferred for the sum of $10, Catharine and Isabella signed the deeds, since they could dispose of the property themselves without requiring James Crawford's and James Bailey's signatures.

Isabella and James Bailey had nine children - three three boys and six girls

• James Crawford. - married Sarah Jones, the daughter of Marmora Township's Reeve, Hugh Jones, one of the early settlers in the area. They had a modest family of three sons and one daughter, and were farmers in North Marmora.

• Margaret (Broadworth)

• Joshua married Charity Kellerman, from Huntingdon
  Township. She was reputed to have supernatural powers.
  According to anecdotes told by Irene McMiIIen, Charity
  could stop cream from turning into butter in the churn and interfere
  with the fertility of women she didn't like. She and Joshua had 11
  children. According to his obituary notice, he dropped dead in the
  Rotunda of the Royal Hotel in Marmora at a ripe old age. He
  seems to have inherited the south half of lot 16.

• Mary (Jones)

• Jane

• Catharine (Bell) was born on 19 June 1856 and was the sixth child in the family. James was an Anglican and Isabella was a Presbyterian but the Anglican strain prevailed and the Baileys were all Anglicans. Isabella and James acquired title to Lot 16, Concession VI in late 1883.

• Isabella (Lough)

• Ida Frances (Peck)

• AIlan married Matilda and bought the north half of lot 16 but he died when he was about 30 years old leaving a widow and two sons. His widow Matilda remarried within about three years, so the farm passed share and share alike to the two sons - Allan and James Angus. They, however, chose :o join the thousands of young men who were opening the great North West, homesteading in Brornhead, Saskatchewan, and the farm was purchased by Catharine and John Bell in 1917.

Eventually the original Quin homestead on the east half of Lot 15, concession 6 was passed on  by Catharine Bailey Bell to her son James Bell.           

Click here for more on James Crawford Bailey

John Bell  married Catharine Bailey  on 30 October 1878, at the age of 22 in Madoc, witnessed by James Gawley and Isabella Bailey (probably her sister). By the 1881 census, John and Catharine were living in Marmora
Township (perhaps on the Bailey homestead)  and had one son, Allan, born in 1879. Their second son, James was born in 1881 and a third son, William, was born in 1884. Their first son, Allan, died in April of 1885, age 5. By that time, they had purchased a farm of their own. The Land Registry abstracts show that John Bell
purchased the east half of Lot 21, Concession 8 from Robert Blakely for $1,800 in November 1884. They kept this farm until 1927 when it was sold to their son James. A fourth son, John Allan, was born in 1889. After John Allan was born, they leased some additional land. The Canada Company records show that John Bell leased 100 acres - the east half of Lot 21, Concession 9 - from November of 1892 for two years and then again from November 1894 to February of 1905. They bought this land in January 1913 but sold it within two years to George Arthur
Tompkins. They also had two daughters. Edith was born in September 1893, but died on Christmas Eve of that same year during an epidemic of whooping cough in Marmora Township. Their last child, Ruth, was
bom in 1897.

After Isabella Bailey died in September of 1899, her son, James Crawford Bailey, as the Administrator of her estate, sold the Quin/Bailey homestead on the east half of Lot 15, Concession 6 to Catharine Bell for $1150.00 on March  27 1901. According to the estate files, James Bailey senior was suffering from gangrene when Isabella died and couldn't make the trip to Belleville. He didn't expect to survive her for very long. In fact, he lived until 20 January 1906.

In September 1907, according to the Land Registry abstract, John and Catharine bought the west half of Lot 21, Concession 8 from the Rathbun Company.

EXCERPT FROM "THE HERITAGE YEARS - A HISTORY OF STIRLING AND DISTRICT

Including the Baileys of Harold