Anglo-Celtic Roots The Cowley Family Saga: From Sherwood Forest to the NHLȄPart 1© BY CHRISTINE JACKSON After researching her own family history in England for some 35 ǡͺͶͶ͸Ͷͷ͹ǯ voyage up the Ottawa River unexpectedly offered Christine an opportunity to research a pioneering Canadian family with deep Ǥ ǯ and their significant and sometimes colourful role in the development of the Ottawa Valley quickly became what is now an ongoing obsession. his is an account of an Ottawa ǯ 400th Valley pioneer FamilyȄthe anniversary of the French explorer- T Cowley familyȄwho arrived cartographer Samuel de Champlain here from England in the 1830s and, passing by our area on his way up ǡDzǤdz the Ottawa River. This article (Part I) traces the lives I have always been interested in the in Canada of some of the family history of my community, as well as members, while Part II will shed the age of my house on Cowley light on their English origins in Avenue, where I have lived for 25 Sherwood Forest and the English years. I had always known that my Midlands, and will speculate about street and several others in the what may have led one of them, at neighbourhood were named by the age of 65, to bring his young Robert H. Cowley, when he laid out family to British North America. the subdivision in 1903.2 My involvement with the history of He called it Riverside Park, although this family started early this year, the name had to be changed in 1950 when a friend sent me two papers (to Champlain Park) when this on the natural and human history of section of what was then Nepean our Ottawa neighbourhood of Township was annexed by the City Champlain Park, written by of Ottawa. members of the community association.1 The authors were Between the 1890s and the First seeking support and suggestions for World War, a property boom was Anglo-Celtic Roots Ȉ 3 Volume 19, Number 3 ȈFall 2013 underway across Canada, and in document and, at the same time, Ottawa the opening of the Britannia offering to work on providing streetcar line in 1900 brought large further information. areas of what was then Nepean Not unsurprisingly she took up my Township within commuting offer of helpȄand I was off and distance of the city. running! While residential subdivisions set My assignment was this: back from the river were generally If you are someone who likes to go aimed at the working classes, those digging into the past, I have a mystery laid out along the Ottawa River you may wish to help me solve. I were promoted as summer resorts would love to know why Captain to the middle class, and they began Daniel Keyworth Cowley's body was to fill with cottages. Riverside Park exhumed from Beechwood Cemetery was one of those, and Nepean and moved to an unknown cemetery assessment rolls show that, by in North Bay, Ontario. I learned this 1911, 34 of the 52 assessed tidbit during a phone conversation I had with a staFF person at Beechwood buildings there were cottages.3 My Cemetery. She had the register of own house was likely built in 1918 burials in front of her and told me as a seasonal clapboard cottage and about this notation describing his subsequently winterized.4 exhumation. Is this something you One of the aforementioned papers would like to follow up on? contained preliminary research on My research last fall tells me that the Cowley family done by a fellow Mary McJanet Cowley (the Captain's resident. From that I learned that wiFe) lived until 1919. She was buried in Bristol, Québec. Why are this the father of the R.H. Cowley who husband/wife not buried together? had planned our neighbourhood And since she was alive for a good 20 had a connection to Chaǯ years after he died, why did she agree lost astrolabe, supposedly found to have him exhumed and buried upriver in 1867. elsewhere? Intrigued, I studied the research Dzdz paper and started using from his wiFe!Ȅthat certainly FamilySearch, findmypast and caught my attention. Being Ancestry to check genealogical unfamiliar, however, with Canadian details online about the Cowley family history resources, I knew of family and to fill in some of the only one expert on cemeteriesȄ unknowns. As a result, I was able to fellow BIFHSGO member and make a little progress, the details of blogger John Reid. which I passed on to the author of In no time John found the entry for the Cowley paper, suggesting that Daniel Keyworth Cowley in the she may wish to update her Anglo-Celtic Roots Ȉ 4 Volume 19, Number 3 ȈFall 2013 Beechwood Cemetery Burial felt I was getting to know Daniel Register, which records his death Keyworth Cowley and I had begun date as 4 February 1897, the DzǤdzȌ removal of his remains on 14 May Someone at Beechwood Cemetery Dzǡdz must have mistakenly entered the notaDzdz Dzdzthe burial register column.5 In fact, most of the entries (they even added quotation marks), for February 1897 show interment perhaps being unfamiliar with the in the vault shortly after death and tiny settlement of Norway Bay burial at Beechwood in May, June upriver and/or unsure of what s/he and even July. heard. It turned out that there was nothing Some Googling took me to the strange or unusual about what had Cemeteries of Pontiac County, ǤǤǯ Québec website, run by the Upper had been temporarily interred in a Ottawa Valley Genealogical Group. vault at Beechwood, pending a time There I found the legal land in the spring (May) when the descriptions of the Norway Bay problems of frozen ground and Anglican and United cemeteries and winter transportation out of town a reference to the transcription of would permit burial. The same thing headstones completed there in happened in 1927 on the death of 1977 by Joan McKay.7 his son Robert. So that solved the mystery of the so-called Consulting the cemetery DzdzǤǯ transcription at the Ottawa Public body. Library, I found that it describes a section of the cemetery as being There remained, however, the issue devoted to the Cowleys and includes of the body having been sent to the mention of a gate on the North Bay for burial. And once Dz dzDzǤ again, John Reid came to the rescue. ͳͺ͹ͳdz John found photographs of some arms.8 There follows a list of some Cowley headstones online in the 14 Cowley Family members, Canadian Gravemarker GalleryȄ including Capt. Daniel Keyworth graves which are at Norway Bay Cowley himself and his wife, Mary United Cemetery, in Bristol McJanet Cowley. Township, Pontiac County.6 That Ǩǯ I have since visited the cemetery wife Mary was from Bristol and seen the headstones, and I am Township, so it was logical that her now quite satisFied that Captain husband and other Family members Cowley was buried at Norway Bay would be buried there. (By now I with his wife, and not at North Bay. Anglo-Celtic Roots Ȉ 5 Volume 19, Number 3 ȈFall 2013 This information I also reported navigation in the Ottawa Valley? back to my community association These were my initial questions. colleague who had written about Well, I Found that he was the eldest the Cowley family. But I did not yet ǡDz tell her that I had become hooked dz on researching this family, largely at Kensington (London), England, as a resuǯ who, at the age of 65, arrived in lengthy 1897 obituary in the Ottawa Lower Canada with his wife, Citizen9 and the book on which my Harriott, aged 53, and their two colleague had based her researchȄ childrenȄa boy named Daniel a biographical memoir of Captain Keyworth (age 14) and a girl named ǯǡ ǡ10 Harriet (age 8).11 (Their second which contains much family history child, Robert, born in 1818, had died and a family tree going back to just one year after birth.) 1697. Daniel Keyworth Cowley, the future Using these two documents and Captain Dan, had been born 9 trying to confirm in modern January 1817, at 19 Dartmouth genealogical databases the dates Street in the City of Westminster and places that were mentioned in (London), England.12 Baptized in the them, unsourced, proved to be an Anglican parish church of absorbing process. But throughout, WestminsterȂǤǯǡ it became clear to me that Captain adjoining Westminster Abbey, his Dan was a larger-than-life second given name of Keyworth personage who rightly earned the was the family name of his paternal title of patriarch of the Canadian grandmother (Elizabeth Keyworth). Cowley dynasty, which he founded and dominated during his long life ǯ from 1817 to 1897. His obituary- grandson R. H. Cowley states that writer referred to him as a ven- Mailes, having been commissioned erable figure who was one of the to bring some soldiers out from earliest pioneers of steam England, came with his family to navigation on the Ottawa River, Montréal in 1831, where he saying that established a garden. his life was one attended through- After only one year in Montréal, out with unwonted interest and however, Mailes died in the adventure. infamous 1832 cholera epidemic, So where did this adventurer come which spread through Lower and from, and how did he get his Upper Canada and is believed to reputation as a pioneer of steam have killed at least 4,000 people in Montréal alone.13 He was buried in Anglo-Celtic Roots Ȉ 6 Volume 19, Number 3 ȈFall 2013 Papineau Cemetery with some of immigrants and French-Canadians the British officers who had that lasted from 1835 to 1845.15 accompanied him from England.