Welcome! If this is your first visit to our blog, please read our Intro post here. To date we have written posts about all known members of the first, second, and third generations of descendants of William Loney of Co Longford, Ireland and we will continue to add new information about their lives and families in the days and weeks to come.
If you are looking for information on someone in particular, you can use the “Search” feature in the upper right hand corner of this page.
We hope that the information you find here will be helpful to you in your genealogical research. While we make every effort to ensure that what we post is accurate (based on source documents or “reliable” family information), we would be silly to think that we haven’t made any mistakes. If you run across one, please, please, please let us know so we can correct it.
Finally, we remain forever optimistic that someone out there will contact us because they have old Loney family photos to share. We would be especially thrilled to have one of William, Charles, John or Robert Loney or their sister, Ann Loney Cunningham. We are waiting to hear from you!
In a previous post we wrote about William Samuel “Tot” Loney and his wife Jemima Alice Devall. Today we’ll be sharing some of what we know about Jemima’s family
Depending on which record you are looking at, Jemima was born 10 Oct, 1881 (1901 census) or Aug, 1882 (1911 census) in Muskoka, Ontario. She was the daughter of Richard Eli Devall and Barbara Wilcox.
Richard Eli Devall was born 24 Aug, 1856, probably in Simcoe Co, Ontario. He was the son of Thomas Devall and Barbara Wilcox. Richard’s death certificate says that he was of Irish/English descent. Census records for him list French, German and English.
In the 1871 census Richard was living with his father, mother and nine brothers and sisters in Tecumseth, Simcoe South. Richard was the fifth of the ten known children – the middle child. His father, Thomas Devall was working as a laborer. The record indicates that he was born in Quebec and his mother was born in Ontario.
On 8 Jan, 1878, Richard Eli Devall married Mary Jane Walker in Alliston, Simcoe Co. He was living in Tecumseth at the time and working as a farmer. Mary Jane was born 10 Oct, 1857, the daughter of John Robinson Walker and Ann Bickel.
Census records for 1881, 1891 and 1901 have Richard working as a farm laborer and track the family from Tecumseth to West Gwillimbury, York North to French Luther, Wellington Co. All three locations are relatively near each other.
You may remember that Jemima Alice Devall, her husband William Samuel Loney and their family moved to the Rainy River District of Ontario between 1903 and 1904. They followed William’s brothers, Thomas and David Loney. The three Loney’s made the move on the recommendation of their father, William “Wild Bill” Loney. In the late 1890’s Wild Bill had taken a boat (aptly named the Shamrock) from Rat Portage (now Kenora) to Fort Francis, Rainy River District, Ontario. While there, he fell in love with the area and when he returned home he told his family what a grand place it was. He called it “God’s Country”. Unfortunately, Wild Bill died in 1901 and was never able to return to the Rainy River area, William, Thomas and David remembered his words and did.
We mention this because the 1911 census shows Richard and Barbara Devall, two of their children and a grandchild also living in the Rainy River area. Perhaps they, too, made the move because of stories they heard from Wild Bill. The census shows Richard employed as a carpenter in “woods”.
William and Jemima Loney moved to Saskatchewan sometime before 1919. Sadly, William and the couple’s sons Robert and Richard Melvin died there in the Spanish Flu Epidemic. By 1921, Jemima and her son Roy were back in Ontario living with her parents at 134? King St. in Emo, Rainy River District. Richard was employed in a saw mill as a mill hand and Jemima was a dressmaker.
Note: In an interesting article on Shelburne, Dufferin Co Heritage Businesses we found the reference below to a widowed Jemima Devall working as a dressmaker. The time line is wrong for this Jemima to be “our” Jemima, plus her last name is Devall rather than Loney, however we wonder if this is a relative who perhaps taught Jemima Devall Loney dressmaking.
“The old Humphries Store and Undertaking Parlor was located close to the Adeline and Main Street corner on Block 1 Lot 12 and 13… Unfortunately in April 18th of 1886, the old destroyer, fire, leveled their Adeline Street Buildings… Shortly after the fire, Edwin Humphries sold the Lot 12 property to Michael Potchett who opened a boot and shoe store on the main floor while his wife operated a knitting mill on the second floor. As for Lot 13, Humphries leased it to a partnership of two widows, Eliza Waite, milliner and Jemima Devall, dressmaker.”
Richard Eli Devall died in Emo 16 Oct, 1936. His death certificate indicates that he had been a laborer in the lumber industry all of his life and had “retired” in July of 1926.
We believe Mary Jane Walker Devall died 24 Feb, 1942 and next time we’ll be writing more about her family.
Do you have additional information on the Devall’s? Perhaps a photo? We’d love to hear from you!
Loney Family from County Longford, Ireland 