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!
Last time we wrote about the family of Jemima Alice Devall (the wife of William Samuel “Tot” Loney), focusing mostly on the paternal side.
Today we’ll be talking about Jemima’s maternal side of her family. Jemima’s mother was Mary Jane Walker. She was born in Ontario (likely Simcoe Co) 10 Oct, 1857, the daughter of John Robinson Walker and Ann Bickel.
John was born abt 1831 in Ireland. 1861 and 1871 census records find him living with his wife and children in Simcoe Co – Mulmer then Tossorontio, working as a tanner. In the 1881 census they are in Caledon, Cardwell where John is a laborer.
We have found no other information on John, so would love to hear from anyone who has anything else to share!
As we mentioned, John’s wife (and Jemima’s mother) was Ann Bickel. She was born 24 May, 1825 in Lewtrenchard, Tavistock, Devon. England, the daughter of William Bickel and Mary Oxenham. According to census records, William was born 1797 or 1801. Mary was born in 1803, 1804 or 1807.
If you are related to Ann and ever decide to visit her place of birth, Lewtrenchard Manor looks like a lovely place to stay and the history of the manor is quite interesting.
“Lewtrenchard Manor is one of the most popular and most prestigious family run luxury hotels in Devon. Nestled in a secluded valley beneath Dartmoor’s wild tors, and virtually untouched by time, the Manor is located in a magnificent setting. Steeped in history, this Jacobean manor dates back to the early 1600s.”
In the 1841 English census, three-year-old Ann was living with her mother and father and seven brothers and sisters (the youngest of whom was just five-days-old) in Lew Quarry, Lewtrenchard where William Bickel was working as a manganese miner. From what we can tell, the lake that is now on the grounds of Lewtrenchard Manor used to be an old quarry, possibly the one where William worked.
1841 census
Sometime between July 1843 and April 1845 the Bickel family immigrated to Darlington, Durham Co, Ontario.
In the 1861 census William Bickel was living in Melancthon, Grey Co with his wife, Mary and some of their children. William’s occupation is listed as farmer. Ann had married by then and was living in Mulmer, Simcoe Co.
Note: Ann died of heart failure 6 Sep, 1909 in Muskoka, Ontario.
William Bickel probably died before 1871. His wife, Mary Oxenham, remarried on 23 Aug, 1876. Her second husband was John Hodgson. He was a farmer.
We are very fortunate to have found extensive information about Mary’s life in Ontario, and, she was quite a lady! The information below is from an article entitled “Once Upon a Time There Were House Calls” in the magazine In the Hills – A Magazine of Country Living in the Headwaters Region.
“And if they were lucky, there was a Granny Beckel nearby.
Remote communities were often blessed by the emergence of a key figure, usually a woman, with – for lack of a better word – a “knack” for healing. Such was Granny Beckel. She came to Horning’s Mills in 1855, then aged 52, and until the arrival of Dr. John Barr in 1866, became a treasure throughout Melancthon Township and beyond.
Granny’s expertise not only encompassed an encyclopedic knowledge of medicinal herbs, she was remarkably adept at setting broken limbs, adjusting dislocated joints, and dealing with wounds and deep-rooted infections.
Yet what distinguishes the story of Granny Beckel more than anything is what she had to do to make her house calls. In all four seasons she would slog through the trackless wilds of Melancthon, ford streams and rivers, and face down wolves and black bears, all with a sack full of not just her medicines, but homemade jams and other goodies for the soon-to-be-grateful patient.
Undaunted by weather or wildlife, Melancthon’s heroine, Granny Beckel, 1803–1880, brought cure and comfort across terrain often too rough for horseback. Her standard fee for house calls, no matter what the distance or the difficulty, was $2. Photo Courtesy Dufferin County Museum and Archives.
Granny was also remarkable for her common sense belief in the benefits of fresh air, good diet, cleanliness and letting nature take its course – this at a time when bleeding and blistering patients were still solidly established practices. Which suggests that if Granny used a home medicine guide, a compendium of advice and treatment in which many of our ancestors placed their faith, she must have been able to separate the wheat from the chaff in its pages.”
And, according to the account below, Mary was apparently quite brave and quite strong.
Mary Oxenham Bickel Hodgson died 19 Jan, 1881.
Do you have additional information on this branch of our family tree? Something about their life in England? We’d love to hear from you!
Loney Family from County Longford, Ireland 