The alphabetical list that follows includes all family names found in Part Two of Assisting Emigration to Upper Canada.
Part Two of that volume brings together the results of years of work to determine a list of "Emigrants on Petworth Ships, 1832-1837." Few passenger lists survive for this early in the nineteenth century, and there are none for these ships. We had to work from scattered records of emigrants assisted through the Petworth Emigration Committee. In England, Sheila Haines and Leigh Lawson supplied names for family members where only the head was named. They found births or baptisms, marriages, and some deaths for men, women, and children. They also looked for information on subjects such as occupation or assistance to emigrate. In Ontario (Upper Canada), Brenda Dougall Merriman added evidence from Canadian sources and helped us to distinguish Petworth families from other emigrant families of the same name. Mary McDougall Maude compiled all this information into our published list. Our information varies from one individual or family to the next: the data most frequently found relate to parish recording of vital statistics or sending emigrants to Canada, ages, occupations, embarkation dates, and names of ships.
Many Petworth people also wrote letters to the folks back home - it was quite an event to receive such a letter, which was shared in the community - and letter writers would mention fellow emigrants and "sightings." The letters are reproduced and annotated in
English Immigrant Voices.
Researchers are reminded that this list, or index, is to the published books and covers the years 1832-37. On this website you will find a separate site for "Post-1837 Emigrants." As well, we have a separate list of "Petworth Wives," which highlights the surnames of women before they married. There are therefore three lists to be consulted.
See our "
Family History Archives" section for more information about our archived collection, which is available to researchers at the University of Waterloo Library. We hope that descendants will add their own family information to the collection for the benefit of present and future family historians.
Notes
1. An asterisk (*) following a name on the list indicates that someone of that surname wrote one or more letters published in English Immigrant Voices.
2. Occasionally we show another name in brackets beside a surname entry. These are spelling variations or aliases that occur in a few sources. A question mark is a sign of inconclusiveness.
3. A name appears on the list only once, even though many families of the same name emigrated in different years or on different ships. For example, different members of the Mann family emigrated in the years 1832, 1835, and 1836. Families with the same surname were not necessarily related.