Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Smithville and the story of Jessie Meredith and Rebecca Smith




Jessie Meredith, the son of Charles Meredith and Miriam Griffin, was born in South Grimbsy, Lincoln, Ontario, Canada.  His father had been born in Pennsylvania and his mother in New York before the Revolutionary War.  During the war, some people in America (before it BECAME America) sided with the British and some with the American rebels.  When America was won from the British, the people who sided with the British decided they didn't want to be Americans anymore, so they headed to Canada where loyal "Tories", as they were called, were given grants of land by the British goverment.  Or something.  I'm not going to research all that because I'm not writing a book, just a blog entry. 

The Merediths were given land in Lincoln county, Ontario, Canada.  Rebecca Smith, the daughter of Abraham and Mary Knapp Smith (yeah, yeah.  Knapper and I are related by more than marriage.) left Pennsylvania and helped settle Smithville, Lincoln, Ontario after the Revolutionarry war.  That's how Jessie Meredith and Rebecca Smith met, by living in the same area. 

Or something.

Sometime before 1865, Jessie and his family came down from Canada and bought land in Michigan.  The Meredith's were a HUGE family.  Jessie himself had at least 9 siblings, and many of them moved to Michigan also.  One of Jessie's brother's also had a son he named Cyrus, and that family settled around Traverse City, which was confusing for a while.  Our Meredith's settled in the Austin Township, Sanilac County portion of Michigan.  A little town called Frieburger, Michigan was where Jessie and Rebecca built their cabin when they first got here.  Strangly enough, I worked at Keebler Company as an occupational health nurse in Grand Rapids with a man named Frieburger.  I mentioned my genealogy research to him and commented on his name being the same as the small town the Meredith's lived and he said it was his FAMILY'S town. 

Now *that's* a small world.



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