Boulton and Kendrick Connection

Time to get out the red pens for a correction to The Boulton Blog books!  This picture taken about 1910 has always hung at the Boulton farm and I bought another copy at an auction sale in Souris a few years back.  It is a remarkable picture and easy to see why copies were made for the family. A recent email from cousin Lee corrected the identity of the lady sitting on a chair in the front middle of the group. The handwriting on the back of her copy belonged to Ida Mae Bigney White, daughter of Susan. The elegant lady on the chair had previously been identified as Louisa Roe, the mother of the two little boys in the picture.  It didn’t really seem right and indeed the true identity of the woman is a generation older than Louisa.  She is Abigail Kendrick, a sister to Ann Boulton(sitting to her left) and her daughter Annie Kendrick is standing at the far right behind her.  Discovering who it was made me curious about the Boulton-Kendrick connection.

Randy's great grandmother Ann Boulton is pictured in this group of 5 in the front right with her 2 years older sister Abigail on the left. Their mother Ann(Higginson) Boulton is between them and brothers William and Thomas are standing behind.  This photo was taken in the late 1880’s in the Brockville, Ontario area.  I thought it was the only photo of Abigail (Boulton) Kendrick that I had seen but apparently not. She was in Reston in about 1910! Abigail married George Kendrick in 1862 at Leeds and Grenville in Southern Ontario.  They had two children Thomas Oughton(1865-1945) and (you guessed it - they loved this name) Annie who was born in 1863.  The Kendricks farmed in southern Ontario, where George died in 1900 at the age of 69.  I don't have any other evidence of how long they stayed but a visit for the sisters after 8 years would have been welcome indeed.   

 Annie remained unmarried but she continued to write letters to the Reston connection in the 1940’s.  I have a couple of them and they are newsy - shared connections, health issues and the weather.  Annie died in 1958 at the age of 94.   Her brother Thomas Kendrick married Sarah/Mary Jane Spotten in 1902 and had a daughter Abigail Gladys in Winchester Township near Ottawa.  Gladys married William Francis McDonald and had a large family.  

The first Abigail’s husband George had one brother that I know of, Richard Kendrick. That family was no doubt another reason for the visit west in 1910. Richard (1850 -1925) and his wife Hester (McIntosh) (1855-1939) arrived in the Reston area on May 1, 1900. That first night was apparently spent with the Boulton family, three miles east from their homestead. The two families had been neighbours at New Dublin, Ontario. Richard and George Kendrick’s father Samuel arrived from Dublin, Ireland in 1823 and the Boultons had lived in the area since leaving the United States as Loyalists. The Kendrick family consisted of 8 sons and a daughter ages 24 down to 4. (Photo courtesy of Ancestry user dwain01) They built their home on 22-6-28 in 1900.  Richard was a blacksmith and carpenter as well as a farmer. The district and school were named Dublin by the Kendricks after their former homes. 

Eldest son Nelson purchased and operated his own steam threshing outfit and operated it in the district for many years. The above picture hung in a bedroom at the Boulton farm and the postcard below with identifying names on the back was borrowed from a collection of John and Verna Olenick.  

A Kendrick family reunion in the year 2000 celebrated 100 years of Kendrick ownership and a cairn on the property was revealed to mark the occasion.  Kendricks and Boultons continue to be neighbours and Reston community members all these years after it began. 

Thanks for sharing your picture, Lee.  It made for a pleasurable day of research , lost in the past ignoring the present!