Lydia (Lyons) Woods (1820 - 1910)

Born 27 Apr 1820 in County Fermanagh, Ireland

Descendants

Died 13 Jan 1910 at age 89 in Grey, Ontario, Canada

Biography

In 1861 she and her husband and their seven children lived on a farm in the Tecumseh (now New Tecumseh) area in Simcoe County in what was then called Canada West, now Ontario.

In 1871 she and six of her children--all but John and Thomas--lived on a farm in Egremont Township (since 2000 part of Southgate Township), Grey County, ON.

In 1881 she, Lydia, James, and Richard lived there.

In 1891 she lived with her son James, his wife, and their three children on a farm in Wellington North Township, Wellington County, ON.

In 1901 she lived with James, Agnes, and their five children on a farm back in Egremont Township.

From a display at the Smithsonian:

"The British bark Ayrshire ran aground off Squan Beach, New Jersey, in January 1850. But the passengers and crew had reason for hope: Congress had begun funding the construction of life-saving stations along the coast of New York and New Jersey two years before. The sea was too rough to launch a surfboat, and the local wreckmaster decided to use his station’s life-car instead. Hauled between the shore and the wreck on ropes, the enclosed boat made 60 trips to the wreck over two days and rescued all but one of Ayrshire’s 166 passengers and 36 crew.

Many of the passengers on the Ayrshire’s final voyage were likely Irish laborers, farmers, and families fleeing famine in Ireland. Almost one million people between 1846 and 1851 died because of the failures of the potato crop and poor distribution of what remained. Hundreds of thousands more sailed for the United States, Canada, Britain, and Australia.

The Irish immigrants aboard the Ayrshire included 50-year-old John Woods, some of his siblings, his 30-year-old wife Lydia, and their three sons—a 2-year-old and infant twins. The family came ashore in the Francis Life-Car. Some settled in New York, while John, Lydia, and their children continued on to Canada, where they established a farm north of Toronto."

There was disagreement among John and Lydia's grandchildren as to which county in Ireland they were from. There are many written records compiled by some of those grandchildren--much is told there about both John and Lydia. One is a rather sad story which came from her granddaughter Maggie, James' daughter: "One day when Lydia was about 25 years old, while her father, John, was gone on a preaching mission, her mother, Lydia, married her off to this praying old man 20 years her senior--that was John Woods, age 45 when he married Lydia. She said a young minister she had been dating just doted on her, but that her mother would cross a ten-acre field to stop them from laughing." Maggie said Lydia was unhappy with her marriage and hated her husband as long as she was married to him.

The story was also told that Lydia had as many as five more children who died in infancy. However, there are no obvious gaps between her known children. Possibly her first two or three died in Ireland. One letter from someone in the family mentions a family Bible--perhaps some day that will turn up and tell us for sure.

Sources

• https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/133242816/lydia-woods