Gertrude (LeRoy) Hankinson (1769 - 1856)

Born 4 Feb 1769 in Poughkeepsie, Dutchess, New York

Ancestors

Wife of Reuben Hankinson UE — married 18 Dec 1785 in Digby, Nova Scotia, Canada

Descendants

Died 1 Jul 1856 at age 87 in Malahide, Elgin, Ontario, Canada

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Biography

Gertrude "Gitty" Leroy was born Feb 4, 1769 to Francis Leroy and Sarah Hegeman in Poughkeepsie, Dutchess, New York. Her parents were Loyalists during the American Revolution and after the war, in about 1783, they emigrated to Nova Scotia with other Loyalist families.

Rueben died in 1833. After his death, Gitty and some of her children emigrated to Elgin, Ontario. She died there in 1856. Gertrude is believed to have an unmarked grave in the Hankinson Family Cemetery (now part of Berean Baptist Cemetery) in Elgin County.

Excerpt from Some Descendants of Hendrick Hegeman

"Gertrude LeRoy, b. say 1768 (no baptism found), d. July 1856 at Malahide Township, Elgin County, Ontario, where she had gone by 1842 with some of her children. She m. 18 Dec. 1785 in Nova Scotia, Reuben Hankinson, said to have been b. 28 Feb. 1758 at Upper Freehold, New Jersey, d. 20 May 1819 at Sissiboo, Nova Scotia, a son of Robert Hankinson and Sarah Taylor.

Gertrude LeRoy and her husband remained in Nova Scotia when her parents returned to New York. Sabine’s Loyalists says he was a “sergeant in the New Jersey Volunteers, taken prisoner on Staten Island in 1777, and sent to Trenton. Before the peace he was an Ensign.” The Official Register of the Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Revolutionary War lists him as with Captain Waddell’s company, First Regiment, Monmouth County. Jones’ Loyalists of New Jersey supplies further details, stating: “this American-born Loyalist … joined the New Jersey Volunteers as a private in September, 1776, and passed through from Sergeant to Ensign in the 1st Battalion on August 14, 1781…. His original commission as Ensign, bearing the signature of Sir Henry Clinton, is in W.O. 42:H6.” He clearly must have come to Nova Scotia with the Loyalist settlement of 1784, but his name is not found among the published lists.[423] In 1794 he is listed as a captain both in the Nova Scotia Legion and in the Acadian Militia, County of Annapolis.

Reuben Hankinson gradually acquired considerable land in the Digby area. At an uncertain date he purchased lot 26 north of Sissiboo River from Stephen Jones, on 15 Sept. 1795 he purchased lot 13 on the same side from William Wilson, and on 9 Oct. 1787 he purchased lot 12 from Daniel I. Brown and wife.[425] Later he was one of the six original associates in the Hatfield land grant of 1801, one of the others being his wife’s kinsman, Francis Harris; Hankinson received 976 acres. In 1824 he, or his son of the same name, purchased lot 15 of Digby from Deacon David Shook.

Reuben Hankinson was a Freemason, being one of the original members of Union Lodge, no. 20, at Sissiboo, formed in October of 1790. Jones says that on his death he left a widow and 13 children. A number of them went to Malahide Tp., Ontario, aforesaid, Wilson’s Digby stating that Kenneth Hankinson and Thomas Hankinson “emigrated … before 1845 to the Province of Upper Canada, or Canada West [now Ontario].”

Reuben Hankinson’s widow Gertrude and some of her children were part of a group of Nova Scotians who went in the early nineteenth century to Elgin County, Ontario. Probably a search of census records could add considerably to the data given below. We note that the name Hankinson was still found in the south central part of Malahide township so late as 1877.[430]"^[1]

Children

1. Francis LeRoy, born 22 November 1786 at Weymouth, Nova Scotia
2. Robert T., born 29 January 1788
3. Reuben, born 27 December 1789
4. Sarah, born 23 May 1791
5. Daniel LeRoy, born 20 December 1792
6. Gertrude, born 24 December 1794
7. James "Thomas" Hartshorn, born 07 June 1796
8. Catherine, born 14 October 1798
9. Richard, born 28 August 1801
10. John Taylor, born 11 August 1802
11. Ann, born 07 July 1804
12. Jane, born 05 August 1806
13. Kenneth, born 19 September 1808
14. Eleanor "Ellen", born 02 August 1811, d. abt. 1833

Sources

1. ↑ Some Descendants of Hendrick Hegeman, http://library.uwinnipeg.ca/people/Dobson/genealogy/ff/Hegeman-Hendrick.cfm#16

• Genealogy and History of the Chute Family in America, A, by Chute, William Edward, 1832-1900, Published 1894, book digitized by Google from the library of Harvard University and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb, Publisher Salem, Mass. https://archive.org/details/agenealogyandhi00chutgoog
• Web: Some Descedants of Hendrick Hegeman, http://library.uwinnipeg.ca/people/dobson/genealogy/ff/Hegeman-Hendrick.cfm

Acknowledgments

• Thank you to Vicki Norman for creating LeRoy-186 on 23 Oct 13. Click the Changes tab for the details on contributions by Vicki and others.