"Oh my, what will Daniel think?" worried Charlotte as she watched the midwife go out to fetch Daniel. "Another girl." I do hope Daniel loved his girls as soon as he peered into their baby faces, for Sarah Louise was the third little one to be born into his growing family. The road to the church in Sussex was warmer this time of year, and on August 20, the Anglican minister christened Miss Sarah Louise Holmes, who was almost a month old. I call her Sarah Louise, for in all the records she is called either Sarah L or S Louise. I know a little bit more about Sarah Louise than I do the others, for someone anonymous, probably a brother or sister, wrote a story about her husband, Robert R Ballantyne, in which Sarah Louise figured prominently.
Riverglade, New Brunswick
Sarah Louise grew up in the house in Riverglade, right where the Trans-Canada Highway off ramp joins the Old Post Road leading in one direction to Salisbury and the other, to Petitcodiac. In 1839, shortly before she was born, her father sold his saw mill in Petitcodiac. There were still no censuses taken in 1840 in Lower Canada, but we know that her father both milled and farmed, so it could be that at this time, so soon after he sold the mill, he was farming full-time. I imagine she and her sisters enjoyed a buggy ride down the Old Post Road, stopping at Mr. James Price's store (near where the cairn is now located) for a little treat. According to tradition, the girls would have gone to school close to Price's store, near the Inn that Uncle Samuel Holstead built and sold to Mr. Israel Steeves. They would have watched the gentlemen and ladies arrive and leave on the stage, which stopped over night at the Holstead Inn, near the end of the Indian Portage at the river. Even though the girls were christened in the Anglican Church, their mother's faith, in Sussex, they probably attended the nearby Baptist Church, built by John Crandall in 1837, a little west of Prices's Store. At the time, it was the only church close to where the Holmes family lived, and also, Daniel grew up in the Baptist faith.
(When the country started taking the census, it was interesting to see the intertwining of the Baptist and Anglican and eventually the Presbyterian faiths in this family. Sometimes they were Baptist, sometimes Anglican, sometimes some children were one and some, the other.)
Smith's Falls, Ontario
While Sarah Louise was growing up in New Brunswick, a wee lad was also growing up in Smiths Falls, Ontario. John and Janet Ballantyne's third child, also the third son, arrived in May, 1842, and they named him Robert. He soon earned the nickname "Wee Robert," but he was only small in stature. He excelled in athletic sports, and favored racing and climbing. He had light curly hair and blue eyes.
When he was about 21, Miss Sarah Louise Holmes came to his town to pay a visit to her sister, Fanny, who married his cousin, James Ballantyne. Louise and Robert's sister, Elizabeth, became warm friends, and Robert often accompanied them on their jaunts. Soon they announced their engagement. She returned home to New Brunswick, and he joined his friends in Iowa, farming and teaching at the school in Brooklyn and building a house. Robert and Sarah Louise wrote long letters to each other all this time, and in September of 1866 he returned to his home in Canada for a few weeks, then hopped on a train for New Brunswick. On October 11, 1866, a lovely fall day, he married his sweetheart at her home in Riverglade. The Baptist minister, Rev. W A Coleman, performed the wedding ceremony. They returned to Ontario for a few months, and then headed out to Iowa. By this time, his brothers John and William also lived in Iowa.
Brooklyn, Iowa
In February, 1867, Robert, his new bride, and his brother William saddled up for Iowa. Four miles outside of Brooklyn, and a mile from their closest neighbor, they listened to the wolves howling outside their home at night. Neighbors built nearby later that year. In the summer, Daniel W joined the little household of Robert and Sarah Louise, John and William. John shortly married his neighbor, after he built their home, and William stayed for nearly a year. Grace, Winifred and Alice quickly outnumbered the males of the household. The farm work, arduous and long, caused Robert and Sarah Louise a lot of anxiety.
They joined the Presbyterian Church, but because of the distance from town, they mainly worshiped at home. Robert taught his children their schooling at home, and in the winter evenings, told them Bible stories. His wife did not take well to the Iowa climate, and their growing family outgrew their little house. So, they uprooted again, selling their farm and heading home to Ontario, Maine and New Brunswick to visit their families and make a decision of where to relocate.
Lincoln, Maine
Kingsley, born in 1876, must have made his arrival in Lincoln about the same time as the rest of the family. The Ballantyne's joined other family members in the community, and purchased an old fashioned but roomy house. After an adjustment to Yankee ways, they settled in, enjoying, as several family members do even now, the beautiful landscape and the bracing air of Maine. Ellwood, Frank and Edith rounded out the close-knit family tree, and Robert furnished their education, their letters and sums topped off with "his own love of nature and reverence for God." He provided and taught at a schoolhouse in the district. He wrote long letters to his children when they left home.
The Ballantyne's joined the Congregational Church in Lincoln. Robert was very active in the church, especially the Sunday School. He taught, and, his biography says, "made a special study of practical Sunday School Work." He enjoyed attending conferences in surrounding areas.
When Robert was 42 years of age, he became a legal United States citizen. I am not sure if Sarah Louise ever did or not.
Robert died at the young age of 50, after suffering severe abdominal pains in the afternoon. He died that evening. His last words to his wife: " I am not afraid for myself, but for you and the children. I should have liked a few more years." Rev. Mr. Powsland conducted his funeral service. He died and is buried in Lincoln, Maine, beside his wife Sarah Louise, who lived until 1906.
Robert never returned to Iowa, but Sarah Louise must have, for she died there on the 21st of February, 1906, in Des Moines, Iowa. Several of her daughters died in Idaho, so most likely she was visiting family at the time.
The censuses confirms the anonymous biography of Robert R Ballantyne. I enjoy seeing family members interacting and knowing each other, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that Oliver Wendell Jones, Sarah Louise's nephew, the son of Abner and Hattie Holmes Jones, living, mind you as a servant, with Sarah Louise and her children, Alice and Frank in 1900. Oliver was the same age as his cousin, Kingsley Ballantyne, but Kingsley had recently married Laura Hall and they were in their own home by then.
Sarah Louise lost her son, Ellwood, at the age of 20 and her daughter Edith, at the age of 10. Robert was deceased at the time of his children's deaths. Grace, Winifred and Alice returned to work and live in the west. They never married, and they all died in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Alice taught school. Daniel W married Kate (Catherine) Warren and they had two children, Jennie and Robert Roy. Kingsley married Laura Hall and they had one daughter, Ruth. Ruth was a teacher in Lincoln, and several of you "cousins" mentioned that she taught you, and someone told me that she died in the year she was teaching them. She was 48 when she died. She never married. Frank married Annie aka Aurie Bailey, and they had two sons, Austin and Norman. Sometime after his wife's death, he married Patsy Larkey. He died in Idaho. Together in the West Broadway Cemetery in Lincoln, Maine, along with other family members, are Robert R and Sarah Louise, Daniel and Kate, Kingsley and Laura, Ellwood, and Edith.
Information about Petitcodiac from Village of Petitcodiac, presented by the Village Council, printed in 1969. Sarah Louise's christening is in the records of the Sussex Anglican Church. Information about Robert's family is in an anonymous essay found at the Lincoln Historical Society. Marriage record for Robert and Sarah Louise: Marriage Register Westmorland county, New Brunswick 1857 - 1888 and the newspaper, Christian Visitor. I also referred to Iowa, Idaho and Maine birth, marriage, death and cemetery records and censuses from 1851 to 1900.
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