Elizabeth Groves (1829-c.1864)
According to family lore, my great great grandmother Elizabeth Groves, the first wife of Jabez Hodgson, was from the West Indies. This was an intriguing story, but I could not confirm it. All the evidence indicated she was born in Scotland. The story became plausible when I learned that many Scots had emigrated to the West Indies, and in particular to Jamaica, in the nineteenth century. However, Elizabeth had a common name and I had no clues to help track her down.
In 2014, I added Elizabeth and her family to familysearch.org, a global family tree connecting millions of people. I did this hoping that someone else might have some information on Elizabeth. In 2018, my wish came true. Someone named Bob noticed that another couple (John and Ellen Watson) shared a dwelling with Jabez and Elizabeth in Blackstone, Massachusetts, in 1850. Bob then found that Ellen's maiden name was Groves and we agreed that Ellen and Elizabeth were probably sisters! This was a turning point--a break in what genealogists call a brick wall. With Bob's help, I was able to piece together the following story, tracing Elizabeth Groves from her birth in Scotland to her arrival in America:
Elizabeth's parents, David Groves and Mary McCulley, were born in Ireland--probably in Ulster--he in 1790 and she in 1797. By 1814, when their first child was born, they had moved to Scotland and settled near Glasgow. Many others followed the same route, seeking work in the booming Scottish textile industry. It's quite possible that David and Mary had Scottish roots and were returning to the homeland of their ancestors, as migration back and forth between Scotland and Ireland had been going on for centuries.
Elizabeth was born on August 27, 1829, in the town of Johnstone, Renfrewshire, about 12 miles west of Glasgow, and she was baptized nearby in the more famous milltown of Paisley.
Paisley Abbey, where Elizabeth Groves was baptized. Photo © Billy McCrorie (cc-by-sa/2.0)
Elizabeth's father David, a cotton weaver, might have worked in this cotton mill, which stood in Johnstone from 1792 to 2017. Or he might have worked at home using a handloom. Photo by Richard Webb (cc-by-sa/2.0)
A census in 1841 found the Groves family living on Macdowall Street in Johnstone. Map reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
At the time of Scotland's first census, held in 1841, Elizabeth was 11 years old and living at home, along with her parents and older siblings Ellen (20), Thomas (19), and David (16). These older siblings were all apprenticed or employed, like their father, in the cotton weaving trade. All three siblings would marry and would make their way to Jamaica and then America. Elizabeth, while younger, would eventually follow the same path.
Shortly after the census, Ellen married John Watson, who also lived in Johnstone and was employed as a servant. The next record we have of Ellen and John Watson finds them living at a coffee plantation named Lottery in Jamaica in 1843 and, upon the birth of their first child, naming him James Lyle Watson, in honor of James Lyle, the owner of the plantation. Another 1843 record has brother Thomas Groves working as a laborer at Lottery Plantation and then getting married, with James Lyle and David Groves present as witnesses.
The arrow over this 1888 map points to Lottery, the coffee plantation in the hills of Manchester Parish, Jamaica, where, in the 1840's, the older siblings of Elizabeth Groves lived and worked, and she almost certainly visited. Map published in 1927. Source: Genealogy of Jamaica
Who was plantation owner James Lyle? He came from the town of Houston, just north of Johnstone in Scotland. His wife Mary Grove might have been related to my Groves ancestors. Given the close ties between the Lyles and the Groves, I would not be surprised if Mary was Elizabeth's aunt. James inherited Lottery Plantation from his uncle Robert Lyle, who died in 1839. Robert had owned the plantation since 1817, and had owned slaves up until emancipation in 1834. Ownership of the plantation remained with the Lyle family until a bankruptcy in 1885.
Elizabeth's brother David Groves left Jamaica in 1844 and, by the time of the 1850 U.S. Census, was working as a weaver in Warwick, Rhode Island, married to Janet Sutherland, and living in the home of her father Alexander. Thomas Groves and his wife remained at Lottery Plantation until at least 1845 and had two children there.
We don't know when Elizabeth arrived in Jamaica or what she did there, but she must have been there, along with her mother Mary, because a passenger list shows that they both sailed from Jamaica to New York in 1845.
This passenger list shows that Elizabeth Groves (19) and her mother Mary (45) sailed from Jamaica to New York City, arriving on July 12, 1845. Other records suggest their ages were actually 15 and 48. Also on the voyage was James Lyle's sister Elizabeth Stevenson and her two children.
By 1847 Elizabeth had met Jabez Hodgson, probably in Massachusetts. By 1850, they were married with two children. An 1850 U.S. Census finds Elizabeth, her sister Ellen, and her brother Thomas all residing, with their spouses and children, in Blackstone, a Massachusetts milltown on the Rhode Island border--the men all working as weavers.
To summarize, in 1850 Elizabeth, her sister Ellen, and her brothers Thomas and David were all living within 30 miles of each other, all still involved in the weaving trade, all having left Scotland and spent time in Jamaica over the previous nine years. The names and ages recorded in the 1850 U.S. Census match up with those in the 1841 Scottish Census, so we can be pretty confident that these newcomers to America are indeed all part of the family that was recorded as living in Johnstone, Renfrewshire, Scotland in 1841.
This excerpt from the 1850 U.S. Census in Blackstone, Massachusetts, shows Ellen (Groves) Watson and her husband John sharing a dwelling with her sister Elizabeth (Groves) Hodgson and her husband Jabez. (The census taker mistakenly recorded Jabez's surname as Hutchinson instead of Hodgson.) Daughters Mary (3) and Isabella (1) would later be known to my orphaned grandmother Eliza as Aunt Minnie and Aunt Belle. After the deaths of her parents in 1896, Eliza (10) and her brother James (1) were taken in by Aunt Belle and her husband Clarence Westgate, while Eliza's sister Isabelle (6) was taken in by Aunt Minnie and her husband Joseph Crowell.
The last record we have of Elizabeth is the 1861 Canadian Census, which places her, Jabez, and their children in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Elizabeth must have died sometime between 1861 and 1867, when Jabez remarried.
Copies of selected original records are attached below:
1829 Birth Record - Eliza (Elizabeth) Groves - DL means daughter lawful (parents lawfully married).
1841 Census - David Groves Household - Family living on Macdowall Street includes David, wife Mary McCulley, and children Thomas, David, Helen (Ellen), and Elizabeth. Ages were usually rounded down to the nearest multiple of 5. Ditto is abbreviated do. The census taker made many errors, some of which were crossed out and corrected. The identity of Mary (age 2) is unclear. She may have been a daughter or granddaughter of either a Groves or a McCulley.