The Doty Family
Next 5 generations
in Canada
THE FAMILY OF BARNETT DOTY
Barnett Doty, the third son of James and Elizabeth Doty was born in
Dutchess County, New York. The date of his birth is not recorded
in the sources I was able to search. We do know, however, that he
was the first Doty in my line to have come into Canada. In 1847
Barnett Doty and Elizabeth Kurtz ("Curtis" on their marriage registration) were married in Grimsby,
Ontario.
Elizabeth was the daughter of Abraham Kurtz (Curtis?) and Ester
Vanderbourg who
had lived on Young St. in Toronto.
It is at this point in my story that I digress and inject a note of
conjecture. When I was old enough to first begin asking questions
about my ancestors I always felt that it was strange when no one was
able to give me any very definite information about my heritage.
At various times I was asked, on official documents, to give
information about my national origin. I always felt a little bit
embarrassed that I was not sure, and so I, as did others, gave
conflicting answers. At one time I had said we were of Dutch
ancestry, at another time I was Irish, and so on. It was not
until I came upon the following bit of information that I guessed why
the facts about my great great grandfather were not generally known by
subsequent generations.
After the birth of their second child
Barnett Doty abandoned his wife Elizabeth and moved to Michigan then Illinois.
There he married again in 1863, to Mary Niles. E. A. Doty, in his book, says
that Barnett was guilty of the crime of bigamy and served some time in
the Jackson Prison in Michigan. I can find no evidence of that, but I
do have the court documents from the Illinois court in which the
Canadian wife sued (successfully) for the considerable estate which
Barnett had left. He had lived in Sterling, Illinois, where
he managed a hotel for some time. He later moved to Princeton,
Ill. where he died in 1874. Elizabeth, then his widow, married
Benjamin James and she and her children lived the rest of their lives in Wilfrid,
Ontario. The children of Elizabeth and Barnett were born in
Wellington Square, Ontario. (I spent several frustrating months of
research in attempts to locate Wellington Square, Ontario. It was
one of two towns which, in 1873, united to form the city of Burlington,
Ontario).
The children of Barnett and Elizabeth were:
William Henry b. Jan 29, 1848
Ester Amanda b. July 14, 1851
THE FAMILY OF WILLIAM HENRY DOTY
William Henry Doty was raised by the James family in Ontario. On
March 18, 1870 he married Mahala Hales of Uxbridge, Ontario.
Mahala was the daughter of John Hales and Isabella Graham. Mahala
bore 6 children before she died. William then married Sarah
Jane McKenzie, daughter of Alexander McKenzie and Mary Ellen
?
and they had 4 children. The census of 1871 and 1881 show that
William Henry had the same problems I have had with national
origin. In the census of 1871 he was a laborer of Irish
descent. The 1881
census also lists him as a laborer but at that time he said he
was Scottish.
The children of William Henry Doty and Mahala Hales were;
Elizabeth b. 1871
John
William b. Oct 30, 1873
Adoniram (Addier or Adner or Ad) b. Aug 6, 1874
Ester (Elizabeth or Lizzy) b. March 16, 1876
Isabella (Bella) b. October 6, 1877
Cinthia (Tinsey) b. 1880
The children of William Henry and Sarah Jane McKenzie were:
Emily (Emma} Mahala Doty (married Jim Coffey)
Henry Doty
George Doty (Salmon Arm B.C. no family)
William (aka, Willie) Doty (Powell River B.C.)
THE FAMILY OF AD DOTY
Special thanks to Charles (Chuck) Doty for passing to me this information regarding his family.
I will refer to my grandfather as Ad. He was married to Susan and had two children,Stanley and Nora.
Susan divorced Ad and he married her younger sister Carolyn and they had two children,my father
George Everett Adoniram and Wilbert. Our father was born in Canada in 1916 and in 1917 they entered
the US in Noonan N Dakota. They then went to Montana where Wilbert was born. Our grand parents
moved to Idaho and then to Seattle. Our father went by George. He met my mother in the Williston
N Dakota area and her name was Lulu Hunter.They married about 1939 and had 4 children,Everett
born 1942, me Charles born 1945, Linda born 1947and Leonard born 1948.
We ended up in the Seattle area in 1950 and in1952 we bought a ranch in the Isssaquah area which
is 16 miles east of Seattle.
Our father had a problem with alcohol,gambling and jealousy. As far as I can tell he was jellos that our
mother got a job at Boeing and was making more money than he was. At any rate he showed up
at home about 9:00 one early August morning loaded up what he could in a 1939 Packard coupe
and left for his folks in Idaho. After he thought it thru he decided to take his parents and head for
Canada because he was Canadian. We spent one year in Coleman.
In late August 1954 our mother came to Coleman and picked us kids up and brought us back to
Issaquah.
Our father died of a heart attach in 1955 at the age of 39 while living in Vancouver.
THE FAMILY OF JOHN WILLIAM DOTY
John William Doty (also know as Jack) was born in Ontario, in the town
of Wilfrid, the first son and the second child of William Henry and
Mahala Doty.
John often said his birthplace was Pefferlaw,
Ontario, but on his marriage registration he gave his birthplace as
Wilfrid, Ont. The two towns were only a few miles apart.
There is some question as to the date of his
birth. On the record
of Registration of Death signed by his wife on October 23, 1949 she
declared him to be 73 years, 11 months, 23 days old. She also
said he was born in the year 1876. Both of these statements can
not be true. What I believe she meant to say was that he was 76 years of age and
that he was born in the year 1873. The Department of Vital
Statistics, in its infinite wisdom, altered the certificate to claim
his date of birth as 1875. When John was laid to rest in the
Moose Creek United Church cemetery a stone was erected in his
grave. The date on the stone does not agree with either of the
dates on his death certificate. The stone on his grave proclaims
that he was born in 1874.
At the time of John's application
for homestead patent he signed a sworn statement in support of that
application. On that statement he claims to be 30 years of
age. The date on the document is December 12, 1903. If
John's memory was reliable and if we believe his oath to be sincere
then he was born in the year 1873. At the time of his marriage to
Mary Jane Graham (September 7, 1898) John claimed to be 25 years of
age. That would further
support the claim of his birth in 1873. Even further support for
the claim of this birthdate can be found in the census of 1881.
There it is stated that, at the time of the census, which was likely
the spring of 1881, John was 7 years old. This, too, would seem
to indicate that he was born in 1873. To further complicate
the matter, and to point out that often dates are not recorded and
reported correctly, Ethan Allan Doty in his book has listed John as
having been born in 1874, and on October 30. John always
celebrated his birthday on October 31. Ethan Allan's book has
Adonirum born in 1874, which is in keeping with the 1881 census.
Based on this information we can tentatively conclude that John was
born on October 31, 1873. Further research is definitely
indicated.
As a young man John made the decision to seek his
fortune in
the newly opened Northwest Territories. About the year 1896 he
and his brother Adonirum came west to Brandon, Manitoba. Here
they worked at whatever jobs were available while they saved enough
money to outfit themselves to establish farms of their own. Ad
worked in the "bush" and presumably John may have also. John, at
least for some of the time, worked for a farmer named John Graham near
the town of Rounthwaite, Manitoba. It was during this time that
he met and fell in love with Mary Jane Graham, the 8th child and third
daughter of John and Margaret Graham. 
They were married
in St. Paul's Presbyterian Church (which later became Central United
Church) in Brandon, Manitoba on September 7, 1898. On their
wedding day it was Mr. and Mrs. Ad Doty who "stood up" with them.
John continued to work for John Graham for another year.
By October, 1899,
John had completed an 18 x 24 foot log house on the
new homestead on the northwest quarter of section 6, township 7, range
2 west of the 2nd meridian in the North West Territories. He
returned to Manitoba for
the winter, but in March of 1900 he and his bride and their baby
daughter Kathleen were on the land to stay. By the 12th of
December, 1903, (when he applied for his homestead patent) he had
broken 102 acres. He had cropped 75 acres, had fenced 6 acres and he
owned 21 cattle and 4 horses. By then he also had a family of
three; Kathleen, Wesley and Elmer.
A few settlers had established themselves nearby. Adonirum
(A.K.A. Adner or Ad) Doty and his wife Susan and their family
(daughter Nora and son Stanley) were living less than a mile east on the
northeast quarter of the same section.
In 1902 the pioneers
(recognizing the importance of education for their children) began to
make plans for
a school in their area. On October 6, 1902, 9
families made application to the Department of Education for a school
to be built in the district. John had 2 children under school age
at that time, and Adner had 1. Living with Adner was his
stepmother Sarah (William Henry had died Sept. 15, 1899
in Uxbridge TWP. Ontario) and her 4 young children, three of whom were
school age. John and Mary continued to live on the homestead
as they expanded their farmland. John broke more land each year
and when Adner decided he was not cut out to be a farmer John bought
his homestead. In 1915 the log house was abandoned in favor of a
newly erected two and a half story frame house on the southwest quarter
of section 5. John continued to farm until 1936 when he and Mary
moved to Carlyle, and his second son, Elmer took over the family
farm. John died in the hospital at Arcola, Sask. on October 23,
1949, a few days before his 76th birthday. Mary lived in Carlyle
until her death in 1968. Both are buried in the Moose Creek United
Church cemetery.
(Click here to see the death certificate of John)
(Click here to see the death certificate of Mary)
The children of John and Mary Doty were:
Kathleen (Kay) Emily Irene Doty b. 1899 d. 1987 Married Gordon Nixon. They had no children.
Robert Wesley Doty b. 1901 d.2002 married Elda Kathleen Cooper b. 1910, d. Sept, 1984
Elmer
John Doty b. 1903 d. 2004, married first Iva Cameron, b.1903
d. 1961, m2 Irene Kramer b,1910 d.
Nov. 11, 2003
George Henry Doty b. 1906 d. 1966 married Katie Grace Lounsbury b.1906 d. 2001
Ruby Pearl Doty b. 1908 d. 1969 m. Vernon Asa Stephenson b. 1902 d. 1980
Margaret Roberta Mary Doty b. 1917 d. 1977 married Glen Cardno b. ? d. ?
Cynthia Leona Doty b. 1919 d. m1 Delbert Ormiston b.? d.1945 m2 Stan McKeller b. 1917 d. 1994
Left to right, Wesley, Elmer, (standing
at the back), Kay, and George (seated).
THE FAMILY OF WESLEY DOTY
Wesley attended Moose Creek and Wildwood Schools. He worked on
the home farm for some time but in 1919 went to Moose Jaw and took a business course. He worked for Walter Stockton in the
Wordsworth General Store and he hauled gravel for road and bridge
construction in the area. In 1932 Wesley
married Kathleen Cooper,
daughter of Charles and Irene Cooper. For
a brief time Wesley and Kathleen (Katy) lived with his parents and then on a
farm just south of Moose Creek near No. 9 highway. It was here
that their first son, Robert was born.
When Charles Cooper died in 1934 they moved to the Cooper farm on Sec
11, Tsp 6, R3, W. of 2nd. At first they rented but later purchased
the farm from Irene. For the next few years Irene continued to
live in the big house on the farm with them, but in 1941 Irene left to
become a nurse and companion to a woman in Toronto.
Wesley and Katy continued to live on the farm and there they raised
their family of nine children. All except the youngest son,
Wayne, left the farm to make their way in the world. Wayne
gradually assumed the responsibility for the field work while the
cattle and the garden continued to be Wes and Katy's
responsibility. They also continued to be active in the
church and community .
On September 4, 1984 Katy died
suddenly. She was carried to
her final resting place in Moose Creek cemetery by her 6 sons.
Shortly after Katy's death Wayne took over the operation of
the
farm. Wes retired to the town of Carlyle, where he stayed until
his death in 2002, at the age of 100 years.
The children born to Wesley and Katy were:
Robert Blair b. Feb. 28, 1934
Clayton Duane b. Feb. 27, 1936
Elizabeth Anne b. May 12, 1937
Donald Stuart b. July 1, 1939
Brian Ross b. Feb. 3, 1941
Allan Wallace b. May 12, 1943
Gordon Wayne b. Sept 5,
1944
Dale Wesley b. Sept. 29, 1946 d. Jan. 12, 1948
Helen Margaret b. Mar. 17, 1949
Beverly Dianne b. July 4, 1951
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