Trout Hollow Mill Burns 155 Years Ago

"The mill is reduced to ashes."

The mill at Trout Hollow near Meaford, Ontario, where John Muir lived and worked with the William Trout family, burned to the ground the night of February 21, 1866. William’s daughter Rachel Trout gives us the exact date in her diary:

“Wed Evening 22nd – What I feared this morning is really true. The mill is reduced to ashes. It seems like some fearful dream. “

The mill’s loss had a significant impact on the Trout family and Muir. Trout Family History states on page 295:

“When our mill was burned we all separated, each for himself.”

John Muir’s story is well known. He left Meaford shortly after the fire in search of work. After traveling south back to the United States in search of work, he would soon afterwards commit himself to, in his own words, “follow his dream of exploration and study of plants.” This path led him to become an influential naturalist and environmentalist, and was instrumental in the founding of The U.S. National Park system.

The story of the Trout family in the aftermath of the mill fire is, of course, less well known. The mill fire left a lasting impact on the Trout family, separating them from each other and setting them on their own life journeys.

Elder William Trout (1801-1877)

William and Catherine Trout of Meaford

The total loss at Trout Hollow created a tremendous financial hardship for the patriarch of the Trout family in Meaford. They not only lost the mill and the modest income it provided making tool handles, they lost an entire season’s worth of inventory. Though his finances would eventually recover, his health deteriorated rendering him unable to work. He spent most of his time with family and at the Disciples meeting house where he preached and tended to its congregants. His wife Catherine died in 1869 and shortly afterwards he moved in with his daughter, Mary Trout Jay, where he would live out his days, passing eight years later.

Mary Trout (1831-1883)

Mary was the oldest of William’s surviving children and not only acted as a “second mother” at home, but also helped operate the Trout Hollow mill with her brothers. A few months after the fire Mary wedded Charles Hugh Jay (1839-1909), a close friend and business partner of her brother William H. Trout. Charles was part owner of the Trout Hollow mill and was instrumental in handling the settling of accounts after the fire. After her father moved in with them, the Jay home became the new center of the Trout family, providing comfort to visiting family members that had moved away. The Mary Trout Jay house, built in 1874, still stands today. Two doors down is the home built by her son, John C. Jay. Recent pictures of these beautiful homes are included below. Mary died in Meaford at the age of 52 after a long illness. Her descendants live across Ontario—several in the Meaford area—while others live in the U.S., including Illinois, California, and Georgia.

Mary Trout Jay House, Meaford

John C. Jay House, Meaford

William Henry Trout (1834-1917)

Mr. & Mrs. William H. Trout and their children, Milwaukee, 1895

The younger William left Meaford almost immediately after the fire in search of work. He headed for Oil Springs, Ontario, by way of Toronto, a 300 mile journey from Meaford. While in Toronto he visited nearby Pickering and proposed to his girlfriend Jennie Knowles, before continuing on to Oil Springs. There he immediately found work as a machinist. He soon moved to nearby Petrolia and together with Charles Jay and another friend from home, built a blacksmith and machine shop for servicing oil wells. This venture was short-lived due to the plummeting price of oil. William returned home and worked various jobs in Owen Sound as a millwright and machinist, before marrying his fiancé Jennie at the family homestead in Pickering in November 1867. Eventually the family moved to Peterborough, Ontario, where they lived for about ten years before moving to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. William worked as a machinist, and then as a draftsman and mechanical engineer and patented close to 30 inventions related to the sawmill industry. He spent the last decade of his life researching our family roots, culminating in his work, Trout Family History, published in 1916 just a year before his death. Five of William’s eight children survived into adulthood, and today their descendants are spread across the U.S., from California to Texas to New York.

Edward Trout (1835-1923)

Edward Trout, c. 1860, Toronto

At the time of the mill fire in 1866, Edward had been living in Toronto for about five years working as an agent for the Toronto Leader newspaper. His success in this job allowed him to send money home to help pay his father’s debts. This pattern would continue for much of the rest of his life. Edward’s success allowed him to help many members of the family financially. He granted several family members free tuition at the British American Business College in Toronto, of which he was president and owner. With his financial assistance his wife, Jenny Kidd Trout, established the Toronto Medical and Electro-Therapeutic Institute and became the first licensed female physician in Canada. Though they had no children of their own, Edward and Jenny adopted two children, Jenny’s grand-niece and grand-nephew, Helen and Edward Huntsman. Edward and Jenny retired to Los Angeles, California, where many of the Huntsman-Trout descendants reside today.

John Malcolm Trout ( 1837-1876)

John Malcolm Trout, c. 1860, Toronto

Like his brother Edward, John was also living in Toronto when the mill burned down. He had been married almost three years to his childhood sweetheart, Eliza Jane McMillan, and had a one year old baby girl, Florence. John had recently taken a job as a reporter for the Toronto Leader, where his brother Edward also worked. This work came naturally to John, as his talent with reading and writing was evident at an early age. He was reading the New Testament at age four. His brother William regarded his speaking ability as “perhaps the best in the Academy” when they were in school together. He left the Leader and with his brother Edward, started their own paper The Monetary Times. He edited the evening edition of the Toronto Daily Telegraph, and published a book, The Railways of Canada: 1870-1. John died of tuberculosis at the age of 39, which his brother William believes was hastened by John’s demanding work routine and the heartbreak of losing two children to diphtheria. His son Herbert, a promising young doctor, also died of tuberculosis at age 30. His two remaining daughters, Rose and Florence, married and had children. Today their descendants are spread across the U.S., from California through the Midwest, to South Carolina and Florida.

End of Part I

The lives of James, Peter, Harriet, Rachel, Margaret, and Alexander will continue in my next post.

Henry George Trout (1770-1852) and his wife Rachel Emerson (1775-1845) raised ten children together in the backcountry of Upper Canada, today known as Ontario. Henry’s story is well-documented. But we know almost nothing of Rachel’s past and her familial roots have never been identified.

A native of Westminster, England, Henry arrived at the Port of Quebec in the summer of 1792 as a private in the Queen’s Rangers. He served for ten years before settling in a village near Fort Erie. By the time his unit was disbanded in 1802, Henry and Rachel already had two children and had presumably already been married.

The little we know of Rachel’s background comes from Trout Family History (1916), written by her grandson. It mentions only that she was born and raised in Connecticut by “English” parents. The author’s speculation that her family may have been U.E. Loyalists has never been confirmed with supporting evidence.

The oldest known original document to reference Rachel is a baptismal record for two of her children. Charlotte (1812-1877) and Hannah (1815-1817) Trout were baptized at the St. John’s Anglican Church in Sandwich, Ontario, which is today Windsor, across the border from Detroit. (Henry and Rachel's home in Fort Erie had been seized and destroyed by the Americans in the War of 1812.)

However, records that would positively link her to a family have never been located. Maybe they’ve been lost to time. Maybe they never existed in the first place. Maybe we’ve been looking in the wrong places.

We do however have valuable clues, both in the historical record and modern DNA analysis, that point to one particular Emerson family—the Jonathan and Sybil Emerson family of Brownville, New York.

It is important to note that this story is still unfolding, and there is more yet to discover. But the available evidence at the very least makes clear where the search for Rachel must be focused.

Recent Developments

In 2018 I contacted one of my matches at MyHeritage after noticing our match “triangulated” with another known descendant of Henry and Rachel Trout. MyHeritage had recently launched their triangulation tool as part of their chromosome browser tool kit. In simplest terms, if three DNA matches triangulate, they likely share a common ancestor.

My contact turned out to be actively researching her Emerson ancestor whose background was also undocumented. Hero Emerson (1796-1839) married David Phelps (1796-1885) and is buried in Perch River Cemetery, near Brownville, Jefferson County, New York.

My contact “HE1” has been researching Emersons in Jefferson County for years, and had pieced together from the available evidence that she was likely the daughter of Jonathan Emerson, an early pioneer to the area who settled as early as 1803 according to census records and tax rolls. She also had in her possession a copy of what may turn out to be the most significant original document in making Rachel’s connection: a court filing by Sybil Emerson renouncing executorship of her husband Jonathan’s estate.

The renouncement is significant for several reasons. It was filed September 22, 1819. As we have no death record for Jonathan, this document suggests he was recently deceased and that his estate is located in Jefferson County. It also confirms his wife’s name as Sybil (we have no marriage record), and that they had a son Ira D. Emerson. (It also proves that Sybil was still alive in 1819, as some believe she died young and Jonathan remarried Rhoda Bailey, but that is another story.)

The document is significant for another reason. Of Henry and Rachel Trout’s ten children they only gave a middle name to one, their last. John Emerson Trout was born August 21, 1819 in Burlington, Ontario. Did Rachel name her son in memory of her recently deceased father? If not it’s certainly a remarkable coincidence.

With just this one court filing you can begin building a family tree. It contains names, relationships, locations and dates. Once you have this foundation in place, building out the family tree is fairly straightforward assuming the original documents are available. In the case of our Emersons, sometimes the supporting evidence was there and at other times not. DNA analysis can help by giving us an avenue to test our guesswork.

If Hero and Rachel were siblings, did they have other family members whose descendants are among my matches? With thousands of matches and associated family trees and few tools to sort it all out, it was information overload. Enter Ancestry’s ThruLines, launched in early 2019.

Ouija Board or Valid Research Tool?

Though it’s not without controversy, ThruLines isn’t black magic. It simply compares the family trees of your DNA matches, and using information from its entire user base, suggests possible common ancestors. It’s a bit like copying your friend’s homework. Actually it’s more like reviewing the whole class’s homework and choosing the most popular answers. You still have to verify everything with good sources. ThruLines simply streamlines the process of where to look. My results so far have been astounding. I have multiple matches with descendants of others in the Emerson family. And other cousins have been reporting similar results. Early returns are very promising.

Rachel's brother Jonathan settled in Jefferson County, NY, alongside his father.
(DNA matches are shown in pink.)

Rachel's siblings Desire and Ira D. Emerson also settled Jefferson County. Ira later moved to Genesee County, New York, between Rochester and Buffalo.

Rachel's sisters Harriet and Hero married brothers, Daniel and David Phelps, and raised families in Jefferson County.

Who Were The Emersons? A Family Profile

The available evidence combined with an historical backdrop can be used to paint a narrative for the Emerson family. Jonathan Emerson was born June 14, 1750, in Hudson, New Hampshire, to Timothy and Hannah Emerson. In 1771 he married Sybil Farmer, the 17 year old daughter of Benjamin and Rebecca Farmer, in nearby Hollis, New Hampshire. Three years later they gave birth to their first child, Sybil Emerson. Shortly afterwards Jonathan and Sybil relocated their family to Bolton, Connecticut, a village just west of Hartford.

The reasons for this move are unclear. It may be related to the events leading up to the American Revolution, or Jonathan may have simply moved his family seeking opportunity. The Emersons were farmers and moved steadily westwards before eventually settling in Brownville, New York. More research is required to reveal the exact reasons why.

Jonathan and Sybil remained in Connecticut for about a decade. We have birth records for three of their children who were born there: Jonathan Jr. (1777), Desire (1779), and Elijah (1781). Rachel was likely born here too in 1775.

The Emersons next move was to Rutland County, Vermont. They appear on the 1790 U.S. Census, but they may have arrived as early as 1782. Sybil’s father and brother (Benjamin Farmer Sr. and Jr.) are shown on the census to be living nearby. One historical account published in 1886 states Benjamin Farmer Jr. was an early settler to the area which would place him there in about the 1780 timeframe when other early settlers arrived. Many of the land grants in the area required the owner to build a house and either farm five acres or move another family onto the property. The terms were five years. It’s possible this is what motivated the Emersons to move next door. Local research especially into land records may prove valuable.

It is here in Rutland County where our Rachel may have been living when she met her future husband Henry Trout. Their first child George was born in 1799 in Fort Erie, Ontario. 1799 is also the year we see Jonathan Emerson move his family westward once again, this time to Westmoreland, Oneida County, New York, just west of Utica.

Romantic Montreal

The circumstances of Rachel and Henry’s courtship have always been a mystery. How does a girl from Connecticut meet a sergeant in the British army who was living in Canada? It’s easy to understand the traditional presumption that her family were Loyalists who fled north in the migrations that were common in the mid-to-late 1780s. The picture doesn’t seem any clearer with Rachel presumably living in Vermont at the time of their meeting.

However contemporaneous accounts tell us the locals made great use of waterways and travel was common. And after the ratification of Jay’s Treaty in 1795, Americans were welcomed into Canada and they traveled there freely for several years, until the tensions that led to the War of 1812 began to rise. It was during this time that Montreal overtook Quebec City as the largest city in Canada, and became the most important trading hub in the region. We can only speculate if Montreal is where Henry and Rachel may have met, but it seems like a likely candidate.

In this 1797-1798 timeframe Henry would likely have been assisting in the building of forts in the warmer months, and at home during the colder months, which we believe was in Fort Erie. We have original records showing Henry shuttling supplies and troops during the War of 1812, as an adjutant lieutenant in charge of the militia camp outside Fort Erie. He may have had similar responsibilities during the latter years of his time with the Queen’s Rangers. There could be any number of reasons why he may have visited Montreal. With about 9000 residents at the time, it was far larger than his home of Fort Erie, or any other settlement in the region of Lake Ontario.

Much must be left to speculation about Henry and Rachel’s first encounter. What we do know is that travel in the region during this time was vibrant. Americans were traveling into Canada frequently, offering a reasonable alternative to the traditional belief that the Emersons fled into Canada as Loyalists.

Looking Ahead...

After Westmoreland, we next find the Jonathan Emerson family in Brownville, Jefferson County, New York. Though Rachel had already moved to Fort Erie by this time, several of her siblings later settled near their father in Brownville. I and a few other confirmed Trouts have DNA matches with some of the descendants of these Emersons. We even have a few matches whose ancestors are the siblings of Jonathan and Sybil. This is about as far back as autosomal DNA analysis will take us, but the results so far are not insignificant. There is much that can yet be accomplished by collaborating with other Trout and Emerson descendants.

After decades of searching, we finally have some fresh locations to look for traces of Rachel, namely Jefferson and Rutland counties. Hopefully our local institutions will reopen to the public soon, and our search can move into the next phase. The latest findings are not proof, but they are without a doubt the most exciting and promising clues we’ve ever uncovered about our Emerson roots.

Please contact me if you would like to participate in this research, or have other evidence or ideas to offer.