From Crediton to London: The Saunders Family Arrives in Canada

Both of Alice Miner’s parents, Bernard Trainer and Louisa Saunders, were immigrants from the British Isles to Canada. Unfortunately, we have very little information about Bernard Trainer’s early life. The notice of his death that appeared in the Goderich Signal in September 1880 stated that he had lived in Goderich for about 25 years. He was believed to have been born in Edinburgh, Scotland, of Irish parents, and had come to London, Ontario “when quite young.” Without any more information, such as the names of his parents, it has proven very difficult to trace his history. 

The Crediton parish church, where James Saunders
and Jane Woollacott were baptized

The Saunders family is more abundantly represented in the records that are available to us. Louisa’s parents were James and Jane Woollacott Saunders, and they were both born in Crediton, Devon, England. James, the son of William and Eunice Saunders, was born in 1792; Jane was the daughter of William and Jane Woollacott, and she was born in 1795. They were married in August 1817, and their first child, Thirza, was born a year later. She was followed by eight more children: Edwin (1822), Stephen (1824), Emma (1827), Louisa (1829), Ann (1832), Bertha (1834), William (1836), and Mary (1839).

Early Methodist meeting

James Saunders was a shoemaker, and he also served as a Methodist lay minister. The Saunders family’s Wesleyan Methodism was a central part of their identity. Methodism was still a fairly new denomination in the early 19th century, but it was growing rapidly. Begun as an effort by Anglican clergymen John Wesley (1703-1791) and George Whitfield (1714-1770) to address what they saw as some of the shortcomings of the established church, it placed great emphasis on preaching, and members were encouraged to meet regularly in small groups for spiritual fellowship and guidance. John Wesley urged members to pursue personal holiness and a disciplined (or methodical) Christian life. He believed that individuals are free to accept or reject God’s grace, and that it is possible to attain perfection, or the overcoming of a will to sin, in this life. Eventually, Whitfield and Wesley divided over doctrinal issues, and the term “Wesleyan Methodist” was used to distinguish his followers from those of Whitfield, known as the Calvinistic Methodists.

Lay ministers such as James Saunders played an important role in Wesleyan Methodism, which originally did not have established houses of worship and relied upon traveling preachers and lay ministers to guide worship and manage the administration of the church. Methodism grew the fastest in those parts of Britain that were being most affected by the Industrial Revolution, and it was most popular among members of the working class and others on the fringes of 18th-century society. Wesleyan Methodism’s emphasis on simple living, self-discipline, and virtuous behavior would have appealed to working people with strivings toward respectability and middle-class status, like James and Jane Saunders.

Mint Lane Chapel, Exeter, ca. 1900

All nine of the Saunders children were baptized at the Methodist chapel in Mint Lane, Exeter, about seven miles from Crediton. The building of permanent chapels was a product of the period after around 1800, when membership numbers were on the rise. In 1798, there were only about 70 members of Wesleyan Methodist societies in Exeter; by 1815, there were almost 300. In 1808, Exeter had become the center of a circuit, or a group of local churches under the care of a minister who traveled among them, and in 1810 the Trustees decided to begin building a new meeting house that would accommodate 700 people. The first services were held at the Mint Lane chapel in 1813.

We don’t know what prompted James and Jane Saunders to leave England in 1849, but they may have been encouraged to do so by their son Stephen, who had already gone to Canada. James, Jane, and seven of their children (Thirza was married by this time, and stayed in England) boarded the sailing vessel Margaret in Torquay in the spring of 1849. Like many immigrants, the Saunders family traveled with friends from home, William and Sarah Woodley Skinner and their children. The Margaret made regular trips between Torquay and Québec, carrying emigrants west and returning with loads of timber. This part of the journey took six weeks. After traveling past the falls of the St. Lawrence, they then boarded another boat which would take them up the river to Hamilton, Ontario. There they met up with a Mr. Pickard, who drove them the last 80 miles to London—another two days of travel. The Saunders family arrived in London in late May, 1849.

Photograph of James and Jane
Saunders, taken after their arrival
in London

There the Saunders family would have found an established Wesleyan Methodist community and perhaps reunited with other people they knew from England. Certainly they seem to have settled into their new home very quickly. Later that same year, daughter Emma married the Skinners’ eldest son, William, and in 1850 Louisa married Bernard Trainer. William Saunders became an apprentice to druggist John Salter, and in 1855 opened his own pharmacy, which would eventually lead him to a long and distinguished career in science. The other daughters, Ann, Bertha, and Mary, also married prominent London men, while Edwin, the oldest son, became something of a local legend as “the Hermit of Misery Bay.”

Jane Woollacott Saunders died before Alice was born, in 1862, but James Saunders lived until the age of 87. Although London and Goderich are some 70 miles apart, it would not have been impossible for the Trainer siblings to remain in contact with their Saunders relatives, and indeed there is evidence that they did. We will look at the next generation of the Saunders family—Alice’s mother and her siblings—in our next post.

Sources:

Information about the Saunders family comes primarily from the birth, christening, and marriage records in the International Genealogical Index, available online at FamilySearch. The family was also recorded in the 1841 England Census (this is the earliest census available).

The account of the family’s journey from Crediton to London comes from Elsie M. Pomeroy, William Saunders and His Five Sons: The Story of the Marquis Wheat Family (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1956).

Information on Wesleyan Methodism comes from Allan Brocket, Nonconformity in Exeter, 1650-1875 (Manchester University Press, 1962) and A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, Volume 2 (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2017).