The Crediton parish church, where James Saunders and Jane Woollacott were baptized |
Early Methodist meeting |
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 |
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 |
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).