William Charles Bray J.P., R.N.

  Research Notes:

Source: http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=:382801&id=I250 has a tiny bit of info.

Source: http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=alh001&id=I240 has much detail.

From http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/c/a/r/Richard-B-Carruthers/index.html :
"Blanche Louisa Bray, Mrs James Large, is said to have been trained in the chemist's shop of her father, William Bray, J.P., R.N.(1814-1882), chemist and druggist of Petrolea (now Petrolia), Ontario, as 'the first lady pharmacist in Canada' along with her two brothers John Lang Bray and William Thomas Bray, came from a medical family."

From: Richard <purton@shaw.ca <mailto:purton@shaw.ca>>
Subject: RE: [ENG-WIL] On the Subject of Wars
Date: Sat, 01 Apr 2006 03:28:03 -0800
In-Reply-To: <001101c6556e$e3f16750$0100000a@hughes>

Yes, the wars in Canada (actually The Canadas at the period) that had just
finished were the Upper Canada rebellion and the Lower Canada rebellion of
the 1838-1839 period. My Portsmouth-born great-great grandfather, William
Bray, gunnery officer, R.N. (1814-1882) arrived at the port of Kingston in
Upper Canada, the highest navigable point on the St Lawrence at that time in
HMS Warspite to help suppress the unpopular Upper Canada rebellion.
According to his obituary in the Adelaide (Ontario) Advertiser, he was the
officer who fired the salvo into the rebels' munitions dump, the windmill,
at the Battle of the Windmill, near Prescott, Ontario (then Upper Canada),
from the seconded steamship traveller, thus effectively ending the Upper
Canada rebellion. Notwithstanding this yeoman service, he was later arrested
for peculation from the stores at the naval dockyard at Kingston (Point
Frederick). He sued his commanding officer, Capt (later Sir) Williams
Sandom, R.N., for false arrest and won £50, with a young Kingston barrister
acting for him. The barrister was none other than the young (later Sir) John
Alexander Macdonald, first prime minister of the Dominion of Canada, and a
friend of Bray's family for many years afterward.

Having sued the Royal Navy and won, Bray left the service and elected to
stay on in Canada after the close of the rebellion. He married in 1839 a
nice Devonshire-born bride, Eliza Jane Lang (1822-1900), who had arrived in
British North America in 1833, and by her sired 11 children.

Some of the Upper and Lower Canada rebels were found guilty and hanged,
others were found guilty and transported to Australia, and some were
pardoned. Others fled to the U.S. The eldest of William Bray's five sons, Dr
John Lang Bray (1841-1915), sometime president of the Canadian Medical
Association in the 1890s married the daughter of a Channel Islander. Her
sister was married to the son of a Lower Canada rebel or 'patriote', Dr
Jean-Baptiste Davignon, one of the leader Papineau's right hand men, who had
slipped over the border into New York State where he practised medicine and
married the daughter of a prison governor. The rebel's son Joseph Eugene
Davignon returned to Canada, became an Anglican and a Conservative and rose
high in the Canadian civil service, all of which must have made for
interesting tale-swapping between Dr Bray and his wife's brother-in-law
Davignon. Of course, Dr Bray could add to his father's exploits his own as a
surgeon in the Confederate Army Surgeons Corps at Richmond, Virginia, C.S.A.
(1863-1865), but that, as they say, is another story. Dr Bray's first cousin
was Sir John Cox Bray (1842-1894), K.C.M.G., first native-born premier of
South Australia, who died in Suez on his way home from London where he had
been serving as South Australia's agent general. The leading Upper Canada
rebel was William Lyon Mackenzie, a Scots-born radical politician and enemy
of the governing elite in Upper Canada. His grandson was William Lyon
Mackenzie King, for many years prime minister of Canada and leader of the
Liberal party.

Amazingly, my ancestor William Bray visited his younger brother Tom Cox Bray
in Adelaide, South Australia and T.C. returned the favour, before retiring
to England. On one trip to Canada, ca 1847, T.C. was so taken with his young
niece, Blanche Louisa Bray (1845-1934), Wm's eldest daughter, and my
great-grandmother, that he tried to adopt her. After his brother's refusal,
he named his own daughter born in Adelaide, S.A. in 1848, Blanche Louisa
(Mrs Donaldson of Bath, Somerset, d. 1930), otherwise I might have been an
Aussie.;)

... Cheers,

Richard Bray Carruthers, M.A. (Oxon.)
OPC Purton and Rodbourne Cheney, Wilts.
Compiling a study of the pedigrees of tentatively called "The Plenteous Pear
Tree" referring to the origin of Purton's name, as the enclosure of the pear
tree.
Vancouver, British Columbia, CANADA

  Birth Notes:

in Greek Street

  Noted events in his life were:

• Occupation: Yeoman, 1845, Strathroy, Adelaide Twp, Middlesex, Canada West (Ontario), Canada.

• Occupation: Merchant, 1849, Strathroy, Adelaide Twp, Middlesex, Canada West (Ontario), Canada.

• Occupation: Innkeeper, 1851, Adelaide Twp, Middlesex, Canada West (Ontario), (Canada).

• Census, 1851, Adelaide Twp, Middlesex, Canada West (Ontario), (Canada).

• Occupation: Dry goods, hardware, groceries, produce, 1857, Adelaide Twp, Middlesex, Canada West (Ontario), (Canada).

• Occupation: Justice of the Peace, 1861, St. John's Ward, Middlesex, Canada West (Ontario), Canada.

• Census, 1861, St. John's Ward, Middlesex, Canada West (Ontario), Canada.

• Settled, 1872, Petrolea (Petrolia), Enniskillen, Lambton, Ontario, Canada. ¹

William married Eliza Jane Lang, daughter of John Lang and Ann Treleaven, on 7 Nov 1839 in St. George's Cathedral, Kingston, Upper Canada (Ontario), Canada. (Eliza Jane Lang was born on 26 Aug 1822 in Stoke, Plymouth, Devonshire, England, christened on 7 Oct 1822 in Morrice Street Wesleyan Chapel, Devonport, Devonshire, England, died on 31 Mar 1900 in Hanover, Bruce, Ontario, Canada and was buried on 3 Apr 1900 in East End Cemetery, Petrolea (Petrolia), Lambton, Ontario, Canada.)