Cole FANs: UPDATE on Joshua Levi Cole
Striking Gold at the Diocese of Toronto Archives.
In a previous post where I introduced my Cole "FAN club," I wrote about Joshua Levi Cole who was the youngest known child of my Canadian Cole family founders Henry Cole and Elizabeth Churchill.
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| Joshua Levi Cole |
I knew that birthdates recorded in census records were not always accurate, that sometimes in records a baptism date was used interchangeably as a birthdate, and that headstones are made by those who survive the deceased (i.e., errors happen).
So, I could not rest. I had to keep searching for confirmation of Joshua's birthdate. I struck gold at the Diocese of Toronto Anglican Church Archives.
A Method to My Madness.
My confidence in birth/baptism records stems from the fact that the entry would have been recorded more closely (as compared to another record, like a census) to the time of Joshua's birth by an interested third party who was present at the event. Census records are notorious for reflecting incorrect birthdates; in my experience I have seen dates that are off anywhere from a year to five years when compared to the birth/baptism register, and they often reflect different birth locations -- even from census to census.
Another goal in trying to confirm Joshua's birth/baptism date was to try to narrow the possible range of his parents' date of arrival in Canada. Although I was fairly certain that Joshua's father Henry was in Canada by about 1825, it was harder to pinpoint Elizabeth's arrival. With a birth/baptism record, I could be more certain of the timing of Elizabeth's presence in Canada.Wait...Methodists at an Anglican Church?
The Coles at that time were Methodists. But I knew that the time period in question was before Wesleyan Baptismal Register recordkeeping in Ontario. So where should I start my search?
I had a hint from inherited family research that at least some of this first generation of Cole children may have been baptized at St. Peter's Church in Erindale, Peel County, Ontario. A quick Google search showed a puzzling fact: the denomination of this church was Anglican. However, I understood that in the early part of 19th-century Ontario, Methodists would sometimes join the congregations of other Protestant denominations in the absence of a Methodist option.
I took the chance that this might have been the case with Joshua and contacted the diocesan archives. The very helpful staff there confirmed that the Peel County (formerly Toronto Township) records do sometimes contain Methodists and that Erindale had covered the needs of the surrounding area (Streetsville is only 10 km from Erindale) until about the 1860s.
Eureka! They Found It!
To my amazement, the research staff at the archives found -- not one, but four -- records relating to three different Cole children for this time period in the records of St. Peter's Church in Erindale and of another church I wasn't aware of -- Trinity Church in Streetsville.
Below is a snip from the St. Peter's Anglican Church (Erindale) 1835 baptism register showing the entry for Joshua Cole. It records his birthdate as 28 August 1834 and his baptism date as 21 February 1835 -- definitive evidence not only of Joshua's actual birthdate, but of his mother Elizabeth's presence in Canada.
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| Baptism Register, St. Peter's Anglican Church, 1835: Entry for Joshua Cole. |
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Sources:
• Source of Baptism Entry, Joshua Cole: Diocese of Toronto - Archives, St. Peter Erindale Baptism Register for 1835, 1996-12 box 1.
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