Bantjes, Rod, “Dalton_Delany.html,” in Eigg Mountain Settlement History, last modified, 14 August 2015 (http://people.stfx.ca/rbantjes/gis/txt/eigg/introduction.html).
Delaney and Dalton Families (Eigg Mountain Settlement History) (Map Location)
This site is on one of two old driveways that come south from the Eigg Mountain Main Road beginning near the present day “Moat.” William Dalton, and his wife-to-be Alice Fitzgerald emigrated from Kilkenny Ireland, to St John's, Newfoundland where they married on 16 June 1822. That same year William, age 36, petitioned for land on Eigg Mountain (see grant petition). They had a son, Richard and daughter, Mary, who married Pat Delaney (after Delaney's first wife Mary O'Brien died in 1873).
Richard, who inherited the farm, sold it to his brother-in-law, Pat Delaney [between 1879 and 1907]. The Church map (1879) indicates R. Dalton (presumably Richard). The census of 1838 and a land grant record for 1861 show Mrs. (Alice) Dalton as a widow.
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Figure 1 – House Foundation |
| Looking east across the cellar, November 9, 2005. |
The Irish names are unique in the area and can be easily located in the censuses. In 1881 Patrick and Mary Delaney had eight children ranging in age from 9 to 22. The house was one story with 6 rooms and we measured its footprint as 25 by 25 feet.[1] So, ten people were living in a space of 625 square feet (63 square feet per person). For comparison, in 2011 the average Canadian house was 1,400 square feet (roughly 560 square feet per person).[2] By 1891 all the children, including the youngest son William who was then 19, had left the farm. Their exodus marked the declining fortunes of the Eigg Mountain settlement and must have imposed tremendous hardship on the parents, now in their 60s, who were left to do all of the farm work unassisted.
Sometime between her first child (1859) and her last (1862) Mary Delaney, according to legend, delivered her own child on a lonely mountain road. Having walked the 24 miles to Antigonish and back to get flour, and still ¾ of a mile from home, she went into labour. All alone, she gave birth, cut the umbilical cord and cleaned off the newborn as best she could. She wrapped the infant and, leaving the heavy sack of flour behind, began to walk the remaining distance to the homestead. After making a few steps on the driveway she realized she had nothing to cook with, so she went back, tore off part of her petticoat, poured in part of the flour, and headed back home with the baby and her meagre provision.
Mary Dalton appears in 1911 as a member of Angus Malcolm Fraser’s household By this time she was 78 and her husband had died. Unusually for that period, she had reverted back to her maiden name. It is unclear what her relationships was to the younger couple, but it may have been that they were caring for her in her old age.
The house foundation is very close to the road – about 9 feet. It is oriented at 258 degrees, roughly parallel to the road, which it probably faced (i.e. west). The foundation measures 25 by 25 feet. The cellar, in the southeast corner, measures roughly 12 (north-south) by 18 feet (east-west). There is almost no stone visible. Behind the house (“X” on the map) is a depression that may have been another structure.
There was a mill on this property in 1936 owned by John C. MacDonald (Kenton and Charlie Teasdale, Antigonish, November 2, 2004). MacDonald made a number of logging trails (“snake trails, logging roads”) (Interview, Kenton and Charlie Teasdale, Eigg Mountain, October 16, 2004)
Genealogy assistance from Leonard Gaudet, whose "3rd maternal great-grandfather" was William Dalton the pioneer.