My Family Tree

John Ramsay and Margaret Penman were married on 4 May 1795. Margaret was from Lot 13.

From the Penman family tree on the Island Register:
Children of MARGARET PENMAN and JOHN RAMSAY are:

DONALD RAMSAY, Abt. 1794
GEORGE RAMSAY
MARGARET RAMSAY
DAVID RAMSAY, Abt. 1804
JANE RAMSAY, Abt. 1805
FLORA RAMSAY, Abt. 1806
NEIL RAMSAY
SARAH ADELINE RAMSAY (dates are off, grand-daughter?)
AGNES RAMSAY
CHRISTY RAMSAY
JOHN RAMSAY, Abt. 1817

There are a few rules of thumb that can be used to check how realistic a list of children is - usually a span of 25 years from first child to last, or first child not before age 15, and not after age 45. There are exceptions. The birth of a sons Donald in 1794 and John in 1817 is a span of 23 years, and assuming Margaret married at about age 20, then she was born about 1774, give or take a few years.

Where was she born? Her grandson said in New England. Her daughter Flora, on the 1891 census, said her father was born in Scotland and her mother on the Island.

Marriage: Public Archives and Records Office of Prince Edward Island, Public Archives and Records Office of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, Queens County, Prince Edward Island, Canada, 46.23533,-63.12547. R.G. 19 Vital Statistics, Series 3 Marriage Records, Subseries Marriage Licenses Book 1787-1805.

Lucy Maud Montgomery's ancestry can be traced back to two Penman sisters, Nancy and Elizabeth. They were daughters of George Penman, possibly from Scotland and then New England, and were born circa 1769.

Excerpt from her Selected Journals:
"Their son Donald Montgomery, my great-grandfather, was the hero of another romance of those early days. I have used this tale in my book, "The Story Girl." The Nancy and Betty Sherman of the story told there were Nancy and Betsy Penman, daughters of a United Empire Loyalist who came from the States at the close of the war of Independence. George Penman had been a paymaster in the British Army; having forfeited all his property, he was very poor, but the beauty of the Penman girls, especially Nancy, was so great that they had no lack of suitors from far and near. The Donald Fraser of The Story Girl was Donald Montgomery, and Neil Campbell was David Murray, of Bedeque. The only embroidery I permitted myself in the telling of the tale was to give Donald a horse and cutter. In reality, what he had was a half-broken steer, hitched to a rude, old wood-sled, and it was with this romantic equipage that he hied him over to Richmond Bay, PEI to propose to Nancy Penman! "

In 1837, her husband John signed over some of his land to his son George, and son in law Samuel McAusland. On PEI, the wife's approval was required on such land transactions, but Margaret did not sign these documents, a strong indication that she had died before that date.

She is not the Margaret Ramsay who died in 1892, that was a Margaret Ramsay in Lot 18 who lived to be 100 - the location is wrong and that Margaret can be linked to another branch of the Ramsay family.