The Second Generation

The marriage of Michael and Maria produced five children. More correctly, there are records of five children. Of the five known children three (James, Francis and Mary) immigrated to Canada and the two eldest (Charles and Edward) remained in Donegal. All that is known about Charles is that he was born in 1810 and that he married Lena Hornel. Edward also remained in Ireland but his children (he had six) and grandchildren immigrated to Canada, the U.S.A. and Australia. He lived well into the twentieth century, died in Donegal and is buried in the cemetery beside the Church of St. Agatha, where the family members are buried. Francis settled in the town of Pembroke, was married to Mary Stack (or Stackpool) at St. Columbkille’s Cathedral in the 1850s, had a large family and died in Pembroke in 1888. (Comprehensive family trees of Edward and Francis have been completed.) The youngest daughter, Mary, was married in Aylmer, Canada East in 1844 to John Rooney. One of the witnesses at the wedding was her brother, James.

James, came to Canada in 1838 just prior to the exodus out of Ireland caused by the potato famine of the mid 1840s. Given the proximity of Donegal to Derry (or Londonderry) and the fact that it was one of the major embarkation ports for emigrants leaving Ireland it is logical to conclude that he left from Derry. What happened to James McCool between 1838 and 1850 is not known except that he attended his sister’s wedding at Aylmer in 1844 and that sometime during that 12 year period he came to Sheenboro, Canada East (as Quebec was called before Confederation). Sheenboro is located in Pontiac County, about 80 miles northwest of Ottawa. It is known that on July 2, 1850 he married Catherine Murphy in Chapeau. They had 8 children before her death in 1866. Some time later he married Mary Mercille, his first wife’s cousin and 20 years his junior, and this second marriage resulted in 5 more children. He came into possession of the property known as the McCool farm (the first farm on the Fort William road which was, and still is, in Chichester township although it has always been considered part of Sheenboro) at some point in the 1840s and farmed that land until the late 1860s. A government report described the land in Chichester at that time as "generally ruff and unfit for cultivation" which might explain why he bought Fort

William from the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1869. For the purchase price of $3000 James received a log cabin trading post, a general store, a residence recently built for the factor and some 800 acres of land including a mile of waterfront bordering the Ottawa River. His occupation was listed as either "storekeeper" or "general merchant" and he continued to operate the store, specializing in "shanty supplies", in addition to farming, lumbering and actively participating in the fur trade. In 1896 he built a hotel, Hotel Pontiac, near the general store and post. At the turn of the century Fort William became a popular summer resort as steamers plying the Ottawa River made it a favourite stop. The most famous visitor was probably the Hollywood star, Mary Pickford.
His descendants, now into the seventh generation, number well over 400 (13 children, 27 grandchildren, 60 great-grandchildren, 117 great-grandchildren, over 200 great-great- grandchildren and an ever growing number of great-great-great grandchildren) and have spread out to practically ever part of Canada and the United States, from California to Newfoundland, and to other parts of the world as well. James McCool died at Fort William on December 4, 1905 in his 89th year and is buried in the family plot in the cemetery beside the Church of St. Paul the Hermit in Sheenboro.