Matilda Mills emigrated from Dundalk, Co. Louth in Ireland with her parents, Robert Mills and Jane Rice, and at least three siblings probably in the early 1840s. They settled near Wellington Square (now Burlington) Ontario.
There, she met and married James Gartlan in 1845 and had their first children there. [See: James and Matilda’s Children]
Sometime in the early 1850s, they moved to a farm in Nottawasaga Township (near the present day Stayner, Ontario).
By 1861, according to the Census, they were living in a one story log cabin in the town of Collingwood with a cow.
Matilda died in childbirth, aged 35, on May 29, 1862 and was buried in the Nottawasaga Pioneer Cemeteryon the Fourth Line just north of Creemore. Unfortunately, her tombstone no longer survives.
James left the family in the care of this oldest son, Michael, 17 at the time, and in Columbus, Ohio joined the U.S. Army and fought in the Civil War. [See James Gartlan in the Civil War]
Also in the 1850s, the rest of the Mills family moved north to Dundalk[1], Ontario.
According to Bess, Robert Mills was a light keeper in Collingwood in the 1850s.
[1] 10 mi NW of Shelburne & 20 mi SW of Stayner
[2] Many thanks to Gillian Hearns and the staff at Archdiocese of Toronto’s Archives who pointed me in the right (hidden) direction. See: Breakthrough.
[3] Many thanks to Shirley Ann Cook confirmed its absence and who has taken photos of the surviving tombstones in the old and now abandoned Nottawasaga Cemetery. See: http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~clifford/Simcoe.htm#Nottawasaga%20twp.
Gartlan Families from Carrickmacross, Co. Monaghan, Ireland 