Charles Lamont and Mary Grant

Mary Grant and Charles Lamont

Mary Frances Grant was the second eldest child of the family, born in 1818. She was aged only 9, when her mother died in 1827. It must have been a difficult time for her, with her father marrying Hannah Guy, a couple of months after her mother's death. With Hannah's death less than a year into marriage, Mary had a new stepmother in Isabella shortly after. We don't have any insight into Mary's growing up and family life but her family was growing his business as a housebuilder during her second decade. When she was 20, she married Charles Lamont on 17 January 1838.

Charles Lamont

Charles Lamont was born around Braemar in Aberdeenshire in Scotland in 1802 or 1803. He emigrated to Canada at some point before 1841 and lived in Dartmouth, across the channel from Halifax. He was a miller and then grain merchant in Dartmouth for most of his life. He was a Catholic and was a parishioner of St Peter's church. At the time Dartmouth grew a large Catholic population of emigrants from Scotland and, increasingly from the 1841, from Ireland as well. In 1841 he married, Mary Grant, who was from across the water in Halifax.

Growing a family

Charles and Mary Lamont had a large family of 11 children. At some point in the 1860s the family moved from Halifax to Dartmouth. The family had a house of the waterfront in the area around Portland. Charles Lamont ran his milling and granary operation on Preston Road, about 4 miles from the Dartmouth settlement. Over the years the elder children started getting married and leaving home. From the Dartmouth St Peter's registry it records that two of the elder daughters, Janet and Margaret were married to their respective husbands in a double ceremony on 23 November 1862. Barbara, another daughter, married and moved to the United States. 

Of their other children, most of them stayed in Nova Scotia and married into families across the province.

Deaths

Charles lived until 1885 and was buried in Dartmouth. After his death Mary lived for a while in Dartmouth but then in 1891 census, she was recorded living with her daughter Janet, her husband Martin Donovan, and a new grand-daughter in Montreal. Mary's record for the 1901 Census has not yet been found and it would not be unlikely that she split her time between various favourite children. Also her death record hasn't been found yet - however various internet sources suggest that she died in 1905, around 20 years after the death of her husband.

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