I was born and raised in England, and didn’t immigrate into Canada until I was fifty. As I have discovered, though, I’m not the first of my family to come here, not by a long shot.

On my dad’s side, originally from County Cork in Ireland, we had been generations Leeds, the centre of the industrial heartland of Yorkshire’s West Riding. In the early nineteenth century, a few of the Maynes had left England, one couple to the USA, and two couples to South Africa, but most remained in Leeds. A few generations later there was a small emigration to Alberta, Canada, of more than one couple, and into the twentieth century, Toronto, Ontario, was the destination for a Mayne or two.

But this movement pales into insignificance when compared to my mum’s side of the family, with the Baters and the Caters. Both families are from Devon, in the south west of England. The Caters were from south Devon, south of Dartmoor, and gravitated to the village of Kingskerswell, which lies between Newton Abbot and Torquay. The Caters married into the Hill Family, and the Hills married into the Bater family, but more of that later.

John Cater, born in Kingskerswell, took himself off at some point in the mid 1850s and settled in St John’s, the capital of Newfoundland. He married a local girl, Anne Murphy in 1857, and that started a most extensive dynasty of Caters around that great island. Successive generations lived and died as “Newfies”, but also migrated out into Ontario and into the USA. I’ve recently been in contact with a modern day member of the original John Cater clan, still living in Ontario.

Then there was the Bater family. The Baters come from North Devon, in and around the River Torridge area. To a man, they were all farm workers; some farm owners, some farm workers, but farming was their only profession. In the late nineteenth century there appears to have been a paucity of work for farm labourers, and quite a few of the young men, some with their wives and children, upped sticks and sailed from Appledore in North Devon, to Quebec City in the French-speaking province of Quebec. From there they made their way on the newly laid train network, to Guelph, a community to the west of Toronto. This wasn’t one or two people, it was many, and the period they emigrated stretched from 1870 to 1910. They all seemed to have headed for Guelph, but from there spread out to the farms of Bruce and Middlesex counties, and the industry of Galt, Cambridge and London (Ontario).

Using the number of deaths recorded for family members as a constant for those arriving but never leaving, and that is Caters and Baters, I have 197 in Ontario and 128 in Newfoundland. Of course many have moved on, largely to the USA, but also to other Canadian Provinces. There are many still alive, naturally, and populating modern Canada, but they’re harder to track down.

There was another emigration route from the fields of North Devon, and that was to Peoria in Illinois, USA. It looks like having crossed the Atlantic and arrived at Quebec City, these settlers have embarked on a second vessel (possibly from Toronto, avoiding the St Lawrence River and its shallows), and made the trip through the Great Lakes, Ontario, Huron and Michigan, to Chicago. Then they made their way up the Illinois River to Peoria, and the rich farmlands that were opening up there. Further migration took them down into Kansas and Missouri.

All of this goes to show that I really am a latecomer to the Canadian party. The ease of my move, in a few hours by air, contrasts starkly with the sea voyage undertaken by my ancestors, many of who never made the trip back to England during their lives. These were brave people, setting our for a new life, and pretty much making a success of things, given that I can’t find a Cater or Bater who ever gave up and went back to Devon. I may be a latecomer, but I am in very good company.

To finish, the link between the Caters and the Baters was facilitated by the Hill family of Kingskerswell. My maternal grandmother was a Hill, descended from the Caters of Kingskerswell. Her father married a Bater from Dolton, North Devon, and there the link was made. Families, all over the world.