Page 8 - News On 7 October 2021

HISTORY NOTES FROM HAZZARD'S CORNERS, BY GRANT KETCHESON
JOHN MCCOY (1823-1885), PIONEER FARMER

John Alexander McCoy was born in Coleraine, County Derry, Ireland in 1823. His
father died soon after he was born. In 1831 his mother, Jane Millen McCoy, along
with her sons, Alex (12) and John (8), sailed for New York. Her final destination was John and Jane McCoy
Auburn, New York, an area where we believe other members of the Millen family memorial in Hazzard's
may already have been living.
Cemetery
In 1834 Jane McCoy married William McDade, a fellow-immigrant, whom she had
met some three years earlier on the voyage from Ireland. The next year the family
took up land in Madoc Township, near Rimington. By 1837, records indicate that
they had constructed a cabin, cleared 14 of their 200 acres as well as building a cow
shed and a potash works. John McCoy and brother Alex would no doubt have
provided a good part of the labour on the homestead during that two- year period,
Like other young settlers, John and Alex needed farms of their own.

They both selected land in the seventh concession, within a mile of the McDade
farm. It would have taken years of back-breaking labour to clear the 100 acres of
workable land on John's 150-acre farm, but clear it he did, resulting in a prosperous
farmstead. In 1849, John McCoy married Jane Allen from the Allen Settlement. Jane,
the daughter of William Allen Jr., was born in 1831, one of the first children born in
the newly-settled Madoc Township. The first census, conducted in 1851, shows John McCoy, Madoc
John and Jane McCoy living on their farm, located on Lot 15, Concession 7 in Madoc Township pioneer
Township.

John and Jane McCoy raised a family of nine children, six girls and three boys. Their
children, like many young people of that era, married into local families such as
Thompson, Blair, Burnside and Ketcheson. Their son, Charles Frederick (Fred),
carried on the farm. He and his wife, Ada Burnside McCoy, completed the
farmstead in the early 1900s by building its crown jewel, an imposing brick
farmhouse that still stands at 1647 Cooper Road.

John McCoy completed his life journey on January 13, 1885, a journey that took him
from a childhood in Ireland, to adulthood in Canada and to his final destination in
Hazzard's Cemetery. He rests there with his wife, Jane Allen, who died in 1902. Born
of hard-working Irish immigrant stock, they are truly a part of the stout fabric that
built the Hazzard's Corners community.

The McCoy family, proudly
posing in front of their new
barn (on right)