Page 314 - Just another English family (Sep 2019)

to the States before the age of three, if it is the same Isaac, would mean that he will have been accompanied.
Who is Loisa?
There are just 78 entries using the Archive site but 94 using the Ancestry site with the name of Soothill in the various United States censuses currently available – 1840, 1860, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930 and 1940. Following the 1840 entry for Isaac, there are just five entries for Soothill in the 1860 census which relate to Loisa Soothill and her family.
Loisa Soothill is a puzzle. Born in England around 1828 she appears in the 1860 census as living in Conway, Franklin, Massachusetts, aged 32, with four children – Charlotte, aged 14; William, aged 12; Mary, aged 8 and Loisa, aged 3. Charlotte, William and Mary were all born in England, while 3-year-old Loisa was born in Connecticut. It is tempting to think of Isaac as the absent father, but the birth years of the children are around 1846, 1848, 1852, and 1857. So, with Isaac born in Halifax in 1837, he is much too young to be the father of certainly the younger children. So one certainly needs to look elsewhere. The candidate seems likely to have been a Soothill who came to the United States between 1852 and 1857. Nevertheless, who is Loisa? If she had been married, Soothill would have been her married name, but there is no evidence of a husband. By the time of the 1880 census there is no Loisa displayed and the children are not clearly evident in the subsequent censuses, but all that comes later in this chapter. What Loisa proves is that Soothills had a presence in the States by the early 1860s, but there is more to tell.
Joseph, George and Thomas Soothill and the Civil War
I have not been able to trace the date of Loisa’s arrival in the States, but 310