Dear dtemple,
Please reply on this forum if you're still interested in your Armstrong and Booth ancestors who emigrated from Ireland to Quebec and Vermont. Several of us have a great deal of information on Robert Armstrong and Ann Booth, and we'd be glad to exchange information with you.
You described a letter written by descendant Effie Mosgrove. That's an important document that I hope you can share with other Armstrong researchers.
Another Armstrong-Booth descendant posted on RootsChat in 2011 (the post that you replied to): <<There also is a document that has circulated the Armstrong family stating the family sailed from Sligo on April 17th 1823 and that they came from the county of "Lathram" and town of "Drumsharribo". I have no idea how accurate this document is or who even wrote it.>>
This is another very important family document that I hope is shared one day by someone!
There's a lot of misinformation posted on-line about Robert Armstrong and Ann Booth. For example -- Robert Armstrong's birth date and place is inaccurately posted in MANY on-line trees, and currently on Findagrave, as "30 Aug 1777 Whalton, Northumberland Unitary Authority, Northumberland, England."
That's not the birth date and place of the Robert Armstrong who married Ann Booth and emigrated from Ireland to Quebec and then settled in Vermont, where he died in January 1850.
According to his obelisk tombstone (erected years after his death by his son Alexander), Robert was age 72 and 5 months when he died January 30, 1850, so he was born in 1777. The exact age calculation of his birth date is August 30, 1777, but the "5 months" may have been an age estimate and not an absolute. People in previous generations weren't as date/calendar oriented as we are today, and often didn't know their exact birth dates. Children often didn't know their parents' exact birth dates, either, as we'd need to consider for that tombstone inscription being correct or not.
The U.S. Mortality Schedule has Robert Armstrong's death in January 1850 at age 72. The death date fits the tombstone inscription (month and year), and indicates a birth year of 1777-1778. Since Robert's wife Ann had already died in 1849, one or more of his children would have given his age information to the census official.
The Robert Armstrong who was naturalized in Vermont in 1843 was age 66, which fits this same man (born about 1777).
His son Robert Jr., naturalized in 1850 in Vermont, said that he was a native of "Latham County, Ireland" which researchers reasonably interpret to be County Leitrim, Ireland. Robert Jr. also said he had arrived in the U.S. in 1835. That's not "emigrated from Ireland," but arrived in the United States, and from Canadian records we know these Armstrongs were in Quebec before moving to Vermont.
The father Robert Armstrong, as sources indicate, was living with his family in County Leitrim when his son Robert was born about 1816. Presumably that's where this family lived for decades, and possibly for generations. Further research in Irish records may reveal additional data.
Robert Armstrong Sr. and wife Ann Booth were married by about 1803, judging by the birth dates of their known children.
There's another inaccurate "fact" given in many on-line trees about Robert Armstrong and Ann Booth. Ann is called "Ann Lattimore Booth" and/or "Ann Lattimore." Tree compilers have unfortunately followed Ancestry's "Hints" and pasted a marriage into their trees without checking it at all. And, without using common sense!
English records show that a Robert Armstrong married an Ann Lattimore on 17 July 1824 at Morpeth, Northumberland, England. That's simply a marriage record for a man who happens to have the same name as the Robert Armstrong who emigrated to Quebec and then Vermont.
The couple who married in 1824 in England is NOT the couple who married before about 1803, lived in County Leitrim, Ireland, and emigrated to Quebec with their children in the 1820s.
The surname Lattimore isn't associated with this family in any records. Several of Robert and Ann's children's death records give their parents' names as Robert Armstrong and Ann Booth (or Robert Armstrong and unknown wife Booth). The obelisk tombstone for Robert and Ann gives her name as Ann Booth, "Wife of Robert Armstrong." In the 1829 baptism of their daughter Mary Ann in Quebec, she's "Mary Ann, daughter of Robert Armstrong of this Seigniory, Mechanic, and his wife Ann Booth."
These and many other source records will help anyone researching Robert Armstrong and Ann Booth. Please LOOK for sources, and don't just copy-and-paste so that you end up with thousands of people in your tree. It's not an accurate family tree with that kind of compilation, it's just names and dates on a page.
Annie
(a descendant of the Armstrongs of Crosscavanagh, in Pomeroy & Donaghmore parishes, County Tyrone, Ireland)
