Footsteps Across The Bridge 135

Margaret married John Bernard. Their children were John and Rachel. Elizabeth (Eliza) married Strang Silliker and later, James Hart. William married Margaret McConnell in 1827.

Mary (1802-1885) married William Cousins.

Rachel (1800-1879) married William Heffield.

Alexander (died 1852) married Eleanor Hall (1797-1890), who lived, in 1881 , at the home of John Waugh in Wilmot Valley.

Archibald? (1805) married Mary Ann Chisholm in 1845.

HENRY

The next settler on the Simmons property about whom much informa- tion is available is Edward Henry (March 10, 1814), of Malpeque. Edward married Grace Hecker (Hacker) on Feb. 25, 1843. Grace was from Devon— shire, England, and had come to P.E.I. with her parents in 1841. Edward apprenticed in Charlottetown as a blacksmith, worked in Cavendish, farmed in Malpeque, and lived in Summerside before coming to Wilmot Valley in about 1858. The Henry family stayed in Wilmot Valley for only two years before moving to Granville Mills in 1860. They had eight children: Augustus, John, Charles Washington (June 12, 1851), Edward MacArthur (Feb. 25, 1853), Flora Ann (Dec. 17, 1854), Emma Elizabeth (June 20, 1856), Isabella and Leah.

HACKER William Hacker (1806) is believed to have been a brother of Grace Hacker. William and his wife Jane (1814) were born in England. William purchased the Henry property and, according to the census of 1861, owned two hundred acres of land and leased fifty acres. William and Jane had two

sons and three daughters by 1861, and appear, on Lake’s Topographical Map of 1863, to have lived on the road leading to Read’s Corner. The Hacker children were:

Thomas, who moved to North Bedeque.

William (1855-1903) who married Ella Montgomery (1866-1954) of North Bedeque.

Elizabeth (1857) who was an artist. Two other daughters.

According to Meacham’s Atlas of 1880 the Hackers moved to the location of the present home of Roy Simmons. The eastern part of the home was built prior to 1850, and the Hackers had the western part, which was designed by William Critchlow Harris, added between 1878 and 1882.