| "REBECCA McCREA, the ninth child and third daughter of Samuel McCrea, was born in 1791 near Stillwater, New York, At the age of three she accompanied her family to their new home in Montague Township, across the Rideau River from the present town of Merrickville, Ontario. There she endured the primitive hardships with her parents and family until the death of her father in 1806 and of her mother in 1816. Thereafter it is believed that she lived with her oldest brother, John McCrea. On May 17, 1830, at the age of thirty-nine, she married JAMES MAITLAND, a lockmaster in the adjoining township, after the death of his first wife, REBECCA SLY, and helped raise his three children. In her later years she lived in Smiths Falls, Ontario until her death on April 7, 1870 at the age of nearly eighty years. She was affectionately referred to by members of her family as "Aunt Becky", and was responsible for the placing of markers at the graves of her parents in the Old McGuigan Cemetery on the right bank of the Rideau River, several miles below the town of Merrickville, where they still stand in good condition."32 |