My Earnshaw Family: a Virtual Cemetery

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My Earnshaw Family

Eli and Ann Cardwell Earnshaw emigrated from Huddersfield, Yorkshire, in two waves, arriving first in Philadelphia in 1841 where they lived for a time and then settling in West Warwick, Rhode Island to work as fullers and other wool-related jobs in the mills. Ann Cardwell Earnshaw died soon after her arrival in the US in 1848 and Eli married two more times afterward. Eli and Ann's son Byron Earnshaw, b. in 1831, arrived in America at the age of 10 and later left his home in Rhode Island to seek his fortune in California, where he just missed the Gold Rush in 1849. Making his way north to British Columbia by steamer, he mined in the Okanagan Valley and later met & married Sinciliex Amy "Shen Shen" Raphael, a Nlaka'pamux First Nations lady born in Lytton, B.C. in 1850 or 1852. Byron established a Fraser River ferry crossing in Lytton, B.C. in 1863. He sold that, bought land and moved to Lower Nicola where they raised their family and ran a dairy farm. They eventually moved to Minnie Lake where they continued to ranch until they sold out and moved to town in Merritt, where Byron died in 1912. Sinciliex inherited his estate and died in 1918, also in Merritt, B.C.They had a son and four daughters: Henry, Lavina, my 2nd great grandmother Minnie, b. in 1873; Matilda and Lena.