Some research has been done regarding a family connection between Captain David Smith of Port Hood and a certain HANNAH SMITH (1750 – ?) who married a SAMUEL SPINNEY (1717 – 1784) at Granville, Nova Scotia.
It has been recorded in some family histories on the internet that Hannah Smith was born in Port Hood in 1750. This is incorrect. There are no early records of any Smiths in Port Hood before 1786 when the Loyalists settled here. Captain David Smith had a younger half-sister, Hannah (b. 1750), the daughter of Gamaliel and Mary Cobb Sellew of Truro, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. According to one record she married Oliver Bowley at Cape Cod and died at Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1813.
One family history states that Hannah Smith Spinney had a daughter Elizabeth (1769 – 1872) who married Redmond Keating and settled at Guysborough in the 1780’s with Loyalist settlers there. Elizabeth’s daughter Elinor Keating married Peter Smyth (no relation to Captain David Smith) – a prominent merchant in Port Hood. Elizabeth (Spinney) Keating died at Port Hood in 1872 at the home of her son-in-law Peter Smyth.
There seems to be a lot of confusion about the Smith / Smyth connection and the link to the Spinneys and Keatings in Nova Scotia.
Can anyone provide any records to make the link? The Port Hood Smiths are well covered in Perley W. Smith’s book The Smiths of Cape Breton (1967).
19 Responses to Spinney – Smith – Keating Families