This is the full version of the MacEachern branch of my family tree, or at least as full as I can get it.

I've pruned off anyone who is still alive.

The first person we know we are related to is Hugh (Ewan) MacEachern, born in 1822 in P.E.I. (we're fairly sure), who farmed near Garfield (lot 58, in the Parish of St. John's, along Wood Island Road). Family wisdom claims that his father was Colin MacEachern, who had a brother (also named Hugh), and that the two of them together came to the Island in the Selkirk settlements on the Polly in 1803. But see below.
Hugh married Catherine MacLean (b. 182?, somewhere in Scotland- the two censuses give her two incompatable ages. If you believe her in the later census, she would have been born in 1828 and had her first child when she was 14. Yeah, right), and had nine children:
Margaret (b. 1842, does not appear in later records)
Mary (b. May 30, 1848, married in Maine)
Sarah (Jan 1, 1853-Nov 10, 1874)
Christina (b. 1853)
Jessie (b. 1857, moved to the States)
Neil (b. Dec 28, 1857)
C. Malcolm (b. Jan 23, 1860, moved to the States)
Charles (Aug 10, 1861 - 1945)
John Alex (b. 1868, moved to the States). Hugh MacEachern lived until Dec 18, 1871; his wife Catherine lived until after 1891. Unfortunately, the marriage records for Hugh MacEachern seem to have been lost, so we have no way of tracing our roots with certainty past him.

Charles MacEachern continued to farm near Garfield (a 1928 atlas of PEI shows that he had two lots totalling 178 acres, and his wife had 30 acres, about halfway between Garfield and Ocean View), and married Mary Jane Panton (1864-1942). Their children were:
Sarah Ethel (b. May 23, 1866, married John Nicholson)
Jemima MacEachern (b. Nov 3, 1888, married Kenneth Alexander MacKenzie)
Ewen Neil (June 13, 1890- 1964; he is buried with his parents)
Frances (b. April 22, 1895)
Charles Everett (Sept 11, 1897 - Oct 29, 1987)
Malcolm (Monty, b. July 22, 1900, married Lena Martin)
Kathryn Maude (b 1902, married Ralph MacKenzie)
John Richard (July 1904- Mar 18, 1989, married Charlotte Drake in 1936).

My great-grandpa, Charles Everett (picture), served in WWI in the Prince Edward Island Highlanders (#105). Luckily for me, his leg was hit by a piece of timber and was sentenced to janitorial work in the hospital until he got off crutches. It saved his life. After the war, he moved out west. He worked for a while in Didsbury, where he married Dorothy Johnson (picture) on Dec 22, 1923. They had their first child there (who is still alive), and then moved to Luseland, Saskatchewan around 1925. They later moved to Edmonton, where the MacEacherns are still found.

The parentage of ggggrandpa Hugh MacEachern is a mystery. He would have been born in 1822 (since he was 49 when he died in 1871), unfortunately, the Belfast church baptismal records start the year the church was built- 1823, which is too late to record Hugh's birth. There was a Hugh MacEachern born in 1821, however, not to Colin, but to Neil MacEachern and Christina Stewart (Neil and Chirsty are listed as being from "Wood Island Road", which is where the family farm was). The 1841 census lists Colin (whose tombstone reads: To the memory of Colin McEachern, a native of Argylle, Scotland, also Isabella his daughter), Hugh (possibly Colin and Neil's brother- his tombstone claims he was a native of the Isle of Mull and came over on the Polly), and Chirsty MacEachern as being neighbors (Chirsty was a widow, presumably of Neil); an 1880 map of the area shows only Mrs. Hugh MacEachern. We have not yet checked the baptism records for the church in Charlottetown (where Neil's Hugh was baptised), however, the baptism records for the Belfast Church show the following:
Colin and Margaret MacEachern had three daughters (Isabella, Janet, and Betsy) between 1823 and 1828
Colin and Catherine MacEachern had two daughters (Margaret and Grace) between 1830 and 1833
Colin MacEachern and Eliz Hart had one daughter (Sarah Ann) in 1847
There was a Catherine MacEachern who had a daughter named Marion in 1823 while a widow of Alex McIntosh.
If we assume that there was a minimum of Colin MacEacherns in the area, and that he was a widower at least once, then his household in 1841 would have contained six daughters and a wife (either Catherine or Eliz). The 1841 census shows that Colin's residence contained 1 male between 16 and 45; 1 male between 45 and 60 (this would be Colin); 6 females under 45 (six daughters) and one female over 45 (his wife). So, we feel it is a safe assumption that Colin was married at least twice, and that Colin had at least one son who was not baptised in the Belfast church, who might have been our ancestor Hugh.

Neil and Chirstie have four children in the baptismal records- Hugh (1821, baptised in Charlottetown), Catherine (1823), Charles (1825), and Marry (1827). Chirstie was listed as a widow on Marry's baptism record, which matches the census record (one widow, two sons, two daughters).

The elder Hugh MacEachern, however, is listed in the census as having four boys (under 16), one man (16-45) and one woman (16-45) in the household, in addition to himself (male over 60). Presumably this is five sons and one wife, but none of his children were baptised in Belfast, even though four of them were born after the church was built. While it is possible that one of these undocumented sons were named Hugh, and that Colin or the elder Hugh is my ancestor, I suspect that I am descended from Neil and that family wisdom is wrong again.

One other point- a partial listing of the Polly Settlers does not contain a single MacEachern. Oh well.

On another note, one of my mother's correspondants sent us some material recently, including a page from a book called "Past and Present" (author, date, etc not acknowledged, although it was written while the Hon. D. A. Mackinnon was the Lt. Gov. of PEI. No, I don't know when that was, either, but it was after Duncan McE (vide infra) died (1877) and before his son Finlay (again, see below) stopped farming), and her own researched findings on Colin McE.

According to her, Colin was the son of Hugh and Margaret MacEachern, and had the following kids:
Hugh (1808-1888, married an Irish Catholic named Bridget, was a tailor in Georgetown, and had Mary, Neffie, and Eugene)
John (1811-1895, married Mary MacDonald)
Duncan (1813-1877, married Ann/Nancy Smith and had Finlay, Colin, Christie, Catherine, Annie, and Mary)
Colin (married Elizabeth Peach, died a union officer in the US civil war in Boston)
Donald (married Janet Campbell) Mary (1822-1884, married Duncan MacDougall)
Isabella (1824-1849, who is buried with her father)
Janet (1826-1854, married Edmund MacDougall)
Elizabeth (b 1828)
Margaret (b 1830)
Grace (b 1833)
This is entirely consistant with the census records mentioned above, since the youngest kids (the six daughters and the youngest son) would still have been around in 1841. And it disproves the family wisdom that our Hugh was the son of Colin, leaving the probability that he was the son of Neil (although, again, he could have been the son of the elder Hugh).