Cynthia Jane Elliot

It's so hard to uncover substantive information about the lives of unmarried women ancestors.  Birth, death, and census records are available, but often not much else--it's hard to imagine their personality, character, or interests with just these basic records.  I'm trying to find out more about Cynthia Elliot, one of the daughters of William Elliot and Mary Oliphant, and sister to Mary Elliot, our direct ancestress.  Here's what I could find.

I don't have a birth record for her:  her death record states that she was born on November 20, 1854, which was just a couple of years before Ontario began keeping civil birth records. She died in 1931, which would make her seventy-seven years old.  She lived with her birth family until the death of her father, William, and then appears to have moved in with her sister Mary's family, headed by John Galloway Scott. William died in 1893,  when Cynthia was thirty-nine years old.


Cynthia appears in the 1861 and 1871 census with her birth family.  She appears in the 1891 census at age 35 with her father, William, who is 78, and two servants, one quite elderly.  On the 1891 census Cynthia and William are living on the same street as the Gooderham family and the family of Sir Henry Pellatt (just before he built Casa Loma).   The John Galloway Scott family (which includes Cynthia's sister Mary (Elliot) Scott as John's wife) is also just a few houses away. 

1891 census record for William and Jane Elliot.  District 119, East Toronto, St. Thomas Ward.

Cynthia appears on the 1911 census as "C. Jane Elliot", age 50, along with her sister Mary (John's wife), who is 68, and John and Mary's daughter Helen, who is referred to on the census as "Elliot Scott". 
Cynthia appears on the 1921 census as "Janey C. Elliot", age 67, in the household of John Galloway Scott, along with her sister Mary, age 78, and her unmarried niece Helen, age 37.  They are living at 29 Dunvegan Road in Ward 4, Toronto North.

Cynthia also appears in the Society Blue Book of Toronto (Dau's), showing that when she lived with the John Galloway Scott family she and her sister and niece were "at home" to entertain on Mondays.  This entry, from 1905-5, is typical:

"Scott (K.C.) Hon. and Mrs. John G.

341 Sherbourne street

Receives Mondays

Miss Scott

Miss Elliott [sic]

Mrs., nee Elliott."

Cynthia died in 1931.

Death certificate for Cynthia Jane Elliot. 

Cynthia's obituary was brief.  The Globe newspaper, Toronto, January 8, 1931, p. 12:

"Deaths.  Elliot--at 29 Dunvegan Road, Toronto, on January 6, 1931, Cynthia Jane, youngest daughter of the late William Elliot, Esq.  Internment took place in the Toronto Necropolis." 

She is buried along with the rest of the Elliot family.