My Family Tree

There is a daughter of John and Harriet in the PEI Baptismal Index, Anne Flora, born April 1859; Annie Laura is in the 1881 Canadian census, age 22 (b. 1859), and there was an Annie Laura, one of four unmarried daughters, named in John Dyment's will. Although several lists of John Dyment's children also include a Laura A. Dyment, born after 1870, there is no record for a second daughter Laura in the PEI Baptismal Index. A search for the name Laura, born anytime in the 1870s, turned up nothing likely in Prince County PEI in the National Library's version of the 1881 census.

It is my suspicion that Annie Laura and Laura A. were the same person. One disappears from records, and the other appears. Two other sisters, Margaret and Eleanor, went to the United States around the same time. Margaret, too, shaved a few years off of her age in census records. It is possible that both Laura and Margaret looked much younger than their actual age.

The first record of Laura A. Dyment, daughter of John Dyment and Harriet Cotton, was in Massachusetts Marriages when she married Joel Fales from Nova Scotia. If she is Annie Laura Dyment, then she would have been 12 years older than her husband. She gave her date of birth as 1872. They were living in Ipswitch, and both were working in a mill. It was the first marriage for both.

In the US 1900 Census, Laura A. Fales was living in Ipswitch, Massachusetts with her husband Joel. They had one daughter Mabel, age 2. Laura A. gave her date of birth as April 1866 on this form. Annie Laura had been married for 5 years. She had had one child, and Laura had emigrated in 1894. Joel was working in a mill.

In the 1910 census Laura A., gave her age as 40, born 1870. They had two children, both living. Although there is a registration in Massachusetts for a Joseph Fales in 1901, this was very likely an error - there was no birth record for their second daughter. Perhaps the clerk got two families mixed up.

Laura Fales died before the 1930 census, when her husband gave his status as widower. She was in Massachusetts city directories up until 1929, and there was a Massachusetts death recorded for a Laura A. (Dumont) Fales in Salem Mass. in 1929, which is most likely her.