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	William Mallett, Melony Rice, and Charlotte Sillifant Family

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William Mallett was the fifth child, and fourth son of Humphrey Mallett and Catherine Balson. He was born in 1796, on a farm called Birchill, not far from a small village named Langtree, in Devonshire, England. William married Melony Rice in Langtree in 1820. They had two children, William and Edwin, but Melony died in 1827. She is buried in the churchyard in Langtree. During his marriage to Melony, William practised as a "Conveyancing Solicitor", a member of the legal profession involved solely in land transactions.

In 1830 William remarried to Charlotte Sillifant (Silliphant) in Devon, and about 1831/2 he, Charlotte, and his two young sons came to Canada. They settled in what is today the Canadian Province of Prince Edward Island (PEI). At about the same time William's younger brother James settled in Ontario, Canada, and one would assume that the two brothers came to Canada together, but there is no evidence of this. One would also assume that the brothers might stick together, and settle close to one another to help each other out in all of the hard work which lay ahead of them, but for some reason they did not. In fact they did not see each other again.

William entered into a 99 year lease arrangement for 200 acres of land on Graham's Road, in Queen's County, not far from New London, "Anne of Green Gables" country. In the early days of settlement in PEI all of the land was owned by just a few landowners, who leased individual farms out to settlers. This is the same sort of system which had existed in England for hundreds of years, and it did not sit well with most tenants, who wanted to own their own land. There were many attempts by the tenants to force the landowners and the Island government to change the system, and it became such a big issue on the Island that one of the enticements offered by the newly created country of Canada to convince PEI to enter confederation in 1873 was an offer of $800,000 to help solve the "Land Problem". Through government intervention, most tenants had become landowners by 1895. In the 1861 census, the Mallett farm was still leased.

William is said to have been lame, and one story in the family has it that he gave his gold watch to another man to clear his land for him. He taught school for a time. With Charlotte William had 9 more children, 3 sons and 6 daughters. Only one son, from either of William's marriages, George, is known to have married and had children. Of the girls, Jane married a Weeks, Annie a Davison, Lizzie a Biggar, Katharine a McKay, and Agnes married Angus Matheson.

William died in 1857, Charlotte in 1859. They are buried at Springfield Anglican Church, not far from Graham's Rd. Their red sandstone tombstones shown above are among the oldest gravemarkers to be found in PEI.