Monthly Archives: April 2015

genealogy

A Great Conference in Providence

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It’s a long way from my house in Montreal, Quebec to Providence, Rhode Island: six hours of driving, plus pit stops and traffic delays. But the moment I walked into my first event at last weekend’s New England Regional Genealogical Consortium (NERGC) conference in Providence, I felt right at home.

That first event was a special interest group meeting of genealogy bloggers. Everyone in that room shared my passion for blogging, although we do it in different ways. For example, Pat Richley-Erickson, who writes the award-winning http://blog.dearmyrtle.com/, also does video blogging on YouTube. At the meeting, I picked up some advice about backing up my blog, and about the value of Thomas MacEntee’s www.geneabloggers.com site as a resource for bloggers.

Over the next two days, I attended presentations from excellent speakers including Lisa Louise Cooke (http://lisalouisecooke.com/) and Judy G. Russell (www.legalgenealogist.com). I was especially interested in Dwight Fitch’s presentation on historical conflicts that affected the early settlements along the Connecticut River, since he used our common ancestor, Henry Burt (c. 1595-1662) of Springfield, Massachusetts, as an example.

Of course, I didn’t have to go all the way to Rhode Island to learn about genealogy. Many webinars and online hangouts take place every week. So for me, the best thing about attending a conference like this was the opportunity to meet people in an informal setting. For instance, I had a long conversation with a member of the Descendants of the Founders of Ancient Windsor. Windsor, Connecticut was founded in 1633 and, although I know I had ancestors there in the mid-1700s, I’ve always wondered whether they were founding families. I also got a chance to meet Joshua Taylor, co-host of Genealogy Roadshow on PBS, a show that I enjoy.

The people who attend and present lectures at conferences like this are the people who are setting the bar high for genealogical research standards. They help us figure out where and how to look for our ancestors, and they educate us about the laws and historical events of our ancestors’ times. They also push us to research diligently in order to prove our conclusions, and to cite our sources.

This was my second time attending a conference organized by the NERGC (www.nergc.org), an association that brings together 22 different genealogy societies in New England. Both conferences were extremely well run. Many volunteers worked hard to achieve that, so to them, I say thank you.

The next NERGC conference will take place in Springfield, Massachusetts in April, 2017. In the meantime, many other exciting genealogy conferences are coming up. (See http://calendar.eogn.com/ on Dick Eastman’s Online Newsletter.) Here are a few major conferences scheduled for eastern Canada and the United States over the next few months:

  • Quebec Family History Society (QFHS)              June 19-21, 2015                 Montreal, QC
  • Ontario Genealogical Society   (OGS)                   May 29-31, 2015                  Barrie, ON
  • New York State Family History Conference         Sept. 17-19, 2015                Syracuse, NY
  • British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa (BIFHSGO)  Sept. 18-20, 2015   Ottawa, ON

Here are links to stories about some of my American ancestors:

Timothy Stanley jr., Revolutionary Martyr  http://writinguptheancestors.blogspot.ca/2013/11/timothy-stanley-jr-revolutionary-martyr.html

Philadelphia and the Mitcheson Family   http://writinguptheancestors.blogspot.ca/2013/11/philadelphia-and-mitcheson-family.html

genealogy

Shediac’s First English Woman Settler

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Shediac’s First English Woman Settler

By Lucy Hanington Anglin

Mary Darby was feeding the chickens in her father’s yard, when along came an oxcart carrying a handsome gentleman.  To her amazement, he stopped the cart, dismounted, raised his hat in greeting and approached her for a chat.  The story told is that young William Hanington (age 33 years) proposed to her on the spot and she (age 18 years) accepted just as quickly.  After their marriage, she was taken across the Northumberland Strait from her father’s home in St. Eleanor’s, Isle St. Jean (now Summerside, PEI), in a canoe paddled by a couple of Indians, to her new home in Shediac, New Brunswick, where her English husband had settled seven years earlier in 1785.

Mary Darby was the daughter of Benjamin Darby, a Loyalist of Newbury,  New York.  Born in England in 1744, he emigrated to America in and settled in Newburg, 50 miles from New York City.  He was imprisoned at one time for his Loyalist sympathies and suffered great hardships at the hands of the rebels.  In 1783, hearing that Washington’s troups were marching on the town, he snatched his ailing wife from her sickbed and fled to New York with their five children.  They embarked for Isle St. Jean at Long Island.  Poor Mrs. Darby died on the voyage and was buried at sea. Mary Darby was only nine years old.  Her father re-married and had another family.

Mary’s first home was the log house her husband William had built in 1787, just two years after his arrival from England.   Although her first child died at birth, the next five of her twelve children were born in that log house.  In 1804, he built a three-storey frame house for his wife and family.  The house was all hand-wrought, the boards and beams were hewn by hand, the shingles were hand split, the trimming hand carved, split boards served as laths and the nails were all hand- made.  Water was obtained from a deep well by means of a bucket attached to a long well-sweep or pole.  Their son Daniel (my great great grandfather), born in 1804, was the first of the next seven children born in that frame house.

It’s hard to imagine but Mary was without female companionship for the first three years of her life in Shediac.  It must have been such a relief when her sister Elizabeth and husband, John Welling, also came over from PEI in 1795 to settle in Shediac.  John bought 200 acres of land from William for 20 pounds sterling (about $20 then). Once settled, Elizabeth and John also raised a large family of 12 children.

William died at the age of 79, in 1838, and Mary lived another 13 years without him.  Her life must have been one of hardship and suffering and yet she lived to the age of 77 years.  Amazing!

genealogy

When did the Charles Mathieu family move back to Canada?

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CharlieinjuryI’ve been trying to trace my great-uncles’ family ever since my great aunt told me that everyone, except his older brother Raymond, moved back from Michigan after Charlie’s dad lost his job in the depression.

According to his Ontario birth certificate, my great-uncle Jean Charles Horace Mathieu was born to Charles Mathieu and Mary in Fort William, Ontario on April 24, 1911,[1] so that’s where my research began.

Ten years later, the family had moved to 500 Aylmer Avenue in Windsor, Ontario, where they were renting a six-bedroom house. Both parents were 51 years old by then. His father Charles worked as a carpenter. His wife, who was born Marie Agnès Proulx, was then called Agnes. (She went by Mary and/or Agnes depending on the documents.)

Jean Charles had two older brothers, Arthur (16) and Raymond (14), an older sister Fernanda (12) and two younger brothers, Lawrence (8) and George Albert (6). [2]

There’s no hint of the family from then until 1932. There is one person who has a family tree on Ancestry who indicates that a Fernanda Mathieu crossed into Canada in 1924. That may have been John Charles’ sister, but it isn’t confirmed.

I wasn’t able to find the family on the 1930 U.S. Census.

By using Steve Morse’s search engine to search Lovells directory, I was able to find a carpenter named Charles Mathieu living at 6760 St. Denis in 1932[3]. I don’t know whether this was Charlies’ family or not.

If it was, they left Montreal again, because there are no listings for carpenters named Mathieu between 1933 and 1939.

Their next appearance in Lovells is 1940 when a carpenter named Mathieu lived at 3286 St. Antoine.[4]

That’s definitely them. I have an undated newspaper clipping about Aircraftman J.C.H. Mathieu between injured in a flying accident that says his parents lived at 3286 St. Antoine. [5] That clipping is undated, but I know that Jean Charles Mathieu lived in Montreal when he volunteered for the Royal Canadian Air Force in Montreal on August 8, 1940.

My original question remains unanswered.

——————————————

[1] Photocopy of Province of Ontario pocket birth certificate issued at Toronto on November 10, 1947, registered in April 24, 1911 in Fort William, Thunder Bay District by Geo. H Dunbar, Registrar Dunbar.

[2] 1921 Canadian Census, Province of Ontario, District of Essex North, Roger West Minard Subdistrict, Number 47, June 13, 1921, B, Page 20, derivative source.

[3] Lovvell’s Montreal Alphabetical Directory, 1932, p1456

[4] Lovell’s Montreal Alphabetical Directory, 1940, p1771.

[5] “Airman Injured,” Montreal Gazette, undated clipping, author’s collection.

England, genealogy

Food Rationing Post WW 2

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I think queues were invented in the UK. We queued for everything and even though I was only about four-and-a-half  years old, I remember queuing with my mother. One time, when she was heavily pregnant with my brother, she sent me into the shop to keep her place, whilst she rested on the wall outside.

I marched in, went straight up to the front of the queue and stated my order…….I remember very well, the smiles and laughs, but I got my order right away and, once outside, instructions from Mum on the correct way to queue.  My Mum told me that ‘food was all we thought about’ how to get it what to make with it, how to stretch it.

We ate everything from the animal. Called ‘offal’ it included heart, kidneys, brain and stomach–all made into quite tasty dishes. I don’t know if I would have eaten the dishes, had I known what I was actually eating!

¹During rationing, 1 person’s typical weekly allowance would be: 1 fresh egg, 4 oz margarine, 4 oz bacon (about 4 rashers), 2 oz butter, 2 oz tea, 1 oz cheese and 8 oz sugar.

 Meat was allocated by price, so cheaper cuts became popular. Points could be pooled or saved to buy pulses, cereals, tinned goods, dried fruit, biscuits and jam.

We used to have a dish called ‘tripe’ boiled animal stomach with onions. Or liver and onions still popular today. If you got a tongue at the butchers you could make many meals with it. Fried, or pressed in aspic to make ‘brawn’ then cut up to make sandwiches with or add to salads.

A favourite after the Sunday roast was “bubble and squeak” which was the left-over potatoes and greens cut up small and fried to a crisp with cold meat and pickled onions, usually fed to us on Monday as the family laundry was done on that day. Corned beef hash was another dish mixed with cabbage and potato and fried.

Chitterlings (intestines) were sometimes eaten cold. Pigs trotters added to a hearty mix of vegetables made a wonderful meal with dumplings. Many people made their own blood puddings.

Gran’s beef olives was a favourite meal. That was skirt steak, when we could get it, beaten to death with a rolling-pin cut into strips and the strips stuffed with sage and onion stuffing rolled up and secured with a tooth pick and roasted for hours on end.

Dripping’ was the various fat from animals carefully preserved (no refrigeration in those days) in a crock and kept on the cold, stone floor in the larder to spread on a piece of bread sprinkled with salt – very tasty!

Most people had an allotment and grew as many veggies as possible. Wasting food was a criminal offence during the war my Gran told me. Too bad that does not apply today!

²The Ministry of Food produced leaflets and posters advising housewives to be creative and one of England’s best known cooks, Marguerite Patten gave cooking tips on the radio.

‘Mock’ recipes included ‘cream’ (margarine milk and cornflour) and ‘mock goose’ (Lentils and breadcrumbs). Powdered eggs and Spam from the US were mainstays of wartime and after. Kippers and Sprats were a fish easy to obtain in Plymouth Devon, a Royal Naval fishing city where I was born.

This is an example of a ‘Government Recipe’ taken from the book ‘Ration Book Cookery Recipes and History. Published by English Heritage, London 1985.

Mock Goose

150 g (6 oz) split red lentils

275 ml (1/2 pint) water

15 ml (1 tbls) lemon juice

salt and pepper

For the ‘stuffing’

1 large onion

50 g (2 oz) wholemeal fresh breadcrumbs

15 ml (1 tbls) fresh sage, chopped.

Cook the lentils in the water until all the water has been absorbed. Add lemon juice and season. Then make the stuffing. Sauté the onion in a little water or vegetable stock for 10 minutes. Drain, then add to the breadcrumbs. Mix in the chopped sage and mix well. Put half the lentil mixture into a non-stick ovenproof dish, spread the ‘stuffing’ on top, then top off with the remaining lentils. Put in a moderate oven until the top is crisp and golden.

I have tried this recipe, and it was really good, considering not much was in the ingredients.

Despite the stresses of wartime, it was reported that the health of the poor improved. Babies and pregnant women were allocated extra nutrients such as milk, orange juice and cod liver oil.

Post war, the orange juice we got for my baby sister was condensed in a small bottle and carefully measured out by the teaspoon and mixed with water. For all the hardships I was never hungry and I do believe that I had a healthy start to life, due to rationing.

¹ http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/topics/rationing_in_ww2

This is an interesting slide show regarding rationing.
² http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8511000/8511309.stm

genealogy

British, Irish, Scottish, Loyalist, American, German, Scandinavian, Dutch, Huguenot Families in Lower Canada and Quebec 1760…

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denbigh

Early Settlers

 

The following database contains information on villages and communities where families settled in Lower Canada and Quebec from 1760 onward. This document will assist researchers seeking to find the names  ( past and current )  of these settlements.

Over the years there have been many name changes in both the counties, villages and settlements. These changes are noted, giving both the original name and the current name on modern maps.

There is a  Table of Contents, along with several links to old county maps.

images

 Click the link below to open in a new window

British, Irish, Scottish, Loyalist, American, German, Scandinavian, Dutch in Quebec

genealogy

Three falls from the sky

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EmontonJournalNotMuchtoTellThe old Edmonton newspaper clipping doesn’t include a clear date, but was written sometime well after January 1942 and prior to September 27, 1944.

Its title “Airman Shot Down Twice But ‘Nothing Much to Tell’ emphasizes the key point of the story.

The nutgraph reads “Like nearly all of the fighting men who return after serving in battle, WO. Hurtubise had little to say about his adventures in the air.” It goes on to say:

The airman had been shot down over friendly territory. He crashlanded both times. He admitted he had been wounded slightly but said “it was nothing at all. You’d never know it now.” [1]

The soldier of few words was a distant cousin—the son of my great-grandfather’s brother and my great grandmother’s sister. His name was Paul Emile Hurtubise. At the time of the newspaper article quoted above, he served as a Warrant Officer and pilot in the Royal Air Force.

Hurtubise was interviewed for the story at his 99 Avenue home in Edmonton (address 111204). The unnamed newspaper reporter writes that Hurtubise was shot down twice in North Africa and also served in raids over Sicily and Italy.

His father Gus was still alive at the time of the article, but his mother Ida died sometime prior to the article date, but after the 1921 census .[2] There was one mention on an ancestry family tree that she died in 1922, when he was only three years old, but that isn’t yet confirmed. Another newspaper clipping in French from an unnamed and undated source cites the family as formerly living in Peace River, Alberta.

Hurtubise attended Jesuit College in Edmonton and enlisted with the air force in January 1941. After training with the air force in Ontario, he got his wings in Dunnville, Ontario and went overseas in January 1942.

At the time of the article, he had returned to Canada to serve as a flying instructor, but at some point, he went back to the front.

On September 27, 1944, he crashed a third time in a Spitfire NH while serving with 412 Squadron.

The third time, he died. His remains are buried in plot 2B12 in the Reichswald Forest War Cemetery in Germany.[3]  He is listed as a pilot officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force in the Service Files of the Second World War Dead.[4] He’s also commemorated on page 341 in the Second World War Book of Remembrance.

——————————————–

[1] “Airman Shot Down Twice But ‘Nothing Much to Tell’,” Edmonton Journal or Bulletin in its Forty-First Year, but the article describes January 1942 as the distant past.

[2] Alberta Province, Bow River District #2,Enumerated subdistrict 25, uncategorized district 218, section number 7, township 22, range 21, meridian 4, lines 28 to 31, family #69, page 5, Sixth Census of Canada, 1921. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada: Library and Archives Canada, 2013. Series RG31. Statistics Canada Fonds.

[3] Canadian Virtual War Memorial by Veterans Affairs Canada. (n.d.). Retrieved February 24, 2015, from http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/memorials/canadian-virtual-war-memorial/detail/2055721.

[4] Library and Archives Canada, Service Files of the Second World War – War Dead, 1939-1947, RG 24, Volume 27803, Item 16884, Service number J45927.