Genealogy

Great-Aunt Amelia’s Christmas Goblet

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Every year at Christmas dinner, my husband toasts our guests with a small antique goblet. His gesture has become a new family tradition. Before he came across this goblet in our kitchen cupboard, it had sat unused at my parents’ Montreal home for decades. I had no idea what it was or how it came into the family.

A pattern of flowers and leaves encircles the metal goblet and the initials and date “MJM to AJB Dec. 25 1852” are inscribed. I realized it must have originally been a Christmas gift, but from whom and to whom?

Amelia's gobletResearch revealed that MJM was MacGregor Joseph Mitcheson (1828-1886), and AJB was his 10-month-old niece Amelia Josephine Bagg (1852-1938). This must have been a gift MacGregor sent Amelia for her first Christmas. A fancy goblet seems like a rather strange present for a young man to give a baby, so perhaps it was a tradition, or his parents’ idea.

Amelia was the second surviving daughter of Montreal notary and landowner Stanley Clark Bagg (1820-1873) and his wife, Catharine Mitcheson Bagg (1822-1914). Catharine’s family lived in Philadelphia and McGregor J. Mitcheson was the youngest of her three brothers. In 1852, he was age 24 and a law graduate of the University of Pennsylvania who had recently been admitted to the bar of Philadelphia.

Despite the distance between the two cities, Catherine Mitcheson Bagg and her brother seem to have been quite close, so perhaps McGregor and Amelia eventually got to know each other. Amelia was 21 when her father died in 1873, and McGregor was one of the executors of Stanley Clark Bagg’s will, so he may have travelled to Montreal to advise his sister on family matters.

MacGregor J MitchesonMacGregor must have been an unforgettable house guest. His blue-grey eyes and long brown beard give him a rather wild appearance.1 He also had a forceful personality. In a book on Philadelphia lawyers, written some 30 years after MacGregor’s death, a former colleague recalled, “There never was an advocate who fought harder, or who merged his excessively egotistic personality more completely in that of his client. In another important sense was he entitled to great praise. He had a ready and instinctive perception of every essential fact in a case, in all its bearings, and a fine gift of memory for retaining them …..”2

Professionally, he specialized in real estate law. In the community, he was involved in the charity work of the United States Sanitary Commission at the time of the U.S. Civil War, he was president of the Northern Home for Friendless Children and Soldiers’ Orphans for many years, and he was an active member of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania.3

MacGregor married at age 41 to Ellen Brander Alexander Bond, a widow with a young daughter, and together they had three children. One died as a child, one did not marry and one married but had no children.

As for MacGregor’s niece Amelia, she also married relatively late at life. She married her first husband, real estate agent Joseph Mulholland, in 1890 and he died seven years later. Her second husband, Rev. John George Norton, Anglican Archdeacon and Rector of Montreal., was a widower.

Amelia had no children of her own, but she was quite close to her niece Gwendolyn Bagg (1887-1963) and Gwen’s husband, Fred Murray Smith — my future grandparents. They probably inherited the goblet when Aunt Amelia died, age 86, in 1938. For them, it would have been a precious reminder of a favourite aunt and a link to a great-uncle who died the year before Gwen was born.

Photo of MacGregor J. Mitcheson by Wm. Notman & Son, Montreal; Bagg family collection.

This article is also posted on http://writinguptheancestors.blogspot.ca

Notes and Sources

I have described the goblet as metal because I do not know whether it is silver or pewter. There is no hallmark.

MacGregor J. Mitcheson was born Joseph MacGregor Mitcheson on Nov. 26, 1828 and died at age 57 on June 29, 1886. These dates are according to the cemetery records of St. James the Less Episcopal Church, Philadelphia. The records of St. John’s Protestant Episcopal Church, Northern Liberties, Philadelphia, held at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, say he was baptized on April 17, 1829.

MacGregor eventually lived on Locust Street in downtown Philadelphia in a house designed by architect Frank Furness. See http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMG1GH_MacGregor_Mitcheson_House_Philadelphia_Pennsylvania

  1. “U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925,” Ancestry.ca [database on-line] entry for MacGregor J. Mitcheson, 1865; National Archives and Records Administration, Washington DC. ARC Identifier 56612/MLR Number A1 508, NARA Series M1372; Roll # 127.
  2. Robert D. Coxe, Legal Philadelphia: Comments and Memories, Philadelphia: W.J. Campbell, 1908, p. 140, accessed March 3, 2013.
  3. An Historical Catalogue of the St. Andrews Society of Philadelphia with Biographical Sketches of Deceased Members, 1749-1907, printed for the Society, 1907; Google Books, accessed July 19, 2013.
Genealogy, Military, Nova Scotia, Quebec

A Wren’s Story: Dorothy Isabel Raguin

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Dorothy Raguin my mother, joined the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service (WRCNS) known as the Wrens in April 1943. She left a job teaching grade three at Berthelet School in Montreal to help in the war effort and to look after her brothers, Robert and Arthur Raguin, both serving in the Navy.

She had graduated from The High School of Montreal Girls School in 1939 and then attended MacDonald College for teacher’s training and began her teaching career.

War was declared in September 1939, but it wasn’t until three years later that the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service was formed. Dorothy was one of over 6000 women who joined the navy, allowing the shore-based men to go to sea. The navy was the last of the forces to admit women. The first recruits were cooks, clerks and laundry maids but by the end of the war, women filled 39 trades including communication operators, signalman, coders and radar plotters. Their pay was also raised from two-thirds of a man’s to eighty percent. The Navy found women were useful.

The Wrens were inundated with applications even though the Army and Airforce had been recruiting women for two years. These women wanted to join the Navy. As the smallest of women’s services, it claimed to be the most selective. The Wrens were known to have recruited a “better type” of girl. They were ladies, not sailors and kept their hats on indoors.

There was a short three-week course at the WRCNS training centre HMCS Conestoga, in Galt Ontario. This facility which had been a girls reform school was referred to as a “stone frigate.” The women put on the Wren uniform and had a rapid transition into military life. They were given physical training, drill practice and learned about naval traditions and customs.“ They all seemed anxious to serve and do something constructive to help win the war. I found them very receptive to naval tradition and amenable to discipline, said Superintendent Carpenter. ”¹

Dorothy was drafted to HMCS Cornwallis September 1943. Mom’s first posting was to a hospital base, Stadacona in Halifax, Nova Scotia. A family friend, Miss Fellows was in charge of the women and had two sick berth attendant positions available. These were prime positions working in the laboratories. One was in haematology and the other in urinalysis. Mom chose blood and a friend got the other position.

 

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Lab in Halifax 1944

 

It wasn’t all work, marching and standing in lines. In their free time, they visited the scenic places around Halifax including Peggy’s Cove and Chester NS. There were always men coming and going from the ships and the Wrens used to take some of the patients rowing on the Arm. As innocent women, they were warned to be careful walking on Gottingen Street which had buildings right to the sidewalk, as they could be grabbed from the doorways! Dorothy celebrated her 21st birthday in the Navy with a lobster dinner at the Lord Nelson Hotel, a treat by her cousin Richard Scrivner who was then a Navy Commander. It was her first lobster and she never had another. There was also trip with other Wrens to New York City. They didn’t have to pay for their hotel and received meals for free as a thank you for their service.

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Doreen, Dorothy, Gwen

One of her teaching friends Mary Hawkins wrote in May 1943 from Halifax. “Dorothy Raguin and I met at the ANA (Army, Navy, Airforce) Club yesterday. She looks fit and is getting a kick out of the Wrens. She was in the School for Teachers the year before I was and was teaching at Berthelet. She left a month after I did – to join the Navy. I asked her if the Wrens get their tot of rum and she said, No, but apart from that everything is just the way Nelson left it. I know what she meant.”²

She finished her duty doing discharge physicals at the Royal Canadian Naval Hospital (RCNH) St Hyacinthe, Quebec. Her transfer was mentioned in the Tiddley Times, the Wrens newsletter. “Our hospital staff have been lucky in the acquisition of Dorothy Raguin, Aileen Fee and P.O. Anne Hawke, all lab. technicians with first-hand experience from Halifax.”³ The WRCNS disbanded in August of 1946 as women were not needed in peacetime.

Dorothy saw her brothers only once while she was in the Navy. She arranged dates for them when their ship came into Halifax. Happily, they managed to survive without her care and returned home safely.

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Dorothy Raguin in the Women’s Volunteer Reserve Corps before 1943.

 

My mother Dorothy Raguin Sutherland, died recently, at 95. She was proud of her service in the Navy and so to honour her and her service to Canada I am posting this story.

Notes:

  1. Superintendent Carpenter on Navy Radio, Recorded10 June 1943 for broadcast 14 and 16 June on CBC. Library and Archives Canada: MG30 E 391 Volume 1.
  1. Buch, Mary Hawkins., and Carolyn Gossage. Props on Her Sleeve: The Wartime Letters of a Canadian Airwoman. Toronto: Dundurn, 1997. Print.
  1. Tiddly Times May – June 1945 Wrens Newsletter page 26.
  1. Huba, Diane., The Wrens 70th Anniversary 2012. Starshell Volume VII No. 58, Spring 2012.
  1. Dorothy Raguin Sutherland reminiscences as told to the author.
  1. www.navaireview.ca/wp-content/uploads/public/vol3num3/vol3num3art5.pdf
  1. www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/wmens-royal-canadian-naval-service/
  2. In the third picture, Dorothy Raguin is not wearing a Wren’s uniform but rather the Women’s Volunteer Reserve Corp (W.V.R.C.) uniform. The main goal of this organization was to fundraise for the war efforts and train women in war-related tasks.

Here is a link to my father Donald Sutherland’s war years.

https://wordpress.com/post/genealogyensemble.com/4615

England, Genealogy

The Bulford Kiwi

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Not many families have a big bird named after them.

Well, we do! It is a New Zealand Kiwi bird and it is carved into the chalk hills in Wiltshire, England. It has been there since 1919, so close to famous, ancient Stonehenge, yet virtually unknown.

During my genealogy searching online for family members, like many researchers, I ‘Googled’ my surname, Bulford, but I would always get sent to ‘Bulford Camp’ in Salisbury, Wiltshire, in the UK, which is a large Army camp that was established in 1897.

The Bulford Army Base is still in use today alongside Bulford Village and the Church. Many times, over the years, family members would go to Bulford to get our photos taken with the Village sign.

My Uncle Roy Bulford Circa 1960’s
Marian, Bulford Camp sign. 1993. No longer a country road!  

Bulford Village grew up on the gravels beside the river Avon. The meaning of Bulford is difficult but the most likely explanation is ‘the ford where the ragged robins grow’ or ‘ragged robin island’.  Bulut is Saxon for ‘ragged robin’ and in the 12th century the name was Bultesford. ¹

The Bulford Kiwi is carved on Beacon Hill above the military village of Bulford on Salisbury Plain. Hill figures, or geoglyphs, ² are designed to be seen from afar rather than above and are a phenomenon especially seen in England. The letters “N.Z.” are 65 feet (20 m) high.

This one was carved after the First World War by the Kiwis (as the New Zealanders were called), eager to get back home. Apparently, no troop ships were immediately available and the troops had a few riots in protest, so officers decided that they should be kept busy by carving a Kiwi into the chalk hills!

In 1919, the Canterbury and Otago Engineer Battalions started their work. The design was drawn by Sergeant-Major Percy Cecil Blenkarne, a drawing instructor in the Education Staff, from a sketch of a stuffed kiwi specimen in the British Museum.

In real life, Kiwis are a nocturnal, flightless bird about the size of a chicken with long legs and beak. The kiwi’s muscular legs make up around a third of its total body weight and can outrun a man. The chalk Kiwi’s body covers 1.5 acres (6,100 m2).

Kiwi Bird found only in New Zealand

The site was surveyed and the design put on to the site by Sergeant-Major V.T. Low of the education staff. From the Kiwi’s feet to the top of its back is 420 feet (130 m) and the beak is 150 feet (46 m) long.

In the years after the Kiwi’s creation, the Kiwi Polish Company – the very polish used to shine our forces’ issued marching boots – maintained the Kiwi through their offices in London, employing local villagers to do the work. Although it had “little if any advertising value [for the company]”, they explained their interest in its upkeep as its being a memorial to the New Zealand troops.³

The chalk Bulford Kiwi

 

SOURCES

Bulford parish itself is rectangular, extending eastwards from the banks of the river and the boundaries have remained unchanged for more than a thousand years. In the Middle Ages, there was a settlement called Hindurrington, to the north of Bulford church, that was also on the river gravels. The name may have originated because the settlement was at the back of Durrington, which was on the other side of the river.[1]

http://bulfordparishcouncil.org/history-bulford-village.html [1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_figure Info about the chalk figures in the UK [2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulford_Kiwi shoe polish [3]

FOOTNOTES

Hill figures are cut in the grass to reveal the chalk and include the Cerne Abbas Giant the Uffington White Horse, the Long Man of Wilmington as well as the ‘lost’ carvings at Cambridge, Oxford and Plymouth Hoe.

For further photos of the chalk Kiwi follow this link:

https://www.google.ca/search?q=Bulford+Kiwi+photos&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b&gfe_rd=cr&dcr=0&ei=M88tWo3VE8XL8AfXvqzIBQ

England, Genealogy

Dear Uncle Bill

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Dear Uncle Bill,

While rummaging through the Dusty Old Boxes containing family memorabilia, I came upon letters written by you to your only brother, my father, Tom.  There were also letters written to your sweetheart during WWII while you were stationed in England serving with the RCAF. So I thought the best way to remember you would be in the form of a letter.

Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Lucy and I am one of your nieces.

Our paths never crossed.  I was only born in 1957 and you died in 1943. Your brother had seven children.  I was his fourth.  His eldest son, born in 1949, was named after you – William Sherron Anglin II.

While staying with my family in England in 2016, I visited you in person at your last known address:  Runnymede Memorial[1], Panel 179, Surrey, UK.  My grandchildren, who always enjoy a challenge, accompanied me in my search to find you. It didn’t take them long to find your panel and you – or your name, that is – inscribed on one of several stone walls, along with 20,000 other airmen,  at this dedicated memorial building on Cooper’s Hill overlooking the Thames River.

Your name was too high up for the children to touch but I brushed my fingers lovingly over your name and told you we were there. I am quite sure you knew it. You had an interest in mental telepathy, as did your grandfather, and his story was documented in the family boxes as well.  (Surgeon and Mentalist)

Throughout your letters to Tom, along with childhood memories, you shared and referred to an interest in The Rosicrucian Order which “is a community of mystics who study and practice the metaphysical laws governing the universe”.[2]

You maintained the belief in an ability to “project” yourself and to send mental messages. I can only guess that a feeling of closeness to your brother by any means must have consoled you greatly while away at war in England.

In your letters to your sweetheart, you described England in general (with the usual complaints about the rainy weather), your life with the RCAF, weekend leaves to Scotland and dances in the mess hall “wishing you were there”.  Although I don’t have her letters in response, I am sure you took great comfort in hearing from her.

You were sent on a training course at the end of May 1943 and, while away, your crew went on a mission without you – never to return. In the last letter to your girl, you confided that you were feeling “depressed” at their loss.  On the very next mission, you went missing as well.

Last picture of Uncle William
Last picture of Uncle Bill (far left) – 1943

Not long afterwards, your sweetheart sent a bundle of your cherished letters, wrapped in a bow, to your mother and wrote “I know I want to forget as soon as I am able, everything – and so I am sending you the few letters I had saved from those Bill sent me from England.  I hope that you would rather have them, than not … perhaps they will make you glad to have something more – to know something else of Bill’s life in England … rather than rake up memories you are trying to forget. For while I want to forget, I feel so sure that you will want to remember.”

Your mother never gave up hope that you would return one day.

Wendling & Josephine Anglin and sons Bill and Tom (1940)

Bill, Wendling  (the stock broker), Josephine, Tom and family dog (1940).

The abundant number of photos found with the letters in these boxes show your 27 years filled with family times – gatherings, annual trips, formal portraits, a few pets and a full life.

You will not be forgotten.

Lovingly,

Your niece Lucy

Note:

http://www.aircrewremembered.com/richmond-bruce.html

William Sherron Anglin was an Air/Gunner and Warrants Officer II with the 429 Squadron flying in a Wellington X bomber, Serial no. HZ471.

Reason for Loss:

Took off from R.A.F. East Moor, North Yorkshire at 22.36 hrs joining 719 aircraft attacking the town of Wuppertal, the home of the Goldchmitt firm which produced Tego-Film, a wood adhesive used in the production of the HE162 and TA154 (aircraft).  Around 1000 acres was destroyed in the firestorm that followed – 211 industrial buildings and nearly 4,000 houses were totally destroyed. A figure of 3,400 fatalities on the ground has been recorded. Bomber command did not escape lightly on this operation losing some 36 aircraft.

It is thought “probable” that HZ471 was shot down by Lt. Rolf Bussmann, flying out of Venlo airfield, and attacking this Wellington at 3,700 meters with the aircraft falling into the sea off Vlissingen.

429 Squadron possible loss area

[1] https://wiki2.org/en/Runnymede as at November 19, 2017

[2] https://www.rosicrucian.org/ as at November 19, 2017.

Genealogy

Dad’s Favourite Christmas Story

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2016-SOLP-Christmas-decorations-11.1-450x348

My Dad always took great delight in regaling us with his favourite Christmas story. It was a story from my mother’s youth, and he had not yet met my mother when it happened, but he enjoyed recounting it every year and we never tired of hearing it.

My Mom came from a family of nine children. She grew up in Sudbury, Ontario, and the story took place in her family home on Christmas Eve of 1924, when she was 15 years old.

Her older brother, my Uncle Eugene, had come home safely from World War I and had married a young widow, Della Sinnett, from Arnprior, Ontario. When their son, Frankie, was born at the end of 1921, there was great joy.

Unfortunately, the happy occasion was short-lived. In spring of 1923, when Della was expecting their second child, she succumbed to septicemia.

Who would take care of young Frankie?

Frankie stayed with his grandparents. My grandmother was a warm, loving lady and she took care of the young toddler, with the help of her daughters still living at home.

On Christmas Eve of 1924, the family gathered and made their way to St. Anne’s Catholic Church for Midnight Mass, but Frankie did not go. Someone stayed home to take care of him. Who it was we never knew. That person must have dropped off to sleep but Frankie woke up. The little three-year-old, mesmerized and filled with curiosity, he made his way in to the parlour where all the presents were under the Christmas tree.

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I like to imagine him as, with great  gusto, he proceeded to open each one of them, scattering paper, ribbons, bows and boxes all over the room! You can imagine the chaos when the family returned from church expecting to sit at the large dining room table and enjoy a traditional French Canadian Réveillons, when families gathered after Midnight Mass. Tourtiére, the famous French Canadian meat pies were freshly baked for this special occasion, along with many other favourite dishes.

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All the family could do was to laugh and try to sort out the presents while some of the family members prepared the traditional Reveillons feast, one that our family kept for many years.

Eventually, Frankie’s father, Uncle Eugene, moved to Kirkland Lake, Ontario and remarried. He died in 1969 and is buried there. Frankie died at the age of 61 and is buried in Lasalle Cemetery in Sudbury, Ontario beside his mother, Della Sinnett and close to his Granny and Granpa Jodouin.

Notes:

You might want to visit the following website. Although they focus on Quebec, the Reveillons is traditional among French Canadians throughout the country,

http://www.greatbritishchefs.com/features/the-reveillon-christmas-canada

 

 

 

Genealogy, Scotland

Did they travel on the same ship?

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It has always bothered me that on the passenger lists of the S.S. Grampian, sailing from Glasgow to Quebec City, my grandfather, Thomas McHugh, was not listed with his wife, Elsie McHugh and their seven children.

My father was always clear that Thomas arrived ahead of his large family in the early 1900s. The plan was that Thomas would have time to find work and a place to live, and get settled in.

I first found my grandmother, Elsie McHugh and the seven children listed on the passenger list of the S.S. Grampian, leaving Glasgow and arriving in Quebec City. The year was 1912.  I knew that I also had to find out when Thomas arrived. I returned again and again to passenger lists for travel between Scotland and Canada in 1910 and 1911. No luck. It was only when I started to research my great-uncle, Edward McHugh that I discovered Thomas also on the passenger list of the S.S. Grampian in 1912, leaving Glasgow and arriving in Quebec City. Thomas was accompanied by his mother and two brothers.

Harrumph. It seemed as if Thomas didn’t leave ahead of time. But why in the world were Elsie and the children not listed with Thomas? Were they separated because of the children? This didn’t make sense. Elsie would have needed all the help she could get. Little Adam was just three and his brother, Thomas was one year old.

I kept going back to these entries. There was something about them that bothered me. I looked up potential reasons to be separated on a ship. I looked up whether families would be divided for any reason in the list of passengers. No luck.

Also, I kept getting mixed up whether it was May or October 1912. I would look at my notes and if it said May, I realized that the date was October and I would change it. I would then go back later and change it back to May. Argh. I needed to get it right.

This week I decided to establish definitely whether Thomas came over to Canada first. Perhaps he came to Canada and then went back to Scotland for his mother, his brothers, his wife, and his children. This would make perfect sense. This would explain why my father was so sure that he came ahead of the family and all the evidence that I had said that he came over with his family.

Well, I could find no trace of Thomas on passenger lists of 1910 or 1911. He wouldn’t have come before 1910, I would think.  I did find him again on the passenger list of the S.S. Grampian, May 1912. And I found Elsie again. Wait a minute. October 1912! The penny dropped. They both travelled over on the S.S. Grampian but at different times of the year. I was so blinded by the name of the ship that I did not realize that even though they were on the same ship, they travelled on different dates.

While this was not a brick wall, it was certainly a puzzle for me. A puzzle of my own making. Once again, this reaffirms that, while primary genealogical research is important, it is also valuable to revisit assumptions, documents, and notes. Look and look again and again.  Most genealogists I know enthusiastically forge ahead and tend to neglect reviewing previous finds. I am no exception.

 

“Those of us already deep in the accumulation may also benefit from revisiting our past research.”

Brenda Dougall Merriman, Genealogical Standards of Evidence: A Guide for Family Historians

 

 

 

Genealogy

Our book “Beads in a Necklace” launches today!

I’m so excited. Our book comes home from the printer today and we’re planning a fun celebration of its existence tonight.

Here’s how we’ve described our creation on the backcover:

Book back cover photo

A Fun Collaboration

This work came to shape slowly over time. Lucy Anglin, Barb Angus, Marian Bulford, Janice Hamilton, Claire Lindell, Sandra McHugh, Dorothy Nixon, Mary Sutherland and I have been gathering monthly for five years. Together, we’ve learned how to craft our research into our ancestors into compelling literary non-fiction  that anyone might enjoy reading.

Late last year, we began speaking about the possibility of putting our favourite stories together into a book.

Today, our dream takes shape. In this work, you’ll meet several of our ancestors, including:

  • Fille du roi Anne Thomas, who married master carpenter Claude Jodoin in Montreal way back in 1666;
  • Felicité Poulin, 18th-century career woman, Ursuline nun and matchmaker;
  • Stanley Bagg, Massachusetts-born merchant who helped build the Lachine Canal in the 1820s;
  • Gospel singer Edward McHugh, whose 1910-period debut at the Montreal Hunt Club launched an international career; and
  • William Anglin, respected Victorian-era Kingston, Ontario surgeon and wannabe thought-reader.

For more information, refer to our book webpage.

Official Book Launch Tonight

Tonight from 7 until 9 p.m., we’ll be celebrating our creation in the hall of the St. John the Baptist Church, 233 St. Claire Street in Pointe-Claire. If you’re in Montreal, feel free to join us for wine, cheese, sandwiches, home-made treats and a couple of readings from the book.

We’ve also put together some photographs and heritage items for a display to highlight some of the stories.

A self-published limited edition paperback will be on sale for $20.

To Get Your Copy

It’s on sale for $20 in Montreal at

  • Livres Presque 9/Nearly New Books, 5885 Sherbrooke O; Montreal, Quebec H4A 1X6, (514)482-7323;
  • Coles, 366 Avenue Dorval, Dorval, QC H9S 3H8;
  • Clio, Plaza Point-Claire, 215 N. St. Jean, Pointe-Claire, Quebec H9R 3J1; and
  • May’s Studio, 459 Main Road, Hudson, Quebec.

The Ontario Genealogical Society has a digital copy available for $3.80.

An Amazon Kindle edition is also available for $3.89.

Hope you enjoy reading our work as much as we enjoyed writing it. I’d love to hear your comments below.

Genealogy

Etiennette Alton’s Verdun Years

Imagine my surprise to discover that my ancestors lived in my neighbourhood more than three hundred years ago.

At that time, Verdun’s Crawford Park was a very different place than it is today. Today, the neighbourhood encompasses about 1000 people in about 20 city blocks between the St. Lawrence River to the aquaduct in the north and between the Douglas Research Institute and the borough of LaSalle to the west. In 2006, more than 20,000 people lived here.

When my ancestor Étiennette Alton lived here, however, the neighbourhood was known as the fief de Verdun and it extended further north through Angrignon Park and the St. Jacques Escarpment.

She moved here after marrying her second husband, Barthélémy Vinet dit La Reinte on Monday, June 13, 1672. She already had three sons and a daughter from her first marriage. Her fifth child, their first son, Martin was born a little later the same year.

The family were among 83 families in the neighbourhood, according to the 1681 census.

The census reads :

« Barthelemy Vinet 48; Etiennet Alton, sa femme 42; enfants : Pierre 20, Jean 16, Louis 14, Marie 11, Martin 9, Gunégonde 7, Madeleine 6, Guillaume 3; 3 fusils; 18 bêtes à cornes; 20 arpents en valeur. »

The couple had five more children in the following fifteen years. They could afford them. Her husband worked for Sieur Jean-Baptiste Migeon de Branssat, an attorney and later judge with the manor of Montréal.

At that time most men—including Vinet, Migeon, and Montreal Governor Francois-Marie Perrot—earned significant portions of their income from hunting and selling furs. The market for furs, however, was diminishing.

In 1676, a new law forced fur traders to obtain licences, although few bothered to do so.

A year later, Migeon was appointed judge and asked to create a public inquiry into the fur trade industry. During that inquiry, he discovered that most elite, including the Governor himself, were illegally involved in the fur trade. The Governor responded by accusing Migeon of breaking the same laws and putting him under house arrest to halt the inquiry before its results could be known.

Genealogy

“Piccole Donne” and Why We Write Family Stories

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margMcleod
Margaret McLeod Nicholson, born 1853 in Richmond, Quebec. During the US Civil War she, too, would have been a ‘little woman.’

 

The first novel I ever read was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.  I was ten or eleven years old.  I didn’t read the book in school. My mother bought it for me along with a number of Deluxe Junior Classics published by the Doubleday Company.

I can remember the look of the book: grey with a yellow spine and sketches of the four March girls in blue ink embossed on the cover. I can remember the feel of the book: the pages thick and slightly hairy, typical of Book-of-the-Month Club editions. I can remember the smell of the book: inky and acidy. It was a new book, after all. And I especially recall the thrill of opening the book, which I understood was my rite of passage into the brave new world of grown-up reading.

I loved Little Women. It changed my life as great books often do, but I can’t say the plot stayed with me. It was only recently, when I decided to learn Italian by listening to ‘easier’ audio books, that I became re-acquainted with Louisa May Alcott’s American classic. Over and over again, I listened to each delightful chapter, first in English, then in French, then in Italian. “Piccole Donne”. Superbo in any language.

It is understood that Louisa May Alcott used her own Massachusetts family as a model for Little Women, a work of fiction.  Authors often lean on real-life characters for inspiration. Who wants to read about unrealistic characters?

1967
Me at 11 with Mickey Finn, the Jr. Deluxe Big Red and very badly cut bangs courtesy of my mom.

The authors at Genealogy Ensemble are publishing a book of authentic short stories about their ancestors, Beads in a Necklace: Family Stories from Genealogy Ensemble. These stories, many of which saw first light on this blog, will soon be available in a glossy hold-in-your-hands hardcopy format.

Beads in a Necklace also includes personal essays by the nine authors, explaining how each of us was inspired to begin the long, difficult and rewarding journey of writing down our family stories.

Claire Lindell was surfing the Net, way back in its early days, when she came upon an article about her father, a pioneer in the Canadian mining industry.

Barb Angus was inspired by missed opportunities and a book called The Wolfe Pack by a McGill University author, Dr. Mildred Burns.

Lucy Anglin lost her mother very early in life and feels that her stories help honour her memory.

Janice Hamilton grew up with oil paintings of her ancestors on the walls around her.

Tracey Arial first wrote about genealogy for a classroom exercise; not a great experience, but one she looks back on with amusement.

Marian Bulford immigrated to Canada from Great Britain in 1978, but it’s her English sea-side roots that move her to write.

Mary Sutherland was inspired by her father once saying, “Find your way home,” and by some fine family heirlooms.

Sandra McHugh was inspired by her ‘two solitudes’ marriage and her Greek husband’s very different kind of family.

I myself got my start when I found 300 family letters from the 1910 period that had belonged to my husband’s ancestors from Richmond, Quebec.  I read them out loud to a good friend who said, “Ick. They sound so old-fashioned.”

But I saw something else in these letters. I saw the story of a strong matriarch and her very spirited young daughters, who had known much better financial times but were making the best it.

I saw women who were on their own, in their fine house in the good part of town, because their men-folk were far away.

I saw proud, independent women who sometimes relied on the kindness of a well-off, gentlemanly neighbour to drive them to the post office or to shovel out their walk in winter.

It was the plot of Little Women, but with characters from real-life closely related to my husband and my very own children! How could I possibly resist that?

 

Beads in a Necklace: family stories from Genealogy Ensemble will be launched in mid-November. A limited number of hard copies will be available for purchase, locally. 

Check back with http://www.genealogyensemble.com to find out how to buy one of these rare first editions.  An e-book  version will be available at launch, as well, with print-on-demand capability by Christmas.

 

pagefromCanadthenandnow

The chapter on the Laurier Era from Canada Then and Now, my fifth grade history textbook. I read this, too, back in the day, but I was not impressed.  This was a typical textbook, filled with sturdy but dull prose and employing a narrative style devoid of colour and controversy. This chapter, about a most pivotal time in history, made no mention of suffragettes and restless young women in harem pants.  In fact, there are only two women in the entire textbook: Marguerite Bourgeoys and Jeanne Mance, worthy women, no question, but only two? Beads in a Necklace showcases many of our worthy women ancestors. It’s terrific social history.

Working together to help genealogists discover their ancestors