Genealogy, Quebec

Notary Pierre Panet

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Pierre Panet de Méru was an important notary in Montreal between 1754 and 1778, a period that included the years immediately after New France was conquered and transitioned into a British colony. If your ancestors lived in Montreal during this period, Panet may have drawn up wills for them, or helped them purchase property or make business agreements.

The son of Jean-Nicolas Panet and Madeleine Françoise Foucher, he was born in Paris in 1731. He moved to New France in 1746 and settled in the capital city of Quebec, where his brother Jean-Claude Panet served as a notary from 1744 to 1775. Panet married Marie-Anne Trefflé-Rottot in Quebec City on October 2, 1754, and he was appointed a notary in the jurisdiction of Montreal two months later.

Following the British victory in 1759 at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City and the surrender of Montreal to the British in 1760, many notaries, court clerks and other notables left New France and returned to Europe. Panet was not one of them. From the beginning of the British regime, he learned to live and work with the new authorities.

He was one of the first notaries in Montreal to work closely with the English-speaking merchants, civil servants, military officers and soldiers who now resided in the region, assisting them with marriage contracts, wills (testaments), after-death inventories, guardianships, property transactions and business agreements.

In addition to being a notary, Panet served as a judge and a justice of the peace. He died June 15, 1804. For more details of his life, see http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/panet_pierre_5F.html

As of December, 2016, the fonds (collections) of notarial acts of Pierre Panet de Méru are not available in any online databases, nor are they on microfilm at the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ). These notarial acts are only available from Parchemin, a database of notarial acts of Québec owned by Archiv-Histo, a division of the Chambre des notaires du Québec.

The notarial acts acts written by Pierre Panet can be found in the Parchemin collection under Cote # 06010308 or under Saphir # 6009308 (1755-1778). See https://www.archiv-histo.com/EN/.

You can consult the Parchemin database at the BAnQ in Montreal and several other locations in Quebec, and at some public libraries elsewhere.

BAnQ Montréal – Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec  535, avenue Viger Est, Montréal, QC H2L 2P3   – Tel : 514-873-1100 #4 or 1-800-363-9028 –   email : archives.montreal@banq.qc.ca

For more information on notarial records see the following links:

http://books.openedition.org/pur/4596?lang=en

http://www.fichierorigine.com/recherche?numero=243137

https://www.archiv-histo.com/assets/publications/1989-Parchemin-Methode_SITE.pdf

https://archiv-histo.com/assets/publications/2015-Notaires-liste-Chrono-Tablo.pdf

http://bibnum2.banq.qc.ca/bna/notaires/fichiers/portail/html/liste.html

 

Genealogy, Ontario

Christina Sutherland Jaywalker

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On a November morning in 1920, Christina Sutherland was hit by a car. She was hurrying along King Street in Toronto and stepped out from between two wagons into the path of the vehicle. The driver, Joseph Stern, couldn’t stop in time and knocked her down. Extremely upset, he picked up her unconscious body, placed her in his car and rushed her to the Toronto General Hospital.

Christina died the next day of a fractured skull and brain concussion. The circumstance of Christina’s death, written up in the Toronto Star was the most noteworthy event in her life.

Mr Stern reported the accident to the Court Street police station. He wasn’t detained after he explained what had happened. Christina’s death was the third one in six days caused by a motor car.

As late as 1910 pedestrians still had the right of the road. The streets were busy with automobiles and horse drawn wagons but people crossed where ever they pleased, with hardly a look. Toronto police began directing traffic in 1918 as yielding the right of way at intersections didn’t work any more. By 1920 Toronto had a population of 500,000 and cars were becoming more and more popular. Police now claimed that most accidents were the fault of the pedestrians and jaywalking became a word.

Little else is known about Christina. The only mention of her is in her nephew William Harkness Sutherland’s diary and that too is about her death. “ Received a special delivery letter from Wilson this morning just as we were starting out to church giving news of Aunt Christina’s death.” There weren’t any photographs of her, she isn’t mentioned in any surviving family letters and the record of her birth hasn’t been found.

She was born in Ontario around 1854, the fourth child of William Sutherland and Elizabeth Mowat. They followed the Scottish naming pattern and so she was named for William’s mother. William purchased crown land in 1855 in Carrick, Bruce County, Ontario. The land had to be cleared, a house built and crops planted, so there was always a lot of work to be done as Christina grew up. All the Sutherland children went to S.S. #9 Carrick. The school, built of hand-hewn logs by the original settlers was opened in 1859. Parents had to supply half a cord of wood for each child attending. Christina continued to live at home at least until she was seventeen.

In 1881 she was living in Toronto and working as a domestic for William Johnston, his wife Mary and their two children. He was her aunt Jessie Sutherland’s brother. Some of Christina’s brothers had also moved to Toronto at this time, but she wasn’t living with any of them.

She wasn’t found on another census until 1911 when she was a lodger at 381 King St West. This appeared to be a boarding house owned by an Alice Dawson, who lived there with her daughter and grandchildren. There were ten lodgers on the census; four women and six men. Christina was listed as an operator at a factory, working 48 hours a week with a two week holiday and all for three hundred dollars a year. She must have had an independent streak as she worked to support herself and still wasn’t living with any family members.

She never married and was reported to be 66 at the time of her death. She was still living on King Street, although at number 391. There was contact with her family as it was her brother George Sutherland who was the informant of her death and her funeral was from her sister Isabella’s house.

Christina was buried in Mount Pleasant cemetery in a plot with her parents, two young nephews and a niece. Even there she didn’t leave a mark, as her name is not on the tombstone.

img_8707
Sutherland Tombstone Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto

Bibliography:

“Hit By Motor.” Toronto Star 4 Nov. 1920: n. Pg. 2 Print.

Toronto Star 6 Nov. 1920 Print.

Ontario Census, 1861,” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MQQ6-V4G : 8 November 2014), Cristenik Sutherland, Carrick, Bruce, Ontario, Canada; citing p. 4, line 18; Library and Archives Canada film number C-1010-1011, Public Archives, Toronto; FHL microfilm 349,251.

“Canada Census, 1871,” index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/M4QW-JX5 : accessed 30 Mar 2014), Christena Sutherland in household of Isabella Sutherland, Carrick, South Bruce, Ontario, Canada; citing p. 28, line 8; Library and Archives Canada film number C-9935, Public Archives, Ottawa, Ontario; FHL microfilm 4396334.

“Canada Census, 1881,” index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/MVFS-GNB : accessed 30 Mar 2014), Christina Sutherland in household of William Johnston, St-John’s Ward, Toronto (City), Ontario, Canada; citing p. 51; Library and Archives Canada film number C-13246, Public Archives, Ottawa, Ontario; FHL microfilm 1375882.

Canada Census 1911 Ontario, Toronto South, 38, Ward 4, page 16 Archives Canada.

Ontario Deaths, 1869-1937 and Overseas Deaths, 1939-1947, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JDT9-6H8 : 11 December 2014), Christina Sutherland, 05 Nov 1920; citing Toronto, York, Ontario, yr 1920 cn 8083, Archives of Ontario, Toronto; FHL microfilm 1,863,282.

Historical Walks through Carrick and Mildmay. Owen Sound, Ont.: Mildmay-Carrick Historical Society, 1989. 48-51. Print.

Plummer, Kevin. “Historicist: Those Vicious Devilish Machines.” N.p., 17 Jan. 2009. Web. 28 Feb. 2016.

Sutherland, William Harkness. Diary from January 1920 to December 1924. In possession of the author.

The story of Christina’s mother Elizabeth Mowat can be found at https://wordpress.com/post/genealogyensemble.com/3293

Genealogy, Military, Quebec

Finding British Regiments in Quebec, 1759-1760

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The 1759 Battle of the Plains of Abraham, in which General Wolfe’s British invasion force defeated General Montcalm’s defending army, is the most famous battle in Canadian history. After the British also conquered Montreal the following year, New France became history and a new British colony in Canada was born.

Thousands of people took part in these events. British historians say that the fleet that sailed up the St. Lawrence River in the spring of 1759 carried between 10,000 and 12,500 British sailors and soldiers, while the book Combattre pour la France en Amérique lists 7,450 French soldiers.

Finding out whether your ancestor fought in this campaign is not easy, but the PDF attached below, Finding British Regiments in Quebec, 1759-1760, may help you make a start. This compilation lists the British regiments that fought at Quebec City and Montreal, and it identifies the places British regiments were posted during the 1759-1760 campaign.

The Canadian government website of The National Battlefields Commission www.ccbn-nbc.gc.ca/en/ describes the historical context of the Seven Years War (also known as the French and Indian War), while the searchable page www.ccbn-nbc.gc.ca/en/history-heritage/battles-1759-1760/soldiers/ lists the names of 7,279 British soldiers and 4,079 French soldiers who took part.

Marcel Fournier and a staff of about 30 researchers in Montreal and France identified 7,450 soldiers and officers who fought for France in New France, plus the names of another 1374 soldiers. These findings were published in Combattre pour la France en Amérique by La Société généalogique canadienne-française, Montreal, 2009 (in French only).

If you are interested in the soldiers who fought in British regiments, you should consult the two-volume In Search of the “Forlorn Hope”: a Comprehensive Guide to Locating British Regiments & Their Records (1640-WWI) by John M. Kitzmiller II, published in Salt Lake City by Manuscript Publishing Foundation, 1988. You will probably find it in a large library. This book is the source of the information complied here.

These two volumes, plus a supplement, tell you which regiment was posted where from 1640 to 1914. The book does this in reverse: you need to look up the name of a place or campaign and the book identifies the regiments stationed there. The supplement can also help you with genealogical research you might want to conduct in British War Office Records. Once you find your ancestor’s name, you may need to visit the Public Record Office, Kew, near London.

Another book, My Ancestor was in the British Army, by Michael Watts and Christopher Watts, published by the Society of Genealogists in the U.K. in 2009, lists dozens of other archives in England, Wales and Scotland in which military records are kept, including the soldiers and mariners who fought during the Seven Years War in North America. You can also try searching military records on the subscription website Find My Past, www.findmypast.com.

finding-british-regiments-in-quebec-1759-1760

 

Genealogy, United States

An Ingenue, a Diary and the Goddess of Love

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.elizabethfair

Young Elizabeth Hardy Fair of Virginia. Daughter of Elizabeth Hardy, who was  sister to Mary ‘Pinky’ Hardy, United States General Douglas MacArthur’s mother.

As a schoolgirl back in the 1960’s before Expo 67 opened in Montreal, the only works of art I would have recognized were the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo.  I would have seen them, you see, on TV caricatured in advertisements for toothpaste or gloves, or on sophisticated Saturday morning cartoons like the Bugs Bunny Show.

Today, when I think of the Venus de Milo, I think of my husband’s Great Aunt  Elizabeth.

In 1910 Elizabeth Hardy Fair,a single society girl from Warrenton, Virginia, USA, was visiting the Continent for the first time. She was in her mid twenties.

The aging ingénue kept a written record in diary form and I have  it.  This European diary reveals that she started her trip in London (hated it, too gloomy) and then went on to Paris,  (loved it, so pretty).

Sorry to say, that’s about as deep as she gets.

Still, Elizabeth penned this one rather intriguing phrase from a visit to the Louvre:  “Saw Gaylord Clarke coming out of the Venus de Milo Room. Second time we have met since abroad.”

Now, if this were a scene from an E.M. Forster novel, and Miss Elizabeth Fair were a luminous young woman of head-strong character, this  ‘chance meeting’ at the Louvre would have been, no doubt, a significant turning point in the trajectory of  Miss Elizabeth’s life.

Just think of it.  In 1910, women such as Elizabeth covered themselves, neck to toes,  in starchy shirtwaists and princess skirts.

Now  contemplate  the Venus de Milo with her sumptuous drapery dipping below the upper curve of her perfect buttocks, and  then figure what it must have felt to be  a young man coming out of the Venus de Milo room  in that era–before the age of California beach volleyball. And then imagine what an opportune moment it was for the very eligible Miss Elizabeth Hardy Fair of Warrenton, Virginia.

As it is, this Mr. Clarke left for England the next day. End of their story.

Elizabeth soon returned to Warrenton, still very much single. Soon she would travel to Montreal (to visit cousins of her father) and find a husband in the form of one Fred Tofield,  banker.

She would live out her life in the posh Linton apartments on Sherbrooke Street West in ‘uptown’ Montreal, impressing her great nephews and nieces at every Sunday dinner with the button on­­­ the floor under the dining room table that she used to summon the staff with her foot.

Now, as someone who likes to write about ancestors, I like to think that everyone who ever lived is worthy of at least one book, or at least a good short story, but my husband’s Great Aunt Elizabeth may be an exception.

Elizabeth and Frank had no children and all she left behind  to her nephew is a tattered scrapbook with a few yellowed clippings like this one from a 1904 St. Louis Social Notes page: .

Miss Elizabeth Fair of Warrenton VA is the guest of Dr. and Mrs. John O’Fallon and is a beautiful girl who has been a great deal feted and admired around St. Louis. The 1904 World’s Fair!

The year before, in  1903, she attended her soon-to-be famous first cousin, Douglas MacArthur’s, West Point graduation.  She glued the dance card into her scrapbook. Mae had the first dance, a waltz; she had the third, a gavotte.

And then there’s this diary, this pedestrian record of her 1910 European experience visiting  all the usual landmarks, Hyde Park, Les Champs Elysees  and Le Bon Marche where she bought handkerchiefs and gloves. It is a diary exposing no wicked sense of humour, sharing no penetrating insights, and including not even one memorable phrase like, say,   “I shall return.”

Well, she did mention seeing suffragettes on the march in London.

Oh, she does pencil in this candid opinion on Da Vinci’s most famous work.

Went to the Louvre in the morning. Pictures most interesting. Mona Lisa was carefully inspected but it does not appeal to me in the least. After lunch, shopped and then drove through Parc Mont Claire. This park is lovely, abloom with flowers, statuary and strollers galore. Great place for lovers and babies… So, no surprise, in 1910, Elizabeth, had love and babies on the mind.

I wonder what was wrong, then, with this mysterious Mr. Clarke?  If things had gone well, it might have been a very good thing for one Frank Tofield. Family legend has it the well-to-do couple argued incessantly over the decades over her spendthrift ways.

(I found Frank’s signed Bible and it was filled with dozens of brittle, faded four leaf clovers.)

So, no book about Great Aunt Elizabeth Hardy Fair, by all definitions a most ordinary Southern Belle and first cousin to a genuine history-book legend. No short story either.

Just this short blog post.

The End.

Below: Elizabeth at her wedding: lavish tastes

elizabethfairmarriage

Genealogy, Great Britain

John Hunter, the Sapper

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By Sandra McHugh

As we all know, genealogical research is never-ending.  Facts need to be checked and re-checked.  Leads must be followed. New research beckons. Research on-line can also quickly add up to quite a lot of money.  So whenever a site offers free access, I try to take advantage of it as much as possible.

Last year, I found out that my great-grandfather, John Hunter, enlisted in World War I In November 1914 when he was in his late forties. I was actually looking for him as potentially serving in the Boer War because I could not find him in the 1901 census of Scotland. So it was quite a surprise to learn that he had enlisted in World War I.  I also learned that he was honourably discharged in March 1915 as he was then unfit for service. It would appear that he was injured.1 This year, when Find My Past offered free access to military records during the Remembrance Day weekend, another surprise was in store.  John Hunter reappeared in the military records in 1917. He had another service number, but it was cross-referenced to his old number.

This is a long introduction to explain why I find my great-grandfather’s service record so interesting.  It is because he was a Sapper. He came from a long line of miners in Scotland that can be traced back to the 1600s.  In World War I, he was part of the Royal Engineers. Their military history is long and honourable. Royal Engineers can claim over 900 years of service to the Crown, dating back to the era of William the Conqueror.2 As a Sapper in the Royal Engineers, his duties would have included “bridge-building, laying or clearing minefields, demolitions, field defences and general construction, as well as road and airfield construction and repair.”3 In civilian life, he was a coal miner, so it is a safe assumption that he was a tunneller. “Royal Engineer tunnelling companies were specialist units of the Corps of Royal Engineers within the British Army, formed to dig attacking tunnels under enemy lines during the First World War.”4 Mining and tunnelling were so important to the British offensive positions that they enlisted experienced coal miners, even those who would not normally have been recruited.  “The desperate need for skilled men saw notices requesting volunteer tunnellers posted in collieries, mineral mines and quarries across … Scotland.”5 This policy explains why John Hunter, working in a coal mine in Scotland, and already in his late forties, would have volunteered.

When John Hunter returned to active service in 1917, he was part of the newly formed 326th Quarrying Company.6 As part of this Quarrying Company, he would have received his training at Buxton and then sent to France, to work in the quarries around Marquise, near Calais.7

 

Sources:

1 John Hunter: Enlistment, Medal Card, Attestation for Short Service, Dependents, Territorial Force for Pension

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Engineers

3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapper

4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnelling_companies_of_the_Royal_Engineers#Request_and_proposal

5 Idem.

6 John Hunter: British Army Service Records 1914-1920 Transcription

7 http://mountsorrelarchive.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Mountsorrel-Quarrymen-and-Qu arry-Companies-RE.pdf

 

Genealogy, Loyalists, Quebec

Louis Chaboillez, Notary of Missisquoi Bay, 1787-1813

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If your Loyalist ancestors settled in the Missisquoi Bay area of Quebec, including towns such as Frelighsburg, Philipsburg, Saint-Armand and Pigeon Hill, the files of notary Louis Chaboillez might help you learn something about them.

This area, located just north of the Vermont border near Lake Champlain and the Richelieu and Pike Rivers, has a long history. The shore of Missisquoi Bay was once the site of an Abenaki village, but in the mid-1700s, the governor of New France divided the land into vast estates called seigneuries. Two of the seigneuries in this part of Quebec were the St. Armand and the Foucault Seigneuries. The first owner of the Saint-Armand seigneury was a Quebec City man who built ships for the King of France, and later, this seigneury was owned by a senior British colonial administrator.

Although New France became the British colony of Lower Canada in 1763, the seigneurial system of land ownership remained in effect until 1854. But long before 1854, many new settlers began to arrive in the area, and they wanted to own their own property.

Thousands of Loyalists who had been loyal to the British during the American Revolution left the United States for Canada in 1784. In the Missisquoi Bay area, they built homes, farms, flour mills, schools and churches. The government of Lower Canada had to find a way to sort out titles to properties in this and similar areas, and it gave this responsibility to certain notaries. The man who undertook this task in the Missisquoi Bay region was Louis Chaboillez. A notary who practiced between 1787 and 1813 in the Judicial District of Montreal, he was assigned to legalize the allotment of lands in the Eastern Townships of Quebec and in the Richelieu River Valley. He served families in the Eastern Townships until the arrival of notary Léon Lalanne in the spring of 1799.

You can find the collection of notarial acts written by Louis Chaboillez between 1787 and 1813 at the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) in downtown Montreal. The acts are on microfilm under Cote (Fonds) # CN60,S74 (1787-1813). The original fonds (collection) includes 14.67 metres of documents and one map. It appears that all documents written by Chaboillez were reproduced, with the exception of the map, on microfilms # 3291, 3292, 3293, 3294, 3295, 3296, 3297, 3298, 3299, 3300, 3301, 3302, 3303, 3304, 3305, 3306, 3307, 3380, 3496, 3497 and 3733. A few additional acts were reproduced on Cote (Fonds) #ZQ601.

As of October, 2016, the notarial acts of Louis Chaboillez were not available on the BAnQ’s website (http://bibnum2.banq.qc.ca/bna/notaires/).

The main Montreal branch of the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec is located at 535 avenue Viger Est, Montréal, QC H2L 2P3; Tel : 514-873-1100 #4 or 1-800-363-9028; email: archives.montreal@banq.qc.ca. The archives is open from Tuesday through Saturday every week; please verify for actual opening hours and legal holidays. See  www.banq.qc.ca/archives/entrez_archives/centres_archives/ca_montreal.html.

Louis Chaboillez’s notarial acts can also be found in the Parchemin collection, compiled by Archiv-Histo, under cote # 06010074 (1787-1813). The Parchemin collection is available at libraries throughout Canada and the United States. Archiv-Histo is an associate society of the Chambre des notaires du Québec.

The collection of notarial acts on Parchemin is the largest and most precise in Quebec. Not all of the documents produced by Quebec notaries between 1663 and 1900 are available at BAnQ repositories across the province. Parchemin tells you where notarial acts (minutiers) are kept, and which ones were destroyed by fire. To learn more, see https://www.archiv-histo.com/EN/index.php.

Compiled by Jacques Gagné  gagne.jacques@sympatico.ca  2016-10-16

 

Genealogy

Bomb Sites, School and Rebuilding A City

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My first memory as a child born at the end of WW2 was of playing mainly in our streets and neighbouring streets.  I was still very small, but I do remember the barrage balloons still flying high in the sky, floating gently on the breeze, and we would lie on the ground and watch them. It was many years before I realised what they actually were, which was a large balloon anchored to the ground by cables and often with netting suspended from them, serving as an obstacle to low-flying enemy aircraft.

We would play among bricks wood rubble, stones large slate roof tiles and broken water pipes, at a site at the end of our street. The reason for all the rubbish was because it was a bombed site. A house, like the ones in our street, had once stood there but no more. We had adventures at those bomb sites especially with the broken water pipes. What young child can resist playing with water? Especially if you can make dams and ponds with all the available stones bricks and wood. It was a sad day when the water was eventually turned off.

We also knew not to play in a bomb site with tape around it, as that likely contained an unexploded bomb. There were parks in Plymouth, but because of the massive damage caused by bombs dropping on this Royal Naval city, these had still not been cleared of the debris and were dangerous.

When I started school, at three years of age that same rubble was negotiated as we walked over it to get to the school building and again when I was 11 and starting at the ‘big school’ – the same one my mum had gone too – there were still signs of war damage.

Shortages of everything was acute. Years later we had no books in our school. The teacher had one for each subject, which he or she would read aloud to us and then pass it around. We had paper pen and ink, but no copybooks to write on, only a sheet of paper. Later, copy books were issued when I was about 14.

The school was OK, but all the teachers were old and not very interested in anything new and certainly, they did not catch my interest but I did love History, Geography and reading. English comprehension writing and spelling were favourites too. Sums were completely beyond me, and nobody cared to go over them again if I got lost, or to take the time to explain anything. There were about 45 children in each class so on reflection, there must not have been much time to explain everything again, but just to get the lesson over with.

Re-building our country was a long time coming It was the early 1950’s before the clearing of bomb sites even began, and I grew up in the 60’s watching our city being completely razed and then rebuilt.

Years later as English social history became an interest, I was to learn about the Anglo-American Loan that helped the rebuilding of our country. ¹ ²

¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-American_loan

“The Anglo-American Loan Agreement was a post World War II loan made to the United Kingdom by the United States on 15 July 1946. The loan was for $3.75 billion (US$57 billion in 2015) at a low 2% interest rate; Canada loaned an additional US$1.19 billion”

By the way, these loans were eventually paid off in full, in 2006!”

²BBC NEWS | UK | UK settles WWII debts to allies

“It is hard from a modern viewpoint to appreciate the astronomical costs and economic damage caused by this conflict. In 1945, Britain badly needed money to pay for reconstruction and also to import food for a nation worn down after years of rationing.  “In a nutshell, everything we got from America in World War II was free,” says economic historian Professor Mark Harrison, of Warwick University. “The loan was really to help Britain through the consequences of post-war adjustment, rather than the war itself. This position was different from World War I, where money was lent for the war effort itself”

Below are newspaper cuttings that my Gramps saved during the war and gave to me for a project I had to write for school about our ancient city. They show Plymouth before and after the blitz and were the kind of bombed sites I played in as a child.

These two photos show Plymouth City Centre before, in 1939 and after an enemy raid in 1942.

I find the captions very interesting. The one below reads: ‘The City Centre as it was, tomorrow we intend to post a photo of the same scene as it appears today after most of the buildings have been smashed by enemy action” img_20161102_0005img_20161102_0003

Below, 1942 St. Georges Baptist Church a before and after view

george-st-baptist-church-1942

Plymouth Shops before and after the Blitz

plymouth-shops-before-and-after-raids

Credit is given for photos from ‘The Plymouth Evening Herald’ Plymouth, Devon UK.

Genealogy

Cinderella Spinster

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Single women, or spinsters as they were once called, did not generally live independently or own a home in the 1800’s. So it was with my second great aunt, Annie Eleanor Kelly of Quebec City.

Until her father William Kelly died in 1902 at the age of eight-two 1. , the census records every ten years list Annie Kelly as living under his roof. 2. Family legend claims that she served as a missionary at one point but I have not found any supporting documentation.

Annie was one of five children born to William Kelly, a coal merchant, and his wife Jane Jamieson. Two brothers and a sister died young. Her remaining sibling Emma Jane married Peter Brodie. Annie’s mother lived until she was seventy-one and I presume it was Annie who cared for her parents during the last years of their lives. 3.

According to his will, William bequeathed to his married daughter Emma the property and house he owned on 1908 Valier Street. To his spinster daughter he bequeathed all his interests in the Quebec Coal Company, all the money in his bank accounts, and all his shares and stock. He also left to her all his household furniture, goods and effects. 4.

One wonders where William thought Annie would put these goods and effects when the house itself went to her sister. He appears to have simply followed the mores of the time. Emma’s husband must deal with the house. There is no evidence that Peter and Emma ever lived there.

The 1911 census finds Annie living with newlyweds Jean Brodie and James Angus, my grandparents. Where she lived from her father’s death to that date is not known. Annie was fifty-seven when she moved in and she stayed there until she died at seventy-four. Jean was the little niece William described in his will as having been taken into the care of her aunt. His sizable bequeath to Annie was “partly in remuneration of her long service in the family and towards me, and to help provide for a little niece she has taken in her care”. 5.

The term “long service” sounds like Annie may have been the family Cinderella.

There has been much speculation as to why Emma gave the care of her youngest daughter over to her sister. It is uncertain if Jean moved into her grandfather’s home to live with her aunt or if her aunt acted as a nanny in the Brodie home. The expression “taken in her care” would suggest the former. There were two other Brodie children, Carrie and Lawton, who appeared to have stayed with their parents.

Or was Emma actually Jean’s mother, despite the names Emma and Peter Brodie on Jean’s baptismal certificate? 6. It is not unheard of for the child of an unwed mother to be raised by a sister. Annie would have been twenty-six when Jean was born. Secretly I like to think she experienced love and romance sometime in her life.

Whatever the reason, clearly the bond between aunt and niece was as strong as any maternal bond.

Undoubtedly, much of the furniture, goods and effects left to Annie by her father were moved into her niece’s home. It may also have been Annie’s money that saved the Angus family when my grandfather’s bookstore went bankrupt during the Depression. As a child, I remember hearing about “Auntie Annie” but I was too young to remember any details. She would have been an integral part of my father’s childhood but my interest in her life came too late for me to ask for more information.

Today I look at some of the beautiful antiques I inherited from my grandmother and ponder their provenance. Might they have been the inheritance of Annie Kelly, spinster aunt?

 

 

Research Notes and Sources:

  • Burial Record, Mount Herman Cemetery, Quebec City, November 15, 1902 (on file with author)
  • Census records up to and including 1901, 1911, 1921, 1931, Library and Archives Canada
  • Kelly Family Bible (owned by author)
  • Last Will of William Kelly, 6th June, 1901. Louis Leclerc, Notary Public in the city of Quebec (on file with author)
  • Ibid
  • Baptismal certificate of Jane Jamieson Brodie – on file with author
  • For many years baptismal documents were used in lieu of birth certificates in Quebec. One could obtain a passport with a baptismal certificate. I did not obtain a birth certificate until 1992.

 

Genealogy

Profile Your Ancestors 4th Video Released

The fourth video in my Profile Your Ancestor series is now available.

This series is designed to encourage genealogists to write narrative stories about their research, such as those on the Genealogy Ensemble blog.

These kinds of stories:

  • deepen your research by encouraging you to look into tiny details you might not otherwise question;
  • are more widely read, even by people who don’t necessarily appreciate how important family history research can be;
  • are great ways to compile a book about your ancestors; and
  • can be fun ways to reach out to other family members.

This video summarizes the points I made in videos 1,  2, and 3 to get you writing such stories about your ancestors. It also invites anyone struggling to consider joining my upcoming profile your ancestors course. This is a great way to get some assistance getting started.

If you’ve got some stories written, I’d love to see links to them in the comments below.

Genealogy, Loyalists, Quebec

Notary Peter Lukin Sr. and the Christie Seigneuries

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Notary Peter Lukin Sr. helped the people of the Upper Richelieu River Valley and Eastern Townships of Quebec sort out land ownership issues between 1790 and 1814. Among his clients were Loyalists and other American-born settlers who had moved north of the border in search of farmland, as well as British, Scottish and Irish-born families.

Although New France was ceded to Britain in 1763 and became the Lower Canada colony, the old seigneurial land-ownership system of New France persisted until 1854. The seigneurial system began in the 1600s as a tool to control the settlement of New France. The king granted large areas of land to influential people including military officers and members of the aristocracy. The seigneurs then rented out farm lots to the habitants, or tenants. The habitants paid rent in cash or grain in exchange for land management assistance and various rights from the seigneurs. This system determined the way rural society in New France developed. When the British abolished the system in 1854, the colonial government had to introduce a means for the tenants to buy their farms.

One area in which the seigneurial system existed was in the Upper Richelieu Valley, an area with very fertile soil that attracted many settlers. The valley stretches next to the Richelieu River, which flows north out of Lake Champlain in northern Vermont and  empties into the St. Lawrence River near the town of Sorel. Lieutenant-Colonel Gabriel Christie acquired five seigneuries in this region following the fall of New France. The Christie Seigneuries remained in his family’s possession long after the seigneurial system was officially abolished.

In her book The Christie Seigneuries; Estate Management and Settlement in the Upper Richelieu Valley 1760-1854 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992), historian Françoise Noël wrote that seigneurial property rights were used to control access to land, timber mills and other resources in the area for many years.

On May 8, 1790, Peter Lukin Sr., a notary and Justice of the Peace in the Judicial District of Montreal, was appointed as one of several notaries assigned to legalize the allotment of lands in the Eastern Townships and the Richelieu River Valley, including the Christie Seigneuries.

The seigneurial system was never implemented in the Eastern Townships, which was settled in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

The notarial acts of Peter Lukin Sr., 1790-1814, Cote # CN601, S269, can be found on microfilm at the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) in Montreal. The BAnQ Montréal is located at 535 avenue Viger Est, Montréal, QC, H2L 2P3; Tel: 514-873-1100 plus option 4, plus option 1; Toll Free: 1-800-363-9028 plus option 4 plus 1; email: archives.montreal@banq.qc.ca

http://www.banq.qc.ca/archives/entrez_archives/centres_archives/

http://bibnum2.banq.qc.ca/bna/notaires/

A database of the Christie Seigneuries, “The Upper Richelieu Valley Database by Seigneury,” prepared by Françoise Noël can be found at http://faculty.nipissingu.ca/noel/files/2013/01/Christie_Seigneuries_by_Seigneury.pdf

Noël also identified three other early notaries who served in the region of the Christie Seigneuries within the Upper Richelieu River Valley:

Pierre de Mérut Panet – Notary, Judicial District of Montréal 1755-1778

Pierre Lanctot – Notary, Judicial District of Montréal 1809-1850

Pierre Besse – Notary – Judicial District of Richelieu 1811-1813

The Notarial Acts of Pierre de Mérut Panet likely address the British officers who were granted lands in the Upper Richelieu River Valley and perhaps also in the Lower Richelieu River Valley (the Sorel area) who fought with military leaders James Wolfe, Jeffery Amherst, James Murray, Charles Saunders, Thomas Gage, George Townshend and Robert Monckton at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759 and at the Conquest of Montreal in 1760.

Working together to help genealogists discover their ancestors