Seasons Greetings

 

Best wishes for a 

Happy Holiday

Season

Connections to Scottish clans

 

                                                                 Houses in Portree, Isle of Skye, Scotland

Last week I wrote about one set of Scottish immigrants that I have researched but those were not my ancestors. One of my own family lines does go back to Scotland though. I have connections to the Highlands and Islands, specifically to Islay and Skye. As I know of that link in my family tree, at one point I signed up to receive emails from the Society of Highland & Island History. They hold webinars and I never know when they might show something of interest. This past week there was a webinar about Y Chromosome Testing and the presenter was Alasdair F. Macdonald.

The Highlands with their clan system are an interesting place to pursue Y DNA testing. There are so many stories handed down about clan linages and the clan system still exists in the present day. Finding documentation to corroborate the stories can be tricky though, as Alasdair told us in the webinar. He has been doing DNA research for a long time as he was one of the contributors to Tracing Your Ancestors Using DNA: A Guide for Family Historians. The book was originally published in 2019 but a new edition is about to come out.

One of the clans he spoke about was the Mathesons. I sat up and took notice then as that was the surname of my 3 x great grandfather, Kenneth Matheson, who immigrated from Skye to Prince Edward Island and then to Upper Canada. Apparently there are two main branches of the Matheson family, one from Shinness and one from Lochalsh. That last place name sounded familiar. It's where the bridge now goes from the mainland to Skye so I would have passed through it on my visit to the island.

Apparently, according to the presentation, there is also a connection between the Mathesons and the Rosses. That also piqued my interest as Kenneth Matheson was married to Ann Ross. Maybe there were ongoing connections between the families over the centuries as well. Of course, now I'm starting to dig out the information I have on my Scottish families. We'll see how far I get with that. 

A Tale of Scottish Immigrants in the Maritimes

 

                                                                                 Brass of priest (1540) Thaxted

I sign up for a lot of webinars related to my areas of research. That's probably part of the reason that I get distracted from whatever genealogical path I've been exploring. A recent talk put on by the Scottish SIG of the Ontario Genealogical Society caught my eye as it had the title, Scots in the Maritimes. I have Scottish lines of research and some of those families ended up in the Maritimes, so I signed up.

The speaker, Peggy Homans Chapman, presented a comprehensive view of records available about Scottish migrants in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and PEI. I already knew a lot of the information she covered, like the wonderful books by Lucille Campey, but she mentioned some different and new to me items and databases that I want to explore.

One of the themes of her presentation about where the Scots settled showed that religion had a role to play in who settled where. I had found that in my own research. My ears perked up when she talked about the story of a priest who met boats coming in to Pictou to deter the Catholic Scots from putting down roots there. She thought it was just an old story but I was able to put the names of the priest, MacEachern, in the chat because I came upon that information in a story I covered in this blog.

The story I had about the priest differed somewhat as MacEachern wasn't meeting the newcomers, he advised people already settled in Pictou to move to Antigonish, where the Catholics had settled. this was part of the story I covered when I wrote about John Brack McNeil back in 2020. His story started with the December 14, 2019 blog post Loyalist or just loyal   and continued for six more blog posts in 2020 commencing with The Search for John McNeil. It was interesting to be reminded of this story and the research I had done in those areas of Nova Scotia. Now I'll have to see if I can find some similar information on my Scots who went to PEI.

Sources:

Information about Angus Bernard MacEachern the priest from PEI who came to Pictou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Bernard_MacEachern 

Blog posts related to the story:

Loyalist or just loyal? - December 14, 2019 https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2019/12/loyalist-or-just-loyal.html

 The Search for John McNeil - January 11, 2020 https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-search-for-john-mcneil.html

Other related blog posts:        The Riddle of the Three John McNeils January 18, 2020

Putting Down Roots by Chance January 25, 2020

The Power of Religion February 1, 2020

Notable in Malignant Cove February 8, 2020

A Will Adds Dates to the Timeline February 15, 2020

Scottish Names February 22, 2020

Images:

By Poliphilo - Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81903245

A second look at a military record

 

                                                                  The book and my grandfather's military record

Reading is one of the joys of my life. I read widely and sometimes what I read provides inspiration for my family history research. This time that spark was provided by a book about a man who served in the Great War, aka WWI. That man was Harry Palin who was living in New Zealand when he joined the armed forces. Those troops were some of the "lucky" participants at Gallipoli.

The book gave a narrative account of that conflict and named the British ships that were supporting the troops in that theatre of war. My paternal grandfather was assigned to a ship in that war and I remembered someone telling me that he was on Lemnos and Mykonos. Was he also involved in the Gallipoli Campaign?

I pulled out my grandfather's naval record and took a closer look. According to the record, he joined up in June of 1917 and was assigned to the President II and served in Chingford. 1917 was too late for the Gallipoli campaign and besides, the President II was parked in different places on the Thames, such as Chingford, and used as an accounting base. Chingford was also the site of a Royal Naval Air Service airfield was explains the note on his record which read ENGT TO R.A.F. A further search into conscription in WWI, explained his late entry into the fighting forces. It wasn't until May of 2016 that married men were subject to the draft.

So, although checking to see if my grandfather was involved in the Gallipoli campaign turned up negative results, I still learned a lot about the records I already had on hand. They are still confusing though, as they also record that he received the Eastern Medal. Was the family lore placing him on Lemnos and Mykonos correct? It look like I have more searching to do.

Sources:

Imperial War Museums – Lives of the First World War https://livesofthefirstworldwar.iwm.org.uk/story/28229 

Palin, Michael Great-Uncle Harry: A Tale of War and Empire, Random House Canada, Toronto, 2023

UK Parliament – Conscription: the First World War https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/yourcountry/overview/conscription/ 

Adding background to family history with a book

                                                        Sources for London ancestors, a book and a death certificate

An online group of family history writers that I belong to sometimes reads a book to see how other writers have treated their historic subjects. This time the book was The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper. In it the author, Hallie Rubenhold, wrote about the lives of Jack the Ripper's victims, showing the reality of those lives as opposed to the lore passed down by Ripperologists through the ages.

Almost right away after the murders in 1888, a whole mythology sprang up around the deaths and the perpetrator. The emphasis was on the killer, Jack, and the mystery of his identity. The victims became throw away women, branded prostitutes by the press and dismissed as such by those whose interest was in the killer's mysterious identity.

Because of my interest in the East End of London in my research, I have read some of the many books about Jack the Ripper. They often contain details about the area where my family lived and the social life of the times that is hard to find elsewhere. I welcomed Robenhold's book and, when I took it off the shelf, I could see that my copy bristled with many bookmarks marking the places that had information that I wanted to look into further.

Jack terrorized the streets of the East End in 1888, a few years after the widow, Sarah Minster Cavanagh, had passed. So the details in the book would concern the generation after her. But when I leafed through the book again I came upon a chapter with the title "Demon Drink" and much of it is about the effect of alcohol on women. On my family tree a few women from that era and general location succumbed to that particular demon. Looks like it's time to read that chapter again and to look at whatever other items of interest I flagged in the book on my first read through.

 

Sources:

Britannica article about Jack the Ripper https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jack-the-Ripper 

 

A neglected family branch

 

                                                               Molly's Reach in Gibsons on the Sunshine Coast

I like to write but finding inspiration about what to write about can sometimes be the hardest part. This week I was busy with a project which took way long than I thought it was going to. Don't they always? Anyway the result was that I finally finished the long project on the day that an article deadline came up. On top of that there was my blog post which I usually try to post on Friday, the day before it goes live.

The fact that my article was for the BCGS journal helps though, because once I thought of what I could write for that, it usually provides a similar topic to write about here. And it did. When writing about a recent trip to the Sunshine Coast of BC, I realized that I have neglected a whole family of relatives on my family tree. Some of them ended up living on the Sunshine Coast and I actually met them in person once, but that was when I was just lightly interested in family history in that time before it took over so many of my waking hours. 

Being a novice was my excuse then but it won't wash now. But thinking about those family connections and how I have neglected them, makes me realize they are prime candidates to put in my plan for when I next visit the FamilySearch Library. I better start that plan before something else comes up. 

For Remembrance Day

 

                                  On Remembrance Day

                      we remember those who have fought

                  in our more recent wars. It is good to honour

            them for their service but it must be remembered that

        war affects more than those in the various military services.

    War can and does affect also those who live through the conflict 

                         as well as those who come later.