Picturing the past

 

                          Google map image of Puslinch where a new chapter in the life of Alexander Mathison began

I've been researching my family's history for the better part of three, almost four, decades now and I've been able to take a few of my family lines far back in time. But the thing that I'm most interested in, the treasure hunt that has me going down rabbit hole after rabbit hole, is the search for stories. My ancestors were a fascinating lot, at least to my eyes. They were there when history unfolded and were a part of social movements both intellectually and physically, as in moving from place to place. Moves that encompassed villages, towns, countries and sometimes vast oceans and endless lands on continents that were new to them. 

While uncovering some of those ancestral stories, I've also sought to hone my writing skills. To that end, I've attended various webinars put on by The Family History Writing Studio. The latest session was held this week. The students were led through a session on how to develop "Cinematic Scenes". It was a very effect session. It also made me realize that I needed a better visual of my work in progress to be able to convey the cinematic version. I haven't developed the story of Alexander Matheson, my 2x great-granduncle, very far but it's one that I find fascinating. Imagine losing track of your family for 40 years - but hey, there was no internet back then, not even any phones or phone books to help track people down. I've realized that my starting scene needs to bring 1850s Puslinch, Ontario to life for the reader. Presently that's difficult as I don't know what the area looked like so now I'm on the hunt for some views of Puslinch at that time. I need to picture it myself to be able to bring it to life for the reader. 

Filing in family information on Jersey

 

                                                                    Google map of the Island of Jersey

There are different venues to search for family information depending on where your ancestors were living. Searching for family information on Jersey is a bit of a mixed bag. I was able to find my ancestor on the 1881 census for the Channel Islands through Ancestry. It's written in English. FindMyPast also has various census years which can be found under "Channel Islands, other Britain and Ireland". I also found an earlier census for 1788 for St Lawrence Parish Inhabitants on FMP, not that I had any ancestors that I know of living on Jersey at that time.

I was unable to find the death of either William Chubb in 1877 or his son, William John Stainer Chubb, in 1878 at FindMyPast or Ancestry. Church of England records for the major life events appear to be available on both of the major genealogy sites. For information on your nonconformist ancestors it's best to check out https://catalogue.jerseyheritage.org/ . So far I've obtained information about the burials of Chubb, father and son, in St Helier's General Cemetery. The entries are very sketchy containing the ages of the deceased, the date they were interred and by whom. They are also in French.

The lack of information on these burial records makes me question whether it would add anything to my knowledge if I obtained the official marriage record of William S Chambers and Sarah Ann Conway Chubb. Newspapers seem to be a better bet for finding information as I found an article in the Jersey Independent and Daily Telegraph for March 14, 1885 about the defective drainage on Mrs. Chubb's shop on Queen Street in St Helier.

Sources:

FindMyPast Newspaper collections

 

https://catalogue.jerseyheritage.org/

An elusive marriage record

 

                                                                             A modern take on newspapers

I've recently started reading a book set in Jersey, Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis. It's for an online book club and reminds me of the surprising family links that I've found to the island. It also reminds me of another brick wall that I encountered. I had searched for the marriage of William S Chambers and Sarah Ann Chubb for years. Their son, my grandfather, was born in Harborne, County Stafford in 1884, but they hadn't been married in the same place. Nor could I find a marriage record in any place that I had traced either of my great grandparents to before they were married. Many checks of the GRO registers turned up nothing.

Maybe they hadn't married at all or, like other couples in my family, had been married to someone else but left them to cohabit with each other. Divorce at that time was way beyond a working couple's reach. There was also the possibility they'd married after my grandfather's birth. But nothing showed up in the GRO records after 1884 either.

Then one day I checked out the newspapers on FindMyPast. It was The Northern Mercury of Saturday, November 13, 1880 that carried the marriage announcement that I sought. William Strange Chambers of Nuneaton had married on October 28 in St. Heliers, Jersey. His bride was Sarah Ann Conway the eldest daughter of the late Wm Chubb, of St. Heliers. So if a marriage record proves elusive, it just might help to trawl newspapers online. 

Sources:

FindMyPast Newspaper collections

Finding Brick Walls

 

I am a member of several genealogy groups, one large society and a smaller, more intimate one where participation is encouraged. Our meeting will be soon but the topic of our get together has been emailed to us already. We're going to be discussing brick walls and any ways that we've tried to get around them.

I've been going family history research for decades and have run into my fair share of snags in that time but once I've found a way around them, it's hard to retain the details of what I was seeking and how I found it in the end. I do have some current conundrums that I'd like to solve though so maybe I can mention those.

Many of my family lines ended up in London, a place from which it is very difficult to figure out a person's or family's origins. Although I did trace my Argent family back to Halstead, Essex but how I figured that out has been lost along the way. I do have a clear recollection of finding where the Arments hailed from. Yes, the two families were joined by matrimony in 1840 when James Arment married Ellen Argent. James gave his father's name as Thomas Arment, a carman. This occupation was to become more dubious when Thomas and his son Thomas were brought before the courts. The criminal records for the elder Thomas supplied a lot of detail about him and recorded that he came from Suffolk. That was how I found were the Arments had come from.

Then there were the brick walls in Canada and the US. Most of them hinge around the Matheson family. I'd really like to find something to confirm my great grandmother's birth to Catherine Matheson and Samuel Tripp but the only information I have comes from their daughter's marriage certificate which places her birth in Bobcaygeon, Ontario before 1869. I have been looking for a birth record for a long, long time. Confirmation of Catherine's death would also help and might even provide a clue as to who was the mother of Samuel Tripp's second daughter. Was the mother Catherine or his second wife, Mary?

Another brick wall for this family involved Alexander Matheson, the man who left home then looked for his family for 40 years. When he died in 1920 in South Dakota various people were mentioned in his obituary. I'd like to be able to identify and track these people in order to determine if and how they were related to Alexander. Just who were Mrs. J. Ruhe of Sioux Falls, S.D. and Mrs. R.L. Eagen of La Crosse, Wis who were named in his obituary? Mrs. Eagen has proven to be particularly elusive as I've tried tracking her through newspapers and directories but have had no luck so far. Looks like I do have a few brick walls to bring up at the meeting. 

Searching for further criminal records

 

                                            The first Arment family petition submitted after the trial of the two Thomases

It's almost unbelievable how many genealogy magazines I had stashed in boxes and stacks around the lower level of my place. Probably the smartest thing to do would be to take the stacks and recycle them all at once but it would pain me to do so remembering how much I spent on every single one of those imported magazines. While they are dated, they also prompt me to look at various records I haven't checked out in a while. A case in point was an article entitled "Victorian convict records go online". Of course this is not really news anymore because it appeared in the November 2010 edition of Who Do You Think You Are? magazine. 

I suspect that I didn't read about the newly available criminal records back in 2010 nor did I read the article before I wrote multiple posts about my own criminal ancestors back in 2018 which started with  https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2018/08/ and followed the trials of the two Thomas Arments, father and son, and their co-accused, Henry Samuel Chester. Some of my prized documents from this research are the petitions that family members wrote regarding the accused, the first from the elder Thomas's wife and the rest from the younger Thomas. I hunted those documents down in The National Archives at Kew.

The gist of the petitions allowed me to pinpoint the death of the elder Thomas. But when I read the words of the younger Thomas (if indeed he was the actual author of the petitions sent in his name. Were there clerks/lawyers who edited and wrote out the words of the inmates?) Whoever wrote the petitions it wasn't clear from the text if the young criminal was single or married. After reading the article in WDYTYA magazine, I searched the "UK, Prison Commission Records, 1770-1951" on Ancestry for Thos Arment. In the records for Pentonville Prison > Register of Prisoners > 1849-1850 I was able to find the entry for Thos Arment age 28 which included the information that he was married and gave his wife's name as Harriet and included her address. Now I have another person to track down.

Sources:

Ancestry, “UK, Prison Commission Records, 1770-1951”

The National Archives, Kew – Registers of criminal petitions

Who Do You Think You Are? On the Record: “Victorian convict records go online”  

Reminded of my search for a Chelsea Pensioner

 

                                                  The article that caught my eye in "Your Family History" magazine

I'm still going through my backlog of genealogy magazines. Much of the news and many of the links are way out of date but some are still relevant like the article I found in the May 2010 Your Family History magazine. The article was about the release of a new collection (at that time) of soldiers' records on Find My Past, the Chelsea Pensioners. It reminded me of the search I had done looking for the father of Benjamin Cavannaugh (sp), my 3 x great grandfather. I was looking for another Benjamin with the same or similar last name among those who had received a pension for military service. There were in pensioners as well as out pensioners. But I didn't get as far with those records by searching Find My Past as the magazine article reported was possible. I did, however, search for Chelsea Pensioners on FamilySearch by checking the catalogue for the subject Chelsea which brought up "united kingdom Chelsea pensioner's service records". I came up with some possible matches but I'll need to get to an affiliate LDS library to see the original documents from which the index was made. That was my search for army men but perhaps he was more of a seagoing type. I found a distinct possibility at Find My Past in the records of "British Royal Navy & Royal Marines Service and Pension Records, 1704-1939". 

But then I started thinking of why I was looking for a military Benjamin Cavanaugh as the father of my known 3 x great grandfather. I had no record of birth for my known relative. No way to know that his father was named Benjamin, only an educated guess that the name was passed down as my 3 x great grandfather named his own son Benjamin. Maybe it was time to shelve this research and work back from what I had already proved to my own satisfaction on this family line. 

Sources:

FamilySearch, “United Kingdom Chelsea Pensioner’s Service Records”

FindMyPast “British Royal Navy & Royal Marines Service and Pension Records, 1704-1939”

Your Family History “Genealogy News Agenda” Chelsea Pensioners Online,  May 2010

Distracted by a match during a DNA webinar

 

                                                                       A snippet from the Welch part of my family tree

I was watching a DNA webinar the other day while idly checking out my DNA matches on Ancestry. Dual screens provide plenty of distractions, sometimes a good thing but not always a great aid to retention for the information originally tuned into. On that occasion, my attention was definitely divided and became more so when I found a new-to-me cousin match. It was high, 179 cm and predicted to be a half 2nd cousin. The match list indicated that my match had a public linked tree but that's not what showed up when I clicked through. It showed one profile picture with private written beside it. That's still what I saw when I clicked through on "view full tree". However, there were two profile pictures on the bottom left of the mostly blank screen and when I clicked on the leftmost of those pictures the actual family tree showed up.

Good thing that it did because I could see right away that my link with my match was through the Welch family, the family of my paternal grandmother. One of the Welch names on the match's tree was even familiar and yes, Benjamin W. Welch showed up in my family connections as well. Then I noticed a complication because Benjamin W. Welch, my match's link to the family, married a woman with the last name of Welch. That might complicate the amount of DNA between me and my match. It also reminded me of a strange connection I found when looking at the military records for one of my George Welches. George wasn't the only Welch listed and I wondered at the time if there was a link between the two Welch names in that military list. I'm not sure if I ever wrote anything about the possible connection between those two recruits or if I explored the possible link further. So I now have another intriguing thing to check out and then there is my DNA match to explore further as well. It never ends, does it?