2019 in Review

2019 is almost done and we're heading into a new decade. Before the year is over, I would like to do a review of my blog posts for the last year. The posts were weekly throughout the year, these are a few of the highlights:

This year there were fewer stories told through a series of posts or in a general theme. In January I started with a series of posts about research and inspiration starting with A Fearful Social History
https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2019/01/a-fearful-social-history.html

February 2nd started two related posts about ancestral places with Buildings for Our Families
https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2019/02/buildings-for-our-families.html

In March there were two posts about research in Jersey in the Channel Islands starting with Searching for an Elusive Marriage
https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2019/03/searching-for-elusive-marriage.html

There were DNA related posts throughout the year but April 13 saw the beginning of two related DNA posts starting with
The McPhees - Scots or French? 
https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-mcphees-scots-or-french_13.html

May 4th - June 15th were my genealogy on the road posts from when I was in Europe. They started with Tenement Tours 
https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2019/05/tenement-tours.html
 

From June 22 on, the posts were inspired by my ongoing research, reading, webinar watching and thoughts about the travel I had done. The posts start with Questioning Family Tree Conventions 
https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2019/06/questioning-family-tree-conventions.html 

 

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to you all!

Loyalist or just loyal?

Revolutionary War Soldier

Maybe it was because my ancestor, Charles Tripp, had fought on the side of the patriots in the American War of Independence, but information in a recent webinar called Colonizing Canada caught my attention. The presenter called the members of the Highland Regiments recruited to fight against the Americans, Loyalists. It was my understanding that the Scots who were recruited may have been given land grants because they fought on the side of the crown but they were not Loyalists. In the definitions I had seen, a Loyalist was someone from the thirteen colonies who remained loyal to the crown during the conflict and subsequently settled in Canada.

I also found the information interesting because my personal research included someone who had obtained a land grant in Canada after having been a member of a Highland Regiment. Could he have been one of the 84th Regiment of Foot as was mentioned in the webinar? If so, maybe then, I had an interest in men who fought on both sides in the War of Independence/American Revolution.

Now I am intrigued. This will require a more in depth look to see what information I have already amassed on the line of my Highland soldier, how he fits into the family tree and if anything further can be found. At least I remember that the surname was McNeil and any land grant would have been in Nova Scotia, so I have a starting point. 

UEL definition:

"The United Empire Loyalists were generally those who had been settled in the thirteen colonies at the outbreak of the American Revolution, who remained loyal to and took up the Royal Standard, and who settled in what is now Canada at the end of the war."*

Sources:

*www.uelac.org 

Images:

By Scan by NYPL - https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/a20151f8-d3cf-5c25-e040-e00a18066189, Public Domain,  https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46447639 

DNA Update

Time for a DNA update. It has been a while. Since my last update. I have been keeping my hand in by watching webinars about the latest developments in genetic DNA testing. Recently I watched Which Spot Does X Mark Anyway? X-DNA Testing in Action, a Legacy webinar with presented Debra Smith Renard. I had been noticing the X matches which showed with some of my autosomal matches on FTDNA (Family Tree DNA) and had been wondering how to use them. This webinar was a very good basic primer on how to use that data to figure out which would be the likely family links on my tree as the X match eliminates certain lines.

While electronic education is good, nothing can beat face to face events and this week I attended a talk about DNA Painter. It reminded me that I really should start to use this site for more than their shared CM (centimorgan) tool. Another DNA related group that I attend is a DNA discussion group. Many of the people in the group are really into researching their DNA and have explored different sites. Gedmatch is a popular one. I signed up for Gedmatch a while ago but only had a few responses so nothing much came of it. I thought maybe putting a GEDCOM on there, so that my family tree could be visible to interested parties, might generate some interest so I did that today and will wait to see if there is any response.

Another new tool that the DNA discussion group is exploring is Genetic Affairs. From the demos I have seen it looks cool in action as the user's family links group together in clusters in front of your eyes. The idea is that you will be able to identify each group by family name. I was very impressed when I saw a novice user demonstrating her clusters and being able to identify most of them with family names. My Heritage has a similar tool on their website for DNA matches so I tried it with my own DNA matches on the My Heritage website. I ended up with a bunch of clusters and had no clue which families were represented or who any of my matches were. I wonder if it would be different if I used the actual Genetic Affairs site and downloaded my Ancestry or FTDNA matches. At least I know who one or two of those matches are.

The bottom line seems to be that I need to spend more time researching my DNA matches and, hopefully, getting some targeted DNA testing done of close relatives so I have more data to play with. I hope I have more to report on my next DNA update

Old Friends from Far Away

The Islay shore close to Kildalton

A few nights ago, I attended a presentation given by a local artist at PoCo Heritage's museum. It was a fascinating talk about making art with camera-less photography but it was one thing that she said during her presentation that really caught the attention of the audience. It was nothing to do with her art. She let slip where she had gone to high school. It seems that many in the small audience had gone there too. After the presentation they crowded around her swapping dates of when they had attended the same school. The inevitable cries of "did you know so and so" and "was Mrs X still teaching when you were there" emerged as the gang reminisced.

We do this. We seize upon common experiences and use them to walk down memory lane, to reach out and engage in a conversation which brings friends and strangers closer together. And this is in the modern world where there are so many ways to communicate. Maybe there's even a Facebook group for the former students of that same high school. How much more excitement would coming across someone from old neighbourhoods have caused among those from other countries who currently lived in the sparsely settled farms of New England or Ontario?

Some of my Ontario ancestors came from Kildalton in Islay, one of the islands of the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. In 1870, John Ramsay of Kildalton made a trip to Canada to seek out former tenants in Ontario to see how they had prospered after emigration. He travelled from farm to farm, seeking out Islay people and they were glad to see him and exchange news of their new places for word of people back home. John Ramsay embodied a link to the old country, was treated well and left a wonderful account of the Islay people he saw, as well as other Scots, because, with the benefit of distance they all came from the same vast neighbourhood. Finding commonality among people from disparate parts of the old country was also a benefit of distance, it seems.

It is interesting to think how or common need for social bonds connects us to people with a common link to a place or an event, like the audience at the art presentation. A better understanding of our ancestors comes if we remember that this was also a common experience that they shared.  

Time and Place

1857 cartoon from Harper's Weekly

Mention a decade in the 20th century and the chances are that just saying something like the '50s or '80s will bring to mind a picture of that decade's style; from clothes, to vehicles, to mood. Once a time has passed it is easy to distill its essence into a handful of images we can use as shorthand to invoke that time period. It has been that way through history.

But writing about the people of the time, of any time back in history, forces a closer look. Life was not as homogenous as our shorthand would make it seem. Different places changed at different times and went through different events that altered life's patterns.

Currently I am involved in several projects which have me skittering from one time period to another and from one place to another. I spend time in 1890s Ontario through diaries found at the University of Guelph diary project at https://ruraldiaries.lib.uoguelph.ca/search, then dredge up memories of Vancouver in the '70s and early '80s for something I am writing, and meanwhile I am working on a project about disasters in the early '20s in Port Coquitlam, BC. What on earth was I thinking when I brought home a library book about Suffolk history to look for background on my family roots there in the 18th century?

But I love history and each era has its own flavour, its own rules and codes for living. Finding them out is all part of the fun of digging into the past and pulling out the stories. 

Images:

By unknown 1857 artist - Ultimately from Harper's Weekly; scanned by H. Churchyard from The Wonderful World of Ladies' Fashion: 1850-1920, edited by Joseph J. Schroeder, Jr., Public Domain,   

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=550210

  

Following a Trail of Breadcrumbs

    Present day Tenter Street probably looks much different from when Thomas Arment's family lived there in the 1840s

Each family line seems to peter out into the unknown at a different time. Some go back for generations, others not nearly as far. In the case of my London ancestors, finding out where the first ancestor came from before they were drawn to the streets of the big city is a frustrating endeavour. One thing about our less honest ancestors, especially ones in a time when it is hard to find information about the average person; criminals leave records. In my search for my criminal Arments, both Thomas, father and son, I decided to check out what The National Archives could tell me. TNA have lots of research guides and I thought they must have one about researching criminals. 

There was a research guide on crime and criminals which had a clickable link to "Crime, prisons and punishment 1770-1935" which sounded promising and showed that the database was available on Find My Past so the records were available online. There were 43 results for Thomas Arm*nt, more than I had found by searching the Find My Past site directly and I had access to the records once I signed in to Find My Past through the TNA Discovery site. Among those records I found another clue. The birthplace of Thomas Arment senior!

 

At last I was on my way to finding out were the Arments had come from! There was only one problem. There is no such place as Great Bennell. Well, at least I knew the county was Suffolk.

To take my research back further, I turned to Family Search and did a search for Arment with the birthplace of Suffolk between the years of 1775 and 1810. This turned up a likely candidate for Thomas Arment senior baptized in 1787 whose parents' names were Samuel Armant and Alice. This couple had other children baptized as well: Samuel in 1784, John in 1790, James 1793 and Mary in 1799. But they were all baptized in Bramfield, Suffolk which really couldn't be mistaken for Great Bennell. This was one of the problems I took with me to Salt Lake City.

At the Family History Library, I found a book called How to find Suffolk Towns and Villages put out by the Suffolk Family History Society. There was no Great Bennell in the book but there was a place called Benhall which other sources told me was sometimes called Bennell Green. Aha! It didn't take any great leap of the imagination to see some clerk in Portsmouth taking that down as Great Bennell. Bramfield and Great Benhall weren't adjacent parishes but they weren't that far apart either. 

After that it felt much better to search the Bramfield records for the family. The baptism register entry for Thomas Arment felt much more likely to be that of my Thomas Arment senior. What's more it was proof of the advice to search the source of online records even if it is a transcript because it read: 1787 Feb. 11 Thomas s. of Samuel Armant and Alice his wife (late Puttock, spinster): born Feb. 2. This led me back to the marriage of Samuel Armant and Alice Puttock on August 3, 1783. Which would be good if they were part of my ancestral line. But were they?

I found what looked to be a tentative connection to Benhall. A search of Find My Past turned up entries for James Armond (Almond) and family who would be the right age for the James born in Bramfield in 1793 to Samuel and Alice Armant. So, it looks like at least one brother lived there around the 1850s. But why would Thomas Arment have given that as his birthplace? I am intrigued and need to follow the clues further.