The lure of genealogical mysteries

 

I love a good mystery. Many of the books I read and shows I watch feature murder mysteries. Good ones draw you in and tantalize you with clues keeping you guessing who done it. Most of these stories are fiction but real life mysteries keep us striving for solutions too. Mysteries like what happened to Amelia Earhart or to the Franklin Expedition inspire people to propose their pet theories about what happened.

Reading Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven, reminded me of one of the mysteries in my own family history, that of how Tom Thomson died. Strange how the uncertainty around his death keeps his memory alive. That mystery has spawned many books about Thomson, his promise as an artist cut down in his prime and speculation as to whether his death was an accident or murder.

But it's not only the well-known mysteries that drive my family research. Others fascinate me as well. For one, where in Ireland did my family come from? But that's a big question involving a whole branch of the family. I find the more intriguing mysteries are the ones that involve individuals. Like just how did the last member I've traced in one branch of my Arments end up with so much money to leave in his will? Since that was the family where a father and son a few generations previous had been sentenced for receiving stolen goods, I find the final sum to be willed an intriguing mystery.

Another puzzle involves a birth in Ashmore, a village in Dorset where my Rideout family lived. Thomas Rideout, my 2X great grandfather, was a relatively young man when he died in 1842 leaving my 2X great grandmother, Mary, alone to raise their children. She never remarried but her last child was born a few years after Thomas' death. I'm sure it was an open secret who the father was. It was a very small village. Try as I might I haven't yet found the answer to that son's paternity. Not that it affects my own line as I'm a descendant of one of the children born when Thomas was alive. Still, the mystery beckons.