This weekend I'm participating in a retreat of sorts with a genealogy group that I'm part of. We're making a long weekend of the meeting and holding it at our local genealogy society's library. The BCGS library is a FamilySearch affiliate so I'm able to see some of the films that I can't see at home. Sometimes you just have to trawl through those census films to see where everyone and their neighbour was living. I'm still on the hunt for Donald McPherson, although not knowing if he came from the same parish as my Mathison clan doesn't help much. So far I've found quite a few Donald McPhersons in the 1841 census for Kilmuir on the Isle of Skye. None of them with a daughter Margaret of the right age though.
Of course as the facility is a library there are plenty of books available as well. When my eyes were tired of squinting at the film images, I went hunting for books that might have information of interest. I've mainly been looking at books about Ontario and its records. The library has quite a collection. As I'm interested in Puslinch where both the McPhersons and Mathesons were living at one point, I looked at information about Wellington County. In one such book, I was surprised to find a write up about the train robbery involving Bill Miner, who is well known in BC. The story included a picture of the trail in Kamloops and a description of the robbery which was an ill managed affair. Surprising information can be found in books!
The best thing about the weekend, of course, has been getting together with fellow family historians. There are occasional bouts of silence as we hunch over our computers concentrating on our research, but those are interspersed with the sharing of information and stories. There's nothing like an appreciative audience when the genealogy tales get going!
Sources:
“Lewis Colquhoun: Wellington County’s Train Robber”
Wellington County History: Railway Issue Vol 4. Wellington County Historical
Research Society, 1991
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