A new year starts with anticipation and resolutions.
Looking forward to 2024, one of my resolutions is to explore
and nurture my artistic abilities further as I started to do with the sketch above.
I hope that the new year brings
new and exciting possibilities into your lives too!
As researchers, we always hope that our ancestors have been included in the records of an event and that those records have remained intact. But sometimes it turns out that when the standard records have not survived it can lead to further records of deeper genealogical value. Such was the case for Charles Tripp and Jane Woodworth, my 3 x great grandparents.
In regards to his entitlements from fighting in the Revolutionary War, things when wrong from the beginning for Charles Tripp. He signed up for three years in January of 1781 and was duly discharged three years later in January of 1784. But, according to his statement, he gave his written discharge papers to the duty sergeant Dakes [sp] "for the purpose of getting his bounty lands". After that, the sergeant's house burned and the discharge papers were lost.
It appears that Charles never received any bounty lands which may explain his subsequent moves through the county of New York and, eventually to Percy in Upper Canada. I wonder if he ever pursued legal channels in regards to the bounty lands. If he let that go, did he feel that there was more at stake when he applied through the courts later when there was a pension involved?
Whatever the reason he did so, his application through the court in Manlius carried an account of the movements of his troop and himself through the three years that he served as part of the Revolutionary force. Probably meaning a much more thorough account of his war was preserved than that of the average combatant. When he died and left Jane a widow, she then applied for the pension available to "certain" widows of revolutionary soldiers. This was also a complicated matter that needed to go before the courts because she couldn't produce a document to prove the marriage. In turn, this created even more records of genealogical value which will form the basis of future research. More on that later.
Sources:
Ancestry: U.S., Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1900
Sometimes people living in the present make history. No, not by being part of a catastrophic event or by breaking some kind of record or something like that. There are times when a person can be witness to preserving things for posterity. That was the case in Port Coquitlam on November 30.
PoCo has been updating the areas close to city hall. One of those places was Veterans Park, the area that holds the cenotaph where people gather to pay their respects on Remembrance Day. Because the renovation called for laying new paving stones, digging was involved. When that was done two time capsules were unearthed, opened and lists of their contents taken. One of the time capsules was from 2013, so just 10 years or so ago. PoCo Heritage members took part in placing that box of memorabilia in the ground and it was not supposed to be dug up until 2038. The other time capsule that made its appearance was from 1998 and among the things it contained were 9 inch floppy discs. Of course, we can no longer read them because we don't have access to the old technology.
I think we learned from those mistakes. The things buried this time in the latest time capsule don't rely on technology to be read and contain a mixture of items we hope will be of interest when the 2023 time capsule is dug up. It was good to witness history in the making.
My plan to see where I am with my genealogy by updating my family tree on my new family history software is proceeding very slowly. Because I want to do it the right way from the get go, I'm entering the information from the printed documents that I have for each family member as I get to them and filling in the citations as I go. It is a slow and painstaking task. It might take a long time to complete but I've given myself some incentive. I signed up for the next DNA Skills Course through Diahan Southard's Your DNA Guide website. It starts in March and my aim is to have at least my North American links entered and transferred to my tree on Ancestry so I can use them when trying out techniques learnt in the course.
The painstaking nature of making correct family tree entries isn't the only thing slowing me down. On top of a time consuming reading habit (189 books read to date for 2023 according to my LibraryThing thread), I write (fiction and nonfiction), volunteer for a heritage society, attend genealogy society meetings and research my family and its history. Being pulled in all those different directions makes me feel like burying my head in a book. Wait, I think I've got that one down pat!
Right now I'm particularly stretched for time because I'm trying to get to all the SIWC (Surrey International Writers Conference) recorded sessions that I have access to. I attended the in-person event in October and, because it is now hybrid, attendees have access to some sessions that were recorded but that's only until November 26. Alisson Woods was the presenter for a session entitled "How to Keep Writing When You Get Stuck". The advice she gave to schedule your time was pertinent for more than just writing. We were told to think of three specific ways to schedule our writing. I came up with the following:
1.
Back in my October 28 post when I wrote about the Freedom Trail in Boston, I mentioned the members of my own family who had fought in the American Revolution. They were Charles Tripp, my 4 x great grandfather and his father-in-law, Solomon Woodworth. They had both served in New York State on the side of the patriots. Solomon Woodworth died fighting but writing about the fact that both men had fought in the same general area made me wonder if the two had ever met.
Of course, it would be hard to prove any association between the two of them at this late date given the scarcity of sources for that time period. Even in this day and age, the meeting of two people would be hard to prove but the possibility of their paths crossing might be something that I could ascertain.
The information I gleaned from Ancestry about the older man, Solomon Woodworth, was that he was killed on September 7, 1781 in Herkimer, Herkimer County, New York. According to records found on Fold 3, Charles Tripp was mustered on July 16, 1781. That means that both men were serving at the same time. When applying for his pension, Charles Tripp swore that he was living at Stillwater, New York when he joined up.
Given the dates: July of 1781 for Charles Tripp's enlistment and September of 1781 for Solomon Woodworth's death in battle, it is possible that the men may have met while both were fighting as patriots. They were also in roughly the same area of New York State in 1781. The Google map above shows the proximity of Stillwater, where Charles enlisted and Herkimer, where Solomon died.
While searching the records I have on hand to find those dates and places, I realized how much information I have about these two men from various sources. To make it more interesting, Charles Tripp died and his widow, Jane, the daughter of Solomon Woodworth, had to file many documents to get access to her husband's pension because the record of their marriage was missing. The extra documents from Jane included affidavits from Woodworth kin. It looks like I have plenty of information to start looking into the Tripp and Woodworth connections further and can probably expand this part of my family tree once I figure out how people are related.
Sources:
Find a Grave – for Captain Solomon Woodworth https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/28181579/solomon-woodworth
New discoveries, databases and ways of researching abound in the world of genealogy. Maybe that's why there are so many conferences. In the old days, before we were all forced into the virtual world, conferences were something to be attended at the venue, usually a hotel/conference centre set up. In North America most of the big name conferences were in the US, which just made sense given their larger population. The only problem with that was that the records discussed and the methods illustrated were skewed towards American research. A lot of those don't come into play when it comes to Canada.
The conference sessions were good, but after hours activities hadn't been planned. Naively I had assumed that would be something laid on for those who were staying at the conference hotel, the Lord Nelson. So the first night I wandered into the hotel bar looking for a drink and a meal which is where I met up with another attendee, Barbara Rae-Venter. She had fascinating tales to tell about her foray into the world of investigative genetic genealogy. I remember her talking about the Lisa Project, an investigation that she covers in her recently released book, I Know Who You Are: How an Amateur DNA Sleuth Unmasked the Golden State Killer and Changed Crime Fighting Forever.
I'm reminded of many of the things she talked about that evening in 2017 when reading the book. At that time she had either not yet started the investigation into the Golden State Killer or was only in the preliminary stages of it. Still, what she told me about other cases she had been involved with opened my eyes to the possibilities of using DNA as an investigative tool. Meeting with Barbara was also illustrative of the networking possible at in-person events although that was the one and only time that happened for me at that conference. I wonder if that's one of the reasons why no more of those across Canada summits ever got off the ground.
Remembrance Day came about as a result of the need to commemorate the fallen in the First World War. The death toll from that conflict was high, taking away a large swath of young men. The day of remembrance has since become a time to remember the fallen from other conflicts. There have been many.
My recent travels took me to a few of the monuments to past conflicts and the men who fought. My exploration took me to Canadian sites, like the Fortress of Louisberg, a French stronghold when that nation held power in the New World. And, while in Quebec City, I toured the Plains of Abraham which were the scene of a battle that figured strongly in the founding of Canada.
Also on November 11, the USA holds a day to remember the veterans of their wars which they call Veterans Day. My recent travel also took in American sites which were also heavily weighted towards military conflicts, a natural result of tourism geared towards the founding of the US as a nation. I viewed the various sites that figure in the story of American Independence with great interest but the memorial that struck me as the most poignant was the statute of a Civil War soldier in a Bar Harbor churchyard, a reminder of the reach of that conflict.
Back on October 7, I wrote about my Revolutionary War ancestors, the ones who fought on the side of the Patriots; my 4 x great grandfather, Charles Tripp, and his father-in-law, Soloman Woodworth. While both of these men served in New York State, I recently had a chance to see historic Boston, where so many of the beginning efforts for American independence were taken.
Many of the preliminary steps towards freeing the nation have assumed mythical status. Events such as the Boston Massacre or the Boston Tea Party have grown by epic proportions although propaganda had a lot to do with shaping the memories of what happened. That was particularly true of the depiction of the Boston Massacre. Paul Revere copied a print that showed British soldiers in a line shooting at citizens of Boston which was not a true picture of what took place. Another myth in which Revere figured prominently was the Midnight Ride which also didn't take place exactly as written.
Even with having to take many of the events leading towards independence with a grain of salt, the history in the city was well presented. Knowing what was important, led governing bodies to save historic buildings like the Old State House. To make things easier for tourists, the city even has a line in the sidewalks called the Freedom Trail which you can follow from one historic site to another. This we followed to Bunker Hill and the ship, The Constitution. The line came in useful as there were many tourists. The number of people interested in this history became very apparent when trying to photograph graves in the Granary Burying Ground. We had to dodge around organized walking tours to get any good pictures.
When researching my ancestors' lives the quest is mostly silent. In bygone days when the search was a more intense endeavour, occasional shouts of "Eureka" might break the silence but those moments were few and far between. But the past was not a silent place. People then may not have been cursed with the sound of rush hour traffic but their highways and byways would not have been quiet. Imagine creaking wheels and the sound of horses or oxen pulling the wagon or carriage or the sounds of mobs gathering for protest or spectacle (not to mention the smell, but that's another subject.) But those kinds of sounds were byproducts. What about sounds that are intentionally made - like music.
Making music has been a part of the human experience for millennia. Did the music hall figure in an ancestor's story? Perhaps they were play goers. There's often music involved in the theatre. In the bid to understand our forebears their entertainment shouldn't be overlooked.
A guided tour I took this year that took me from Nashville to New Orleans, reminded me of how music can be a soundtrack to our own lives. Tunes can invoke a feeling or bring forth memories. How did they affect people in the past? Before the days of TV, many affluent people had pianos in their homes and family sing songs were a part of some home repertoires. Adding more sound to family tales can help to bring their stories alive. That reminds me, I really should find out what tunes were popular in the North during the Civil War.
Sometimes there are surprising finds amongst your own stuff. I don't know if that's especially true for women with purses that fall out of favour for one reason or another. My tendency is to put those old bags on a shelf and basically abandon them after only taking out the bare necessities. So, when I decided to clear some space to have room to store a new suitcase, I knew it was finally time to empty and discard some of the purses that had been gathering dust.
I had a vague idea of some of the contents, like a key to a bank box, although it wasn't in the purse I thought it was. There were other keys there, only I'm not sure what they open; maybe the desk drawer at my old office. They were a puzzle. Not so the dozens of pens nestled between wrapped sweets pulled from purse bottoms and who knew that leather-like wallets could turn sticky and reluctant to let go of the plastic cards once safely ensconced in those handy card slots. The disintegrating wallet tried to hold on to my citizenship card but I managed to pull it out eventually.
Besides that half remembered ID card which captured a time and memory, there were other treasures to be found. It appears that some of those handy carryalls must have come with me to seminars and on research trips. There were papers, some of which I still have to go through. But more strangely, I found a stash of microfiche. I don't remember acquiring the fiche but the receipt included in the envelope confirms that I did. The receipt was dated back in 2000, when researchers still looked at that kind of media regularly. There has been a lot of water under the bridge since then. If I ever looked through those fiche, I didn't make a note of it so I'll have to do it again. I wonder if my family history society still has a fiche reader? Better yet, what other treasures might be lurking on my own shelves? That's an incentive to start getting organized for sure. I just need to keep the momentum going!
My family history society, the British Columbia Genealogy Society (BCGS), is putting together a book of veterans this year. The deadline for members to submit the information about our military ancestors is September 30 but, of course, I left things to the last minute and, as I write this, I am working on my entries before getting ready to go on yet another trip.
My ancestors seem to have been drawn into a lot of conflicts. Particularly surprising to me, given my background as a displaced Brit brought up in Canada, is the strong showing men in my family tree made in the American Revolution, on the American side! I didn't see that one coming. When researching my 4 x great grandfather, Charles Tripp, who took up land in Percy, Northumberland County, Upper Canada in 1797, my first thought was that he was a late Loyalist. It wasn't until later that I discovered his pension records on Ancestry, clear evidence that he fought on the side of the patriots. I thought it was strange that he was given land in Upper Canada. That makes me wonder if there was festering animosity between the United Empire Loyalists of Upper Canada and the newcomers who had once fought for the enemy. I can't imagine how Charles' wife, Jane Tripp nee Woodworth, felt living among former foes as her father, Captain Solomon Woodworth, had lost his life in a skirmish while fighting on the American side.
But lives are filled with conflict and sometimes it is hard to tell friend from foe. That's particularly true with internal conflicts within countries, like revolutions or civil wars. My research has uncovered more that one Union soldier on my wider family tree. What I would really like to find, though, is evidence that takes me back further, perhaps even as early as the civil war in England. According to my research, a wide swath of my ancestors called that country home at that time of that conflict and, given how many of them participated in later wars, they must surely have chosen a side in that long drawn out fight. Of course that's just the English side, we won't go into the warlike tendencies of the nationalities that make up a large portion of my ancestry. The Scots and the Irish are not known for their timidity either. Perhaps it's a good thing that earlier records are hard to find or the veteran project would take me even longer.
Images:
H. Charles
McBarron, Jr., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
On my trip to Ontario, I had a chance to stay with my brother and his wife as they live near to Paris, Ontario where I had attended the writers retreat. On a day's outing, I had my first ever look at Niagara Falls, quite an impressive sight.
Not all of our time was spent catching up or sightseeing. My brother brought a stash of our father's papers up from his basement. My visit seemed to be the inspiration for weeding through what was there. Of course, I was madly snapping pictures of records of interest. It was strange to see family history information I had sent to my father that I had found while digging into our family's past. There were other intriguing items like photos of people we couldn't identify although they were clearly of importance and copies of letters with references to events in the larger family that left something to the imagination.
Once the stack of papers had been examined, photographic slides came up from the basement repository. Remember those? As we peered through a handheld viewer, we tried to make out the figures in the images. Some were hard to see and most of them weren't labeled with people's names which would have made identification easier. Surprisingly, there were slides of images from the '50s. They must have been photographs that had been converted to slides, the latest technology at the time.
While going through the papers, I captured so many images on my phone that I'll have to make time to study them in depth. At least in the era that photographic slides were the done thing there weren't as many of them to go through as there are in these days of point and shoot with a phone that is constantly in reach. That brevity must have pleased the audiences pinned down in their seats by good manners as they were subjected to slideshows back in the day.
It's strange to say but our research into the past to find out about our ancestors is constantly changing. The past may stay the same but our ways of accessing it continue to evolve. It pays to keep up with the latest trends so I'm constantly learning and seeking new opportunities for education. In my case, since I want to write about my ancestors that also means learning more about composing compelling narratives that are faithful to the historic facts.
I recently attended a Writers Retreat put on by Lynn Palermo of the Family History Writing Studio. There have been a few online writers retreats but this year two in-person events were to be held; one in Paris, Ontario and the other in Maple Ridge, BC. I attended the one in Ontario.
Over the last few years, I've been meeting up with my fellow writers at the studio by zoom. Seeing people I'd known as talking heads online was a bit odd at first but knowing each other even that little bit helped to break the ice. We learned a lot over the two days of instruction which made me rethink how I have been portraying the main character in my story. We didn't spend all of our time listening though. On the last day we were given the task to illustrate a story that Lynn had related from her own family's history. Let loose with paper and plenty of art supplies, I got in touch with my artistic side and fell in love with the watercolor brush pens I was using. I need some of those!
Aside from artistic endeavours, I learned a lot over the short time of the retreat and enjoyed meeting my fellow students in person. We spent time together but I also found time to explore the town of Paris. It was nice to have fellow writers to share meals and conversation with. And, as part of the entertainment, many of the fledgling writers shared excerpts from ongoing projects after our evening meals. There were a lot of interesting lives captured in their words, inspiration for the work I am creating about my own ancestor.
Packing, I've gotten used to it over the years. As I remember it, I started packing for myself at the age of 6. My family travelled a lot and I continued to travel over the years. But it's one thing to pack and know that you are coming back home. What if home is moving with you?
Travel changes us but none so much as that which changes our surroundings permanently. I almost wrote "for good" and had to alter that wording because some of those moves weren't travel towards something new they were looking forward to. Rather they were looking for sanctuary after being evicted from their homes. How would you pack for a journey like that?
The temptation would be to take important family keepsakes with you, if you still had them. Only there would be limited ability to take furniture, especially things that were heavy and bulky. That was certainly true in early days with people crammed below decks on immigrant ships. At later dates, movement of household goods was more easily managed if you had the means to pay. I think that our family furniture followed by ship when we immigrated to Canada from England. We came by airplane, a far cry from those earlier immigration treks across the ocean. Not as easy as in this day and age though as there were no jets in those days.
It's interesting to think of the dynamics of our ancestors moving from place to place particularly when it involved immigration. Nice to think that some may have been able to take family keepsakes with them. And really, those were the lucky ones who weren't displaced by war or evacuation due to natural disasters. After those events, I suppose, choosing what to take with you may have been made easier because time was of the essence or perhaps there was little left to choose from.
In Canada, we are used to the large land masses that make up our provinces and figuring out where places, like states, are in the US can be a challenge. The other day a friend asked me what the state under Alberta was. That one I knew, having once lived in Calgary. "It's Montana," I said having gleaned that knowledge from my time working in oil industry offices in downtown Calgary. Even though the name of the state came to me automatically, I wasn't sure if it was the only state directly under Alberta.
That's where maps, like the Google map of the United States above, can come in handy. It also helps when I try to figure out how far my ancestor, Alexander Matheson and his family moved as I work on his timeline. According to one of his letters, he and his wife moved about 800 miles since they were married. They started out in Freeport near Chicago then in May 1870 moved to Iowa. Looks like good timing as the Chicago Fire of 1871 probably caused a lot of disruption in the areas of Illinois surrounding the city. Later, in early April of 1883, Alexander and his family moved to South Dakota.
Until I looked at the map, I had no idea where Iowa or the Dakotas were. In my mind, I had conflated North and South Dakota with North and South Carolina which I was familiar with having traveled through them on my way from Montreal to Florida by car. My mental map had the Dakotas parallel to the Carolinas. Now, looking at the map, I can see they are much further north. That means that the farmland and crops would have been similar to those in Illinois. As a farmer, that would have made a difference to Alexander Matheson. Looking at a map really did enhance my understanding of his story.
Sources:
Google maps:
map data ©2023 Google, INEGI
Letter 6
from Alexander Matheson to his sister, Margaret Thomson
Just as I threatened to, I've finally gotten around to going through my stash of magazines. The thing is that I've discovered other caches of them on the different floors of my living space. But I spent good money for these publications so I'm giving them a once over if they look interesting and most of them do. My tastes haven't changed that much.
An article in an old issue of Harper's made me think. It was the June 2014 edition which isn't that old considering that I still have barely touched magazines with bonus CDs attached. Remember those? But I digress, the Harper's article was an account from their archive which had been written 70 years prior, in August 1944. Their correspondent, Vernon Bartlett, had written about the non-event that D Day had been from the point of view of someone on the ground just getting on with their daily tasks with the, by then, accustomed complications that being in England in the middle of the war added.
In a way the feeling the article conveyed was similar to the text I received from someone in Nova Scotia asking me if the wild fires in BC were affecting me. In return, I asked her if she had been flooded out by the torrential rains in Halifax in July. The answer was no in both cases. Because that's the thing, when something momentous happens, the immediate thought is that it is widespread affecting everybody in the area. But that is not always the case.
It's nice to include historic events in our ancestor's stories but are they as all-encompassing as we think? Unless there is written proof, perhaps it is best to look at the people known to have been affected and see if there is any link with our past relatives. It could be that nothing changed for them after the event so maybe that piece of history was not noteworthy in their lives.
Sources:
“Invasion
Diary” by Vernon Bartlett. Harper’s
Magazine. Harper’s Magazine Foundation, New York, New York, June 2014.
Letters can be a wonderful window into ancestor's lives. I'm lucky enough to have access to two collections of correspondence; one from my maternal grandparents and one from a 3 x great uncle, also one of my mother's relatives. Both sets of letters were one sided though. There were no copies kept of the answering letters. Still, there was enough information to fill in some blanks about their lives.
Placing them in context can make their actions more understandable. It can also lend depth to the narrative of their stories. My current task being, of course, getting one correspondent's tale down on paper. Readers of this blog will know I'm working on Alexander Matheson's story. He was my 3 x great uncle and led an interesting life. He outlined some of it to his sister, Margaret, after he finally discovered where she was living after 40 years. She must have kept those letters that he wrote.
He started writing to his sister in 1895 but I know from his correspondence that his use of the postal system started much earlier than that. In his letters to her, he mentioned the different post masters he had written to in Canada seeking news of the family he had lost. He was in a different country because, when he couldn't find his family, he moved across the border to the US in the late 1850s.
But, although we now take postal service for granted, even call it disparagingly "snail mail", back in the 1850s it wasn't the same as it is now. So, as part of the research for Alexander's story, I decided to find out more about the postal system while Alex was using it. Not only was that the US postal system but also the postal system in Canada as well.
In Canada, new post offices tended to pop up where the rail lines went. It took a while for the railways to head west. The US had other events that opened up their postal system. According to a book that I read about that country's postal system, it really expanded with the California Gold Rush, followed a few years later by the US Civil War. Apparently, many soldiers kept up regular correspondence. Which makes me wonder who Alex wrote to while he was fighting in the Union Army. That correspondence would be an interesting find if it still exists.
Sources:
Correspondence
of Alexander Matheson – 1895-1920
Gendreau,
Bianca; Willis, John; Brousseau, Francine, Special
Delivery: Canada’s Postal Heritage, Goose Lane Editions, Fredericton, N.B.,
2000
Henkin,
David M., The Postal Age: The Emergence
of Modern Communications in Nineteenth-Century America, University of
Chicago Press, Chicago, 2006
In depth research into an ancestor can take you a lot of places. For some, there is the need to find out about the places where they lived and/or the occupations that they had. That information can inform the researcher about the reasons for some of their actions and, in turn, provide a better understanding of what they lived through. As someone who loves history, I enjoy trying to picture my ancestors in time and place. I've even been lucky enough to find information written about particular ancestors.
In the case of my ancestor, Thomas Strange, who lived from 1723 to 1784, I was even more fortunate to find something that he had written. He was a nonconformist minister in Kilsby, Northamptonshire, so a learned man. I was lucky enough to find information about him at Dr. Williams Library in London which included some of the sermons he had written. They were long! I wouldn't have wanted to sit through one especially as, according to one of the accounts written about him, he had a speech impediment.
The Reverend Thomas Strange would be an interesting ancestor to write about. At the moment, I'm focusing on another relative. One closer in time. Alexander Matheson, who fought in the US Civil War. There has been a lot written about that war, so the main problem with finding out information is weeding through all that is out there.
There was another aspect to Alexander's story besides the war, however. That was his search for his family, his father and siblings. It was a search that took place from another country because he had last seen them in Canada. It meant that he had to search by mail. Can you imagine? Only, it wasn't quite the mail service we know today. Which leads me to more research, this time about the postal service in two countries during the time of his 40 year search. It's strange the places that family history can take a researcher.
Timelines, I have quite an assortment throughout my family history collection. I often draw one up when about to embark on a research trip, especially one to the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City. The list reminds me of the family lines I want to concentrate on during that trip. But it does more than that. Not only does it pinpoint an ancestor or ancestral family in time but it also shows gaps that need more research. Timelines also serve as an excellent backbone when piecing together a family history story. A case in point is the story of my 3x great uncle, Alexander Matheson. I was able to weave together a timeline of his movements from his letters and military records. Those movements showed the important events in his life which underpin the framework of his story.
I'm looking forward to adding the data from his timeline to my Family Historian software so that I can use their mapping technology to follow his movements. That should prove interesting. Unfortunately, the places are just pinned on the map of the world, there appears to be no line that indicates the person going from point A to point B. Not that I've gotten far with my inputting. I'm still working on the first person I've entered, which is me. I'm one individual whose timeline would benefit from lines going from one place to the other to show how many times I've moved back and forth from place to place. Still, showing where a person has been, adds a sense of whether they lived their life in one community or many. If they put down firm roots or drifted from place to place.
Even better than maps, of course, is on the ground research; actually visiting the places where ancestors lived. It gives a better idea of the lay of the land and how long it presently takes to get from one place to another. If you know when your family made the move and you do a bit of digging into the available transport at the time, that should give you a better idea of the effort to get from the initial spot to the next. Having a timeline with the date, might also be able to give you a head start when looking for a reason to up stakes when you plug the family's dates in to the history of the locality. Timelines and maps really complement each other when you add in the history they were living through.
At times I think I'm really slow at getting stuff done, especially when it involves my family history. But, sometime between dealing with fixing my travel ticket to my upcoming writers retreat as the airline had decided to nix one of the flights I'd booked and updating the list of all the deadlines and to do items necessary before I leave, I realized that I have so many things on my plate that it's a wonder anything gets done at all.
A case in point is using family tree software to enter my tree the right way instead of the slap dash method I employed before. I downloaded the Family Historian Trial which allows you to try out the software for a 30 day period. The user has the choice of downloading a GEDCOM file to Family Historian or entering individuals one at a time. I've decided on the one at a time method to finally get everything recorded the right way. Yesterday, I finally entered the first person in the tree, me. But, if I want to start as I mean to go on, I need to find the document to cite to verify the information I know off by heart.
I'm hoping data entry will be easier with more immediate relatives. But I think that things will get trickier as I go along. I'll need to pull information from my family history binders, the research logs I've kept from various trips, the photos of records on my phone and those unlabeled thumb drives with family data that I've brought home over the years. It looks like it will be something to chip away at over time which means I should probably buy the software before I invest too much time into it. But, exploring the software further, it has maps and timelines which makes me wonder if that means a person can be tracked over time and space through their life. That would be so cool, especially with my family who weren't known for staying in one place. That would take the timelines I've drawn up to the next level!
Sources:
Family Historian software https://www.family-historian.co.uk
It has been many years since I started researching my family's history. Along the way, I've amassed a lot of information. So much that I've forgotten much of what I have. That's probably because I'm good at gathering information but fall down on actually taking stock of what was reaped and how it fits into what I already know.
Along the way, I've also gathering information about all the children each couple in my family had. I just didn't add it to my family tree. At least, not the one on Ancestry. I think that the tree I had on Family Tree Maker might have included the siblings of my direct ancestors but I can't remember. The last time I was able to access that program was a couple of computer crashes ago. I still use the printouts I made of various pedigree charts but that is the only information I have left from Family Tree Maker.
What I've decided to do is to be thorough as I work through and update each family. That means I'm going to go through the information I already have and work on adding collaterals to the family names that have already received much of my attention. Like those ones where I've visited the places where they once lived. That way I will not only use the research I've already done and revisit the conclusions I came to about the family group but I'll also revisit my development as a family historian.
I learned so much during my years of research but that magic feeling of being on the spot where they lived will be wonderful to revisit. Like the trip to Evershot where my Chubb family lived. It's believed that they had some connection to the Acorn Inn which I'm standing outside in the above photo. It's a memory so old that the shot was taken before digital photography was the norm.
The other day as I was driving from my home to the grocery store, there were lanes blocked off on the street I was on. I needed to make a left turn but the way that traffic was offset it looked a bit dicey. So I decided to take another route, taking my left turn a couple of blocks later. Once I made my left, I found traffic backed up on that second route as there was construction there too and up ahead only a single lane open on the street I was on. As I sat there in the lineup waiting our turn on the single lane, I thought how my journey that day was a great metaphor for my current research.
Currently, I'm supposed to be looking for the veterans in my family tree as the BCGS will be putting together a book with the military ancestors we submit. I have a few ancestors who were veterans and, while it is easier to find the more immediate ones, like people who served in WWI or WWII, the word is that they already have enough of those. What they are looking for are those who served in other wars, more distant ones. The problem is that they also want to know their relationship to the submitter. I've researched quite a few of the military types attached to my family. Some I've even written about on this blog, but I've never really spelled out my relationship to them. This looks like another case where having the collateral lines on my family tree filled out would be handy. That's on top of how those collateral lines would help with figuring out my DNA matches. I need to do that to keep up with the DNA Study group. Maybe it would also enable me to find the link to that illusive match who emailed me. Filling out the collaterals would probably also help with the story I'm writing about Alexander Matheson.
Looks like adding those collaterals to my family tree is my current road block. It's just so much work that I've been putting it off. If I'm going to do that work, I should also test our new family tree software so that all of my work doesn't exist solely on the Ancestry site. As part of Kathryn Lake Hogan's Starting Out or Starting Over sessions that she offered this year, we checked out various family tree software. One that I hadn't heard of before, Family Historian, looked like a good fit for me especially as it was put out by a UK based company. Most of my research and family were based in the UK and some of the extras they offer looked like they would be helpful. I think it's time to bite the bullet and get started. I just wish my road block would clear up as quickly as the ones I ran into on my way to the grocery store. When I checked the next day, both road blocks were gone and traffic was running smoothly again.
The Islay War Memorial in Port Ellen
I recently attended a planning session for a heritage society and, as I was listening to the various members of the group, a thought came to me. Maybe it is harder for people who are focused on history to plan our way into the future. We're used to looking at the cause of events knowing what the outcome will be, not trying to figure out what will probably happen if we take certain actions.
No one really knows what the results of their actions will be. They can hope and plan what they are going to do based on what has previously happened and by studying results of what others have tried, but outcomes can go in unforeseen directions. That knowledge is especially sobering when fighting is involved. As I'm gathering veterans from my family for the 2023 Veterans Book for the BC Genealogical Society, it's strange to think that those people signed up with no idea of what the end result would be. Even if their side won, there was nothing to say that they'd be around to see it. All of those men and women had no idea of the outcome of their service when they signed up.
It was a risky business, but happily most veterans in my family tree lived through the experience. Of the ones I've found so far, only Corporal John Hunter, who fought in WWI, didn't come back alive as evidenced by the war memorial in Port Ellen, Islay, Scotland. I'm still finding the veterans in my tree and adding collateral relatives as well so that statistic might change. I can't foresee the outcome of my search into the past, another way in which both the future and history are unpredictable.
A close up of some of the names on the Islay War Memorial
Recently, I attended a Legacy Family Tree webinar about researching collateral ancestors. The title of the talk was Collateral Research - The Secret Sauce to Finding Family Records and it was given by Cheri Hudson Passey. It seemed like a timely talk that might spur me on with the task of adding branches to my family tree. She told us about the many advantages of researching siblings and family connections and how it had helped in her research. I've experienced some of the advantages of collaboration on family lines by venturing off the direct lines in my own family research on the Matheson line when pursuing information about the siblings of my 2 x great grandmother, Catherine Matheson. A fellow researcher passed along copies of Alexander Matheson's military record as well as copies of the letters he wrote to his sister, Margaret Thomson, after he found her again. Now that I think of it, maybe there really would be an advantage to filling out the branches of my family tree to include other members.
As though to prove that point, my I-Pad featured the above photo that I took when I was in Edinburgh. It was a surprise to find a memorial to Scottish-American soldiers in the Old Calton Cemetery close to Calton Park in Edinburgh. It was a reminder not only that information can be found in unexpected places but that there are more connections that bind us than are readily apparent. I guess there is something in the idea of searching widely that may reveal more of the stories I seek.
Sources:
Legacy Family Tree Webinars - https://familytreewebinars.com (the Collateral Research talk is viewable for free until the 11th or 12th of July - one week from the original viewing of July 5, 2023)
Last Tuesday evening, my genealogy society, the BCGS, held its first Writers Group chat. There was a fair gathering of people in attendance and writing experience was varied. After introductions, there were two presentations. One member showed us her blog on which she posts about her ancestors, a way to organize her research, keep people informed and provide a legacy for future generations. The other talk was about "Veterans Book 2023", a publication that members of the society are putting together. It was a pitch to get more of us submitting information about our ancestral connections and the conflicts in which they had served, preferably not during World War I or II as they have been inundated with that information and want more variety.
I haven't looked at my records in depth yet but I know that I've already written about at least two if not more of my family connections who were involved in various conflicts around the world aside from those who fought in WWI and WWII. There was William McKay, a Royal Engineer, who participated in the Second Afghan Campaign and I know that early on I touched on the military career of George Welch whose regiment was sent to India at the time of the Indian Mutiny.
There were also ancestral connections who fought in America: on the American side for the American Revolution, the Union side in the US Civil War and the Canadian side in the War of 1812. I wonder what other conflicts my far flung family participated in. I have to see what I can find out. Maybe, if I'm lucky, I can find records that reach back to the English Civil War. I'm sure that some of my family were involved in that, they did live in Northamptonshire were many of the battles in that conflict were fought.
To continue on from my post last week, I added descendants to my 2 x great grandparent, Cavanagh/Minister couple and proved the path to my match who I could see on Ancestry, a third cousin once removed. All that was left was to add the correct dot to the matches I shared with that third cousin, only there weren't any. We had no shared matches in the Ancestry database. I put that down to the fact that DNA testing hasn't caught on in Britain like it has in America. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that people in the UK are not as keen to find family connections since they are they are still living close to their families' origins.
I haven't given up on adding offspring to my 2 x great grandparents, I'm moving on to a different set of 2 x greats. One of the couple this time hails from Dorset so there's the potential that my email match, the one I'm supposed to be adding collateral ancestors to my family tree for, could be a link. On top of that, I think that some descendants of my Rideout/Maidment couple left the UK. Maybe some of the Rideout/Maidment children are the reason Australian communities show up in my Ancestry DNA Story. People in faraway Australia, like those in the US and Canada, might be more interested in DNA testing. At least that's what I hope.
Initially, I was surprised when Australian communities showed up related to my DNA. Then I researched the story of Henrietta Chubb, sister to my great grandmother, Sarah Ann Chubb. Henrietta married a military man, William McKay. My June 2020 blog posts about them followed the Army Engineer and his family from the UK to Malta and back, then on to Bangalore, eventually ending up in New South Wales. So, there was a definite Australian link to one of my Dorset lines, the Chubbs. I have a feeling that some of my other Dorset line, the Rideouts, ended up in Oz as well.
My family, including all of its branches, seems to have rarely been content to stay in one place which feels like business as usual for me. Not for some families though or else how could the DNA testing companies come up with their reference populations. I can't imagine having all four grandparents coming from the same place but that's what's required to become part of those all-important population markers that allow the companies to come up with ethnicity estimates. I'm not sure what methods are used to come up with Ancestry's communities but they are supposed to be pretty good clues to where family has lived in the recent past. I think I've figured out why I have Australian communities and hope to find out more. Virginia and Eastern Kentucky Settlers also show up in my Ancestry communities. I don't have a clue as to why or who they could refer to. I guess I have more digging to do.
Lately, I'll fallen down a bit of a rabbit hole. Early this year, I resolved to expand my family tree on Ancestry by adding to the branches, listing siblings as well as my direct ancestors. I intended to start with my Dorset family links because I was still looking for a possible link related to the email I received from a DNA match. I didn't get very far with that but then I signed up for Diahan Southard's DNA study group. In one session she told us about how she uses the Ancestry dots in a system to filter her matches. Once I clued in, I realized it only works if you have an extensive family tree on Ancestry. It looks like I really need to work on adding those collateral lines.
I made a start from the top of my Ancestry tree, the 2 x great grandparents on my paternal line, neither of whom have roots in Dorset. So figuring out that match I was emailed about will have to wait a while longer. My searches took me deep into the East End of London. One of the first things that came to light was a mention in the Old Bailey Proceedings Online for Sarah Cavanagh in 1861, something I was pointed towards by a search on Find My Past. Her offense was making counterfeit coins. I looks likely that Sarah was the daughter of my 2 x great grandparents as the Old Bailey record also used the name Weldon and my Sarah married a John Weldon in 1862.
As I was still working on filling out my family tree, I didn't stop to find out anything further about Sarah's criminal past. It's likely there will be records with more information. As I filled out the information about Sarah's children, however, I was tickled by the fact that her daughter, Eliza Weldon, married Edward Siequien, a police constable in Whitechapel, someone on the side of law and order. There's got to be a story there.
Sources:
Ancestry
family trees
Find My
Past searches
Old Bailey Online https://www.oldbaileyonline.org
It seemed like fun, a tour touching on the musical history of the South from Nashville to Memphis then ending up in New Orleans. I'm always interested in history, enjoy music and hadn't spent much time in the southern states except for a time my youth, but that's a tale for another time. I thought I wouldn't run across anything that I could use to add to my family's social history. In that, I was wrong.
Geography is not my strong suit, especially when it comes to the United States. There are just too many states to keep track of especially for someone who wasn't exposed to that information during school years. History I'm a little bit better with particularly when one of my family connections was involved.
I knew that my 2 x great uncle, Alexander Matheson, a Union soldier, fought at Shiloh and that the battle took place somewhere in the South. My connection between that battle and Tennessee didn't come until I saw it written in stone in the Nashville Pathway of History, a wall marking out the events through the years in Tennessee's history.
Between that wall marking out Tennessee history and an installation about the Civil War at a rest stop, I was able to gather more information for my family history, an unanticipated side benefit to a musical history tour. I never know what I'll find when I take my explorations on the road.
Music is often in the background of our lives except for the chosen few who make it their life's passion. Most people can remember tunes from different phases of their lives. Indeed hearing certain tunes can evoke those memories along with feelings of joy or sorrow. Music plays a part in the history of our lives and takes us back beyond our own pasts to that of those who came before us.
