Seasons Greetings

 

Best wishes for a 

Happy Holiday

Season

Connections to Scottish clans

 

                                                                 Houses in Portree, Isle of Skye, Scotland

Last week I wrote about one set of Scottish immigrants that I have researched but those were not my ancestors. One of my own family lines does go back to Scotland though. I have connections to the Highlands and Islands, specifically to Islay and Skye. As I know of that link in my family tree, at one point I signed up to receive emails from the Society of Highland & Island History. They hold webinars and I never know when they might show something of interest. This past week there was a webinar about Y Chromosome Testing and the presenter was Alasdair F. Macdonald.

The Highlands with their clan system are an interesting place to pursue Y DNA testing. There are so many stories handed down about clan linages and the clan system still exists in the present day. Finding documentation to corroborate the stories can be tricky though, as Alasdair told us in the webinar. He has been doing DNA research for a long time as he was one of the contributors to Tracing Your Ancestors Using DNA: A Guide for Family Historians. The book was originally published in 2019 but a new edition is about to come out.

One of the clans he spoke about was the Mathesons. I sat up and took notice then as that was the surname of my 3 x great grandfather, Kenneth Matheson, who immigrated from Skye to Prince Edward Island and then to Upper Canada. Apparently there are two main branches of the Matheson family, one from Shinness and one from Lochalsh. That last place name sounded familiar. It's where the bridge now goes from the mainland to Skye so I would have passed through it on my visit to the island.

Apparently, according to the presentation, there is also a connection between the Mathesons and the Rosses. That also piqued my interest as Kenneth Matheson was married to Ann Ross. Maybe there were ongoing connections between the families over the centuries as well. Of course, now I'm starting to dig out the information I have on my Scottish families. We'll see how far I get with that. 

A Tale of Scottish Immigrants in the Maritimes

 

                                                                                 Brass of priest (1540) Thaxted

I sign up for a lot of webinars related to my areas of research. That's probably part of the reason that I get distracted from whatever genealogical path I've been exploring. A recent talk put on by the Scottish SIG of the Ontario Genealogical Society caught my eye as it had the title, Scots in the Maritimes. I have Scottish lines of research and some of those families ended up in the Maritimes, so I signed up.

The speaker, Peggy Homans Chapman, presented a comprehensive view of records available about Scottish migrants in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and PEI. I already knew a lot of the information she covered, like the wonderful books by Lucille Campey, but she mentioned some different and new to me items and databases that I want to explore.

One of the themes of her presentation about where the Scots settled showed that religion had a role to play in who settled where. I had found that in my own research. My ears perked up when she talked about the story of a priest who met boats coming in to Pictou to deter the Catholic Scots from putting down roots there. She thought it was just an old story but I was able to put the names of the priest, MacEachern, in the chat because I came upon that information in a story I covered in this blog.

The story I had about the priest differed somewhat as MacEachern wasn't meeting the newcomers, he advised people already settled in Pictou to move to Antigonish, where the Catholics had settled. this was part of the story I covered when I wrote about John Brack McNeil back in 2020. His story started with the December 14, 2019 blog post Loyalist or just loyal   and continued for six more blog posts in 2020 commencing with The Search for John McNeil. It was interesting to be reminded of this story and the research I had done in those areas of Nova Scotia. Now I'll have to see if I can find some similar information on my Scots who went to PEI.

Sources:

Information about Angus Bernard MacEachern the priest from PEI who came to Pictou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Bernard_MacEachern 

Blog posts related to the story:

Loyalist or just loyal? - December 14, 2019 https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2019/12/loyalist-or-just-loyal.html

 The Search for John McNeil - January 11, 2020 https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-search-for-john-mcneil.html

Other related blog posts:        The Riddle of the Three John McNeils January 18, 2020

Putting Down Roots by Chance January 25, 2020

The Power of Religion February 1, 2020

Notable in Malignant Cove February 8, 2020

A Will Adds Dates to the Timeline February 15, 2020

Scottish Names February 22, 2020

Images:

By Poliphilo - Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81903245

A second look at a military record

 

                                                                  The book and my grandfather's military record

Reading is one of the joys of my life. I read widely and sometimes what I read provides inspiration for my family history research. This time that spark was provided by a book about a man who served in the Great War, aka WWI. That man was Harry Palin who was living in New Zealand when he joined the armed forces. Those troops were some of the "lucky" participants at Gallipoli.

The book gave a narrative account of that conflict and named the British ships that were supporting the troops in that theatre of war. My paternal grandfather was assigned to a ship in that war and I remembered someone telling me that he was on Lemnos and Mykonos. Was he also involved in the Gallipoli Campaign?

I pulled out my grandfather's naval record and took a closer look. According to the record, he joined up in June of 1917 and was assigned to the President II and served in Chingford. 1917 was too late for the Gallipoli campaign and besides, the President II was parked in different places on the Thames, such as Chingford, and used as an accounting base. Chingford was also the site of a Royal Naval Air Service airfield was explains the note on his record which read ENGT TO R.A.F. A further search into conscription in WWI, explained his late entry into the fighting forces. It wasn't until May of 2016 that married men were subject to the draft.

So, although checking to see if my grandfather was involved in the Gallipoli campaign turned up negative results, I still learned a lot about the records I already had on hand. They are still confusing though, as they also record that he received the Eastern Medal. Was the family lore placing him on Lemnos and Mykonos correct? It look like I have more searching to do.

Sources:

Imperial War Museums – Lives of the First World War https://livesofthefirstworldwar.iwm.org.uk/story/28229 

Palin, Michael Great-Uncle Harry: A Tale of War and Empire, Random House Canada, Toronto, 2023

UK Parliament – Conscription: the First World War https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/yourcountry/overview/conscription/ 

Adding background to family history with a book

                                                        Sources for London ancestors, a book and a death certificate

An online group of family history writers that I belong to sometimes reads a book to see how other writers have treated their historic subjects. This time the book was The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper. In it the author, Hallie Rubenhold, wrote about the lives of Jack the Ripper's victims, showing the reality of those lives as opposed to the lore passed down by Ripperologists through the ages.

Almost right away after the murders in 1888, a whole mythology sprang up around the deaths and the perpetrator. The emphasis was on the killer, Jack, and the mystery of his identity. The victims became throw away women, branded prostitutes by the press and dismissed as such by those whose interest was in the killer's mysterious identity.

Because of my interest in the East End of London in my research, I have read some of the many books about Jack the Ripper. They often contain details about the area where my family lived and the social life of the times that is hard to find elsewhere. I welcomed Robenhold's book and, when I took it off the shelf, I could see that my copy bristled with many bookmarks marking the places that had information that I wanted to look into further.

Jack terrorized the streets of the East End in 1888, a few years after the widow, Sarah Minster Cavanagh, had passed. So the details in the book would concern the generation after her. But when I leafed through the book again I came upon a chapter with the title "Demon Drink" and much of it is about the effect of alcohol on women. On my family tree a few women from that era and general location succumbed to that particular demon. Looks like it's time to read that chapter again and to look at whatever other items of interest I flagged in the book on my first read through.

 

Sources:

Britannica article about Jack the Ripper https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jack-the-Ripper 

 

A neglected family branch

 

                                                               Molly's Reach in Gibsons on the Sunshine Coast

I like to write but finding inspiration about what to write about can sometimes be the hardest part. This week I was busy with a project which took way long than I thought it was going to. Don't they always? Anyway the result was that I finally finished the long project on the day that an article deadline came up. On top of that there was my blog post which I usually try to post on Friday, the day before it goes live.

The fact that my article was for the BCGS journal helps though, because once I thought of what I could write for that, it usually provides a similar topic to write about here. And it did. When writing about a recent trip to the Sunshine Coast of BC, I realized that I have neglected a whole family of relatives on my family tree. Some of them ended up living on the Sunshine Coast and I actually met them in person once, but that was when I was just lightly interested in family history in that time before it took over so many of my waking hours. 

Being a novice was my excuse then but it won't wash now. But thinking about those family connections and how I have neglected them, makes me realize they are prime candidates to put in my plan for when I next visit the FamilySearch Library. I better start that plan before something else comes up. 

For Remembrance Day

 

                                  On Remembrance Day

                      we remember those who have fought

                  in our more recent wars. It is good to honour

            them for their service but it must be remembered that

        war affects more than those in the various military services.

    War can and does affect also those who live through the conflict 

                         as well as those who come later. 

Strength from family history

 

                                                            Battle of Britain-Blitz, Dawn by Joseph Gray

I get reminder emails about watching Ask the Experts, a series of interviews that Diahan Southard does with various experts in the genetic genealogy community. They take place on Your DNA Guide's YouTube channel. The one this past week snuck up on me but I tuned in on time to see it live. Her guest was Judy Russell, the Legal Genealogist. The discussion was interesting and one of the things that Judy said really rang true for me.

I can't remember her exact words, but Judy talked about how knowing one's family stores gives people, particularly young people, strength and resilience. She cited the men and women who made the trek west by wagon train to claim new land. My thoughts didn't stray back that far but I can attest to this. When I was going through a particularly trying time in my life, I found strength by invoking memories of my grandmothers. They both lived in London at the time of the blitz in WWII. The thought of them coping with the disruption and fear that the constant bombing brought gave me the fortitude to get through my day to day life in trying circumstances. Knowing they had been able to carry on told me that I could too. 

Images:

Battle of Britain- Blitz, Dawn image: a view from the north bank of the River Thames in London over towards the Shot Tower on the south bank. A few civilians are walking on the pavement in the foreground. Clouds of smoke, showing evidence of fires caused by German air raids, are visible on the horizon.

Gray, Joseph - http://media.iwm.org.uk/iwm/mediaLib//281/media-281466/large.jpg This photograph Art.IWM ART 15672 6  comes from the collections of the Imperial War Museums

Deadlines and research plans

 

I like to keep busy but sometimes I think I overdo it. Maybe I have too many irons in the fire. The writerly part of my soul is busy this weekend learning more about the craft of writing at the Surrey International Writers Conference. But at the beginning of this week, a friend reminded me that she had asked me earlier about going back to Salt Lake City and the genealogist in me took over.

So that's just two things, right? Well maybe but research trips to the FamilySearch Library take more time planning for than the actual hours spent on the ground in the genealogist's mecca. And then there's writing. It's great to learn new stuff at the conference but then the best thing to do is to apply the most promising techniques before forgetting the reasons behind them.

In the meantime, I have some other deadlines to meet this coming week. I guess I better get writing but maybe I should plan which subjects to concentrate on first. 

DNA update: confused by new Ancestry Origin results

 

Periodically Ancestry updates what they used to call their ethnicity results which are now found under Origins. It's always interesting to see how things have changed but this latest iteration of my results has me scratching my head. After past updates I've heard complaints about how Ancestry had amped up testers' Scottish origins when they didn't feel that was right. Now I have a similar complaint but in another direction.

As someone with an Irish surname at birth, I'd previously found Ancestry's estimate of my Irish background on the low side. It made me question how my family name had been bestowed back when my lot first ended up in London. But the other DNA sites where I'd tested made me feel better about the origins of my family line: FTDNA's result showed 13% Ireland while Living DNA showed 7% Ireland. Now with the change in their estimates, Ancestry has whittled down my Irish origins to 1% and, as a new wrinkle, they've added 2% from Cornwall. I'm not sure where the Cornish bit comes from, nothing that shows up in my genealogy, that's for sure. 

Once I'd finished shaking my head over my new results, I checked those for my son whose Ancestry kit I manage. His Ireland region has a value of 13%, of which 6% is from his father and 7% is from his mother. Wait a minute, if my DNA is only 1% from Ireland how could I have passed on 7% to my child? That's almost as baffling as the Virginia & Eastern Kentucky Settlers that Ancestry linked me to in one of their previous updates. 

Life as a widow in the second half of the 19th century

 

                                                                 A Romanized image of a washerwoman in Paris 

Although still in her early 40s at the time of her husband's death, Sarah Minister Cavanagh didn't remarry. The 1861 census found her at yet another address from the ill-fated one at 31 Devonshire Street which had seen the death of two of her children as well as her husband, Benjamin. According to the census, sharing the accommodation with Sarah were her son, Henry, and daughters, Maria and Emma. Henry was 16 and employed as a shoe black. As a widow Sarah's occupation was also listed. She was a washerwoman. In 1871 this changed to charwoman only to change back again to washerwoman in the 1881 census.

A Dictionary of Old Trades, Titles and Occupations, defines a washerwoman as: "A person who 'took in' other people's washing into her own home for a fixed fee. As opposed to a laundry woman who did the same job in a commercial establishment." Whatever her employment, it was manual labour which makes me question if she had book learning. If she was self-employed she must have been able to keep a tally. Beyond the sheer physicality of the work gave me respect for her stamina. It wasn't as though there was running water readily available or washing machines when it comes to that. She was still performing this work after the age of 65. But in those days the choices were supporting yourself or resorting to the workhouse. Not a decision to be taken lightly. 

Sources:

Ancestry.com census returns

Waters, Colin A Dictionary of Old Trades, Titles and Occupations, Countryside Books, Berkshire, 2002  

Image:

Washerwoman pic

By Giovanni Boldini - https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2018/tableaux-omp-19me-sculpture-pf1809/lot.188.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=85308359

A closer look at Sarah Minister/Cavanagh's moves through London

 

                                                Sarah would have been close to this river in her moves through London

Sarah Minister/Cavanagh and her family rarely stayed in one place for long while living in London and, while I have lots of addresses for them, it was had to pinpoint the actual places they were living in on Charles Booth's Poverty Map (1886-1903). Most of the addresses were for places, courts or yards. Those designations sound like smaller geographical areas than streets so were probably less likely to be written on the map. The actually poverty legend that Booth's maps were noted for was very patchy throughout the areas I was looking at; Whitechapel, Finsbury, Stepney and St George's in the East. The map didn't add much to my knowledge of the family's circumstances.

While Benjamin was alive he worked at various jobs in the building trade. It is hard to say if Sarah also worked for a wage. Did her husband support her and the nine children they had together? Not that the children stayed home for long. The only census which showed most of the family together was the 1851 census, the last one in which father Benjamin was still the head of the household. Even that showed only 7 of the 9 children as Emma was not yet born and Matilda was absent. Perhaps Matilda was in the infirmary as she died in 1853.

The deaths in the family give credence to the idea that they were not living in the healthiest of situations so perhaps they were among the less well off in whichever area of the city they were in. Even after the death of her husband, Sarah continued to move from place to place in London. Maybe that was how it was done in the East End. 

 

Sources:

Charles Booth’s Poverty Map (1886-1903) https://booth.lse.ac.uk/map

Following Sarah Minister/Cavanagh's moves through London

 

                                    A copy of one of Charles Booth's London Poverty maps in my collection

Many of my ancestors ended up in London. The city was a draw for people from all over the country. Just off the top of my head I can think of at least three places that I've been able to document that my ancestors hailed from: Dorset, Suffolk, Essex and Norfolk - oops that looks like four that automatically came to mind. Because of this, I've amassed books on London, its history and social issues. Among the collection are also London atlases from various time periods as well as the Poverty Maps that Charles Booth drew up in 1889. While Sarah died a few years before that date, I think that those maps will be a good indicator for the state of the areas she lived in even if that happened to be decades earlier. I don't think there was much reform prior to Booth bringing the state of London's areas to public notice.

I have amassed a list of addresses for Sarah from official government documents such as marriages and deaths as well as census information. Also helpful for tracking down the family's moves were baptismal records. I wasn't able to find those for all 9 of the children and, in the case of 3 of the offspring, they were all baptized in the same month and year, so that source wasn't as helpful as hoped but there are still a lot of moves and changes of abode to cover. Now to track the places on a map if I can find them all.

Sources:

GRO certificates for marriage and deaths obtained from the General Register Office in the UK

Parish records accessed through Ancestry and FindMyPast

 

First steps to uncover a family story

 

                                                 The GRO death certificates for Benjamin and Sarah Cavanagh

Even though I feel I neglected Sarah Minister, the notes and documentation on hand have a lot of information about her. It isn't complete though and, if DNA matching might potentially help, I will need to find out about both her children and any siblings she might have had. There are similarities between her experiences and those of my other 2 x great grandmother, Mary Rideout nee Maidment. They both became widows at a young age. I wonder if Sarah, like Mary, had a child after her husband was no longer around.

Unlike Mary, Sarah moved a lot as was common for the city dwellers of London at the time. She would have lived in the Big Smoke from the time of her marriage to Benjamin Cavanaugh on September 11, 1838 until her death in 1885. As you can see from the photo of their death certificates above, Benjamin died in 1855 so that meant she was a widow for 30 years. Even so, her occupation on her death certificate was listed as being the widow of Benjamin Cavanagh, as though that was what had supported her for three decades.

At this point, I need to go through the information I have and come up with a plan of action to fill in the gaps of Sarah's story and determine what happened to her children. I also hope to take the search back to Sarah's origins in Great Yarmouth and see if there are any other related Ministers I can follow up on.

Sources:

General Register Office Death Certificate:

·         Benjamin Cavanagh 25 March 1855 31 Devonshire Street age 39 Painter Journeyman Phthisis 3 years Pericarditis informant Mary [Ind] present at the death registered 27 March 1855

 

·         Sarah Cavanagh 10 August 1885 Infirmary Bakers Row age 70 Widow of Benjamin Cavanagh a plumber 6 Charlotte Place Apoplexy informant JJ Ilott medical superintendent Infirmary Bakers Row registered 12 August 1885

A forgotten family branch

 

                                                                        A street in The Rows, Great Yarmouth

Some of my latest posts have been about the Maidment family as finding the parents of my 2 x great grandmother, Mary Maidment, had been a long time quest. But you know, another 2 x great grandmother was also missing parental information and she rarely came to mind. Her name was Sarah Minister and she came from Great Yarmouth. I know very little about her story.

A recent episode of Walking Wartime Britain made me think of her and her ancestors as the show host was in East Anglia. Before the program I didn't know exactly where East Anglia was but apparently it takes in Great Yarmouth, which is a port city and would have been the area where the Nazis landed if they had invaded Britain. Precautions were taken at the time, of course, especially along the coastline but Great Yarmouth would have been hard to defend. The viewers were taken on a brief tour of an area of the town called The Rows, where the roads are narrow paths between the buildings. It made me wonder if that was where Sarah had grown up.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I will be able to determine that as both of Sarah's parents appear to have died prior to 1841 and the earliest Great Yarmouth directory seems to be from 1839. Sarah herself was no longer in Norfolk by that time as she was married in Hoxton, Middlesex in 1838. When had she moved from Great Yarmouth and had she done it on her own? It looks like there is more to find out about her story.

Sources:

GRO certificate of marriage between Benjamin Cavanagh and Sarah Minister 11 September, 1838, District of St John the Baptist, Hoxton, County of Middlesex, (Registration District of Shoreditch)

University of Leicester, Special Collections Online – Historical Directories of England and Wales  https://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/digital/collection/p16445coll4/search/searchterm/1820-1829!1830-1839/field/period!period/mode/exact!exact/conn/and!and 

Images:

By Great Yarmouth's Rows - Row 95 (Kittywitches Row) by Evelyn Simak, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=142379971 

September resolutions?

 

                                                    Just some of the genealogy magazines I haven't yet gone through

This week I watched as the kids went back to school and it felt like things were getting back into the normal grove after being relaxed for so long. In my case, I don't have to go back to work or school but I am affected by school traffic as I live adjacent to a school so have to time my activities to avoid high traffic hours when school lets out. It also left me with a feeling that I should be getting back to something too. And, you know, I probably should figure out where to focus my time. So I thought, why not resolutions in September.

January resolutions are traditional, I know. But September feels like the start of the year in a lot of ways. Besides, January could get in on the deal as well. It would be a great time to look over my list of resolutions and see which ones are doing fine and which might need more work or maybe some tweaking.

I foresee the compilation of a comprehensive list to get myself back on track only part of which would be about family history. I'll start with my genealogy resolutions though and they are:

That should keep me going for awhile!

Genealogy and the dog days of summer

 

                                                                Some of the pictures now on my dining room wall

I was able to attend a meeting of the PoCo Genealogy Group this past week, something I am rarely able to do as it is usually held on the first Wednesday of the month which conflicts with another meeting I attend. Before the presentation about the latest Ancestry updates started, one of the other attendees asked me, "Are you getting much genealogy done?" I nodded yes. Her answer to that was "I'm not." When I looked around the table there were fewer attendees that usual. I don't know if that was because of the change from the meeting's usual date or if the missing people had also been sidelined by the dog days of summer.

It has been hard to get into research lately as life speeds up as we head towards the start of September which is often a cue to start the usual work and school days up again. I'm hoping that some of my latest activity will bring me some inspiration on the family history front. The walls of my living space were mostly bare but recently a friend helped me to hang some of the many paintings and framed photos in my possession. Since I am related to not only the people in the photos but also to the artists whose paintings I have hung, I'm hoping that being surrounded by their works brings me insights into the past. 

Checking out WikiTree

 

                                                        My sparse family tree as it currently appears on my software

I'm always interested in learning new things related to genealogy and, with the advent of DNA testing and the various ways it can further research, I've added genetic genealogy education to my repertoire. Last year I signed up for the Study Group at Your DNA Guide where they talked a lot about their DNA Skills course. The study group members in the skills course seemed so much further ahead, so I signed up for that as well figuring that I'd have time to take the course since the yearlong Study Group would be over. Then, of course, they offered a special deal to join the second year of Study Group. So I signed up for that too.

Its has been interesting and, at times, overwhelming especially when the DNA Skills course was still happening but that's over now - well, sort of, I still haven't reached the end of the lessons. I kind of got distracted by my research goal which was to find the father of Mary Maidment, my 3 x great grandmother. Finding that link led to my interest in gamekeepers.

When looking for my Maidment links, I headed off in the wrong direction at first, adding many links to my new family tree software. Those incorrect links have been deleted and my tree on my version of Family Historian is looking sparse. I really should enter more family there but I've been offered another distraction. The latest session of Your DNA Guide Study Group was a session about WikiTree.

I'd heard about WikiTree before and have listened to well-known genealogists extoll its virtues but I wasn't sold on being part of a community that was working on a single family tree. that could be a holdover from listening to people's complaints about the single family tree on FamilySearch. But, after watching Connie Davis and Greg Clarke explain how the WikiTree site works, I signed up. So it looks like I will be filling in my family tree on that site as well as on my own software. It looks like there is a social side to WikiTree too as I've received emails welcoming me. Nice, except that I can't keep up with my emails as it is!

Sources:

https://www.wikitree.com

https://www.yourdnaguide.com

A new look at old research

 

                                                                              A carman on a London street

I sent a message off to someone on Ancestry thinking I might get a reply. That came about due to a prompt from an email from My Heritage which I couldn't fully access because I currently don't have a subscription. As I had no access to the family trees referenced by the email, I thought the same people might have trees on Ancestry where I do have a subscription. Of course, the email was about a line unrelated to my gamekeeper research but I didn't expect a quick reply. I mean, sending messages on Ancestry is like consigning them to the ether.

The person I messaged replied within a day! They had questions and the clarification they were looking for was about a line I'd done extensive research on, the Arments. They were a family who showed up on many records in many cases because of their brushes with the law.

As I leafed through my Arment research to answer the questions I'd been asked, I looked at the information I had with new eyes. Given my recent foray into working with my DNA, perhaps there was a genetic research question I could tackle. There was also another story that I hadn't looked into further, that of the death of George Arment, who would have been my 3 x great uncle. He was a carman or carter who met his end by being crushed between two hogsheads of lager. That looks like it deserves a newspaper search!

 Images:

By Internet Archive Book Images - https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14579853990/Source book page: https://archive.org/stream/wandererinlondon00luca/wandererinlondon00luca#page/n252/mode/1up, No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43453370

Taking research on historical occupations further

 

                                                                                    Gamekeepers' Cottages

When tracking ancestors back in history, research usually takes in the census as well as birth, marriage and death records. Sometimes when the object of interest lives in a town, directories can fill in some details which can be handy in the years between censuses but beware, the information on the directory entries was gathered beforehand. I've found recently dead people listed.

I haven't yet look at directories for my Maidment gamekeepers but, since their profession often saw them in court with poachers and the like, I decided a perusal of historic newspapers was in order so my subscription to Find My Past is coming in handy. I've just begun to look up the names of Elias and his sons and I've already hit pay dirt. There have been the reported on court cases where the Maidment in question had to give testimony about a person caught red-handed with game. Also of interest were some ads placed by one of the men looking for a new position, an ad that gave specifics of height and age and trustworthiness. I also came across the report of an inquest into the death of one of the Maidment men's wife. That's one I need to look into further!

Because I've been so successful in my search for the gamekeepers I'm interested in, I've started to wonder if I should perhaps try newspaper searches for those in other professions, like shopkeepers and publicans - I have a few of those I'd like to know more about. 

Sources:

FindMyPast newspaper search https://www.findmypast.com 

Image:

By Gamekeepers Cottages. by Mick Malpass, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=108140086

Multiple uses for a DNA chart

 

                                                                 X-DNA chart with names from my family tree added

When I delved into the study of how to use genetic genealogy, I was interested in learning more about the inheritance of X-DNA. Its inheritance is harder to track that that of mitochondrial DNA  in that it isn't just handed on from female to female. Fathers of girls also hand down an x chromosome to their daughters as do their mothers giving the majority of females two x chromosomes. There are handy dandy charts to figure out the X-DNA pattern. Two possible sources are in the links under Sources at the end of this blog post.

As I filled out the name for my own chart, I realized that this different way of arranging the information from my family tree was useful in other ways as well. It was a visual of the lines I haven't been able to extend back very far. Many of those lines stop at females and I think that has a lot to do with the difficulty of ascertaining birth surnames for women whose identities were often swallowed up by the family they married into.

When I look at the names I've been able to fill out it appears that breaks in the line are frequently found after the 2 x great grandparent level. I should be able to update the chart a bit though now that I'm confident about who Mary Maidment's father was. Now I just need to confirm who her mother was and then try to extend both of those lineages back further.

Sources:

https://dna-explained.com/2012/09/27/x-marks-the-spot/

https://familylocket.com/x-dna-inheritance-and-recombination/

Researching ancestral occupations: gamekeeper part 3

 

                                                                                         Image of a gamekeeper

My search for gamekeepers among the Maidments is proving a longer task than I anticipated. With the documents that I've accessed so far, it seems like my 3 x great grandfather Elias was the first in the family to become a gamekeeper and many of his sons took up the occupation too. He had quite a few sons, many of whom were born in different places. From the information I've seen so far, these sons also moved across England. I suppose that makes sense because gamekeepers were hired by large landed estates and there would only be so many of those around so any aspirants to the profession would have to go to where there were vacancies.

The son I've found the most varied information sources for so far is Jasper who was baptized in Enford, Wiltshire in 1814. When trawling through information on the National Archives, I came up with a catalogue entry of the Appointment of gamekeeper: Jasper Maidment held by the Nottinghamshire Archives. Strange, as none of the information I have on him so far has a connection to Nottinghamshire. Ancestry also pointed me towards his very informative gravestone which gives the date and location of death as well as naming his longtime employer, George Spofforth Lister. I hope to parlay that tidbit into more records about Jasper's employment. Fingers crossed for similar luck with my continued searches. I wonder what treasures I'll be able to discover about the other Maidments.

Sources:

Ancestry – Wiltshire, England, Church of England Births and Baptisms, 1813-1922 for Jasper Maidment

Find a Grave https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/135991997/jaspar-maidment

Images:

By Internet Archive Book Images -  https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14593150360/Source book page: https://archive.org/stream/withnatureandcam00kear/withnatureandcam00kear#page/n350/mode/1up, No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43736289

Researching ancestral occupations: gamekeeper part 2

 

                                                These books about occupations are just the beginning of my research

Real life has cut into my research time lately, so I haven't gotten very far with researching the gamekeeping Maidments. The family's time in the game, so to speak, began with the patriarch Elias who lived from 1773 to 1825. I haven't yet found records that can confirm how early Elias took up the profession and it looks like he didn't keep up the work in his older years. As for his sons, I'm currently tracking the censuses in with they were listed as gamekeepers and the places they were living at the time.

Knowing that gamekeepers were employed by large estates, I'm also hunting for resources about large English estates. I'm should to be able to dedicate more time to this quest soon and hope my next blog post will be about the steady progress I've been able to make. A breakthrough would be nice but for now I'll keep following up possible sources. 

Researching ancestral occupations: gamekeeper

 

                                                                                        Image of a gamekeeper

I'm still looking into my Maidment family links and, as many of the men were gamekeepers, I'm looking into that occupation further. According to the information in the Heritage Production book on English Occupations, the gamekeeper was considered part of the village hierarchy giving him status. That makes me think of someone rather settled with a respected place in village life, a life that I used to believe changed little from decade to decade with little movement from place to place.

Only the Maidments moved from place to place, sometimes showing up as labourers and on many occasions their occupation was listed as gamekeeper. Could be the moves were to more lucrative posts or maybe the estates they were employed by no longer needed their services. Then too, it could be that their employers owned more than one estate so moved employees around. It could also be because the man acting as gamekeeper had worn out his welcome.

An extract of an article on Cambridge Core, painted a far different picture of the gamekeepers status. Not only could he bring the law down on poachers and the like, but his peers and those above him in the hierarchy didn't put much stock in his honesty. All this makes me wonder how the Maidments were perceived and if maybe that led to them moving time and time again.

My research is still ongoing and I hope to be able to find out more. According to the Heritage Production book, the Quarter Session records should have information about gamekeepers. Now I just have to consult various sources to find out when and where they lived to figure out which of those records I should delve into. 

Sources:

Christensen, Dr. Penny Researching English Occupations – Professions & Trades. Heritage Productions, Toronto, Ontario, 2003

Extract from The Gamekeeper and English Rural Society, 1660-1830  https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-british-studies/article/abs/gamekeeper-and-english-rural-society-16601830/664EDA50F7F0A3F663233CEBD09D159B

Waters, Colin A Dictionary of Old Trades, Titles and Occupations. Countryside Books, Newbury, Berkshire, 2002

Images:

By Internet Archive Book Images - https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14593150360/Source book page:https://archive.org/stream/withnatureandcam00kear/withnatureandcam00kear#page/n350/mode/1up, No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43736289 

 

Clues in the unsettled life of a gamekeeper?

 

                                                                   Books about old trades should come in handy

I've been doing genealogy research for a long time and have amassed a fair number of books on various subjects related to my research. My recent findings had me pulling two books about occupations off the shelves. It all had to do with my 3 x great grandfather who I've finally determined to be Elias Maidment. It took me a while and a few false trails before I was satisfied that he was the man; the target of my DNA search to determine who the father of my 2 x great grandmother, Mary Rideout nee Maidment, was. 

Once I settled on Elias, some of the questions I had about Mary began to make sense. I had often wondered why the censuses had given her birthplace as Gloucestershire when, from what I could determine, she had spent most of her life in Dorset. When I filled in Elias' children I noticed their birthplaces changed a lot, as though he had a profession that required him to move from place to place. Baptismal records didn't list his profession until 1814 when his son Jasper was christened in Enford, Wiltshire. That record showed that Elias was a gamekeeper. As he retained this profession when he later moved to Sixpenny Handley, Dorset it seems likely that his earlier moves might also have been due to his trade.

                                                      A list of the birthplaces of Elias Maidment's children

It looks like those books about occupations will come in handy as I find out more about gamekeepers. It must have been a worthy profession, some of his sons followed in his footsteps. I'm also wondering if the profession of woodman might be related in some way to that of gamekeeper as some of my Rideout clan were woodmen and the Rideout and Maidment lines came together with my 2 x great grandparents, Thomas Rideout and Mary Maidment. Let's see where this line of research takes me. 

Attending an in-person genealogy conference

 

                        The Delta Hotel near the Toronto Airport was the site of the recent Ontario Ancestors conference

In these days of virtual conferences, it seemed strange and extravagant to be registering to show up in-person at this year's Ontario Ancestors conference. It was to be their first foray into the non-virtual world of conferencing post pandemic. In my case, not only would there be a hotel room to pay for but also airfare. Would being there rather than sitting in front of my own computer be worth the extra time and expense?

It was! There is something about being in the same room as fellow genealogists that can't be replicated. Not to mention the shared meals and the temptations of the marketplace. On one night there was also a Burns Dinner enactment in which some of us took part. Unfortunately there was no whisky in the classes we toasted with.

It was great to connect with new acquaintances and I was also surprised to find some familiar faces in the marketplace among the vendors. Some of the gals I knew from the Family History Writing Retreat which I attended last year were there as well as someone from BCGS who had taken the opportunity to explore connections in the general area before setting up her stall at the conference.

I enjoyed my time at the conference and learned much more than if I had stayed home and tuned in on my computer. Not only do I find I retain more when seeing things in-person but I also pick up things from the side conversations and chance encounters. 

Heritage on the ground in Regina

 

                                                                       Rae Street and 15th Avenue in Regina 

I recently took a genealogical journey. One of my stops along the way was in Saskatchewan, a province I hadn't yet stopped to visit. The place was of interest because I'd tracked my maternal grandparents back to Regina where they met and married. I have the marriage certificate to prove it. The certificate was enclosed in a booklet with scriptures, prayer and vows along with the signatures of the guests. But I wanted more. 

How did this Englishman and my Canadian born grandmother of Scottish extraction ever meet? I thought maybe it had happened as a result of the Regina Cyclones of 1912. I ascertained that they were both within the affected zone or at least close to the scene of destruction at the time. It could have happened then but as I tracked down their various addresses during both of their stays in the Queen City, it seemed that a better bet was when they lived within 3 blocks of each other in 1914.

I found out more about the cyclone by checking copies of the Regina Leader Post at the Saskatchewan Archive. A visit to the Prairie History Room at the Regina Public Library gave me access to the Henderson Directories for Regina so I could track down my relatives' addresses through the years. They moved around a lot but in 1914 my grandfather Harold was living at 2301 Rae and my grandmother May was living at 2048 Rae. I finally found the right area of town after my mapping app sent me way on the other side of town. I found the correct area of town while looking for bookstores. In a walk down 13th Avenue which was in close proximity to my hotel, I stumbled across the Rae Street I wanted to find and realized there were only three blocks between where Harold and May had lived making me think that they likely came into contact then. Sometimes just walking the streets in an ancestral place brings more understanding. 

A shift to Canadian research

 

                                                                  Notes I made previously on the Matheson family 

It never fails, I feel like I'm getting somewhere with my DNA studies and following the Maidment line but now I need to shift focus. It's time to get my research ready for a genealogy trip. Unfortunately, I won't be jetting off to Dorset to find out more about my family there. On this trip my concentration will be on Canadian records. Strangely, when I was busy filling out the wrong line of Maidment descendants, a shoot from that line took me off to Canada as well. As yet, my now and, I hope, correct line of Maidments hasn't taken me in that direction. There's still a chance though as other things have gotten in my way so that research hasn't born much fruit yet. Who knows where the correct Maidment line will take me. I have a suspicion that some of the Maidment descendants ended up in Australia. 

For now, I need to concentrate on my Canadian lines. I've done a fair amount of research over the years. So much that I often come across notes that I've made but have totally forgotten about. I was surprised to find a book containing notes that I took from a book that gave me clues on my Matheson family. The book was Angie Littlefield's The Thomsons of Durham. There were interesting details in it about a marriage and death the records for which I've been searching for a long long time. I need to see the records with my own eyes, though, especially as I've found some details in the book that I can dispute. I hope to be a bit further ahead in my research once my trip is done.

Revisiting and revising my Dorset research

 

                                             There are many pages of entries marked with x due to my previous research

Sometimes genealogical research can lead down a plausible trail that looks okay but, when other information comes to light, things don't look so good. That's what happened to me when working on my Maidment line. The 1841 census had shown a Harriet Maidment living with Thomas Rideout and his wife Mary Rideout nee Maidment. With Harriet was a 1 month old son, Henry Maidment. When I found a Harriet Maidment of the same age having other children out of wedlock before finally marrying and changing her name, I assumed it was the Harriet I was looking for. No matter that Henry was no longer with her. Children often died in the first years of life back then. 

When I found a second Harriet Maidment in the 1841 census of the same age as Mary Rideout's sister I knew I had to do more research. The second Harriet I'd found was living with William Maidment who looked to be her father. With the Harriet I'd been researching, on her marriage certificate she named her father as William. Besides that marriage took place in East Stour the 1841 census place for William Maidment and his daughter, Harriet. It looked like it was time to scrap all the work I'd already done.

So, I decided to look for Harriet's son, Henry Maidment in the 1851 census. I remember searching for Harriet Maidment in the same census with no luck but searching for females of marriageable age can be problematic. Maybe being male Henry had kept his last name even if he had ended up with a new family.

I found a likely candidate, a Henry Maidment listed as a nephew with birth year about 1842, living in Sixpenny Handley, Dorset - right county, right age. A check of the listing showed Jasper Maidment as the head. I'm sure the name Jasper had come up with checking Ancestry's ThruLines. With Jasper were his wife Mary A, children: Joseph, Mary A, John, George, sister Jane and nephew Henry. What was more Mary A., Jasper's wife, was born in Ashmore, where Thomas and Mary Rideout lived. Maybe I was on the right track at last.