Research and a family mystery

 

                          The Bridgend Hotel on Islay where my Auntie Peg once stayed while doing research in the area

My first forays in family history research happened many years ago. It was a time before personal computers were the norm in family homes, a time so long ago there was no internet. Do you remember those days? They seem remote now as I sit writing this blog post while taking part in an online writing sprint on Zoom with the Family History Masterclass for the February Writing Challenge.

But as far away as the start of my own first steps into my family's past take me, there was someone who had gone before me, my great aunt Peg. Unfortunately, I never spoke to her about her search or anything she had found. She lived in Winnipeg and I grew up in Montreal, so we were not close. She died in the 1970s and my first halting steps on the path to researching family history happened a decade later.

Perhaps my great aunt's interest in family percolated down to other members because it was some family stories that first made me perk up my ears. It could have been the subject that caught my attention, though. That old question of whether he fell or was pushed. I was a fan of murder mysteries at an early age. I have a distinct recollection of my Gran talking to my mother about a death in the family. It was a mysterious end that I later found out had become part of Canadian mythology.

Did Auntie Peg read The Tom Thomson Mystery by William Little? It was about her first cousin once removed and it came out in the '70s while she was still alive. That book might have sparked the conversation I heard between my mother and grandmother. My grandmother was Auntie Peg's sister. It's a real boon to research an event that drew public attention because family details make their way into the account. It's like newspaper research on steroids.

But, as much potential as those sources have, I would still like to be able to see what my Auntie Peg had found during her researches. I know that she went as far as travelling to the places that our ancestors hailed from as I have evidence that she travelled to Islay, where our Gilchrist clan came from. I'm sure that if she had known of my interest, she would have passed on the results of her research. As I've gotten older, I know it would ease my mind knowing there was someone I could leave my research to. Who to leave our research to is a common topic in my genealogy society at the moment and many of us wish we could pass it along to an interested person in a younger generation.