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. 

Questionable limbs on the family tree

 

                                          Looks like these Maidment documents don't relate to my family tree after all

Back in my April 20th blog post, I wrote about my quest to find the parents of my 2 x great grandmother, Mary Maidment. She and her husband, Thomas Rideout, had married in 1833, before civil registration in England, so the record of their marriage didn't include the names of the parents of the happy couple. So I needed to find another way to identify Mary's origins. A major clue that I was following was the entry for Mary and her husband and family in the 1841 census. They were listed with their children and also included in the entry were Harriet Maidment and one month old Henry who had the same last name as his mother. My theory was that Harriet was Mary's sister but the 1841 census didn't list relationships.

I had been digging into this research over the years and, at one point in time, I had found Harriet Maidment marrying a George Roberts. I had even ordered the marriage certificate for this couple which gave the name of Harriet's father as William Maidment. Further digging showed this Harriet also had other children out of wedlock before she married George Roberts. That sounded familiar even if none of the children was named Henry. After all, infants did die, especially male children.

Many hours were spent following up on the descendants of Harriet Maidment/Roberts. Those offspring travelled far afield and I wondered if any of their descendants would show up in my DNA match lists as I gleefully added those branches to my Ancestry family tree. But one day I checked the 1841 census for William Maidment, the father that Harriet named on her marriage certificate. There was one in East Stour, Dorset where Harriet Maidment/Roberts got married in 1844. But following William Maidment's name on the 1841 census was a Harriet Maidment aged 20, the same age as the Harriet Maidment listed with Thomas Rideout and family on the 1841 census for Ashmore, Dorset. Had the same person been listed in two places or had I made a mistake and followed the wrong Harriet Maidment?