Records with mixed messages

 

                                      I still haven't added my tree for the descendants of Samuel Tripp but I'm getting close

Time for genealogy research has been limited lately so I've been doing it in fits and starts. I'm still tracking down my Tripp links, the offspring of Samuel Tripp and their descendants. There have been a few mixed messages as I troll through the records. By searching through public family trees on Ancestry I was able to find an obit attached to a tree that included Edward Herbert Tripp, a prime candidate to be one of Samuel's sons. According to that 1958 report, Edward Tripp lived in the Kingsville district of Ontario for most of his life. A fact that would tend to negate the 1916 census record that I found for Edward and his family in Lethbridge, Alberta. Was the census record wrong as it stated that Edward Tripp was Chinese? On the other hand, the names of his wife and children were the same as I'd seen elsewhere.

Interestingly, the information in the obituary also mentioned his time serving with the First Hussars in the Boer War. I've had ancestors who served in various armed conflicts but never one in the Boer War before. I'll have to see if I can find any military records for him. Maybe those records will name his parents. The search goes on as I create a timeline of the various records I've found for the Tripp family. They are all tucked into my Ancestry shoebox for now and it's getting very full. 

Overwhelming hints

 

                   Still working on expanding the family tree of Samuel Tripp and his descendants but nothing new to add yet

Most of my research on my personal family tree has been in England or Scotland. I'm quite familiar with digging for information in the records that are kept there and I've become used to tracking things down. My latest endeavour involves American/Canadian research and I'm finding the amount of Ancestry hints and the records that come up a bit overwhelming. I can see the temptation to accept hints and records because the only options are to accept the record into your own Ancestry family tree or to ignore the hint. There is no option to place it in abeyance to think about it for a while. It would be easy to fill in your tree quickly that way but would it be right?

I think I'll be better off searching for records myself using the hints to steer me in the right direction. Finding out what happened to the children of my 2 x great grandfather, Samuel Tripp, and his wives is helped by the fact that so many of them were sons so kept their last name. So far the deepest mysteries are about the daughters: my Charlotte, the daughter of his first wife, Sarah Ann, whose mother has not been determined and Mary Elizabeth, the daughter of his second wife. It will be interesting to see how far I get with my search for all of Samuel Tripp's descendants. 

Census problems in research

 

                                                        My Tripp family tree hasn't expanded any since last week

I'm still on the trail of Samuel Tripp and his family although my research time has been a bit lacking lately. That's not the only thing that's holding me back from filling in the subsequent years for this family that I last found on the 1881 Ontario census. The last information I found was that of the last child in the family, James Wilbert Tripp who was born in Buffalo, New York later in 1881. With the amount that the family moved around, I thought they might have returned to Canada by the time of the 1891 census was taken. No such luck.

The logical conclusion is that they stayed in the US. But that presents a problems as very little of the 1890 US census survived. It looks like following up on this family will be trickier than I thought.

I've run into problems searching for family links in places where census information is sparse before as members of my family have ended up in different parts of the globe, usually those areas are English speaking but diverse for all that. When I followed up on Australian family links, I was dismayed to find that there were no census records to search. There were electoral records but nothing that showed a family with its members all together. Then there's Ireland. There are some Irish censuses available but I haven't been able to find one early enough to link my family in the East End of London with their Irish roots.

I'm hoping for more research time in the coming weeks so that I can find out what happened to the various members of my Tripp family. If I bring Samuel Tripp's descendants forward in time that should go a long way to figuring out some of my DNA matches. That's more incentive to continue my search.

Adding descendants and more mysteries

 

                                                  Samuel Tripp's children (without Sarah Ann, the mystery girl)

As I wrote about last week, I've started adding the descendants of my 2 x great grandfather, Samuel Tripp, to my family tree. Well, I've added his children, at least the ones for which I found birth records. It appears that he had six children with his second wife, Mary or Mary Ann Redin or Rowding. Samuel and Mary Ann started having children in 1870 and then every two years or so they had another one. The birth records are a road map of the different places that they lived in around Ontario until the last child, James Wilbert Tripp, who was born in Buffalo, New York in 1881.

The move to New York State must have been just before James Wilbert's birth as the family appeared in the 1881 census in Pickering, Ontario. The 1881 Canadian census was taken on April 4, 1881 and James Wilbert made his appearance on October 23 of that same year. Interestingly, there was another child who showed up on the 1881 census, Sarah Ann Tripp, aged 13.

In past searches while looking for evidence of what happened to Catherine Matheson/Tripp, Samuel's first wife, I've found traces of Sarah Ann. In some cases Catherine has been given as her mother. I'm not sure if she was the child of Catherine or Mary Ann and have not been able to find a birth record for her. In the 1881 census her age was given as 13, so a birthdate of 1868 maybe or, as the census was taken in April, perhaps the date of birth could be 1867. Samuel Tripp and Mary Ann tied the knot on September 5, 1867. It remains to be seen if I can pinpoint who Sarah Ann's mother was as I continue to research this family.

Stymied by a mystery

                                              A book about Bobcaygeon I consulted as part of my research

Mysteries intrigue me, especially those mysteries that I find in my family tree. Like the one that involves my 2 x great grandmother, Catherine Matheson. Confirmation of the link between my great grandmother, Charlotte Tripp and her mother Catherine Matheson comes from Charlotte's Ontario marriage record. In the same record Charlotte named her father as Samuel Tripp. The bride also gave her place of birth as Bobcaygeon, Ontario. Records of Charlotte's birth and the marriage of her parents have proved elusive, if they exist at all. The only marriage that I have been able to find for Samuel Tripp is that of his marriage to Mary Roden (sp) on September 5, 1867, in Ontario. As other records led me to believe that Catherine, Samuel's first wife was deceased by the time of his second marriage, I have been searching for any records in Bobcaygeon to confirm Catherine's death or Charlotte's birth. I've had no success so far. 

The problem with this mystery, aside from the fact that I can't find the records to solve it, is that it has kept me from researching my 2 x great grandfather, Samuel Tripp and his family. Rather than going back over the same fruitless search again, maybe my best strategy at this point would be to gather the information that is there and available on this branch of the Tripp tree. Who knows, I might find some clues that help solve the mystery of my 2 x great grandmother, Catherine. 

The lure of RootsTech

 

                                                              The Salt Palace where RootsTech was held in 2025

It was around this time last year that I was thinking about going to Salt Lake City. I've been to the genealogist's Mecca many times in the past with different groups. They were wonderful trips all of them, whether roughing it with the BCGS group at the low cost Carlton Hotel (sadly it closed, then burnt down), or staying at the Plaza Hotel next to the Family History Library, now FamilySearch Library, with other groups like the Ancestor Seekers, I've enjoyed my time there. (Apparently, the Plaza will also be closed soon).

Visiting Salt Lake was especially productive in the time before online databases. We'd spend hours at those microfilm viewers often from the time the library opened until it closed. But genealogy research has come a long way since those days. Technology has transformed the way we search and genealogists are often early adopters of new tech that could help them make connections with their pasts.

It was because of this eagerness to embrace new ways of doing research that the first RootsTech conference was launched in 2011. I had never made it to the conference in the past although I was happy to watch the online content once that was made available in the later years of the conference. But last year, a friend asked me if I wanted to attend in person. I said yes.

RootsTech was a wonderful experience and I'd be interested in going again especially as I now know what to expect. Also, the research we were able to do before the hordes came in was great. But in 2026 I'll be back watching online even though I still have lots of short sessions to catch up with on my playlists from previous years. Have you registered for RootsTech for 2026 yet?

Looking at family history from a different perspective

 

What's your favourite way of  looking at your online family tree? For me, it's the vertical view on my Ancestry tree. There I can see how far back I've added my direct lines. It also reminds me that one of my tasks is to concentrate on adding collateral lines. That's not going very well.

Today when I logged onto my Ancestry account, I check out one of the hints which showed me the hinted tree information in a vertical manner which I found hard to read. It was disconcerting too, as I couldn't get back to my own family tree right away. But everything went back to the way I liked it after I hit the right buttons.

That was when I took a closer look at the view options and chose "Fan". That gave me a fan view of the tree with me as the centre and the generations back to my 2 x great grandparents showing. What's more, it included the dates for every person including the outer tier with those 2 x greats. That highlighted the missing years in the outer edge of my fan chart. Something else to work on.

Changing my family tree view showed the possibilities a new perspective can bring to the same old data. Maybe there was something to those charts we drew up back in the old days before genealogy went online. I'll try to remember to look at my data in different ways going forward.

* The tagline for Julia Creet's The Genealogical Sublime is: Public History in Historical Perspective

DNA update

 

Well, it's finally here. The DNA origins update that Ancestry was promising gives a finer break down of European regions, placing a label that reads NEW each time it has added a more granular region to testers' results. It's nice to see my Netherlands region made the grade in this version. As I remember that faded from view in a previous update. I have no problem believing in that ethnicity because some of my ancestors came from the Western Isles of Scotland and from an area of England once known as the Danelaw. That would be a Viking link but I have no idea if it is from my Scottish roots or my English ones. 

I'm still trying to figure out the Cornwall origin that Ancestry stuck me with in the previous update. It appears again in this latest update. I even went as far as looking for Cornish surnames, but didn't find one that appeared both on the list and in my family tree. I'm not sure about the Cornish connection but maybe it comes from as far back as the Netherland/Viking one.

The most baffling result though has to do with Irish origins. There is still the same disconnect between my Irish roots and the information on my son's origins update. According to Ancestry, I have no origins in the Republic of Ireland. They have my Irish links confined to Northern Ireland in Donegal and something called Central Scotland and Northern Ireland. I don't know about the Donegal part but Central Scotland takes in Islay and I've documented my links to that island. So it confirms what I already know. 

The part that I really don't get, is that according to Ancestry, I have no origins in what is now the Republic of Ireland. That doesn't really jibe with their results for my son who received an estimate of 13% Leinster origins solely from his maternal side. According to Diahan Southard, different results could be from the different chips used by the company depending on the timing of the DNA tests. So I'm wondering if the best idea would be to take another DNA test to get updated results. Maybe that would even result in more and different matches. 

Family moves

 

                                          Scarecrows on Charlottetown streets were a new custom since I had lived there

Some researchers are lucky to have generations of their families living in one small town or village far into the past. In that case studying the local history makes a great deal of sense. Building up a picture of the environment for the decades your family lived in the locale and the people they lived among can paint a picture of their lives while filling in the social context.

Other researchers come from families who immigrated, staying in the new city or country and continuing their lives there. But what of the people and families who rebounded: heading to a new place, living there for a while and then heading back to where they came from or somewhere in the vicinity. What did they anticipate when they went home?

There are members of my past family who did just that. My maternal grandfather came to Canada from England in 1911 and returned in the 1930s. Did things turn out as he expected? He probably couldn't have predicted another war at that point any more than he could have anticipated the depression that sent him home. But still, the country he returned to hadn't stayed still while he was gone. Things change sometimes so much that a person can barely recognize the place.

That's what I've seen in my own life, having lived in Halifax for two different periods as well as doing the same in Vancouver. Every time was different. Things, place and people had changed. Any of our ancestors who moved back and forth would have been able to attest to that.

Tempting links to take a tree back

 

                                            Both of my grandfather Henry's lines have been hard to take back beyond his grandparents

In an effort to find out more about Matilda Fletcher, who I wrote about in my last blog post, I took a look at the family trees on Find My Past. There was one that looked very promising, taking Matilda's ancestors back a few generations. The hitch (of course, there was a hitch) was that the tree's creator had assumed that Fletcher was the name that Matilda was born with. I wasn't so sure. When I looked further into that particular tree, I noticed more names that were in my own family tree. The only problem was that my grandmother was entered with her first husband's last name and she was given unrelated ancestors. Hmm, maybe it wasn't the best researched tree.

My strategy has changed. I decided to look for Fletcher children with a mother named Matilda born before Matilda's 1815 marriage to Benjamin Cavanagh. Perhaps then I could find the death of the first husband and, more importantly, the marriage for that husband and Matilda which would give the last name she was born with. I'm not sure how far I'll get but it's worth a shot. I just hope she was only married twice.

Sources:

Ancestry.com

FindMyPast.com

Chipping away at a brick wall

 

                                                                                           London Bridge

There is one family line that I keep returning to time after time. There are reasons why it is hard to find information further back for this family. The earliest record I can be sure of is the marriage of Benjamin Cavanough (sp) to Matilda Fletcher on May 29, 1815 in the parish church of Saint Andrew Holborn by Licence. He was listed as a bachelor and she was a widow. She signed her name while he made an X. The witnesses were James Hayes and Susannah Chapeu (sp?).

The next record I have is the baptism of their son, Benjamin Cavannaugh in Saint Andrew Holborn on February 11, 1820. The date of birth was also given. It was February 11, 1816. Their abode was listed as Whites Alley and the father's occupation as Chancery Lane. Why did they wait 4 years to have their son baptized? There were no other children of the couple baptized at the same time so it wasn't a batch baptism.

Unfortunately, this all takes place before there were censuses that named the inhabitants. I've previously searched for information about men with the surname of Fletcher dying in the area presuming that Fletcher was Matilda's married surname. The occupation of Chancery Lane for the elder Benjamin is one I should look into further. Hopefully I'll find more clues from that search and whatever other potential searches I can think up and maybe I should also check out FindMyPast, there's a thought.

Sources:

Records from www.ancestry.ca 

Ancestry's Origins

 

According to Ancestry's Blog, their Ancestral Origins, which details the regions that a tester's DNA comes from, will be updated soon. It means that those of us who have done a DNA test at Ancestry will likely have their ancestral regions changed once again. It also gives me hope that there may be a correction to my own regions.

As I complained earlier in one of my posts, Ancestry added Cornwall origins to my regions with the last update (I have yet to find anyone from Cornwall in my family tree) but at the same time they demoted my Irish region to 1%. My son also tested his DNA at Ancestry with a much larger result in the Ireland regions, 7% of which was received from me. How can this be when I only have 1% to give? The math boggles my mind. I'm hoping for more clarity with the new update but we shall see.

Family pride of place

 

                                                                                                  London Bridge

Often where you're from defines you. We have these preconceived notions about the character of people from certain places. I was reminded of that recently on a UK Who Do You Think You Are? episode which featured Lisa Hammond who, among the other roles that she played, once had a recurring character on the EastEnders. She was proud of her East End roots, the gritty down to earth characters of her ancestors came from the right place with them being born in various neighbourhoods of London's East End. She cheered every time a new London birthplace for one of her forebears was revealed until, as was inevitable, there was an outlier. Her original London ancestors had started out in Wales. That was a surprise which made Lisa rethink some of her family's past.

In my own family many, many of my family lines ended up in London, a fair portion of them in the East End. They came from all over, although I haven't found any that came from Wales yet, nor the ones from Cornwall that Ancestry says I have. (I'm not sure what's up with that.) Still, I feel a sense of pride with my London background even though I wasn't born there and never lived there. Still I am but one removed so I come by my pride honestly. Then again, I also feel a sense of pride at having lived in various cities in Canada, getting a sense of each which can only be obtained in walking the streets of a city in which you live. When it comes right down to it, leaning about the places in which they lived can tell you a lot about your ancestors. 

Even genealogy information gets dated

 

                                                                 Not the only box of magazines I've found

I'm still going through my piles of magazines. All those glossy covers were appealing when I bought them but somehow between the store and my home the urge to read them must have dissipated. Leafing through them now there are many articles I can skip. For some write ups that's because they don't touch on places or names I have an interest in. For others, it's because the information has become dated. It's surprising how much was written about the latest databases becoming available on various family history websites. Now that's old news that I heard somewhere along the line from other sources.

Even without looking at the cover date, it's pretty easy to figure out the time period of the publication if there's an article about DNA. Those write ups that only talk about YDNA were pretty far back. There are still stacks and boxes of magazines to leaf through but, as time goes on, my perusal has become quicker. I'm not sure when I stopped buying genealogy and history magazines and, I must admit, one or more of those publications has made it home with me in recent years. Still, I knew I was running out of room to keep all knowledge which I barely glanced at once it was mine. So I thank myself for curtailing the magazine buying habit. And when I finally get through all the stacks it will be less likely that any more glossy covers will make it through my front door. 

What records will we leave?

 

                                                                  My grandparent's letters from their 1954 trip

It's all relative. As this is a genealogy blog, you might think I was talking about ancestors, but I'm not. It's about correspondence and related subjects. Really about how things change around us bit by bit so we don't really notice until we think back about how we used to do things.

Things like staying in touch with far flung friends and relatives. That used to be done by letter or, if you were feeling particularly flush, maybe a long distance phone call, preferably on a Sunday when rates were cheaper. No wonder people lost touch with each other. Not only were those distant relatives out of the loop wen it came to being in the know about what was going on in your life. They probably didn't have many acquaintances in common. Although, that wasn't true in all cases, especially in earlier instances of chain migration.

But at least with letters there was a paper trail. I prize the one sided correspondence from my grandparent's 1954 trip around the world. Another prized but one sided correspondence was that between my 2 x great-granduncle, Alexander Matheson, and his sister, Margaret Thomson, when they were able to connect after losing touch for 40 years.

Now that we are awash in digital correspondence in the form of emails and texts, will people in the future have access to our output or will it be lost like information stored on floppy discs or CDs? How will people who come after us find our words, the records of our lives?

Remembering the weather

 

Today it rained here for the first time in a long time. It felt like we had to learn a new way of being, from dressing for the weather to realizing it takes longer for the brakes to kick in when driving. But that's modern day stuff. The weather affected our ancestors as well, sometimes in profound ways. Think of droughts, floods, bitter snowstorms, they all took their toll.

Have you ever thought of the effect of weather on your own ancestors? Many of them were probably farmers, more in tune with how the seasons affected the land. Even city dwellers' lives can be altered by weather events. Floods come to mind. But what of ice storms, blizzards and hail?

I read of one such event in Death in the Air: The True Story of a Serial Killer, the Great London Smog, and the Strangling of a City, which told a story of the smog that choked London in December of 1952. More recent life changing weather comes to mind thinking of hurricanes, tornados and cyclones. I've written before about how the Regina Cyclone affected my grandfather when he lived in that city in 1912, which makes me wonder if more of my family has experienced life altering weather events. So if you're wondering why your family immigrated of migrated maybe a look at the weather of the time might provide a clue. 

Sources:

Dawson, Kate Winkler, Death in the Air: The True Story of a Serial Killer, the Great London Smog, and the Strangling of a City, Hachette Book Group, New York, 2017

 

Trying to break an Irish brick wall

 

                                                                                      Trinity College, Dublin

Cavanagh is one of the surnames that I've been researching for years. The earliest record I have relating to this family is the May 29, 1815 marriage of Benjamin Cavanough of St. Andrew Holborn, Middlesex to Matilda Fletcher. He was a bachelor and she was a widow and the marriage was by license. I want to take the Cavanough/Cavanagh line back before 1815 and hope to eventually find my way back to Ireland.

I haven't been successful yet but I'm always on the lookout for clues. One of those clues was the fact that the Clan Chaomhánach (Cavanagh and related names) biannual gathering was held in County Wexford. This eventually led me to explore the Down Survey of Ireland and, at the time I first looked, I found Cavanagh names there. But those land records were from the 17th century which leaves me with a gap to breach.

Another resource was a site mapping Irish surnames. The data is shows where particular surnames were based in Ireland in 1890 but it still gives a general idea.

I think it's time to see how far back I can take my research on the Cavanagh family line. Maybe I will be able to break down this brick wall if I try hard enough.

Sources:

The Down Survey of Ireland – https://downsurvey.tchpc.tcd.ie/index.html  

Mapping Irish surnames – https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/a3b90776f4cd4052bf19e097da898f36

A genealogical path to history

 

                                    My hunt for my grandfather's story took me to the Saskatchewan Archives in Regina

My genealogical research has led me many different places. That's partly because the family branches that I've studied did just that, they branched. Not that they strayed far from the areas that immigrants from the UK were known to travel. It's just that they weren't content to get there and put down roots. Some of them even went back to the country where they came from.

Their journeys and migrations have led to many different settlements and points in history. So to understand them and the times they were living through, I've delved into the history in an effort to try to come to grips with the events that affected them. Good thing I'm a history buff. I've learned a lot and enjoyed doing it. 

The trick is to keep learning as you go along. It was in a class on writing family history stories that I first heard about the Regina Cyclone of 1912. That perked up my ears. My grandfather had just come to North America in 1911 and from my research I knew that he'd lived in Regina for a time. Was he there for the cyclone? Drawing up a timeline I was able to pinpoint where he was living when the cyclone hit Regina. Then later I visited Regina to find out more.

But most of the families I've researched have similar stories, times when historical events have touched their lives. It just pays to be aware of the things that were going on around the places they lived then digging to find out if they were affected.  

Writing down the family story

                                                 The article I found stashed in an unrelated magazine

The hunt for a family's history can be compelling, clue following clue. The search can be so engrossing sometimes that it's hard to remember to note down the sources looked at. I'm guilty of that. When I first heard of the Genealogical Proof Standard which laid out all of the steps that were necessary for a genealogist's work to be credible, I wondered who had time for that when there were so many family lines to follow. But you know, there is something to be said for writing down the steps and conclusions.

As I've written recently, I'm currently going through the stacks of magazines and other written material I have stashed away. It's taking a long time. There are lots of different stashes of magazines secreted around the place. Recently, I opened one of the magazines only to find photocopied sheets from another magazine. It was a story I'd written for Your Family Tree magazine about my own family from Islay which appeared in the March 2015 issue.

What a find! It gave the story of a few generations of my Islay family, indicated the sources I'd delved into and the conclusions I'd drawn. This magazine article is a document that brings my research on this family line into focus. And, now that I think about it, there really is something to be said for taking the time to follow the steps of the Genealogical Proof Standard, especially the part about writing it down. My source citations could use some work though.

Sources:

The Genealogical Proof Standard - https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Genealogical_Proof_Standard 

Catching up with items saved "for later"

 

                                                   The Salt Palace Convention Center where Rootstech was held

I've been going through closets and cupboards lately, finding things that have been put away "for later", much later in many cases. Unfortunately, I've come across more hoarded history and genealogy magazines but at least I've made some progress leafing through them and turfing them into recycling containers.

That gives me a start on the physical items but a recent email from Rootstech reminded me of my playlists at the Rootstech site. I have saved videos on those playlists going back to 2022. Maybe it's time to start tackling them as well before the information becomes outdated. After all, many of those recorded sessions are short, less than half an hour in many cases. Who knows, I might find some good advice that helps me find a vital record. At the very least, it may remind me of the finds that I came upon the last time I was in Salt Lake City and bring back the feeling of being there in person at Rootstech for the first time. 

Memories and genealogy field trips

                                                       A sign for The Mousetrap on Granville Island

Memory triggers can sometimes come from unexpected angles. Recently, the connection of two overlapping events brought forth the flavour of a genealogy trip in my past. One of the groups I belong to is the BCGS Writers Group. In our society, practicing genealogy writers of various stripes meet monthly to critique submitted writing or discuss our latest tribulations and triumphs. Recently, it was decided that we, as a group, would submit "Then and Now" columns to our monthly newsletter. I don't really need another writing project since I already write an article every month but chimed in with my druthers before I could be assigned something. So I chose field trips as there have been quite a few of those since the beginning of the society and I've participated in a few.

With that in the back of my mind, I responded positively to my book club's social event. We were to attend Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap put on by the Artsclub Theatre on Granville Island. That brought forth a whole memory of being with a BCGS group staying at Kew so we could access the National Archives. It was within transit access of London, so one night we decided to attend a play. I wanted to see The Mousetrap which had been playing in a theatre there for decades but that idea was nixed because one of our group had already seen it. Instead we saw a farce. Not really my thing.

The memory brought back the feeling of that trip being with my fellow genealogists. We might have been researching different places and times but then and now we have a common language and love it when we can get together with people who can appreciate our stories even if we do have different taste in theatre productions. 

Finds in boxes

 

                                                                     Some papers set aside for further review

I moved into the place where I now live over 15 years ago. At that time, I put my "important papers" in bankers' boxes and stashed them in closets upstairs and down. It's finally come time to clear out some space and I'm finding it strange to see what I once found important enough to keep. There is a lot of paper, most of it notes and term papers from courses I took as a mature student.

Some of the items are definitely recyclable at this point, like the psychology notes and papers. The information about anthropology courses I took explains some of the books that presently rest on my bookshelves. Not that I've picked up those books recently. Of more interest are the notes from my history courses.

When I glanced through my history papers, I could see that I often used my own family history to add context to various themes that I wrote about. It looks like those write ups might inspire new themes for my blog and any other writing I undertake about my family history. I've only just begun to dig through the boxes. Who knows what else I might find? 

Hunter/Gilchrist connection on Islay

 

                                      The Hunter gravestone erected by Mary Campbell in Kilnaughton Cemetery, Islay

There's nothing like going to where family connections lived and walking the places they would have walked. For a genealogist, an in-depth survey of their setting includes their final resting places. In 2010 I took a trip to Islay to follow up on my Hunters and Gilchrists. While there I walked the streets of Port Ellen and checked out the White Hart hotel which figured in the family somehow.

Being thorough, I also walked out to Kilnaughton Cemetery to check out the gravestones. It took me a while to understand the layout of the various areas in the cemetery as there was a new section and an old one. The old one held some gravestones that piqued my interest, particularly the one erected by Mary Campbell, the wife of Ronald Hunter. There, etched in stone, was her name and that of her spouse as well as the names of many of their children. It's probably a good thing that I took photos and notes of the names I was interested in. I've since checked out the online information for Kilnaughton Cemetery looking for the names of the Hunters on the stone that I recorded and none of the databases I checked have those names. Maybe the stone eroded so they can no longer be seen or maybe the people who recorded the information omitted that stone and a few others that I checked for.

                                                   The names that I recorded from the Hunter/Campbell gravestone

The information on the stone gives me a head start on Ronald Hunter's family. Now to see if I can find the final resting place of his brother, Hugh, and perhaps find out more about Hugh's daughter.

More connections for the Hunters and Gilchrists?

 

                                 Excerpt from Hunter/Campbell marriage record showing their mothers' maiden surnames

Although my research showed that my line of the Hunter/Gilchrist family (Mary/James) immigrated to Upper Canada around 1853, I tried to find out what happened to the rest of their family who had stayed in Scotland. Part of that was because it was the first family line that I'd gotten anywhere with. Besides, the Hunter part of the family didn't stray far from Glenegedale or Kildalton so they were easy to track down.

Of course, I mean by that the male Hunters were easy to find; the females, not so much. Land, including tenancies followed males. In this case, Mary Hunter's younger brothers, Hugh and Ronald. Both of these brothers had offspring but for each of them it was later in life. Extremely late for Hugh. He never married but named his daughter in his will. By my calculations he would have been about 65 when she was born.

Ronald also became a father later in life as he was 46 when he married. His bride, Mary Campbell, was 25. Quite an age difference. One thing I didn't notice until I looked at their marriage entry closely a few days ago was that both Ronald's mother Flora and Mary's mother Margaret had the same maiden surname, Gilchrist. Was there a possible family connection between the two mothers? Something worth looking into further.

Sources:

ScotlandsPeople 1879 marriage entry for Ronald Hunter and Mary Campbell

The Hunter family of Glenegedale

 

                                                                    Islay Airport, Glenegedale, Islay, Scotland

In past genealogical research, most of the family lines I followed led me back further in time, going back generation by generation following one particular person or couple each time. Those were the people I wanted to know about. What did I care if they had 10 siblings or none? Of course, with the advent of DNA testing, that type of research has changed. Now we want to know more about the whole family, all of the children and back in those days there could be a large number of offspring.

I strayed further afield when researching the Hunter family of Glenegedale. That was partly because I didn't find a baptismal or birth record for Mary Hunter, my 3 x great grandmother. (I eventually proved her parentage to my satisfaction by using the Scottish naming pattern.) It was also because there are lots of records related to Islay especially for families that stayed on the land and Hunters from this family lived in Glenegedale for generations. I was able to follow the names and the land through resources like The Day Book of Daniel Campbell of Shawfield 1767 as well as by using other information found on LDS films.

Sadly, I was unable to walk the land that my ancestors farmed through all those generations. The yearly valuation records for the land showed how the last Hunter tenant was gradually eased off the land to make way for the Islay Airport. 

My blog posts for June 4, 2022 https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2022/06/ and November 11, 2018 https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2018/11/ mention my use of valuation rolls to find out about the Hunter tenancy on the land in Glenegedale.

Looking back at old research

 

                                                                    A scenic view on Islay

The first family I started my research with were the Gilchrists. It was my maternal grandmother's maiden name and I knew that her sister, my great aunt Peg, had done research on the family back in the day. That was in the days before computers were a thing. In her quest for information she traced them back to Islay and even visited there. Unfortunately, I don't know what she found there because her research wasn't saved or at least, if it was, I have no idea where it is.

Still, as a family to begin with in the infancy of the internet the Gilchrists were a good one. The OPRs (Old Parish Registers) were available at my local Family History Centre. I think they were on microfiche kept in the actual centre so they didn't have to be ordered from Salt Lake. It was on the OPRs that I found the marriage of James Gilchrist and Mary Hunter, my 3 x great grandparents.

I have no idea if Auntie Peg even got as far as the marriage entry with her research. However, I do know that she visited Islay where her grandparents came from. I have a postcard that shows the hotel where she stayed and, on my first visit to Islay, I stayed there as well. So, in a way, her research did inspire mine.

Looking for links to Cromwell's army

 

                                                             Civil War reenactors on Northampton University grounds 

When I listed my military ancestors recently, I'd found most of them listed in the BCGS' 2023 Book of Remembrance. Many of the people who contributed to that book had ancestors listed from much earlier conflicts than I had been able to find. At the time I promised myself to see if I could find any of my forbears in conflicts prior to the American Revolution. Perhaps I could find participants in the English Civil War. I thought I had a good chance as some of the battles took place near or in Northamptonshire where I know part of my family lived.

The wars took place from 1642 to 1651. That was too late for one branch of my ancestors who went to the New World before that time. But my nonconformists, the Stranges, Devonshires, Kinchs and Rolls of Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire might conceivably have been involved. But how to check?

That's when my new project of going through my genealogy articles and magazines came in handy. I came across a place to check in https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/cromwell-army-officers . That looked promising. But no luck. There were no officers in Cromwell's army with my ancestors' last names. But then I looked further and there were also Palmers and Paynes in my family back then. Those names showed up in the database. So perhaps there were family members with those names among Cromwell's officers or indeed it could be that my ancestors fought but weren't officers or maybe even fought for the Royalists. It will take more digging to find out if there are existing records that could help.

Tackling a genealogy article backlog

 

                                                                 Just a few of the magazines I have stashed away

It has taken me a while (years actually) but I'm finally tackling some of the genealogy reading material that has gathered into stacks and piles while I promised myself that I would get to it later. It seems that later is now. I'm tackling not only the many genealogy magazines that I bought but never read over the years but also the genealogy society newsletters from the days when societies used to issue them in physical booklets. Didn't read those either.

The newsletters are fast reads, mostly dealing with events long past and member stories that I can now ignore as they don't fit into my research areas. The genealogy magazines are a different story. While I blithely skip over letters to the editor or new of genealogy gatherings long past, some of the articles contain information that does fit into the history I am searching or gives advice about using research facilities that could be of help in my searches. Hopefully the advice given isn't hopelessly outdated. 

I'm not sure how long this project will take but I'm looking forward to the piles and stacks dwindling as my knowledge increases.

Adding descendants to my family tree

The Matheson part of my family tree needs more branches

Back in February, I wrote about the need to concentrate on adding descendants to my family tree in order to help identify DNA matches. I haven't gotten very far with that aim, although my Ancestry family tree is a bit better than the information I have on my family tree software. Because I was dragging my feet on adding collateral branches to my tree, the first talk I attended at RootsTech went by the title of An Ever-Growing Tree: Descendency Research and DNA Matches. I thought that it would give me a push in the right direction but so far it hasn't. If the talk was available online, I'd watch it again. Unfortunately the only reminders I have are the notes I jotted down in class so now I'm searching my RootsTech playlists for any talk concentrating on the same basic ground.

I did come back from Salt Lake City with some incentive to start adding collateral relatives to one line though. I found an obit for my 3 x great uncle, Alexander Matheson which named the relatives who attended his funeral in Letcher, South Dakota. Among his nine grandchildren there were two women named: Mrs J Ruhe of Sioux Falls, SD and Mrs R L Eagen of LaCrosse, Wis. I think I've figured out who Mrs Ruhe is but Mrs R L Eagen is another story. I think I'll start researching the Matheson line to add Alexander Matheson's descendents so that I understand how the named grandchildren fit into the family especially the hard to find, Mrs R L Eagen!

Sources:

Newspapers.com – obituary of Alexander Matheson in Owen Sound Sun Times of December 18, 1920

 

Some of the more recent military ancestors from my research

 

                                                                        WWII photo of my uncles in Cape Town

Also included in the BCGS 2023 Book of Remembrance were my military ancestors who served in WWI and WWII. They appear in the following list:

WWI: Charles Edwin Cavanagh, a publican, joined the Royal Navy in 1917 and served in the Mediterranean until September of that year when he was transferred to the air arm of the navy which was taken over by the RAF which formed April 1, 1918.

WWI: Harold Strange Chambers, immigrated to Canada in 1911 and, like many British born men in Canada, he joined up for the war. He spent his time in Ontario where pilots were being trained. He acted as clerical support. His records were interesting as his next of kin was listed as his cousin Margaret Little in Australia before he married in 1918.

WWII: Charles Edwin Booth Cavanagh, joined the RAF in 1939 shortly after war was declared. He was part of the crew setting up airfields in southern England, for which he was mentioned in dispatches. After that he was sent to Singapore but rerouted to India when that city fell to the Japanese while they were en route. He was an intelligence officer during the Burma Campaign where he liaised between the allied factions.

WWII: Cyril Cavanagh, merchant seaman. One of the many men working to bring supplies to Britain. His ships were torpedoed three times but he survived the war.

WWII: June Chambers, was working as a clerk in Welwyn Garden City when she joined the Women's Land Army in 1942. She resigned in 1945.

After trawling through the entries I sent in for the 2023 Book of Remembrance, I became aware that I left out some other family connections. Quite a few, in fact. The photo at the top of this blog post is a reminder of that. Looks like it's time to expand my list and, in some cases, flesh out the stories that I have.

Earlier military ancestors from my research

 

                                                    Paul Revere statue in Boston, a symbol of the American Revolution

After going through the 2023 Book of Remembrance which the BCGS put together in 2023, I'm amazed at how far back some members have been able to track their military ancestors. There are pages and pages of forebears who fought before my entries come into play. I've only been able to find records back to the American Revolution. The partial list of military ancestors that follows are mostly from my line but at least one would be from the family I married into. They are as follows:

John Brack McNeil was part of the 82nd or Hamilton's Regiment, men who were recruited in Lanarkshire with some additions from Glasgow and the Highlands. They fought for the British in the American Revolution and were offered land grants in Pictou, Nova Scotia in 1784 when the regiment was disbanded. John McNeil took up land in Pictou but later sold up so he could take up land in Antigonish County where the Catholics had settled. (There was a priest behind this move, you can be sure.)

1781: Captain Soloman Woodworth was leading a scouting expedition along West Canada Creek near Fort Dayton when they were ambushed, 22 of the men on the American side were killed including Captain Woodworth.

1781 - 1784: Private Charles Tripp was a patriot who found in New York State. He married Jane Woodworth the daughter of Soloman Woodworth. In 1800 they moved to Percy, Newcastle, Upper Canada to take up land.

1850s: Private George Welch was a farrier in England when he signed up for a short stint in the army. He was sent to India at the time of the Indian Rebellion in the late 1850s.

1861 - 1864: Private Alexander Matheson was a young man who left his home in rural Upper Canada to find work and came back to find his family gone. He moved to Illinois just before the US Civil War started. He joined up, fought in various places including the Battle of Shiloh. He was shot and captured at Big Shanty, Georgia and discharged at Springfield, Illinois as a paroled prisoner of war.

1863 - 1888: Royal Engineer William McKay signed up at the age of 14 when his father was stationed in Ireland. William married my 2 x great aunt, Henrietta Chubb in Weymouth and then they were shipped off to Malta and had several children. He absconded with some funds, was caught, jailed, busted down to sapper and sent back to Portsmouth. After a while there he and his family were sent to Madras and he was active in the Afghan Campaign. From there they were sent to Bangalore. He retired to Sydney, Australia.

This list contains only the earlier military ancestors I have researched. I'll continue with the ancestors who were involved in later conflicts next time. 

Getting a list of military ancestors together

 

                                                   A book of military ancestors put together by the members of BCGS

The next meeting of one of my local genealogy societies has recently started inviting the other members of the group to share information about their research and/or ancestors based on certain topics. Last session we were looking at occupations. Next meeting will be military ancestors. I've researched a few of those and even written about some of them. Now to come up with a list.

Then I remembered that I had a copy of the 2023 Book of Remembrance that the British Columbia Genealogical Society put together for that year. Some of the entries are about my relatives and the book itself will be great to take to the meeting to show the other members as I don't think many of them are also members of the BCGS. I believe there are more ancestors that I wrote posts about so I'll have to have a trawl through my blog to see if I can come up with additional entries over and above the BCGS book. 

Occupation - engraver

 

                                                        Josiah Taylor was involved in the design of this advertisement

My search for more information about the Hinton family line brought me to another well-known family, the Taylors of Ongar. I had never heard of them before but it was another family line that, while remote, could prove to be interesting to research. The link to the Taylors came through James Hinton, the son of Thomas Hinton and Mary Strange. This James Hinton (there are a few of them) married Ann Taylor. Ann belonged to the Taylors of Ongar, a well-known dissenting family, an appropriate bride for James Hinton, minister of the Oxford Congregational Church.

The bride, Ann Taylor, was the daughter of Josiah Taylor the engraver, according to the book about James that I was able to access online. My immediate thought was that Josiah Taylor worked engraving metal such as silver. But the fact that he was known as the engraver rather than an engraver, meant that he was probably well-known. So I went looking for some of his work.

The images I found weren't of metal objects which confused me until I looked up the trade in A Dictionary of Old Trades, Titles and Occupations. Apparently engravers didn't just work with metal with one of the main mediums they were known to engrave being printing blocks. It's amazing the information research can turn up.

Sources:

Hopkins, Ellice Life and Letters of James Hinton Ballantyne Press  https://archive.org/details/lifelettersofjam00hintiala/page/n5/mode/2up 

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

Images:

By Print made by: Josiah Taylor (?)Lettering engraved by: E Gullan - https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_D-2-312, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90226464

Census information can raise many questions

 

                                                              The present day building at 82 Wentworth Street

It has been hard to sustain the push I felt to extend and/or prove the information on the family tree sent to me by a cousin many years ago. Somehow there isn't the same amount of time to devote to genealogical research once back on home turf. Besides, I've been intrigued by the information that took me to London so I've started to look at the research that I've gathered on my East End relatives to see where the gaps are.

When I look at the 1891 census records for 82 Wentworth Street, I see an extended family which means collateral relatives to add to my family tree. The entry also brings up questions. I can identify everyone at number 82 as being related in some way except for one couple, William McArthur and his wife, Mary R. Did they have some as yet unknown family connection to the rest of the people living in that dwelling? My great grandmother Charlotte's sister, Mary A. Wright, is head of her part of the household but she is listed as married. Where was her husband Thomas James Wright? I also would like to know when she and her children moved into the same residence as her sister and family. Was it before or after the spate of killings made life in neighbourhood even more precarious?

I'm still reading up on the effect of the Ripper murders on the East End. It must have been difficult for them. Perhaps that was why the family were all living in such close proximity in 1891.

Sources:

Ancestry.ca  – 1891 England Census 

 

The joys of meeting in person

 

                                   The BCGS Library, one of the places where in-person meetings sometimes take place

These days many, if not most, genealogy society meetings take place on Zoom. The BCGS, the larger local society that I am a member of, pivoted to the online platform during COVID and found that it attracted members from outside the immediate area. Perhaps that is why they never went back to meeting in person. That, and the money saved by not having to rent a meeting room.

 That makes the decision to continue meeting online understandable but at the same time I miss the people I used to sit with and the conversations we used to have. There isn't that ability to really connect with people especially when some want to have their say all the time so everyone else's contributions are basically drowned out.

All the Zooming makes me really appreciate the in-person meetings that are still being held. Perhaps that is why I've joined so many groups that meet face to face. Many of those groups are genealogy groups. I was especially stoked when I made it to the PoCo Genealogy group's meeting this week and got to participate in discussion on occupations. There were a wide variety of jobs that were discussed both by the in-person attendees and by those who joined us on Zoom. It is nice to be heard!

A Strange Connection

 

                                                                                Books about Jack the Ripper

My maternal and paternal lines have their origins in the UK. Those origins are generally from different regions although there is one county they both have links to, Dorset. Strangely enough, both of my parents were unaware of this link. Of course, given the draw of that city, their families eventually ended up in London. In the case of my mother's family that didn't happen until the 1930s. I've been unable to determine when the first of my father's forebears ended up in the East End of the city but it was at least 100 years earlier.

Tales of life in the shadier part of the Big Smoke have added to the picture of my ancestors' lives but the story I have particular interest in is that of Jack the Ripper. He roamed the streets of the East End from 1888 to about 1890. His deeds would have affected the household of my 2 x great grandfather, Henry Cavanagh most particularly as the extended family, which contained many female members, lived at 82 Wentworth Street where I found them in both the 1881 and 1891 census. The body of Martha Trabram, one of the Ripper's victims was found just around the corner from the Wentworth Street address.

I know the murders would have affected my paternal family connections but my recent research into the Hinton family, connections on my maternal side, also turned up a link to the murders. A Wikipedia article alerted me to the fact that James Hinton appeared in From Hell, a graphic novel about Jack the Ripper. It makes me wonder if I'll stumble over any other connections between the maternal and paternal sides of my family.

Sources:

Wikipedia article about James Hinton, surgeon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hinton_(surgeon)