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.