52W Mark II – Week 21: Brick Wall

This week’s 52 Ancestors challenge is about one of genealogy’s biggest challenges: brick walls. These are the ancestors we can’t get past – we’ve been blocked in our ability to learn more about them or those who came before them. More often than not, brick walls involve ancestors we may have spent years or even decades researching, to no avail.

This week will be a rare foray into my wife’s side of the family. Before doing so, I want to share the brick wall in my ancestry that I’ve been banging up against for decades: my great x3 grandparents, Robert Nelson and Elizabeth Joseph. I’ve been trying to crack these two since the mid-90s. I know a lot about them after they left Ireland, but precious little about before they emigrated. It doesn’t help that this a prime example of a lot of people copying incorrect trees and sharing the information as if it’s correct. It also doesn’t help that my own family – some of them family historians – perpetuate the myths and legends about them that simply aren’t true or are contrary to what little evidence there is.

Turning to my wife’s side of the family, the brick wall I’ve been trying to break down for almost 15 years is that of Ann (“Annie”) Pitre, my children’s great x3 grandmother. I don’t even know if that is her real name, it could be Peters. It’s also likely that her ancestors were Pitre and the name was anglicized somewhere along the way.

One of my prime sources of information about Annie came from my wife’s grandmother, L. Annie was her maternal grandmother. While L would have been 24 when her grandmother passed away, she acknowledged that her recollection of her maternal grandparents may have been inaccurate. L told me that Annie’s surname at birth was Pitre and that she was possibly born in Rustico, Prince Edward Island. Baptism indexes for several of Annie’s children list her surname at birth as “Pitre”, but others provide the surname “Peters”.

Based upon cemetery records, it would seem that Annie was born on March 25, 1857. However, census records are inconsistent regarding Annie’s date of birth. None of them support 1857 as her year of birth:

1881	1891	1901	1911
Age 29 (b. 1852)	Age 38 (b. 1853)	Age 45 (born 25 March 1856)	Age 56 (born June 1854)

I haven’t been able to find Annie in the 1921 census. The 1931 census will be released in two weeks – hopefully I will find her there.

All four censuses say that Annie was born in PEI. The 1901 and 1911 censuses state Annie was “French”. This is consistent with the fact Rustico had a large Acadian population. This would fit with the possibility Lillian’s grandmother was born in Rustico, where there was a significant French Canadian population. The 1901 census states that Annie’s mother tongue was English and that she was unable to speak French. However, the 1881 census records Annie as “Irish”. The 1891 census had a stroke through the box for “French Canadian”, as does everyone else on the page. The 1891 census notes that Annie’s father was born in PEI but her mother was born in Ireland.

Annie married Patrick McKenna (1839 – 1914) sometime before 1873. I have yet to find any record of the marriage. The most certain facts I have relate to her death and burial.

I’ve chased down many trails, gone down many paths, reviewed many records, checked many newspapers, and ordered many inter-library loans, among other things. I’ve even employed my rusty French scouring Acadian-related sources. Luckily, my wife is fluently bilingual and has helped me with those, as has our eldest child, whose French is very good and who is a budding genealogist himself. Many promising leads came to nothing, but hope springs eternal.