Category: 52 Ancestors 2023

52W Mark II – Week 24: Last One Standing

Are you an “endling”?

This week’s 52 Ancestors Challenge is “Last One Standing”. The suggestion is to write about an ancestor about whom you feel you are the only one researching. I am sure we all have someone for whom we’re the only researcher. However, to me, the first thing to come to mind is someone who is the last of a family line.

At the monthly general meeting of the BC Genealogical Society in December 2022, the guest speaker was David Landers. He gave a fascinating talk on the topic of the last of a family line, which he termed an “endling”. The discussion after his talk proposed applying “endling” to other genealogical ends, such as when a senior branch of a family dies out, leaving only the cadet lines, or the end of a surname, such as when a family only has daughters.

Mr. Landers acknowledged that he had not come up with the term, but he certainly was a strong advocate for adopting it. He even applied the term to himself, as he did not have children, and his family line was ending with him.

Unfortunately, I have been unable to find anything online regarding Mr. Landers or anything relating him to the topic. I only have my recollection of his presentation to rely upon. What I do remember was that he identified the source of the term as it relates to genealogy. In particular, I remember him saying that the original proponent of the neologism wrote to a magazine to advance the cause of employing “endling”.

While it might not be the same place where Mr. Landers discovered the word, I was able to find this article at The New Yorker, What Do You Call The Last of a Species?, which fits my recollection of Mr. Lander’s talk. The article credits a physician in Georgia, Robert Webster, with coining the term.

Dr. Webster contacted Merriam-Webster to propose adding “endling” to its dictionary, but was told a word would need to regularly appear in print before it could be considered for inclusion. Taking up the challenge, Dr. Webster took out an advertisement in a medical journal to suggest adoption of the term. Later, Dr. Webster and a colleague wrote a letter to Nature, arguing the “need for a word in taxonomy, and in medical, genealogical, scientific, biological and other literature, that does not occur in the English or any other language.”

I believe “endling” is a perfectly cromulent word and would love to see its adoption for genealogical use!

52W Mark II – Week 23: So Many Descendants

The theme for this week’s 52 Ancestors Challenge is “So Many Descendants”. The approach I’ve chosen to take is to look at immediate descendants – children only – rather than foray into who in my tree might have the most grandchildren and beyond.

That said, I will take a moment to note my great x10 grandfather, Dirck Jansz. Dirck is the furthest back I’ve traced my direct paternal line, “van der Fluit”. One of my projects has been to find all known descendants of Dirck, a project which of course is nigh impossible and will never finish. That said, I’ve found about 864 direct descendants of Dirck.

Onward and upward, Dirck.

Of course, the person with the most children in my tree is a father. My great great grandfather, Horace Burgess, had nineteen children. He had nine children with his first wife, my great great grandmother Sarah Cook. Their eight child, and youngest son, was Milton Leo Burgess, my great grandfather. After Sarah died, Horace remarried, to Julia Josephine Lundquist, with whom he had ten children.

The woman in my family tree who appears to have had the most children is Horace’s paternal grandmother, Violate Stockwell. Violate and my great x 4 grandfather, William Burgess Sr., had 12 children, including my great x 3 grandfather William Jr. Violate had her first child, Harrison Burgess, a year after she married William. Violate was 19-years-old when Harrison was born. Violate was 42 when her last child, Vilate, was born. There is a 22-year difference between Harrison and Vilate. In fact, Harrison had been married for two years when his youngest sister was born.

Forget about so many descendants – so many kids! I highly doubt Harrison was put to work helping his mother with his younger siblings. I’m willing to bet that task fell upon the eldest of his sisters, Rosina, who was four years younger than Harrison. Needless to say, times have changed. My mother absolutely put me, the eldest of five, to work helping her with the household and with my younger siblings. It certainly provided me with plenty of life skills I am grateful to have.

52W Mark II – Week 22: At the Cemetery

During my last visit to the Netherlands, I was fortunate to visit a graveyard where several of my relatives are interred. I say fortunate, because in the Netherlands graves are routinely cleared after a few decades.

Kerk van Sint-Joannes de Doper, Noord-Scharwoude, Noord Holland, Netherlands

I was staying with a cousin whose home is only a few hundred metres from the Kerk van Sint-Joannes de Doper (Church of Saint John the Baptist – link is in Dutch). I walked past it every day. One afternoon my father and I, along with a few of our cousins, explored the church and the adjacent graveyard, Het Parochiële Kerkhof Sint Jan de Doper (The Parish Cemetery of Saint John the Baptist – link is to Find a Grave).

Het Parochiële Kerkhof Sint Jan de Doper (The Parish Cemetery Saint John the Baptist), Noord Scharwoude.

Here are a few of the graves of some of some of my extended family, several of whom I had the pleasure of knowing, including my great uncle, Nic van Kleef.

(As cemeteries are a big part of genealogy, it should come as no surprise that it forms a common theme for the 52 Ancestors Challenge. For Week 46 of the challenge in 2022, the theme was “Tombstones“.)

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.

Who is Annie Pitre?

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.

Robert Nelson (1818 – 1902) and Elizabeth Joseph (1818 – 1902)

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:

1881189119011911
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.

North Rustico Bay, Prince Edward Island

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.

Charlottetown Guardian, January 17, 1941, page 6.

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.