Personal Story – Page 11 – A Deck of Ancestors

52 Weeks – Week 51: Perseverance

Another Self-Administered Pat on the Back

It’s the penultimate week of Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors Challenge, which is all about “Perserverance”. When I reflect upon this week’s theme, I keep coming back to the satisfaction I feel upon successfully rising to the challenge (albeit with one week to go!). This was the third time I signed up for the challenge, and as the saying goes, third time is the charm!

While I have been working on my family history since I was in elementary school, my greatest lapse has been writing it up. I’ve managed to collect a lot of information over the years and have recorded it all in RootsMagic, writing about my family history has been sporadic and scattered throughout various media and platforms. With this blog, I had hoped to consolidate a lot of that material in one place. So far, I have managed to do exactly that. An added and unexpected bonus is that with each entry, I learned about gaps in my research and knowledge, which lead to me improving upon those aspects of my genealogy.

Another benefit (which I had hoped for) is that this blog has served as a basis of compiling a family history book. Undertaking that project revealed how much writing I have done for this blog over the last year. With this post, the document is approaching 185 pages!

Given the primary purpose of this blog, I have largely written it for myself. However, I regularly share my weekly entries on the Twitter account I created as a companion to the blog and in the “Generations Café” Facebook group created by Amy Johnson Crow. As a result, a few people have taken the time to read it and provided some favourable feedback. For that, I remain grateful.

Finally writing about my family history in an organized way has certainly been a huge improvement in my genealogical habits. I am glad that I persevered with it over the last 51 weeks.

52 Weeks – Week 48: Overlooked

This week, the 52 Ancestors Challenge asks us to consider “Overlooked”. What might I have overlooked? If I knew the answer to that, it wouldn’t be overlooked!

Thinking it over, it’s not so much what I’ve overlooked as what I’ve ignored.

All children of my ancestors other than the child from whom I’m descended

This is actually a thing of the past, but it’s a case of doing the work now that I should have done a very long time ago.

Back in the day – decades ago, now – I would sometimes ignore the multitude of children some of my ancestors brought into this world. Sometimes it was when a couple had ten or more children. More often than not, it was something I did when an ancestor remarried, or had an earlier marriage, which produced children. One of my great great grandfathers had 19 children – nine with his first wife and ten with his second.

There were simply so many kids in some families – even in ones with parents who only ever had one marriage – that I didn’t feel like I had to the time to enter all of them into my database or that it was all that important. In the case of previous or subsequent marriages, I’d usually annotate the entry with a note saying how many children the couple had together. Sometimes I’d include the first names of those children, but without their vital stats. What a time saver!

**Not** the longest list of children in my database!

Of course, anyone who has done genealogy for a while will have immediately spotted the error of my ways. I was foolishly ignoring my FAN club! Also known as “cluster genealogy”, “FAN” stands for “Friends, Associates, and Neighbours”, although over the years many have included “Family” amongst the friends. It is a term coined by Elizabeth Shown Mills, which involves researching the cluster of people around the person who is the target of the study. It often involves research of a person who might seem otherwise elusive. Evidence about their FANs might shed light on the otherwise mysterious relative.

I now make a point of including all the children of my direct ancestors. As well, I have a couple of direct ancestors for whom I am researching all their descendants. Of course, this has meant going back and properly adding all those children to my tree.

Citations

You have to take the crunchy with the smooth. As much as I love genealogy, like all things, it has its down sides. For me, it’s writing up source citations.

It is such a tedious time-consuming chore that I’ll sometimes put down my genealogy for weeks or even months at a time. All the while, mounds of data, digital and paper, keep piling up because sometimes I can’t not research. On top of that, I often have a gazillion browser tabs open at a time, waiting for the day that I bite the bullet and start doing the work.

It’s the doing dishes of genealogy, yet absolutely vital to the process.

Something I haven’t ignored?

This blog!

52 Weeks – Week 43: Organized

Wow, hard to believe that with this post, there are only ten weeks left of this year’s 52 Ancestors Challenge!

This week’s theme is “Organized”. I can be organized, but I hate doing it and it bores me as a topic. The irony is, given some unexpected events, I find myself having to be organized so that I can create this post. If not tonight, then it won’t be done at all!

I decided to do another take on the word. Organized labour came to mind. My maternal grandfather, Leo Burgess, was a strong union man. I thought I had a photo of his union card, which would have been a centerpiece of this post. Turns out I have almost everything but!

Many years ago, the CPR station in Lethbridge was converted into a public health center and the railyard was removed. However, this caboose remains preserved at the site of the former station. I wonder if my grandfather ever worked on this specific railcar. Heck, I wonder if this is one of the cabooses that he took me on!

My grandfather worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway for 32 years. He started as a brakeman and worked through the ranks, later becoming a yard manager. Early on, because of winter layoffs, he chose to work for the CPR in Cranbrook because there was more work there during the winter to provide a steady income. In 1972 he became a conductor, performing that role until his retirement in 1982.

*Some of the items my grandfather used for his work as a conductor, which are now in my possession.*

A trip to the train station with my grandfather. I would have been about two or three years old at the time.

My grandfather often brought me to the train station when I was little. Of course, the highlight was always getting to go on to the caboose. When I was older, he’d often take us kids to his favourite haunts, which included the former Labour Club of Lethbridge. We’d always get a treat, like a pop and french fries, but what we loved best were the “pull tabs”. This was many years before lottery scratch tickets, but the idea was similar. They were about the size of a scratch ticket and had semi-perforated tabs that you’d pull off. Underneath were the kinds of images you’d see on a slot machine. Grandpa would buy a bunch and let each of us kids open one up.

My grandmother’s politics were never a secret and she was more than happy to share her opinion about it. However, I don’t remember my grandfather ever talking about politics. I didn’t want to assume what his politics might be, even though he was a staunch union supporter. A few years ago I asked my mom about it. She told me that she rarely heard him talk about politics and he never said what parties he might have supported. My mom had her theories, but had little to base them upon.

I previously wrote about my grandfather’s role as part of the crew operating the train that was used during the filming of *Superman: The Movie*.

I’ll be at my folks’ later this week. I’ll have to dig through what of my grandfather’s belongings that my mother still has and see what more I can find.

The CPR caboose on display at the Claresholm & District Museum in Claresholm, Alberta, which is located in a former CPR station. I highly recommend this museum – it is an amazing place for a town of Claresholm’s size.

52 Weeks – Week 40: Preservation

This week’s 52 Ancestors Challenge theme is “Preservation”.

I often see queries on social media asking for recommendations or advice about the preservation of paper documents and other media. Those questions always make me miss my late aunt, Helen Diana Burgess, who was a conservation scientist. She’d have known the answer. I wish I had gotten more conservation tips from her.

Helen Diana Burgess (1951 – 1999). I love this photo because it shows her at work doing cool science stuff.

The professional world knew her as Helen Burgess, to me she was my Aunt Diana. I wrote about her in Week 9, “Women”. Sadly, she passed away in 1999.

Fortunately, I learned early on from her about things like the acids in paper and what not to do with photographs. Based on advice I had received from my aunt, I created one of my very first pieces of preservation, an album of compiled family photos, past and present.

The cover is boring but the contents are awesome.

I started putting this album together sometime in the mid-1990s. As a result, I cannot remember where I bought the materials, the brand names, or other specifics of the items I used to create this album. I don’t even know if the retailers I visited are still in business. Clearly I was more focused on preserving the family memories than preserving the methodology and materials.

What I can say is that the book is about 11″ x 17″ and contains several hundred pages of very high-quality acid-free paper. I used photo corners Aunt Diana recommended that were acid-free, with adhesive that would likely result in minimal harm to the paper and photos over time and remain in place for years. I even recall buying the types of pens she recommended for the project. I only use the odd numbered pages, so photos don’t press against each other when the book is closed.

I organized the book by starting with myself and then my four siblings. I then have a section for my parents, followed by sections for each set of grandparents.

On the first page I’ve included the card with my birth announcement. I mounted it on the page in such a way that you can see this *delightful* photo of me taken shortly after I was born.

It progresses to great grandparents and then onto direct ancestors beyond my great grandparents. I then move on to aunts and uncles, great aunts and uncles, and then finally cousins.

I am quite proud of the results so far. While I haven’t worked on it in twenty years, it remains very much a work in progress. There are many blank pages waiting to be filled and there is no shortage of material to add. In the time since I last worked on it I’ve married and had kids. While one sister was married when I started this, she has had two children since I set it aside. One of my brothers has married and has a child of his own. Other marriages have occurred and many babies have been born. There are also graduations and other milestone occasions that could be included.

I can say with certainty that the materials are well preserved. The pages are crisp and white and the photos look as good as they were when I started. I see no signs of discoloration, fading, wear, or decay. Hopefully this book has many long decades ahead of it.

Another Self-Administered Pat on the Back

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