My entry for this week’s theme for the 52 Ancestors Challenge, “Popular Name”, will be shorter than usual. I simply cannot come up with something that is interesting enough to me that seems worth writing about. So what I have are two short snappers.
One thing that popped into mind when I saw the theme was how incredibly popular the name “Jennifer” was at one time. My youngest sister – Jennifer – was born during the height of the name’s popularity. At times during elementary school, there were at least four Jennifers in her class. One year there were three Jennifers and three Michaels. She told me, mostly tongue in cheek, that she’s fairly sure that every Jennifer has a brother named Michael. Which she certainly does.
The other thing that came to mind wasn’t so much a popular name, but not too long ago I learned of an ancestor with a name that has amused me to no end.
I recently discovered one of my 7x great grandmothers, who was named Antje Pieters Butter. Her middle name could likely be a patronymic, suggesting that her father’s name was Pieter.
This means that there is a possibility that my 8x great grandfather was Pieter Butter.
If anything, this week’s theme has caused this song to be stuck in my head:
A few weeks before I turned 19, I visited Ottawa for the first time, during a student conference. I took the opportunity to visit my aunt, who by that time was well-established in the capital. I had already been actively working on my family tree for at least ten years by then, so our conversation turned to our family history.
We ended up talking about our Nelson ancestors. I knew nothing about them beyond my great great grandfather, John Alexander Nelson. My family and I had gone to a family reunion of his descendants in Big Fork, Montana when I was 13.
John A. Nelson, circa 1930s.
My aunt told me that John’s parents, Robert Nelson and Elizabeth Joseph, had emigrated from Scotland to the United States. My aunt then volunteered two pieces of information that I found particularly exciting.
Joseph Nelson (1818-1902) and Elizabeth Joseph (1818-1902)
First, she said that the belief was that the Nelson name in Scotland had Viking origins. Vikings? That was even cooler than if she had told me they were descended from pirates. Second, she said that through the Nelson line we might be descendants of Robbie Burns. I was thrilled by that possibility, because Burns was one of my favourite poets.
I knew enough at the time not to accept the idea unconditionally. I had already honed an overdeveloped sense of skepticism. I already knew a few family legends and their lack of veracity, so I had no reason to believe these legends would turn out to be any different. Moreover, while the initial development of the Genealogical Proof Standard was many years in the future, I was well into my undergraduate degree in history and knew full well the importance of proof.
However, I received these pieces of information back at a time when genealogy was done the old-fashioned way. Personal computers were still largely a relatively new and novel thing and it would be a few years before most of us even heard of the internet. It would have taken a lot of time and effort to verify or debunk what I had learned. Besides, the ideas were so cool that I was really not in a hurry to burst the bubble.
In the meantime, I reveled in the prospect of a Scottish connection. I learned that the Nelsons had connections to Clan Gunn. Shortly afterwards, I spotted a necktie patterned on the Gunn tartan and bought it mostly out of amusement. Plus, I enjoyed bewildering people as to why someone with a Dutch surname was wearing a tartan tie.
Alas, all good things come to an end.
While Robert and Elizabeth had lived in Scotland, they weren’t Scottish. They were Irish. They were both born in Muff, Donegal in 1818 and married there in 1842. Sometime in the early 1840s, likely around 1844, they relocated to Renfrewshire, Scotland. By 1850, Robert was working at Brown’s Sugar House, on Roxburgh Street in Greenock, Scotland as a sugar baker. Sugar bakers usually refined muscovado sugar, an unrefined brown sugar imported from Barbados. In 1848, they joined the Latter Day Saints (“Mormons”). On September 3, 1850 Robert and Elizabeth, along with their three children, departed Liverpool on board the ship “North Atlantic” bound for New Orleans. By 1854, they had settled in Salt Lake City where John, my great great grandfather, was born.
Passenger list for the North Atlantic showing the Nelson family travelling from Liverpool to New Orleans.
As for the Burns connection, it really did not take much to dispel that myth. Robert Nelson’s mother was a woman named Martha Burns. Martha was born in 1787. So while her surname was Burns and she was born at a time Robbie Burns was busy fathering numerous children, that is where the correlation ends. None of Burns’ children – legitimate and illegitimate – were named Martha. Moreover, Martha was born in Muff, Donegal, not Scotland.
My grandfather during basic training when he first enlisted during WWII. One of these men was responsible for a “prank” that resulted in my grandfather’s back injury.
I definitely needed one of these this week.
This week’s theme for the 52 Ancestors Challenge, is “Conflict”. I knew right away what I wanted to write about: the fight by my maternal grandfather, Leo Burgess, for his military disability pension. Unfortunately, it has been exceptionally busy at home this week, so I only got to this today.
I have always found the records to be fascinating, because they read quite like a workers’ compensation claim, except in a military context. The records are rather detailed, and include both the legal and medical records that were part of the process. They also included far too much personal information about my grandfather’s personal life, going beyond what was necessary for the adjudicators to decide the issue. Nothing scandalous or unsavoury, just things you really don’t want to think about. As our 11-year-old says when there’s anything remotely romantic in a TV show or movie: ew.
My grandfather’s attestation paper and other military records from the short time he spent in the army during World War II.
My grandfather’s military service and his injury were often-told tales, which is largely reflected what I found in his military records. My grandfather actually enlisted twice during World War II. The family story is that my grandfather was injured during basic training, due to a prank pulled by a bunkmate. A couple of months after he was discharged, my grandfather enlisted again. The family story is that he decided to re-enlist after a “robust” night on the town with his buddy. It wasn’t until after he was well into basic training the second time that the military seemed to discover that they had already discharged my grandfather once before, and decided to discharge him again.
Now, to the record. Both times, my grandfather was enlisted as a private. He first enlisted in July 1941. Upon enlistment, he was assigned to the 6th Division Petrol Company Royal Canadian Army Service Corps and posted to #13 District Depot in Calgary. However, he was admitted hospital in August 1941 due to appendicitis.
My grandfather during basic training in Peterborough Ontario.
Leo was in hospital until mid-September 1941, but was on sick leave for most of the rest of the year. On December 6, 1941, he arrived at the No. 32 Canadian Army (Basic) Training Centre in Peterborough, Ontario. Later that month, he was indeed injured due to a prank by one of his bunkmates.
If the family anecdotes are correct, this is an accurate depiction of my grandfather’s wartime injury.
According to my grandfather and the witness statement of another soldier, my grandfather had the top bunk of the bed. The man below him thought it was funny to use his legs to push the bunk above as a way to wake my grandfather up in the morning. The man pushed too hard, causing my grandfather to be ejected from his bed, injuring his back. My grandfather’s evidence and the medical records say that subsequent to this incident, his back condition worsened in the course of basic training
By mid-January 1942, my grandfather was in the hospital due to his back condition. He spent time at military hospitals in Peterborough and Kingston until March 1942, when he entered physical rehabilitation. The military discharged my grandfather due to his disability at that time, and he returned to Calgary.
My grandfather enlisted a second time in July 1942. While the family story is that the military didn’t know at the time that my grandfather had already enrolled and been discharged, the records are not so clear. At least one document refers to “re-enlistment”, so it may be that my grandfather’s prior service was not such a surprise to the army.
During his second enlistment, my grandfather was sent to the Canadian Army (Basic) Training Centre No. 133 in Alberta. He did not complete his training as he was discharged as he was “unable to meet the required Military Physical Standards”.
My grandfather with his parents, Hazel (née Nelson) and Milton Burgess.
The pension records I have do not tell the whole story. At every level of adjudication, the military had denied my grandfather a disability pension. My grandfather was about 6’4” or 6’5”. Veterans Affairs took the position that my grandfather’s back problems had been due to his height and were not aggravated by his duties during basic training. The documents I have are the statement of claim and a 20 page summary of evidence for what was likely the last level of appeal. I do not know if he was successful, although I do know he was in receipt of some form of military pension after he retired from his career with the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Despite his short and interrupted service, my grandfather was awarded the Canadian Volunteer Service Medal (CVSM), which was established on October 22, 1943 and issued in recognition of eighteen months of voluntary service in the Canadian Forces. The medal was granted upon honourable discharge to any service member of any rank who served on Active Service from September 1939 to March 1947. Leo was also granted the War Service Badge – General Service, awarded to members of the Canadian military who served in the military forces on active service during WWII and who honourably ceased to serve on active service by reason of physical disability.
Some of the documents from my grandfather’s pension appeal.
It feels like I haven’t posted in weeks and it feels like I missed a week or two somewhere. However, that isn’t the case, and I’m just in time for the latest topic for the 52 Ancestors Challenge, “Yearbook”.
It inspired me to pull out my own yearbooks and share them with our kids. Happily, they did not find my high school photos to be funny or old fashioned. Rather, our seven-year-old, looking at an old Apple II in a photo taken in the computer lab, exclaimed “is that a computer?!?”
My high school yearbooks. (This is not me in grade nine, baby. ♬♪♪)
I never received my copy of my grade nine yearbook, even though I paid for it. I’m particularly annoyed by the lack of a grade nine yearbook, because The Barenaked Ladies’ Grade Nine – which is pretty much set at about the same time I was in grade nine – perfectly describes life that year. Happily, they tore down the awful place where I started grade nine shortly after I moved, so I take solace in that fact. I much more enjoyed the school in our new town.
I love yearbooks. I discovered my parents’ yearbooks in a closet when I was about nine-years-old. I read the hell out of them, I practically had them memorized. I loved seeing how my parents looked when they were in high school and finding my aunts and uncles in their yearbooks. My parents were always happy to indulge my questions about their high school experiences.
My mom’s grade twelve yearbook, with her grad photo. Her high school seems to have been adverse to alphabetical order.
My father’s grade six yearbook. I was surprised that his school had yearbooks available for grades prior to high school. I assume it was because his school went from grades one to twelve.
I’ve also found yearbooks to be a very source for family history research. In addition to my aunts and uncles who appeared in my parents’ yearbooks, I’ve found many of my cousins in yearbooks available online. As my parents are the oldest and second oldest of their families, I’ve found their siblings in later editions of their schools’ yearbooks that are also available online. As a lot of my extended family lives in Alberta, a great resource for me has been the Bruce Haig Collection of the University of Alberta Library.
My aunt Diana when she was in grade nine, as found in the yearbook for the year my mother graduated from high school. Aunt Diana did go on to have a successful career as a scientist, which I’ve written about many times, particularly in Week Nine.
One of my other aunts graduated from nursing school in 1970. I found her graduating class in a compilation yearbook for all the years her school was in operation.
In addition, I have found relatives in university yearbooks, which has helped round out my knowledge about them. This has been of particular help on my wife’s side of the family. Her family has a much earlier post-secondary academic history. For my mother, her brother and sister were the first generation to go to university. For my father’s side, I was the first to attend university. However, my wife has quite a few ancestors going quite a way back who had university educations. For some of them, I’ve found the Internet Archive to be a great resource for some of their yearbooks.
For example, one of my wife’s great grandfathers graduated from the University of Toronto Medical School in 1906. Other than during World War I, when he served as a Captain in the Canadian Army Medical Corps, my wife’s great grandfather spent his entire career working at Toronto General Hospital specializing in internal medicine. My knowledge of his university career was sketchy until I found, among other things, the yearbook for the year he graduated with his medical degree.
A helpful companion to yearbooks are university convocation programs. Many universities now have them available online. I’ve found a lot of information about many members of my and my wife’s extended family through those programs. While I still have my hard copies, I’ve even found the programs for both of my degrees, as well as of many other family members, published on the University of British Columbia’s website.
Meanwhile, I had intended to post an image of my photo in my yearbook for my graduating year. While perfectly harmless at the time, my write-up did not age well, so I’ll be posting just the photo. As well, they always posted the grads’ baby photos in the yearbook. To this day, decades later, I am still unhappy with the fact the yearbook committee lost the original of the photo I submitted, so all I have now is the copy I’ve made from the yearbook.
Me in my graduating year.I have copies of other photos taken this session, but they weren’t as good as this one. It’s why I selected it for the yearbook.
A Deck of Ancestors 