Week 20 of the 52 Ancestors Challenge and the theme is “Textile”. It’s not really anything that has much relevance to my family history. At most, what I can share on the topic is essentially a co-incidence.
My wife has deep roots in Maritime Canada. Her grandmother ran a small arts and crafts store, selling items by local artisans. One item her grandmother sold were quilts made my a woman who lived in her community. When my wife was little, she got one of those quilts.
Years later, on the opposite side of Canada, I learned that one of the partners of the firm I worked at was the son of the woman who made those quilts.
My mother-in-law still had that quilt, so she pulled it out when we were visiting her one Christmas for our son to see. So here are two photos of the quilt.
Next week’s theme is “Yearbook”. That’s something I might have more to write about.
This week’s topic for the 52 Ancestors Challenge is “Food and Drink”. Finally, a topic I can really sink my teeth into!
Soup of the Day
Last year on The Great Canadian Baking Show (a direct adaptation of The Great British Bake Off), one of the contestants said she was using her great grandmother’s recipes. There are things my grandmothers made that I have been trying to recreate or emulate for years, but nothing from any of my great grandmothers. I also realized that if I had recipes from my great grandmothers, my kids would have recipes from their great great grandmothers. I love to cook, both my kids really like being in the kitchen with me, and my eldest shares my love of genealogy, so it would be special to have those kinds of recipes.
I asked my mother if she has any of her grandmothers’ recipes, and asked the same of my mother-in-law. I now have a few of those recipes.
From my wife’s mother, I got a recipe for brown bread handed down from her grandmother. Among other things, it calls for two cups of rolled oats, nine cups of flour, and a cup of molasses. Despite that volume, it apparently yields only three loaves of bread. While I am rather good at baking, I don’t really enjoy it, so I haven’t yet tried out this recipe, especially with the volumes of ingredients it requires.
Something I have tried making, however, is cranberry sauce using a recipe from my wife’s great aunt. My wife is actually a very good cook, but doesn’t enjoy it as much as I do so she rarely does. However, she’s usually the one who will make this cranberry sauce. Besides, I don’t actually like cranberry sauce.
So many cranberries!
My mother said that her maternal grandmother was not really a good cook, except for one thing: raisin cookies. While I take my mother’s word for it, I find it hard to get excited over raisin cookies.
My maternal grandmother was an amazing cook and baker. She made her soup noodles from scratch and pickles from cukes my grandfather would grow. While my grandmother was born in Saskatchewan, both her parents were Germans from Russia, so a lot of her cooking reflected that cultural heritage. My mother, also a very good cook, learned from her mother, so a few of our favourite meals as kids also reflected that background.
My grandmother also made her own preserves, jams, and jellies. Of those, one of my favourites was her chokecherry jelly. A year after she died, I moved away from home to attend university. While unpacking, I discovered that I had a jar of her chokecherry jelly in one of my boxes. Realizing that I had the last jar of her jelly in the entire world, I savoured and stretched it out as long as I could.
Making stock during my latest attempt to replicate my grandmother’s soup.
My dad’s mother was not as good a cook. Rather, her usual fare was either very, very good or…not so very good, to put it kindly. In fairness, a couple of things she seemed bad at was because she was cooking for my grandfather’s tastes. For example, he enjoyed meat beyond well done. However, my grandmother made amazing soup. I have spent years trying to recreate her groentensoep met balletjes (vegetable soup with meatballs). While it’s a common traditional Dutch soup, everyone has their own little twists on how they make it. I exchanged many emails with one of my aunts over the years as we tried to work out my grandmother’s special way of making it.
My grandmother made a lot of customary Dutch dishes. Some I really liked, others I found…less likeable. While it was usually greasy, I really liked her hachee, a beef and onion stew. However, I really disliked her stamppot, which she made more often than not. Stamppot usually consists of potatoes boiled and mashed with other vegetables. My grandmother typically made boerenkool stamppot– kale and potatoes. The way my grandmother made it, she’d boil the vegetables beyond recognition, then my dad would make me cover it in gravy and mix it together. I was sure I was being punished for something.
One day during a trip to Alberta to visit my parents, I found myself in my grandparents’ neighbourhood. I thought the time of day was right, because it meant that I was probably too early for supper. While I loved her soup, I didn’t want to run the risk of ever having to eat boerenkool stamppot again. Unfortunately, my grandparents were eating early that day and my grandmother had already started cooking and invited me to stay for dinner.
Much to my surprise and delight, in addition to her soup, I discovered that my grandmother was making nasi goreng, an Indonesian fried rice dish. As Indonesia was a former colonial possession, Indonesian food is very common in the Netherlands. It’s fantastic food, It makes up for the fact that some staples of Dutch cuisine seem to be things made on a dare – or named on a dare, like snert (a nickname for ertwensoep, traditional Dutch split pea soup, which is delicious).
I asked my grandmother if she was trying something new. She replied that she made it all the time. I did a mental double take and said that I had never seen her make Indonesian food before in my entire life. “Oh, that’s because your father doesn’t like it, so I never made it when your family came for dinner.” So all those years I had been choking down boerenkool stamppot we could have been enjoying nasi goreng! Needless to say, that evening I let my father know how unimpressed I was to make this discovery.
Rijsttafel, a sampling of Indonesian dishes served wth rice, at the former Balilicious restaurant in Vancouver.
While it seems that Dutch cuisine leaves something to be desired, I may be exaggerating to some extent. Some of my favourite treats and dishes are Dutch and I’ve collected a few cookbooks with Dutch recipes. Unfortunately, I have yet to find many recipes that work for our entire family. While my version of my grandmother’s groentensoep is generally a big hit, other things seem to divide the house fifty-fifty.
Making rodelinzensoep (red lintel soup) using a recipe from my father’s cousin.Snert! Fun to say, fun to eat!
Before I leave the topic of Dutch food, never accept an offer from a Dutch person of dubbel zoute drop: double salted black licorice. Lots of Dutch people love to see the reaction of their unsuspecting victims. I love black licorice, but without the addition of the Dead Sea.
Over the last few years, I’ve started to acquire recipes from more extended branches of the family. My brother-in-law is Jewish, and I’ve acquired a few recipes and cooking tips from his sister and mother. Sometimes I’ll try making a particular dish from recipes I’ve found online, and then sought guidance from my sister’s mother-in-law as to how to tweak and improve the dish. What I have discovered is that the best latkes are the ones made by someone else – I find them to be a lot of work!
Meanwhile, I just remembered that at the time of that episode of The Great Canadian Baking Show, my parents were in the middle of moving house, so my mom said she’d look for her mother’s notes and recipes after they settled in. However, visiting her over Christmas and well after the move, I completely forgot to follow up on it. Hopefully I can remember this seven months from now, when visiting her next Christmas!
It’s been a bit of a struggle to keep up with the 52 Ancestors Challenge over the last few weeks. A combination of real life and lack of inspiration have been conspiring against me, but I’m proud that I’ve kept up my participation in the challenge. We’re over a third of a year into it and I’m still going strong.
This week’s theme is “Social”. One social aspect of our extended family is part of the inspiration for the title of this blog, A Deck of Ancestors. The 52 weeks theme fits in with the idea of a deck of cards and the fact my family is crazy for cards.
My brother shuffling the deck for yet another round. It was probably 1:30 a.m. and we were likely starting our nth game of something…
When I was little, it seemed that there was always a game of cards going on whenever we visited family. The game that captivated me the most was cribbage, with its rapid game play, unique board and scoring system, and arcane language and what seemed to be strange incantations: “fifteen two, fifteen four, fifteen six…“. Even now, when all my siblings and I are at my folks for Christmas or special occasions, it does not take long for a card game to break out, which usually lasts late into the night. Sooner or later, significant others and spouses are assimilated into the tradition.
My maternal grandfather taught me how to play when I was six or seven. Heaven forbid if you didn’t follow all his customs in the way you shuffled, cut cards, or played the game. The last time I visited him before he passed away, we spent most of the day playing cribbage. It is a wonderful memory that I still cherish.
In addition to cards, board games were a huge part of our family life when I was a kid. My siblings and I often would receive a board game for Christmas or our birthdays. Games are also a huge part of our home with our kids. I still have a few of the games I had as a kid, plus we have a great selection of more current games.
A very small sample of some of our games.
Not long ago, I also taught our eldest cribbage. Of course, the time I get one of the best hands of my life was our first actual game together. He was too inexperienced to appreciate what I had, and it’s not all that fun getting a hand like that against a kid playing for the first time.
Set up for 29. Unfortunately, the other five did not turn up with the cut.
In the “Better Late Than Never Department”, it’s Week 17 of the 52 Ancestors Challenge. It was a busy week, so I am a bit late with what I am referring to as “this week’s theme”, Document. While an excellent album by R.E.M., the topic here actually relates to genealogical records and documenting genealogical events.
You spin me right round baby, right round, like a record baby, right round, round round.
Many many years ago, I read Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. As political philosophy, it’s nonsense, but I read it as literature. In that regard, there was one turn of phrase she used that I found to be an excellent descriptor of what one might otherwise call a “mixed bag” or “hodge podge”: “a mottled collection of cracked coffee cups“. I think that describes the somewhat random curation of documents I have chosen to highlight.
My original intention was to find the very first physical copy of document I sent away for as part of my genealogical research. I started my family tree when I was eight, but did not start gathering records until my 20s. That was back when you had to write letters and send away for documents. I’m pretty sure the first record I obtained that way included the birth registration for my father’s paternal grandmother, Teetje Pater.
Birth registration for Teetje Pater, born August 2, 1894 in Waarland, Harenkarspel, Noord Holland, Netherlands.
However, I never got around to finding the physical document, although it turns out I had scanned it a long time ago. I got sidetracked in my quest, because I had forgotten how many physical records I had gathered back in the day. I was impressed with myself, seeing the care I had taken to properly sort and store them. Not only documents, but artifacts. Hopefully my Aunt Diana would be proud. It turned into a fun trip down memory lane. What I’ve ended up doing is choosing a few random items that caught my fancy in the moment.
The first item I cast my eye upon was not so much a document qua document, but a book that I store with my documents, the Atlas of Prince Edward Island, Canada, and the World, published by the Cummins Map Co. in 1928. It belonged to my wife’s great grandfather and was given to me by my father-in-law, who has deep Island roots. Not only is it an amazing resource for research, it’s a beautiful work of art. You can see this atlas online.
Lots 27 and 28, showing where my wife’s great great grandfather farmed.Atlas of Prince Edward Island, Canada, and the World. I suppose it might have been helpful if I had remembered this book during Week Six, Maps.
The CBC recently reported about a similar earlier atlas of P.E.I, the Illustrated Historical Atlas of the Province of Prince Edward Island, published by the J. H. Meacham Company in 1880. The Meacham Atlas is available to view online through the University of PEI.
I also have many original records of my maternal grandfather, Leo Burgess. These not only included things like letters he wrote to his grandparents while he was in basic training during World War II, LDS church records, tax and property records, vital stat records, SIN card, drivers licence, but also fun things like a ticket stub when he saw his beloved LA Dodgers with his brother.
Unfortunately for my grandfather, the Dodgers lost. The final score was 4 – 0 for the Cubs.
Among other things, I also have the records of his appeal for his military pension. My grandfather enlisted with the army twice during World War II – long story – but was discharged due to an injury he sustained during basic training the first time he enlisted. It wasn’t the training itself that caused his injury, it was a prank his bunkmates pulled on him that resulted in a permanent back injury. The documents read a lot like a workers’ compensation claim, as they use a lot of the same language that you see in workers’ compensation law. I also have my grandfather’s military records, which I obtained from Library and Archives Canada. I only had to wait a year for them, which unfortunately nowadays would be considered a pretty speedy response.
My grandfather’s attestation paper and other military records from the short time he spent in the army during World War II.
I have mentioned before that my grandfather worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway for over 30 years, first as a brakeman and later as a conductor. During his time with the CPR, he worked on the train crews for movies like Silver Streakand Superman: The Movie.
Working on Superman was one of the highlights of his working life. My grandfather was always proud to talk about meeting one of his favourite actors during filming, Glenn Ford. The scene took six days to shoot. During his memorial service, one of my grandfather’s friends told an anecdote that suggests my grandfather felt that he had gotten familiar with the cast and crew. Apparently during a break in filming, Ford was talking to a group of the railway workers when my grandfather sauntering up, put his arm around the actor, and said, “How’s it going, Glenn?”
My grandfather was working in the engine during the filming of this scene.
I don’t have the photo that this letter refers to, but I assume it’s the same photo that appeared in a few railway publications I have seen.
My grandfather, Leo Burgess, is the man wearing a cap standing on the right side of the photo. I assume this is the photo referred to in the photo above.
I was also surprised to see the records I have for myself, including an envelope containing a lock of my hair from my first haircut. What I was happiest to find was my baby book. I came across all my siblings’ baby books while visiting my folks over Christmas, but not mine. I forgot my mother had given me mine a long time ago.
On the first day of Grade Five, our teacher began class with, “Welcome centennial babies!”
More of an artifact turned into a document, I pressed some of the flowers that relatives in the Netherlands sent for the funeral of my paternal grandmother, Christina Komen. She passed away in Lethbridge, Alberta on Christmas Eve in 2000, only a few hours after I arrived there for the Christmas holidays. I was always sorry I was unable to get there a few days earlier.
If I had been smarter, I would have made a note of what kind of flowers these were. I also wish I had remembered these during Week Eleven, Flowers.
I’d like to end with one document I forgot I had saved. This is one of two wall-sizes pedigree charts I had hanging in the flat where I lived in the 1990s. I created it with the old DOS version of Cumberland Family Tree, probably using a dot matrix printer. It hung on a wall I had dedicated to family history photos.
In the decades since I created this, a couple of branches of this pedigree have now been pruned, while others have been greatly expanded. I placed an apple on the document to provide a sense of scale.
Now time to play catch up and start on Week 18: Social!
A Deck of Ancestors 