Tag: 52 Ancestors

52W Mark II – Week 25: Fast

This week’s 52 Ancestors Challenge is “Fast”. Ironic, because I was anything but fast in thinking of anything that even remotely had anything to do with “fast”. In fact, on her Facebook group, Generations Cafe, Amy Johnson Crow has already posted next week’s theme. [Spoiler alert: it’s “Slow”.]

However, one of the main goals of the 52 Ancestors Challenge is to get us to write. So the important thing is just to get something down. So bearing that in mind, I’ve found something, which I can get down fast.

According to his obituary, my wife’s great uncle, Ralph Dimock MacDonald was:

[a]n avid sailor from his youth, Ralph loved the sea and competed in a number of ocean races, including the Marblehead and Bermuda classics. He served as Commodore of both Armdale Yacht Club and the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron and was instrumental in the relocation of the RNSYS harbour site to the Pearson property on the Northwest Arm.

the Halifax Chronicle Herald, January 28, 2008

I haven’t investigated whether Ralph won any of the races in which he competed, but I am sure he would have been pretty fast regardless.

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“.)