Burgess – Page 11 – A Deck of Ancestors

52 Weeks – Week 17: Document

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.

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 Streak and 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!

52 Weeks – Week 16: Negative

It has taken me most of the week to get to completing this week’s theme for the the 52 Ancestors Challenge, “Negative”, because that’s mostly the reaction I had to it.

The first example given in the description for the theme – and the first thing that came to my mind – was “discovering something ‘negative’ about an ancestor”. That brought to mind the ancestors that I really don’t admire. As one branch of my family tree goes back to almost the very beginning of the Latter Day Saint movement, I have a few polygamists as direct ancestors. It was an offensive, oppressive, and misogynistic practice, begun in secret likely because its proponents knew how reprehensible it really was. My least favourite of these ancestors is the one who started as a slave owner and ended up as a polygamist. I might not like these people, but I still research them because it helps in finding out more about the ancestors who I do like.

However, I had neither the bandwidth or the patience this week to write about those men any further. So how else to spin “negative” without delving into the things that weigh us down, cause us to complain (ugh – writing up source citations!), or simply “yuck our yum”, as my kids might say? Unfortunately, while I have many tradespeople in my lineage, none of them were electricians, short-circuiting that idea for further discussion.

^{Image: Copper Wire – Positive and Negative by Tudor Barker available under Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 2.0 Generic licence.}

I know that for this challenge a lot of people are writing about photo negatives, but it seems to be a well-worn path of discussion. Nevertheless, here is an attempt I made many years ago to turn some negatives I found into a positive, without really having the kind of equipment that I really needed or that was even practical. Years later, I came across prints that were made from those same negatives. This is an example of but one of those photos.

Me with my Aunt Diana, who I wrote about on Week Nine.

Meanwhile, for this week’s theme another participant in the 52 Ancestors Challenge, Karen McPherson of I Seek Dead People, posted about a pair of father-and-son rouges, both named Robert Cross. The elder was born in 1613 and the younger was born in 1642. I am also descended from Robert the elder, through his daughter Anna. I have done absolutely no research on this branch of the family since the mid-1990s. My other lines have been of much greater interest to me and I’ve just never come back to the Crosses. After reading Karen’s story, I don’t think I’m in any more of a hurry to get back to them. That said, I now know more about an ancestor that I didn’t know before. (You’ll want to see Karen’s blog post for the cartoon, which I found exceptionally funny.)

What I’d like to do is end this week’s theme on a note of positivity – with a negative! While I hope I don’t jinx things by pointing this out, our family has managed to get through more than two years of pandemic without coming down with a single case of COVID. We’ve all gone in for testing at various points in time over the last two years, and fortunately the result has always been negative. Today we tested our youngest again and, happily, the result was once again negative.

That’s the kind of negative I like to see!

52 Weeks – Week Twelve

Joined Together

Twelve weeks of genealogy, my true love gave to me: the theme “Joined Together” for the 52 Ancestors Challenge. Rather than a lot of discussion, I thought this week I’d post photos of some of the couples whose unions ultimately resulted in…me!

While I have photos of other (great) grandparents, I will only post for those of whom I have the pair. First, my maternal great great great grandparents.

William Burgess (1822 – 1904)
Charlotte Liggett (1837 – 1909)

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

Valentine Schmidt (1839 – ?)
Margaretha “Regina” Boechler (? – ?)

Next, for my great great grandparents on my father’s side, I only have photos for one pair. These are my grandfather’s grandparents.

Johannes Jansz “Jan” Pater (1862 – 1935)
Ariaantje Jacobs “Adriana” Bleeker (1865 – 1929)

I have photos of all my maternal great great grandparents.

Horace Conrad Liggett Burgess (1854 – 1940)
Sarah Florilla Cook (1857 – 1894)

Ella Elizabeth Thomas (1859 – 1941)
John Alexander Nelson (1854 – 1942)

On to my great grandparents. I have photos for all of them.

^{Theresia “Teetje” Pater (1894 – 1947)
Johannis Albertus van der Fluit (1894 – 1932)}

^{Adrianus Komen (1888 – 1948)
Elizabeth Bakker (1888 – 1976)}

^{Milton Leo Burgess (1891 – 1964)
Hazel Nelson (1899 – 1967)}

^{Heronimus “Jerome” Lerner (1895 – 1954)
Emelia Anton (1903 – 1997)}

My paternal grandparents.

Adrianus Joseph “Arie”
van der Fluit (1923 – 2002)
Christina Komen (1923 – 2000)

“Trouwboekje” means “marriage booklet” in Dutch. In the Netherlands, only a civil marriage is legally valid. A church ceremony can take place afterward, but is not recognized by the state. The registry office would issue one to a couple at they time they were married. They typically include an extract of the marriage registration. While they can vary from one municipality to another, a trouwboekje usually will include space for the birth information of the couple, as well as for the children of the marriage. They can also include information about religious matters, such as information about the church wedding and baptisms of the couple and their children.

My maternal grandparents.

^{Leo Cleveland Burgess (1920- 1995)
Helen Lerner (1921 – 1984)
October 1971}

^{Helen and Leo around 1947.}

My parents. Married crazy young by current standards and still together, modelling what a great marriage should be.

And then there’s mine.

52 Weeks – Week Eleven

Flowers – Sort Of…

I have to admit, I found little inspiration this week’s theme for the 52 Ancestors Challenge. My eldest suggested that I write about my Mayflower ancestor, but it’s not really a topic that speaks to me. While I know it’s a goal for many to find Mayflower ancestors, it wasn’t mine. I was underwhelmed and, somehow, strangely disappointed when I discovered I had a Mayflower ancestor.

As for literal flowers, from a family history point of view, I will acknowledge that when I think about it, they do remind me of each of my grandfathers.

My maternal grandfather, Leo Burgess, had a garden that took up most of half his back yard. While he might have grown other things, my strongest memory is that every year he planted mostly potatoes. One year, when I was little, there was a bee shortage. My grandfather spent many hours going from flower to flower of each potato plant, dabbing them gently with a small paintbrush to pollenate them.

My maternal grandparents’ home in Lethbridge, Alberta. The potato garden was in the back, along the eastern half of the back yard. I took this in May 1995, after my grandfather passed away. You can see my mother and aunt Diana at the front door. We had gone in to sort through my grandfather’s things.

Not the house where my grandfather Vanderfluit turned the front yard into a flower garden. This was in the 1960s, when he still did farm work.

My paternal grandfather, Adrianus “Arie” van der Fluit, was an avid gardener. In his retirement, he removed all the grass from his front yard and replaced it with flower beds.

While there are photos of each of my grandfather’s gardens, I don’t happen to have any handy. However, while looking, I came across photos of my paternal grandfather showing him with something that I associate more strongly with him than flowers – dogs.

My grandfather in Lethbridge, Alberta with Sheba, in the late 1960s or early 1970s.

My grandfather in the Netherlands, a few months before he married my grandmother.

My grandfather started training dogs at a young age, when he was still in the Netherlands. It was something he continued to do after coming to Canada. In the 50s or 60s he even trained dogs for the police. As long as I can remember, my grandfather always had at least one dog, usually a German shepherd. My favourite was Sheba, the first dog of his that I’m able to remember.

In my lifetime, my grandfather always had German shepherds until I was in my mid to late 20s. Around that time he and my grandmother moved into an apartment. They were near the top floor. One day my mother told me that he had gotten a Bouvier. I had never heard of the breed before. From the sound of the name and because my grandfather had moved into an apartment, I figured it was some sort of small or toy breed.

Imagine my surprise when I first visited my grandfather after he acquired the dog and I saw how huge it was. My grandfather had turned the entire balcony – which was quite large – into a kennel. They lived next to a huge park, which was helpful. However, my grandfather quickly found more space for the dog. The building was largely unfinished at the ground level with large windows, balcony-style doors, and lots of natural light. My grandfather got permission to house the dog in there. Given the inch, he soon had a menagerie down there – along with many planters of flowers.

My grandparents later moved into a house in a small farm town. It had a huge back yard for dogs. My grandfather set up a huge obstacle course for them. He kept training dogs – even after losing his foot due to complications associated with diabetes – until he passed away at age 79. The last time I visited my grandfather before he passed away, he showed me his latest dog, putting it through its paces along the course. Doggone it, I was impressed, both with the dog’s training and with the fact my grandfather was still able to do what he loved, despite his age and health.

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Joined Together

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Flowers – Sort Of…

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