Old newspapers are a great resource for genealogists. However, I do more than read just the item I’m looking for. I enjoy seeing what else was in the news on the same day as an ancestor’s birth, marriage, death, or other newsworthy action. Not only because it provides context for the familial event, but also because there are some really fun or interesting items to be found. There are all sorts of things you wouldn’t believe.
This is page two of the Newmarket Era (Newmarket, Ontario) for October 1, 1875.
The item I was interested in is found in the bottom right-hand corner, marked in red. It announces the marriage of our sons’ great great great grandparents, Charles Crittenden Van Norman and Isabella Newman Carmichael.
However, there are lots of fun, interesting, and odd bits on the rest of the page. The first thing I noticed is immediately above the marriage notice: a great bit about what appears to have been a foiled plot to rob Windsor Castle, when Queen Victoria was on the throne.
Buried elsewhere on the middle of the page was an item about the first appointees to the newly created Supreme Court of Canada. Note that there were no appointees from west of Ontario, although the only western provinces at the time were Manitoba and British Columbia.
That’s right, you wouldn’t believe it, the Supreme Court of Canada did not come into existence until seven years after Confederation. It wasn’t even front page news. The placement of the item in the middle of the page, in the third column, below a piece on new regulations for local postmasters, indicates the relevant unimportance of the court at that time. It wasn’t even the highest court for the country. That role was held by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the UK until 1949 – 82 years after Confederation. Elsewhere on the page is an item noting that the first choice for Chief Justice of the new court turned down then offer – he preferred to remain in his position as the head of one of the provincial appeal courts.
A few columns over is an item that you wouldn’t believe – “A Monster Devil Fish”. An incredible story about “A Florida Devil-Fish That Almost Baffled Fifteen Men”! The item ends by noting that “only only of these singular fish” had been captured before, “previous to the war.” Obviously, readers at the time would have known what war the story was referring to. Today, given that the item came from an American wire service, it’s most likely the reference was to the American Civil War.
Above the Devil-Fish item is another story that not only you wouldn’t believe, you probably would not want to believe. “A Singular Marriage” tells the story of a divorced single mother of three (a “brave little creature”). She ended up in such a state of poverty that she was left with the prospect of begging, starving or going to the poor-house, unless she took a job as the housekeeper and nanny for her ex-husband, his new wife, and their two-year old daughter. “All these things and even more did the poor woman undertake, never by sign, word or look exhibiting the least evidence of discontent. But bitter her feelings must have been!”
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 