Tag: PEI

52W Mark II – Week 34: Newest Discovery

In Week 21 of this year’s 52 Ancestors Challenge, I wrote about one of my brick walls, Anne (“Annie”) Pitre, our children’s great x3 grandmother. The biggest questions were whether her surname at birth was actually “Pitre” or “Peters, and whether she was Acadian. Last week, I found a nugget of information that suggested that Anne was in fact born “Pitre” and that it is more likely that she was Acadian.

Still looking for Anne Pitre!

We just spent two weeks in The Maritimes, where my wife has deep roots. As the trip was primarily to visit family and to acquaint our children with their Maritime heritage, there was precious little time for genealogy research. I was able to get in a few minutes’ time here and there in places like the Nova Scotia Legislature Legislative Library and Pier 21 in Halifax. I had less opportunity to do so in Charlottetown, but a rainy day and change in plans gave me an unexpected hour and a half in the Charlottetown Library.

Years ago, before COVID, I had ordered Volume VI of Jean Berard’s Généalogie des Familles Acadiennes de L’Île-Du-Prince-Édouard from the Charlottetown Library through interlibrary loan, which covers surnames starting with the letter “P”. I thought the work was a collection of births, marriages, and deaths, which is why I ordered that volume. However, I was dismayed to discovered it was sorted by marriages, which meant I wouldn’t find Anne under her birth name. Rather, if she was in Berard’s collection, she would be found under “M” with her husband Patrick McKenna. So what I really needed was Volume V.

Before returning the book, I poured through every entry for “Pitre”, but did not find any that included a daughter named Anne that was born anytime near where our Anne was likely to have been born. At least my rusty French got a workout.

I didn’t order Volume V at the time due to several reasons. However, like anything that’s put at the bottom of a to-do list, it tends to stay there.

Fast forward a few years to my time in the Charlottetown Library, which naturally had every volume of Berard’s work on its reference shelf – including Volume VI.

The entry for Patrick McKenna and Anne Pitre, showing the birthdates and baptismal dates of two of their twelve children.

What was exciting about this was that it appeared to confirm that Anne’s surname at birth was Pitre. However, once I translated it into English, I realized that the entry was for the baptisms of two of Patrick and Anne’s children. I had already found these children in the Prince Edward Island Baptismal Index. The only new information here is the inclusion of the children’s godparents. The problem is that I have also previously found some of Patrick and Anne’s other children in the same index, which recorded Anne’s surname at birth as Peters.

One positive thing I can take from this discovery is the fact Anne is even to be found in this collection. Her inclusion in a collection of Acadians strongly supports the conclusion that Anne was Acadian.

52W Mark II – Week 21: Brick Wall

This week’s 52 Ancestors challenge is about one of genealogy’s biggest challenges: brick walls. These are the ancestors we can’t get past – we’ve been blocked in our ability to learn more about them or those who came before them. More often than not, brick walls involve ancestors we may have spent years or even decades researching, to no avail.

Who is Annie Pitre?

This week will be a rare foray into my wife’s side of the family. Before doing so, I want to share the brick wall in my ancestry that I’ve been banging up against for decades: my great x3 grandparents, Robert Nelson and Elizabeth Joseph. I’ve been trying to crack these two since the mid-90s. I know a lot about them after they left Ireland, but precious little about before they emigrated. It doesn’t help that this a prime example of a lot of people copying incorrect trees and sharing the information as if it’s correct. It also doesn’t help that my own family – some of them family historians – perpetuate the myths and legends about them that simply aren’t true or are contrary to what little evidence there is.

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

Turning to my wife’s side of the family, the brick wall I’ve been trying to break down for almost 15 years is that of Ann (“Annie”) Pitre, my children’s great x3 grandmother. I don’t even know if that is her real name, it could be Peters. It’s also likely that her ancestors were Pitre and the name was anglicized somewhere along the way.

One of my prime sources of information about Annie came from my wife’s grandmother, L. Annie was her maternal grandmother. While L would have been 24 when her grandmother passed away, she acknowledged that her recollection of her maternal grandparents may have been inaccurate. L told me that Annie’s surname at birth was Pitre and that she was possibly born in Rustico, Prince Edward Island. Baptism indexes for several of Annie’s children list her surname at birth as “Pitre”, but others provide the surname “Peters”.

Based upon cemetery records, it would seem that Annie was born on March 25, 1857. However, census records are inconsistent regarding Annie’s date of birth. None of them support 1857 as her year of birth:

1881189119011911
Age 29 (b. 1852)Age 38 (b. 1853)Age 45 (born 25 March 1856)Age 56 (born June 1854)

I haven’t been able to find Annie in the 1921 census. The 1931 census will be released in two weeks – hopefully I will find her there.

All four censuses say that Annie was born in PEI. The 1901 and 1911 censuses state Annie was “French”. This is consistent with the fact Rustico had a large Acadian population. This would fit with the possibility Lillian’s grandmother was born in Rustico, where there was a significant French Canadian population. The 1901 census states that Annie’s mother tongue was English and that she was unable to speak French. However, the 1881 census records Annie as “Irish”. The 1891 census had a stroke through the box for “French Canadian”, as does everyone else on the page. The 1891 census notes that Annie’s father was born in PEI but her mother was born in Ireland.

North Rustico Bay, Prince Edward Island

Annie married Patrick McKenna (1839 – 1914) sometime before 1873. I have yet to find any record of the marriage. The most certain facts I have relate to her death and burial.

Charlottetown Guardian, January 17, 1941, page 6.

I’ve chased down many trails, gone down many paths, reviewed many records, checked many newspapers, and ordered many inter-library loans, among other things. I’ve even employed my rusty French scouring Acadian-related sources. Luckily, my wife is fluently bilingual and has helped me with those, as has our eldest child, whose French is very good and who is a budding genealogist himself. Many promising leads came to nothing, but hope springs eternal.