Tag: Steeves

52W Mark III – Week 26: Family Gathering

Save the date – July 25, 2026 – for the Steeves Family Reunion in Steveston, British Columbia!

If you’re a “Steeves” in North America, odds are you’re a direct descendant of Heinrich Stief and Regina Stahleker. In 1749, they emigrated from Münsingen in the Duchy of Württemberg (now southwest Germany) and settled in Pennsylvania. There they had seven sons. 250 years ago, in 1766, under land grants arranged by Benjamin Franklin and others, they moved to what is now New Brunswick and were amongst the original settlers of Moncton. The family later settled in Hillsborough, New Brunswick and there they started multiplying.

Apparently there are over 200,000 direct descendants of Heinrich and Regina. Our kids are two of them! At a family reunion in New Brunswick in 2016, there was an attempt to set a Guinness World Record for largest gathering of individuals with the same last name. Unfortunately, the attempt fell short.

Notable Steeves descendants include the Hon. William H. Steeves (one of the “Fathers of Confederation” of Canada), Jack Layton (late Leader of the Opposition in Canada’s parliament), Laurence J. Peter (author of The Peter Principle), and Janette Oke (author). A few years ago, I gave a presentation on “Law and Genealogy”, using my sons’ Steeves connection as a research example. Through sheer serendipity, the presenter who spoke before me was also a Steeves descendant, John Steeves, a now-retired Justice of the B.C. Supreme Court. Right before the program started, I leaned over and quietly asked him if it was okay to incorporate him into my presentation.

Coincidentally enough, our Steeves connection does not end there. Several years ago we moved to Steveston, a fishing village that is now part of  Richmond, B.C. The village was founded by Manoah Steeves, who left New Brunswick with his wife Martha Taylor, dropped an “e” from his surname, bought land in the southwestern corner of Lulu Island in 1877, and established a dairy farm.

Manoah and Martha Steves

Nearly all of Lulu Island is now part of Richmond. In 1880, Manoah’s son William Herbert obtained a crown grant of the land that became the townsite of Steveston.

The streets in our neighbourhood share the names of Steeves relatives and places in New Brunswick. Manoah’s descendants still operate a farm on the land he originally purchased.

One of the houses on the property was built in 1917. Harold Steves, Manoah’s great grandson, lives there. Harold served one term as a Member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia and many terms as a Richmond city councillor. He is also a life-long farmer and an active conservationist – he was a driving force behind the creation of the Agricultural Land Reserve in British Columbia.

Harold has turned part of the house into a private museum. In addition to artifacts reflecting all aspects of his and the Steves family history of farming, politics, and conservation activism, Harold has turned part of the home into a recreation of the Hong Wo Store, a general store that had been established in 1895. Beside the Hong Wo store, Harold has recreated the canteen his parents operated during World War II, serving the soldiers stationed at a base beside the farm.

Manoah Steeves Elementary School.

Harold opened up his museum to the general public earlier this year as part of “Doors Open Richmond”, a city-wide festival of culture and community operated by the Richmond Museum. Needless to say, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity. I could have spent days in there. His bookshelves alone could keep me occupied for weeks. Plus it was a chance for the boys to meet their fourth cousin three times removed! 😉

Steveston, B.C., or as you might recognize it from television, Storybrooke, Maine.

52W Mark II – Week 49: Family Recipe

Years ago on The Great Canadian Baking Show, one of the contestants said that she was using her *great* grandmother’s recipe. I have all sorts of recipes from my grandmothers (and copious notes on the recipes they didn’t write down that I’ve spent years trying to recreate). However, it never crossed my mind to think about my great grandmothers’ cooking. So the episode inspired me to ask my mother and mother-in-law if they had any of their grandmothers’ recipes.

My mother-in-law responded first and provided me with her maternal grandmother’s recipe for brown bread. I’m happy to have it, but I doubt I’ll ever make it. It not only calls for nine cups of flour, it also requires two cups of rolled oats. I know that nine cups of flour isn’t outlandish for two loaves of bread, but adding in all those oats, it strikes me as a lot. However, the real impediment is that while I love to cook, I do not enjoy baking – despite the fact I am a pretty good baker. Nevertheless, I am thrilled to have a recipe that our kids can say was their great great grandmothers! (In fact, writing that last sentence has me thinking that maybe I should make this recipe…)

My mother responded by saying that she didn’t think she had any. She reminded me that her maternal grandmother was not a very good cook. The one exception was that her grandmother made fantastic raisin drop cookies, which all the grandchildren loved. My mother doesn’t have the recipe, which is fine by me. The only thing more boring than raisin cookies is oatmeal cookies.

As for my grandmothers, I’ve written about their cooking in some detail before, but I can add a bit of an update.

This past summer we participated in a 16-week Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program through a local Richmond farm, Sweet Digz Farm. Overall, we had a very positive experience. What became apparent very early on was that a lot of the produce we were receiving lent itself to a lot of Dutch dishes. In particular, we had a lot of potatoes and kale, the key components of boerenkool stamppot (the Dutch were eating kale decades before it was cool and trendy in North America). My paternal grandmother often made stamppot, and it was awful. I knew I could do better.

My youngest and I went to a local butcher in Steveston Village and he selected the sausage for the recipe. (Sometime I will have to write about the Steeves family of New Brunswick, after whom the west coast village is named. My kids are Steeves descendants.) I also was a bit non-traditional with my stamppot. While there are no hard and fast rules, stamppot is usually potatoes and kale, while a combination of potatoes, onions, and carrots is hutspot. I was a rebel and not only used potatoes, carrots, and kale in the same dish, I used a few kohlrabi in place of a couple potatoes.

If I say so myself, it turned out amazing, and needless to say, much better than my grandmother’s. Not only that, but everyone in the family loved it and wanted seconds. While my family are generally not picky eaters, there are very few things that appeal to all of them. There’s always something I can tell someone is less than thrilled with. Even moreso with the Dutch foods I make – there’s always one who loves it and one for whom the dish is not for them. Pity, because in the winter months I really could go for some snert. A few days later I made shepherds pie (another universal favourite), but used leftover stamppot instead of the typcial mashed potatoes. Another win!

The biggest score, however, was during a visit to my mother’s a year ago. She distractedly removed an item from the back of a shelf and casually said, “oh, it’s my mother’s recipe book.” Yes, my head exploded. I had been asking her for years if she would find it for me sometime. I immediately absconded with it and photographed every page. The vast majority of the recipes were her desserts and sweet dishes but very few of her savoury dishes. However, a few of the savoury dishes seemed familiar – they were things my mother made, but in a whole different way. I could see how my mother adapted and changed her mother’s recipes over time – just as I do with my mother’s recipes!

My maternal grandmother’s recipe book.

My grandmother also wrote down a few non-culinary recipes, such as this Recipe to Unshrink Woolens:

There were also a lot of clippings of recipes from magazines and product packaging. This was an advertisement on the reverse side of a recipe my grandmother clipped from a magazine in the 1970s:

I suspect those scientists – and their successors – remained frightened, and rightfully so.

52 Weeks – Week 29: Fun Fact

When I noticed that the theme for this week’s 52 Ancestors Challenge was “Fun Fact”, rather than assume what people might consider to be a fun fact, I asked each of my boys, “what’s a fun fact about our family tree?” The 11-year-old answered, “that we have ancestors from the Bailiwick of Jersey!” The 7-year-old said, “that we’re related to someone who has a school named after them!”

 Manoah Steeves Elementary School.
Manoah and my sons are first cousins six times removed.

Pity. Great ideas, but I’ve covered both those topics. It’s as if they both deliberately conspired to suggest my Week 5 post, in which I wrote about both those things.

I gave it a few days and asked again.

“What about having Mayflower ancestors?” Great idea, but that doesn’t actually really interest me or strike me as a fun fact. When I discovered a connection to a Mayflower passenger, I was actually rather disappointed because it’s such a genealogical trope.

“What about that we’re related to three U.S. Presidents?” Three for them, only one for me. Again, that’s as interesting to me as finding a Mayflower ancestor. To me, that’s another well-worn genealogical topic.

The death warrant for Rebecca Nurse

That said, there is one group I can trace my line to that is a popular genealogical goal, which for some reason I have found somewhat interesting. My Gx10 grandmother was Rebecca Nurse, who was one of the women of Salem Village executed on the false accusation of being a witch. I had avoided reading The Crucible until I made the discovery, because I had no previous interest in that historical event. However, this doesn’t strike my fancy as a “fun fact”.

“What about the fact that we were the missing branch of the family?” That’s a brilliant suggestion. Unfortunately, it’s another thing I’ve already written about!

Despite their enthusiastic responses that all fit the query, I had pretty much written about all the fun facts they suggested. Rather than dampen their excitement, I let them know that they had some brilliant and interesting ideas.

So what’s a fun fact I haven’t already written about?

After sleeping on it, I realized that while I stated on day one that my focus in this blog was on my side of the family, I also noted that from time to time I might delve into my wife’s side of the family “because there are some fairly interesting stories there.”

So, finally. Fun fact: my wife’s 4xG grandfather, William Norris Venning, was a silversmith in Saint John, New Brunswick.

William Norris Venning (1795-1877)
Attributed to  Joseph Brown Comingo
Art Gallery of Nova Scotia

William was born sometime about December 1796, likely in Devonshire, England. I don’t know when he came to North America, or if he came on his own or with his parents. It was sometime before he was 19, the time by which he had begun his work in Saint John.

William’s silversmith mark.

William was active as a silversmith from 1815 to 1871, although one source has him also doing some watchmaking early in his career. Some of William’s work is in the National Gallery of Canada, while the Royal Ontario Museum has a teaspoon he created.

A silver teaspoon by William Norris Venning

52 Weeks – Week Five

Branching Out

With a new month and new week comes a new theme for the 52 Ancestors Challenge. The theme for February and the first week of the month is “Branching Out”.

A bit literal, don’t you think?

Frankly, at first this one had me stumped. (By the way, my theory is that all puns are intended.) While Amy offers gentle suggestions as to what a theme might mean, she leaves it to participants to decide what we think it means. Many people are taking this as an opportunity to talk about their collateral branches. Others are sharing that while many genealogists look up their trees, they are in pursuit of the downward branches of a specific ancestor. There have also been many discussions of research strategies involving genealogy FAN clubs – “Friends, Associates, and Neighbours”, a term coined by Elizabeth Shown Mills describing a method of cluster research.

These forms of branching out didn’t speak to me for the challenge. For the most part, I’m primarily climbing up my tree, looking for direct ancestors. I keep track of their FANs in pursuit of that goal. I also have a couple of ancestors for whom I am tracing all their descendants. Yet I found no real inspiration there for this post.

For me, a significant moment of branching out for me was when I got married. By then I had already spent many years on my own tree, and by that point in time it was becoming a lot of work to make little progress. However, with my wife, there was a whole new set of branches to explore with all sorts of low-hanging fruit ripe for easy picking. Besides, I considered her family to be my family, so it was like researching my own tree. Moreover, as we planned to have children some day, I simply saw it as getting a head start on their family tree.

To my great pleasure, our eldest child shares my interest in genealogy. I even bought him a membership to the BC Genealogical Society as a birthday present. Much of my branching out has been in pursuit of questions he has put to me.

There are all sorts of fascinating things about our children’s maternal line. For example, they are direct descendants of Heinrich Stief (“Steeves”) and Regina Stahlecker. Originally from Baden-Württemberg, they emigrated to Pennsylvania, where they had seven sons. The family relocated to New Brunswick in 1766. If you’re a “Steeves” in Canada or the United States, odds are you’re one of their direct descendants. In 2016, there was an attempt to set a Guinness World Record for largest gathering of individuals with the same last name. Unfortunately, the attempt fell short.

Notable Steeves descendants include the Hon. William H. Steeves (one of the “Fathers of Confederation” of Canada), Jack Layton (late Leader of the Opposition in Canada’s parliament), Laurence J. Peter (author of The Peter Principle), and Janette Oke (author). A few years ago I gave a presentation on “Law and Genealogy”, using my sons’ Steeves connection as a research example. Through sheer serendipity, the presenter who spoke before me was also a Steeves descendant, John Steeves, a judge of the B.C. Supreme Court.

The interesting connection is to Manoah Steeves, who later in life dropped an “e” from his surname and became “Steves”. In 1877, he and his wife moved west and bought land on Lulu Island in British Columbia, where they established a dairy farm. From this grew Steveston, a fishing village that is now part of Richmond, B.C., where we now live. Manoah’s descendants still operate a farm here. The streets in our neighbourhood share the names of Steeves relatives and places in New Brunswick, 4300 kilometres away. Taking our kids to school is like a daily trip through their family tree.

Steveston, B.C., or as you might recognize it from television, Storybrooke, Maine.
Page from the Jersey Parish Register showing the baptism of Francois Le Quesne (Francis LeCain)

Another branch on which I have spent more hours of research than I ever expected to do came from a seemingly random question my son asked about a name on his maternal line that he saw in my database, Francis Barclay LeCain. It also turned into a great way of showing him what genealogical research really entails and that not everything can be found with few clicks online. Years later he still asks to do research on Francis and the LeCains.

Francis is our childrens’ great x8 grandfather. He was born Francois Le Quesne around October 1723 in St. Helier Parish, Bailiwick of Jersey. The connection to the Channel Islands alone was an immediate point of fascination. The Le Quesnes appear to go back on Jersey for many centuries.

From the French: “Francois, son of Jean le Quesne & his wife Elizabeth Horman, was baptized the 20th day of October, 1723. Mr. Francois Bertelet and his wife Madame Marie Manger, being the godfather and godmother“

Francis came to Annapolis Royal with the British army as a “Master Artificer” or “Armourer” in the employ of the Board of Ordnance, which among other things was responsible for the manufacture and supply of weapons for the military. Francis’s obituary noted that he had lived in Annapolis for 64 years, which puts the year he came to Nova Scotia as being about 1742. In 1745 he married Alicia Maria Hyde, a daughter of a military man who also hailed from Jersey. Our children are descended from Francis and Alicia’s youngest daughter, Mary. Alicia died in 1758. Francis married again in 1761, to Elizabeth Foster. The blacksmith shop he established remained on the same site for over 100 years. Francis died in Annapolis Royal in March 1806.

Francis LeCain’s obituary published March 15, 1806, from Minn’s Weekly Chronicle, a Halifax newspaper.

Next week’s theme is “Maps”. I’m looking forward to that. I love maps. Atlases of historical maps I found in grade eight fostered my love of history, which was my major in university.