WHY YOU SHOULD RAKE UP THE PAST AND WRITE ABOUT IT

ByLee Ann
General Billy Mitchell

My husband has been reading Flyboys by James Bradley, and told me about American General William “Billy” Mitchell. Mitchell was one of the first men to be convinced that airpower would radically change warfare forever. This was after World War I, when planes were flimsy and wars were fought by ground and naval forces. Mitchell urged the United States to beef up the air force, especially as Japan mobilized for war. He was court martialled for criticizing his commanders – President Coolidge wrote the order himself – and died insisting he’d eventually be vindicated. And he was, thanks to President F. D. Roosevelt, who came to believe the “Third Dimension” of airpower was crucial to victory. Which it was in World War II, particularly in the Pacific.

I was furious that I’d never heard of General Mitchell. Why aren’t we taught this kind of thing in history class? How can it be that such a man, such a life, could be largely forgotten, a mere generation or two later?

I got into quite a rant about this, which led me to wonder why I got triggered. And of course, as a writer of family history, and someone who teaches workshops about writing family history and memoir, I believe in the importance of people’s lives. I believe:

  • People are always more than they appear.
  • Everyone has a fascinating life story.
  • Most often our lives have ripple effects on the generations that come after us – not just our children, but sometimes grandchildren and beyond. (I hear about this all the time from workshop participants.)

If I think a little more deeply, though, I realize that what I was most upset about is the fact that we all really do disappear after we die. Those who knew us eventually die too, and unless someone has recorded something about us, it’s as if we never existed. Even someone who has had a big impact on the world, like Mitchell. Even someone who has had a big impact on our own lives.

As a genealogist, writer and workshop leader, what I do is make records of people’s lives, and help others to do so as well. To help ensure people are not forgotten. To honour lives that have been lived before us. To reflect in a memoir about a particular life. To make a more indelible mark. Because I think everyone deserves the chance to assert:

I was here.

NATURE OR NURTURE? TAKING THE LONG VIEW

ByLee Ann

Old photos of ancestors sometimes show fascinating physical resemblances: your deep-set eyes show up in a grandmother; your son’s school picture looks just like his grandfather’s at the same age. But what about skills, talents, interests? Is it possible to find similarities at that level? I love to hunt through a lineage for these deeper connections. Sometimes jobs repeat in the family tree. Is this nature exerting itself? A parental interest nurtured into the next generation? Or do opportunities present themselves in successive lifetimes, making it look like a trait or occupation “runs in the family”?

Fred Smith’s pipe-fitting tools

Take my husband’s line. In his case, I’m struck by a particular consistency in the men: an aptitude for building and fixing things that is strongly evident in Geoff, and was maybe even more so with his father, Don, who was a millwright at the General Motors foundry in St. Catharines. Don’s father Fred worked as a pipe-fitter and helped build the Sir Adam Beck-1 hydroelectric plant in Niagara Falls. Going back another generation, Fred’s father Alex was also a millwright. He worked for many years at a lumber mill in Parry Sound.

Alex’s father, John Duff, is the earliest ancestor I’ve found so far in the line. All I know of his working life in Scotland is that for a time, he was a spirits distributor in Glasgow. (Hmm. An echo to his five-times great-grandson the sommelier?) In Canada, John Duff first worked as a porter in Toronto, then a labourer in Simcoe, and then, for almost 30 years, John worked a farm in Muskoka.

This fact is fascinating for three reasons:

  1. I know about farming in Muskoka, where soil is thin and rock dominates in a back-breaking, heart-breaking way. John Duff, meet the Canadian Shield.
  2. John’s 200 acre plot of land sits less than a half-hour drive from where our cottage is today.
  3. Farming, or at least, growing things, might be another thread that can be followed through the Smith men’s lineage. John’s son Alex also farmed in Muskoka for over a decade before switching to engineering. Don loved to grow flowers and consistently promoted to me the benefits of “well-rotted manure.”

And how’s this for another connection – this one across six generations: Muskoka itself, which Don loved and where he built the cottage. Where unbeknownst to Don, his grandfather and great-grandfather were landowners too. And a place that Don’s son and his two grandsons cherish as much as he did.

Nature, nurture, opportunity? The next time you’re wondering where your skills and interests came from, consider taking the long view through your family tree!

|

WRITING IT SO THEY READ IT: How I’m Bringing Family History to Generation Y

ByLee Ann

I set myself a bit of a challenge lately when I decided to create a family history specifically for my two sons, age 28 and 25. Neither of them likes to read. Neither has a big interest in history, family or otherwise. But they do like hearing me tell stories of the ancestors I’ve discovered: the inventors, heroes, and adventurers they descend from.

I knew right away that writing a book for them, while great fun for me, would be a spectacular failure in the end because they wouldn’t read it. So I started thinking about what they would want to know, and how I could best package it.

Right away, I realized two things:

  1. Any data has to be directly related to them, and anchored in family members they know. So the working title of this project is “YOU!” and I use that pronoun in everything I present to them. I also use their four grandparents as the “roots” for the branches of the family.
  2. Everything has to be delivered to their phones. This is, of course, how they are used to getting information.

I write short, illustrated pieces that I know will catch their interest: any link to hockey; ancestors who farmed near their beloved Muskoka cottage; members of the military in addition to the cousin they know well.

This picture tells them of their nationalities: Your Nationalities pdf

Two short essays give snapshots of what each of the four branches of the family were up to in 1909 and 1927 – the first and last times the Ottawa Senators won the Stanley Cup.

Of course, it takes a long time to put together all the research necessary for one of these one- or two-page history bursts. But I love nothing more than kneading raw data into something interesting… providing a glimpse of people’s lives from the distant past in a way that these “millennial” boys of mine will relate to.

I send out a new installment of “YOU!” about every month or six weeks. So far, the return emails have lots of exclamation marks, usually following “awesome, Mom”.

To other genealogists I say, “Know your audience. The rewards are many!”

CLUES TO A LIFE: First Steps to Knowing an Ancestor

ByLee Ann

Sometimes a genealogist finds a jackpot of information about an ancestor: photos, records, letters, memories. Most often we have only tantalizing clues with which to piece together the story of a life.

Such was the case with William Henry Bellamy, my husband’s maternal grandfather. All I knew starting out was that he:

  • was born in England
  • spent time in Burma during World War I
  • ran a POW camp in Alberta during World War II
  • lived in Niagara Falls during my husband’s growing up years (1950s).

We have this wedding photo of him with my husband’s grandmother, Dorothy Baston:

And we have these pieces, which we think may have come back with him from Burma:

That’s it… and yet, that’s quite a lot. Following these clues down the typical research avenues, I could look for specific facts about William and orienting myself to the times and places of his life:

  • Ancestry.ca for census, birth and marriage information
  • online searches for Burma (now Myanmar and independent from Britain since 1948) and for WWII POW camps in Canada (who knew!)
  • contact with Uncle Jack, William’s son and my husband’s uncle.

This is what I think of as “Phase I” research, which scoops up the basic pieces of data about the person’s life and points to the more serious searching to be done.

Marriage records are treasure-chests of data: age, parents’ names, current address, occupation, and in William’s case, his rank and the name of his regiment in 1918: Second Lieutenant, The King’s Own Royal Lancaster.

The trouble with documents like this is they often contain, well… lies.

Which is what Uncle Jack confirmed, when he provided two major pieces of data: first, William’s birthdate was not what he claimed on the marriage record. Second, William ran away from home at age 15 and registered for the army under his mother’s maiden name, Mann.

This, of course, raised a whole barrage of questions for Phase II research: why did he fudge his age? Why did he run away? And how did he manage to go from William Mann to William Bellamy in the military?

The answers to ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions are always more fascinating than ‘what’ and ‘when’. And I think for the most part, clues to these answers are most often provided by those who knew the ancestor.

So, talk to your elders. They give great clues!

TRACKING MARGARET McPHEE – OR: How Women Get Lost in History

ByLee Ann

It’s hard enough to trace my husband’s Smith ancestors, without running into the likes of Margaret McPhee.

Margaret is my husband’s great-great grandmother and like many women, she first shows up in a genealogy search as the wife of the head of a household, in this case the wonderfully named John Duff Smith. Her maiden name of course doesn’t appear on the census – which is the first way that women get lost in history. I finally found her last name on her son’s marriage record – spelled “McFee,” which turned out to be incorrect. As I learned, there are at least three variations on the spelling of that name: McFee, McFie, and McPhee, not to mention the possibility of a Mac prefix, which doubles the fun. So just for starters, if you search for Margaret McFee in the Scotland Select Births and Baptisms, 1564-1950, you get 1,763 hits. How to find the correct Margaret?

I can trace her life in Canada quite easily, from 1861 to 1901 through her husband’s household on the census. But what about before she tied herself to John Duff and came to Canada?

Again, John Duff came to the rescue because by searching his name and her first name, I found their marriage record from 1854. She’s recorded as Mcfee this time, living in Kingarth Parish, County Bute. Thinking she might have grown up there, I narrowed my original search of the births and baptisms with this location, and got 425 hits.

I needed another way to home in on her, so returned to the census to see what other information she might have reported that would lead me to her. And I found the second way that women get lost in history: they lie about their age. Margaret’s birth year, based on her reported age on five Canadian census reports, ranged from 1828 to 1830. So add that to the variables Margaret/Margret/Margt and McFee/McFie /McPhee and I was starting to despair that I’d ever find the right Margaret in Scotland.

Other family trees on Ancestry were no help. Amateur genealogists are notorious for simply copying someone else’s sloppy research. I found one tree with two source records for her, census records that even at first glance were two completely different families.

Luckily the 1901 Canadian census asked for specific birth dates and she reported May 6, 1828. Figuring she would fudge the year but not likely the day, I searched the Scotland birth records again and found her. Margaret McPhee, born May 6, 1826. (Sorry, Margaret, for revealing your true age.)

Margaret grew up not in Kingarth, but in Saddell and Skipness Parish, in County Argyll, Scotland, which is on the east side of the Kintyre Peninsula, the place made famous by Paul McCartney’s “Mull of Kintyre.” By age 15 she was working as a domestic servant for a neighbour, but 10 years later was back at home and had taken up dressmaking. She and John Duff came to Canada sometime between their marriage in 1854 and the 1861 Canadian census. In 1861 they were in York (Toronto) where he worked as a porter, and she, as a married woman reported on the census, had an occupation of “none.” This is the third and probably most effective way that women’s lives get lost in history. Before marriage, they might have a recorded occupation, giving us a hint as to their abilities and opportunities. After marriage, they have “none” and so their personalities and contributions largely vanish.

Margaret McPhee Smith: Scottish immigrant, Muskoka pioneer, farmwoman for over three decades on a hardscrabble acreage on the Canadian Shield, ancestor. And like so many other women who lived full and sometimes fascinating lives, far more frustratingly unknown than any male.

WHERE I BELONG

ByLee Ann

I just became a member of The Pennsylvania German Folklore Society of Ontario – Chapter of the Twenty. This very active group of historians and genealogists are the custodians of historical Mennonite records, including much from my Fretz and Honsberger ancestors.

This is not a culture I strongly identify with, since it comes from long-ago branches of my family tree. Still, it is certainly a group to which I belong, happily, if somewhat loosely.

I also recently found I have a connection to one of Niagara’s “royal” families. My five-times great-grandmother was the remarkable Mary Secord, sister of James Secord, whose son was the husband of the famous Laura, heroine of the War of 1812. A tenuous connection, but still. Another group to which I belong, and I’m delighted with this connection too.

Isn’t this a big part of genealogy research – finding where you belong, which people and what cultures you are part of? What these two recent discoveries have me thinking about – once again – is identity. What I’ve uncovered in my father’s family history has further cemented my already strong sense of myself as a Canadian: after all, we’ve been in the country since 1784! It’s also strengthened my sense of connection with Niagara. Not only did I grow up there, but so did about 11 generations of my father’s family, arriving as some of the first white settlers of the region.

Some of the discoveries we make as genealogists resonate more strongly than others. But even thin links to other cultures or family lines delight and enrich us.