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THE WAR OF 1812: IT’S PERSONAL

ByLee Ann
Fort George image from friendsoffortgeorge.ca

The War of 1812 took up a lot of time in my history classes during middle school. After all, I grew up in Niagara Falls, and much of that war was fought in our neighbourhoods. So every year, my classmates and I were herded into yellow buses and taken down the Niagara Parkway to Fort George and Queenston Heights, the sites of two major battles.

Brock’s Monument image from friendsoffortgeorge.ca

For me, these field trips were beyond boring. I was unimpressed by Fort George’s summer students, the cute, costumed “soldiers” with their pretend rifle drills. From my tween-aged perspective, the statue of General Isaac Brock at Queenston Heights was interesting only because it had once lost its arm and part of its torso in a lightning strike. I stubbornly refused to participate in the annual climb of the narrow, winding staircase inside Brock’s monument. Two hundred and thirty-five steep steps! Plus all the boys said there were bones up there.

Drummond Hill Cemetery image from niagarafalls.ca

Lundy’s Lane in Niagara Falls is the site of what historians agree was the bloodiest battle of the war. This was never a school field trip, since Lundy’s Lane had developed into a strip of fast food outlets and tourist shops, which it still is today. At the Lane’s highest point, Drummond Hill Cemetery holds the remains of soldiers from that battle. My husband remembers finding musket balls there when he was a kid – now, that’s interesting! Too bad I didn’t know about it when I was twelve.

It was only recently I discovered that two of my four-times-great grandfathers fought in the battle of Queenston Heights and also the battle of Lundy’s Lane. And on the opposite side of the spectrum, my Mennonite ancestors refused to fight on religious grounds.

Muster Roll showing Benjamin Willcox and his son Daniel. Image from ourontario.ca

The War of 1812 now feels far more personal than it ever did in history class or on field trips. What I learned opened a window into the life of Benjamin Willcox Jr., who fought alongside his 16-year old son Daniel in the 4th Lincoln Militia. And Martin Boughner, who left a pregnant wife and two-year-old daughter when he walked off the farm and into battle.

The War of 1812 also marked the first test of conscientious objection in Canada. For my Mennonite ancestors – the Honsberger and Fretz families – this test was real, and it was difficult. While exempt from active fighting, Mennonites were conscripted into “non-combatant” roles. This included driving supply wagons to the battlefront, which certainly did not provide exemption from mortal danger. Not to mention the King could “impress” their horses, carriages, and oxen as needed. And Mennonites, like the rest of the Niagara settlers, were not exempt from having army battalions move into their homes and barns and/or steal food from them when the military stores ran low.

One of the things I love most about researching my ancestry is that it transforms history. No longer is the War of 1812 a boring series of field trips, place names and dates. Now it’s a collection of stories alive with real people who belong to me. It’s an event that allows me to reflect on connections and influences that ripple through generations. I’m proud of all my ancestors who played a role in the war of 1812: the men who were called away from farming and families and who possibly had no interest in soldiering; the women and children who had to step up to keep farms operating… and also the men and women who may have stood up against the military, the government and their neighbours, in order to be true to their faith.

**This is an excerpt from my essay, “The War of 1812: It’s Personal,” which was published in Canadian Stories Magazine, Volume 19, Number 111 (October-November 2016.) You can order a copy of it here.

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THE PAST IS NEVER FAR AWAY

ByLee Ann

On a stretch of the Old Muskoka Road just north of Utterson, a few pieces of corduroy have heaved their way to the surface. “Corduroy” refers to the logs set cross-ways on a pioneer road, usually in the more boggy sections. Certainly the area between Utterson and Allensville is particularly low, so it makes sense there would have been a need for corduroy here.

I’m always thrilled to step on an actual piece of the road trod by many of the people I wrote about: Harriet King, Florence Kinton and others travelled this section of the road.

Last weekend, I listened with a smile as the people who live on the road today warned visitors that the road is twisty, full of potholes and dangerous cracks and needs to be travelled carefully. In fact, some helpful neighbours have drawn squiggly yellow lines on top of the worst humps and written CAUTION with arrows in several spots to warn drivers. I’m sure if the stagecoach drivers of the 1800s could have scrawled something in the dirt path to warn others of the perils of the road, they would have. As I’ve said many times when summing up the story of this road: “the road was awful; it was always awful; the end.” And so history continues in a modern form!

In Torrence, the Muskoka Conservancy owns a protected tract of land where an old growth pine tree stands. Botanists estimate it’s about 150 years old. So when the Muskoka Road was just being hacked out at its starting point a few kilometers to the southeast in Washago, this tree was the mere sprout of an acorn. It somehow survived the 19th century logging as well as a widespread fire in the 1930s to grow to a girth of 1.2 metres (almost four feet) at its base and a height of easily 15 metres (50 feet.) I gazed up into the canopy and tried to imagine a tree twice that girth and 25 metres – 82 feet – tall. That’s what Muskoka’s original old growth forests held when the first pioneers arrived… with their hand axes for tree chopping.

I love when the past shows glimpses of itself! These log pieces and this massive pine remind me that we are never far from our pasts… as individuals or as districts.

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!

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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!