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Last week I uncovered several reputable researchers who have traced my Wilcox family line all the way back to England in the 1500s. In 1638, the first Wilcox arrived in what is now New England, just 18 years after the famous Mayflower. One hundred and fifty years later, the Wilcoxes joined other families in the major wave of Loyalist immigration to Upper Canada. They settled in the Niagara region in 1787, beating my Mennonite ancestors by over a decade. My five-times-great-grandfather Benjamin Wilcox Sr. was Overseer of Roads in Grimsby Township and also Town Warden, a job which included settling a dispute between two men over a hog in 1796.

You might think, wow, all that information found by others – just “cut and paste” into the family tree!

Not so fast.

I always do my own research, the painstaking process of checking “primary source material”. This includes official records of birth, death and marriage, war service, census information, town records; and contemporary records such as newspapers, family bibles and letters, when available (which they haven’t in my case.) Only when I’ve exhausted all the sources I can find online and in archives and museums, do I look at other family trees that other genealogists have published, in books, papers and reports or online, via such services as Ancestry.ca. The online services in particular have been a boon to genealogists the world over, promoting contact and sharing of far-flung branches of families. Sometimes I find exciting gems, like the picture above.

Sometimes I find problems. For example, all the online Wilcox family trees I found recorded my three-times-great-grandfather Hamilton Wilcox’s first born son as James Alexander Wilcox. In fact, Hamilton’s first born was James Benjamin Wilcox. I know this because I traced my grandmother’s line back to Hamilton Wilcox via primary source material.

James Alexander Wilcox was the son of Hamilton’s brother Daniel. Because he was born just two years after James Benjamin in the same township, and because census records show Hamilton’s son as simply “James”, it’s an easy mistake to make.

But a costly one, for those family historians content to copy other people’s research without verifying. And the picture above? I have yet to find the owner of the original, who can verify this is in fact Hamilton and Dorothea. The folks I’ve contacted so far have said no, they just copied the photo from other family trees.

Reputable researchers check primary source material and also cite their sources when they publish. I try to be a reputable researcher.

Beware the cut and paste.

There’s nothing like seeing a photograph of your ancestors! Even black and white, stiffly-posed portraits yield rich hints of inheritance. There’s your brother’s wiry hair, your father’s broad shoulders, mom’s delicate nose – all familiar in grainy sepia.

My aunt sent me a photo of my great-great-grandparents, Fredrick and Magdalena Eckhardt. She got it from a cousin. I pulled it from my files again today with the intent of writing about the information that can be found here: in expressions, in clothing, in accessories.

Check out Magdalena’s dress. She, of Pennsylvania Mennonite upbringing, daughter of an original pioneer settler who had made that 700 kilometre trek from Buck’s County to Niagara. Like Amish and other Anabaptist groups, the Mennonites promoted a simple, agricultural and community-based lifestyle. In about 1895, some Mennonite groups started enforcing a dress code of plain attire, emphasizing simplicity and for women, a type of cape dress, with a piece of square or V-shaped fabric covering the bodice and a veil-like head covering plus a bonnet.

And here’s Magdalena, sporting “leg of mutton” sleeves, the height of 1890s fashion.  She certainly seems to be defying the “plain folk” dress code of her church! Does this tell us something about her, or about her relationship with her faith or her church during “The Gay 90s”?

As I pondered these questions, something tugged at my memory, sending me back to check the records. Found a bit of a problem: Magdalena died on June 3, 1869.

So now what? Is this really a photo of Fredrick and Magdalena? Is my fashion knowledge faulty? What else can I check to verify that the photo is in fact my great-great-grandparents?

Never mind trying to tease out personalities and attitudes from this picture. I’m back to basics: looking for more data.

I always begin researching an ancestor’s life with great optimism. Especially one born in Canada after Confederation, when we started to have all these formal records of who lived where and when: census records, city directories, voter lists, passenger lists. And much of this is searchable online. So how hard can it be to reconstruct someone’s life story?

The short answer: it’s not possible. Yawning gaps exist in the formal records and many times the records are missing altogether, or for unknown reasons ancestors don’t show up in records where they should.

Here is what I’ve found so far in the official records about my grandfather, Albert Eckhardt. First, the so-called “tombstone” data: he was born April 17, 1892 in Vineland, Ontario. He married my grandmother, Mabel Augusta Wilcox, April 12, 1922. He died at St. Catharines General Hospital August 9, 1950. An entire lifetime occurred between those dates; little is recorded “officially.”

His birth certificate states that Albert’s birth was attended by a physician. He was the third of six children born to Solomon Honsberger Eckhardt and Sarah Fretz Eckhardt, both German Mennonites with long family roots in that church. The 1873 City Directory places the family on Lot 1 Concession VI Louth, between Jordon and St. Catharines.

The 1901 census notes a nine-year old Albert attending school full time, and also gives this hint about the family: Albert’s father claims English as his first language. So it’s possible that the use of German was lost by Albert’s time, but that’s not a certainty; I’ve learned that people tell census-takers all kinds of lies.

None of them, not Sarah, not any of the six children, appear in either the 1911 or the 1921 census. I have no idea why this is; Albert and all of his siblings lived in the Niagara area their entire lives and most of them are buried in Vineland.

Albert and his brother Jesse next show up in militia pay records of 1913 and 1914. They were part of the Welland Canal Field Force, guarding the strategic canal with rifles and orders to “shoot to kill” any suspicious trespassers, as the war heated up in Europe. Albert spent 12 days in the force in 1913 and was paid $1.00 per day, about $20.00 in today’s currency. Both brothers went to Europe to fight. Albert sailed in the summer of 1918, got the mumps, and spent his wartime convalescing in General Hospital #12 (Bramshott) before being sent back home with one damaged testicle. His war records, which I have from Library and Archives Canada, include a sheet of paper where the nurses tracked his fevers – this was probably clipped to the end of his hospital bed.

After his marriage, Albert next appears in 1928 as the “Informant” for his mother’s death certificate. It’s not until 1935 that I find him again, this time in a group photo of the Culverhouse Cannery employees.

There are other possible sources, of course, but the point is this: we live our lives outside of what is written in the formal records. Knowing any ancestor takes much more than a search through the archives. I need memories, and these come either from personal diaries (which in Albert’s case do not exist) or from talking to people who knew him. The archival data gives me more questions than answers.

This is Fredrick Eckhardt, patriarch of the Canadian line of Eckhardts from Lincoln County (Niagara) and my great-great grandfather. I am determined to be the first to trace Fredrick back to his homeland, which seems to be the Alsace-Lorraine region of France.

Fredrick identified himself on various Canadian census forms as being born in France and being of German origin. This is a big clue that he came from what is commonly called Alsace-Lorraine, the area of France that is traditionally German-speaking. This region flipped back and forth between German and French control over the centuries; during the two decades leading up to Fredrick’s birth in 1818 and until 1870, it was part of France – all of which probably explains his census recordings.

Unfortunately, there are over a thousand communities in Alsace-Lorraine, and the records for the region are organized by community. Which one did he hail from? I could search through many microfilms (very little is available on-line) to try to find him… or maybe there’s a different tack. What about immigration records?

One of his obituaries says he came to Canada as a young boy with his parents. Hmm. How old is a “young boy”? Does twelve still qualify? Ten? Working back from his marriage date, which was probably in 1843 (assuming a marriage before 1844, the year his first child George was born), I am going to assume he immigrated somewhere between 1818 and say, 1830.

I don’t know his father’s name, who as head of the household, would be the main passenger to search for, but not a lot exists in terms of shipping records, anyway. To find his father’s name, I checked Fredrick’s death record, but parents’ names were not recorded in 1901, the year of his death. I also tried to hunt down his marriage record, but civil records did not begin in Upper Canada until years after his wedding and the Mennonite church – the church of his wife, Magdelana, where I assume they were married – does not keep marriage records.

He may have had a brother, George, who also appeared in Niagara around the same time as Fredrick, was just a little older and also from the Alsace region. What I’ve been able to trace so far on George has yielded no helpful clues.

So. I’m searching for the Eckhardt family in Alsace-Lorraine – a region of over a thousand communities – who had at least one child (Fredrick) born in 1818, parents’ names unknown. Port of departure unknown, probably sometime between 1818 and 1830, ship and route unknown. Arrival date in Upper Canada unknown and possibly via routing through some port in the United States; eventual settlement somewhere in the Niagara district.

I’m all for a good hunting expedition, but really, Fredrick.

How far do the influences of our ancestors reach? Do you have to have known family members in order to be shaped by them? Or do long-dead, distant relatives cast a long shadow into today?

After two years of research on my mother’s side, I knew enough about the “characters” in that part of my family and their “characters” to write this:

These are the influences on each generation stepping forward: values taught by and absorbed from parents, plus others assimilated from life experience. What imprints on us is what we teach our children. And so it goes.

I reached two generations back from my mother to highlight the strongest and best traits that I saw running down the direct line to me. This is what I found in many of the ancestors, and what I hope imprinted on me:

• Courage.
• A sense of humour.
• A strong work ethic.
• The ability to love fiercely and defiantly.

I’ve just realized that three branches of my family tree – one on my mother’s side, two on my father’s – originate in the Alsace region. (See the chart Alsace Lines.) What kind of imprint might come from this? Or the experience of being marked as “different”, whether Hungarian (on my mother’s side) or Mennonite (on my father’s). What about skills and aptitudes? On the Granger side, for example, we have what I think is a disproportionate number of aviators!

And if you don’t do research and identify ancestral traits and influences, do they still play out in your own life? I think they do.

What do you think?