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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.

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!”

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.

WHERE DO YOU COME FROM?

ByLee Ann

My friend Lynn recently posted these questions triggered by one of her children’s school projects about family history. Are North Americans ever “from” here? How long do your ancestors have to have been from here before you can just say, “my mother’s relatives came from Canada”?

This got me thinking… and I think we self-identify largely by the place of our birth and upbringing. So, like Joe on the old beer commercial: I. am. Canadian.

But where are my people from? What are the cultures that influence my history? Let’s have a quick look at the lineage:

Parents:

  • Canada, USA

Grandparents:

  • Canada, Canada / USA, Hungary

Great-grandparents:

  • Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada
  • USA, USA, Hungary, Hungary

Great-great grandparents:

  • Germany, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada
  • USA, Germany, Ireland, England, Hungary, Hungary, Hungary, Hungary

If I stop here, I’m back to people who were born in the early 1800s. Even at this point in the ancestry, I’m fifth generation Canadian on my father’s side, with a dollop of German.

Maybe that’s why I identify so strongly as a Canadian, culturally and historically. Also, nothing from my mother’s side overshadows this. Her relatives came from Hungary and the USA for the most part, but my grandfather denied his Hungarian ancestry all his life, so there was no influence there. And although my childhood rang with my parents’ assertion that everything is better in the USA – maybe stemming from my mother’s citizenship and maybe from living in the border town of Niagara Falls – I never did buy into that idea.

I think cultural influences have to be actively “handed down”. You can’t feel an affinity with a country just because it’s on your ancestral chart. You need the food, the songs, the values to be part of your upbringing. Even then, some influences you absorb, and others (like my parents’ feelings about America) you choose not to adopt.

In my case, I feel less of an affinity to culture as defined by countries as I do with some of the values and inclinations of my ancestors themselves. Examples: I feel a stronger allegiance to the pacifist stance of my Mennonite ancestors than to any of my soldier ancestors who fought with distinction on the Plains of Abraham, with Niagara’s famous Butlers Rangers, in the war of 1812, and the two World Wars. And as I’ve asserted proudly before, I’m sure I’ve got dirt in my DNA, imprinted from generations of farmers in Niagara.

So: I say my father’s relatives came from Canada and my mother’s from the USA and Hungary.

And regardless of where my relatives came from, and how long ago they arrived, I. am. Canadian.

How about you?