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.

THE INTERNET: Making Connections to the Past and the Present

ByLee Ann

Last week three family members contacted me about genealogy. My aunt from the Eckhardt side wrote a lovely note on a gorgeous card, thanking me for all the research I’ve been doing. “We have been very lacking in such information!” she said.

Then my cousin Tim – a Granger connection – sent a message via my website. He wanted to  alert me to a newly-translated book about a couple of Hungarian adventurers who rode motorcycles around the world during the ’20s and ’30s. I hear from Tim periodically since the time we met in 2004, after our mutual cousin Susan found me on an online genealogy forum during my research for Strength Within: The Granger Chronicles. Susan initiated the connection by sending me a message saying, “I think we may be cousins.”

Land petition (1795) by my 4-times great-grandfather Benjamin Wilcox, provided by my cousin Jim

Last week, a “new” cousin Jim contacted me via email. He had stumbled upon this blog and found that we are both researching the Wilcox family and that we are even further connected via the Eckhardt line. It’s always a delight to find someone in the family who’s as passionate as I am about all this! Of course Jim and I have each taken a slightly different tack on digging for the ancestors, and by sharing, we both gain new resources and insights.

One of the biggest thrills of genealogy research is making connections. Connections to ancestors, to past ways of life, to ancestral countries and cultures… and also to people in the family, some you know and some you get to “meet”, often thanks to online connections.

The internet: it’s much more than a genealogical tool for data collection! 

DIRT IN MY DNA

ByLee Ann
Vineland Public School and gardens, c. 1895

I am convinced there is a farming gene and it forms part of my DNA. For me, almost nothing surpasses the pure joy of green vegetable seedlings in early spring. Unless its the pencil-to-paper planning of that garden next to a cup of coffee and a snowy window. The annual miracle of pink peony tips or ground-hugging sedum rosettes seems to bring me more delight every year.

I am unique in my immediate family for this; my parents didn’t garden, and in fact my father ordered the two peach trees on our Niagara Falls city lot hacked to the ground the first time he found a worm in the fruit. Neither of my siblings grow plants; my sister’s son once said, “any hole my mother digs for a plant is a grave.”

Yet the more I probe into the ancestral lines, the more gardeners and farmers I find. Certainly my maternal grandparents loved the flowers, particularly roses, they grew in their tiny St. Catharines yard. And on that side of the family, my Hungarian great-grandfather and at least two generations of men before him were peasant farm labourers.

On my father’s side, though, farming runs back over 10 generations in some of the lines. My historical map of the Niagara peninsula is dotted with the squares I’ve coloured in, representing the acreages owned by various branches of the family starting in 1785.

I know that DNA testing can reveal the origins of all kinds of traits, of parentage, of racial origins, of propensity to various diseases.

Today I’m thinking that somewhere on the twisted strand that makes me who I am, there’s a marker for a girl who likes her hands in the dirt, coaxing forth new life, fresh food and beauty.

WHY I DO MY OWN RESEARCH

ByLee Ann

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.

A PICTURE’S WORTH A THOUSAND DATA POINTS

ByLee Ann

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.