2019: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 12 (12)

One of the suggestions for this week's topic of "12" is to write about the person in the #12 slot of an ancestorl chart.  In other words, one's mother's father's father.  In my case this would be John Schell, my Great Grandfather.

John Schell, the son of John Alexander Schell and Mary Jane Ross, was born January 13, 1867 in Innisfil Township, Simcoe County in Canada West.  He was their third child, but first son.   At the time of the 1871 Canadian census, the growing family of John Alexander and Mary Jane was living with his parents: Benjamin Schell and Mary McGill.  This discovery was beneficial to my genealogy research as I had grown up knowing the connection from me to John Schell.  Having previously confirmed that "my" John Schell was the son of John Alexander and Mary Jane, the census connected my Schell line through Benjamin Schell to the Johann Christian Schell who had settled in the Mohawk Valley area of New York state and married into the Petrie family, one of the Palatine families who settled in the Herkimer County area.  My Schell branch has been in Canada since around 1800 and in North America since the 1700s.

John Schell & Mary Deadman with oldest sons George & John

By the time of the 1881 census, John Alexander had relocated his family to a farm in Sunnidale Township in Simcoe County, with several of his siblings as neighbours.  As an adult, my Great-Grandfather John continued the family tradition of farm living in Simcoe County.  On April 24, 1894, he married Mary Deadman, daughter of George Deadman and Rebecca Gauley, in Stayner, Nottawasaga Township, Simcoe County, Ontario.  They lived on farms in Sunnidale and Tosorontio Townships before purchasing a farm in Brentwood, Sunnidale Township in early 1916.  John Schell bought the Brentwood farm from Thomas Bates, who is also one of my Great-Grandfathers.  Thomas's daughter Irene married John's son George in 1927.

Glencairn Union Cemetery, Glencairn, Ontario

John Schell died at the relatively young age of 49 years on May 24, 1916 of pernicious anemia - not long after having moved his family to Brentwood.  At the age of 42, his widow, Mary, was left to raise their ten children - the youngest being only six years old.  Their eldest son, George, was my grandfather and had just turned 21 and took over the responsibly of running the new family farm.  

The children of John Schell and Mary Deadman:
George (1895-1974) m. Martha Jane Irene Bates
John (1896-1933) m. Alice Evelyn Townsend
Maud (1899-1994) m. Isaac Spring Ambrose
Alfred (1900-1952) never married
Robert (1901-1994) m1. Mavis May Pearce ; 
                                 m2. Elsie Jean Terry 
William (1903-1991) m. Dorothy Foisie
Wesley (1904-1995) m. Nora Ellen Elizabeeth Jardine
Edward (1906-1970) m. Elizabeth Edna Holmes
Margaret (1908-1986) m. Albert Justing McBride
Stanley (1910-1966) never marrid
 
George eventually built a new house on the property and the original house torn down.  This newer house is the one I know from my childhood visits to my grandparents.  In the 1960s, my grandparents sold off most of the farm land, keeping a portion around the house to still do some vegetable gardening.  This portion of the John Schell farm is still in the family.  One of my first cousins and her husband have lived in the house for the past several decades, having raised their daughters there and now their grandchilden frequently visit.  More than 100 years later, the property is still in family hands.  Not bad for John Schell who had lived on several farms during his short life.  He managed to leave a legacy to his family.

Although I never met my Great-Grandfather John Schell, I grew up "knowing" him.  It was not always on display, but I do remember seeing the above photo as well as individual ones of John and Mary taken at the same photograph shooting.  My Mother would often reflect back on life in 1944, the year that her father George turned 49.  He was very superstitious and he was sure that he would die at the same as his father had.  The family was very relieved when he turned 50.  (He lived for another 30 years.)

Another story Mom often told was a comment her father would say about his father.  According to George, his father would comment that there was "music in the air, if only one was able to capture it".  The phonograph, radio and telegraph had been invented before his death, but I wonder what he would think of the world today?  Wifi, bluetooth, wireless and other modern technology pull not only music from the air but video as well.  And we are not bewildered by any of it.  We take it as a given and go through withdrawal when servers are down and we are unable to tweet, snapchat, facebook or text.

2019: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 10 (Bachelor Uncle)

2019: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 9 (At the Courthouse)

2019: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 8 (Family Photo)

2019: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 7 (Love)

I've always been a great believer in love and am a romantic at heart.  My collection of romance novels will attest to that.  In my personal life, I was prepared to stay single than marry someone just for the sake of being married.  I did find my soulmate when I was in mid-30s and we will be celebrating our 24th wedding anniversary this year.  Family and friends still say we act like newlyweds.

As I continue to do my genealogy research, I am surprised at the number of males and females who never married.  Were they like me and were holding out for their true love and never found him/her?  Or was their story more tragic and they lost the Love of their Life before getting to the altar?  I will likely never get the answer to those questions. 

And then there are some that did get married later in life.  Did they "settle"?  Or did they finally find their True Love like I did?  There are many couples in my trees that lived into their 80s (which is something for people born in the 1800s and earlier) and celebrated their Golden Wedding Anniversary together. 

Mary Jane (nee Woodland) & William Daisley ALLEN

There is a family "heirloom" that has been used at Golden Wedding anniversaries for three generations of my Allen family.  The sign had been created in 1931 for the 60th Wedding anniversary of my great-grandparents: William Daisley Allen and Mary Jane Woodland. 

It was used again in 1970 for my grandparents' (Harry Allen & Gertie Cooper) 50th Wedding Anniversaries and then in 1997 for the 50th anniversary celebrations of two of their children: daughter Dora and her husband Fred McWhinnie and son Albert and his wife Helen Maloney.

When the Allens love, they love for a long time.

My father died before my parents were able to celebrate their 50th Wedding Anniversary.  However, my parents set the bar high for a loving relationship - which is why I believe I was not prepared to settle for less in my love life.

My parents (Jack Allen and Eveleen Schell) grew up in the same small Ontario hamlet: Brentwood, so they knew each other.  My father was six years older, so they were never went to school together - the community was large enough that the school house was divided into two rooms.  By the time my mother started school, my father would have been in the senior room.  However, several siblings of my father did attend school with my mother. 

By the time she was a teenager, my mother had set her sights on the local farm boy - but it took her several years before he gave in and paid her any attention.  It took a mutual friend to con him into double dating as the friend was interested in the school teacher that boarded at my maternal grandparents' house.  Although my father didn't pursue my mother, he apparently always made sure that he was dressed his best when hanging out at the local store with his buddies and "conveniently" ran into the local girls, including my mother. 

When they did become an item, Dad still played hard to get.  At church each Sunday, Mom would invite him to dinner and he always tried to use the excuse of farm chores to try to turn down the invitation.  Mom later learned from his sisters that he always made a point of doing his share of the chores in the morning before church, leaving the afternoon chores to his younger brothers.

Dad was a man of few words, but his actions spoke volumes.  He never left for work without a kiss from my mother.  He would not go to her for the kiss, but would stand at the back door waiting for her.  There was one year during my childhood that Mom was in and out of the hospital for several surguries: broken ankle, gall bladder and hysterectomy.  At that point in time, Dad's job as the Superintendent of a mechanical construction company required him to check in on various out of town job sites.  After driving for several hours each day, he would come home and cook the dinner I had prepped and then take my brothers and me to the hospital to visit my mother.  Once back home, he had paper work to complete before heading to bed and repeat the process the following day.

My Father died of pancreatitis in 1990 after only a few weeks of illness.  My Mother was devastated and wanted to give up the will to live.  But my brothers and I were able to get her to accept that he would have wanted to her continue with her life.  Dad's goal in life was always to provide a better life for his wife and children.  With his investments, insurance and pensions, Mom has been able to continue living without changing her lifestyle.

On the first anniversary of my father's death, my mother spent the day reading letters that he had sent her back in the days when they had been dating.  Prior to marriage, she worked as the Cook's Assistant in an Old Age Home and boarded at the home.  The man of a few words actully spent his evenings writing notes to his girlfriend.  They were more notes, but meant a lot to my mother - so much that she had kept them for over 40 years.  Even 29 years since my father's death, she still has them and refuses to let us read them.  She has requested that they be buried with her.

As Mom was adjusting to life as a widow, I began to realize that I was holding out for a True Love like I grew up seeing in my parents' relationship.  I eventually did meet my True Love and my husband has many of the qualities of my father.  Like my father, Terry's actions speak volumes.  We were together for several months before he acutally said the words "I love you" to me, but I was confident of my love from his actions.  He made been through a bad divorce, so I knew the words would be difficult for him but I knew I was loved.  Once he finally vocalized the words, he tells me several times a day.  And like my father, he will do anything for his wife without thought of himself.

2019: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 6 (Surprise)

What surprises have I encountered during my genealogy research?

I have already written about the surprise I had (aka "skeleton in the closet") when I found the marriage registration for my great-grandparents, Tom Bates & Pearl Mumberson.  They were married in January 1905 and their eldest daughter, my grandmother Irene, was born in June of that year.

Although I was surprised about that discovery, as I had never heard of the timing (unlike great-grandparents on my father's side who never hid the fact that their first born was less than nine months after their marriage) my biggest surprise was the ethnicity of my father's side of the family.

I grew up hearing stories of male family members being active in the Orange Lodge (Independent Order of Odd Fellows) and they would attend the Orangeman Parades on July 12th each year.  My mother tells of a story that when she mentioned to a cousin of my father's that she had never attended such a parade, his response was that she should be ashamed to admit that.  He did not take into account that her heritage was German (Mennonite), although her mother's side was British.

The Allens were staunch Protestant English and proud of their heritage.  I would avoid wearing green on St. Patrick's Day with the arguement that I would then be obliged to wear orange on Orangeman Day.


I had also been told my one of my aunts that the Family Bible indicated that the family had sailed to Canada from Liverpool England in July 1831 and settled in the Mono Township area of Upper Canada.  So naturally I assumed that the Allens were English and when I started researching, I discounted Allens from Ireland.

Lo and behold, one evening when I was searching on the internet (back in the early days no less), I came across a tree which included my father as well as his siblings and parents.  Although there were some errors and missing information on that tree, there was enough consistencies for me to accept that this tree was part of mine and provided me with the names of my great-greatgrandfather's parents and siblings.  All I had known was that Robert Allen had sailed from Liverpool at the age of 6 with his family - but I never had details as to the other family members.

As with any tree I discover online, I use the information as hints to do my own research to prove, or disprove that information.  My research led me to online communication with a woman who was actively doing research with the Dufferin County Museum.  Although not related to the Allens, she warned me that there had been several Allen families in the Mono Township area - some Scottish, some Irish and she believed my Robert Allen was the son of the Margaret Buchanan, wife of William Allen, native of Ireland, buried in the St. John's Cemetery, 7th Line, Mono Township.  In a later discussion with my aunt, she gave the exact wording from the family bible, indicating that the family was from Armagh Ireland.

So in my mid-30's I was surprised to discover that I was Irish not English!

2019: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 5 (At the Library)

Week 5's topic of "At the Library" is well fitting for me as I spent 37 years working in academic libraries.  I started as a Student Assistant at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada while I was still in high school and continued while a student at that university.  When I dropped out of university in my second year, I was hired on in a staff position.  During the next 10 years, I worked my way up through the ranks to a position of Circulation Co-ordinator of one of the libraries.  A few years later, I took a Leave of Absence to relocate with my husband in Regina, Saskatchewan and was hired to work in the Interlibrary Loans section of the John Archer Library at the University of Regina.  One of my junior positions at Queen's University had been in the Interlibrary Loans unit of the Health Sciences Library.  Needless to say my workplaces have served me well when I became obsessed with genealogy.

Working in an academic library system in the 1990s, I was in place to be on board with the explosion of personal computers and the internet as well as having the advantage of purchasing computers for home through payroll deduction.  The Documents unit of Queen's University Libraries is a depository for Government of Canada publications and the collection included microfilm of the Canadian census.  I spent many lunch breaks and after work time cranking through reels of microfilm.  The creation of Ancestry.ca was a God send to me as I could use its search engine to locate an image of the census rather than cranking the reels and then download that image to my computer. The microfilm readers I had access to at that time were not automated nor were they attached to a printer.  So when I had found an ancestor, I would have to hand write the information and then enter the data into my computer at home in the evening.

The Special Collections Unit at Queen's University houses various print documents relevant to genealogy research for Ontario.  If I wasn't checking microfilm in Documents, I was checking the Marriage records for Upper Canada, Canada West and Ontario in Special Collections.  Again, this pre-dates the availabilty of Ontario marriage records on Ancestry.

Working in Interlibrary Loan units gave me an understanding of how easily one may be able to obtain desired articles and books not available at one's home library.  I also understand the reason why not all material is available via Interlibrary Loan.  The library housing certain information has an obligation to have the material readily available to its prime users: university's staff and students in the case of an academic library and taxpayers at a public library.  In other words, library are not willing to loan Reference material to local patrons and definitely not via Interlibrary Loans which could make the item unavailable to others for at least a month.  Such material needs to remain in-house so it is available to patrons.  If extra copies, or older edition, of a book is also in the library's collection, it may be available to loan.  But has budgets continue to shrink, there is less and less duplication.

Although my only experience of providing reference assistance to faculty and staff was the years I was Co-ordinator of the Biology branch library, I am well aware of the importance to sourcing one's research and citing sources.  That knowledge had started in high school as one of my history teachers went out of his way to prepare us for writing university papers.  After having to return to the public library and try to relocate the books I had previously returned without properly recording the bibliographic information.  Never happened again: when I picked up a book, I recorded the details of the book; when I recorded a fact, I recorded the page number.  This practice has served me well for genealogy researching.

Another advantage of being a staff member at a university is access to online databases - either in the library, or accessing from home.  I was fortunate when I took an early retirement, I was able to retain my work email and have befinited greatly by accessing online newspapers.

Although I have never worked in a public library, I have certainly been a patron of my local public library.  When Ancestry started their Canadian domain, I subscribed to that but was reluctant to spend the extra for the American or British domains and made use of the Ancestry Library Edition at the public library.  But I quickly found it wanting: one had to book time on the library computer (or take one's chance of availability) and there was a two hour maximum (unless no one else had booked time on the computer).  And at this point in time, the only way to download a found image was to 3.5 inch floppy!  Do you know how many floppies I needed to take to the library each trip?  So I soon "bit the bullet" and upgraded my Ancestry subscription to World Deluxe and have never looked back.  I don't make daily purchases of coffee at my local coffee shop, so I use those funds to be able to download relevant records on the spot to my own computer as I research from the comfort of my home any time day or night - not when the public library is open and has an available computer.

In my hometown, the local branch of the Ontario Genealogy Society housed their collection in a wing of the main branch of the public library.  Before I moved away, I spent many a Saturday aand/or Sunday going through non-circulating books and entering data into my laptop.  How I wish I had a portable scanner back then.  I did make use of my scanner when I did a "field trip" to the Herkimer County Historical Society's Library.  After a full day, mostly scanning, I left with a lot of documentation, but only got through one folder of my Schell ancestors.  Unfortunately, I've never been able to make a return visit.

During my time in Regina, not only did I make use of relevant genealogy material at the univerisity library, I was also a frequent visitor to the public library as well as the Saskatchwan Genealogy Society's library located in Regina.  The Regina Public Library had a Prairie History Room full of genealogy material and the Librarian of that room co-ordinated a series of genealogy workshops during the winter months each Saturday.  One workshop was a field trip to the Regina location of the Saskatchewan Archives where we were given a behind the scenes tour.  The SGS Library housed a lot of Ontario related material as many prairie settlers had originated, or passsed through, Ontario before arriving in Saskatchewan.  My genealogy research greatly benefitted from my two years in Regina.

Obviously I am a great supporter of libraries for genealogy research.  Having experienced doing research before resources were readily available on the internet, I can appreciate the benefits of online research.  But one needs to realize that not everything has been digitized and does not need to be instantaneous.  The thrill can be in the hunt.  There are also benefits to having access to a librarian or library technician/clerk. (Yes, not all library employees are librarians.)  Google (or Bing, etc) is not a true replacement for a reference person.  For simple questions, maybe, but for more indepth assistance one needs the human interaction.  By talking to a volunteer at the Herkimer County Archives Library, I was handed a large file folder of acticles and documents pertinent to my ancestor.  If I had tried to investigate the library on my own, I would have wasted a lot of valuable time - even in the one room research facility.  Library staff are able to offer valuable, informational workshops for a nominal fee, or even free, as it is considered part of their regular job and not their source of income.  Not that I'm discounting the value of genealogy professionals and the work that they do, but if one is lucky enough to live in an area that offers genealogy workshops at their local library, go for it!

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY!