2019: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 1 (First)

New year, new 52 Ancestors project.

Week 1's topic is fitting: 'First'.  What to write?  First ancestor to migrate to the New World?  That would be my 5x Great Grandfather, Johann Christian Schell, who reported arrived in Philadelphia in 1749 before settling in the Mohawk Valley area of New York and marrying Maria Elizabeth Petrie, a member of one of the Palatine families of the Burnetsfield Patent.  I have yet to revisit this ancestor in my Do-Over Project, so I'm reluctant to write about him with possibly unfounded information.

Instead, I have chosen to write about the first 'skeleton in the closet' I unearthed in my research.

Not long after I had started down the rabbit hole of genealogy research, Ancestry established their Canadian website.  The fact that the majority of records at that point in time were from Ontario was not a deterent as a high percentage of my ancestors lived in Ontario before and after Confederation.  I dove in and searched for birth, marriage, death records as well as census of the known ancestors whose lifespan were covered by the available records.

My Great-Grandparents: Thomas Edward Bates & Elsie Pearl Mumberson

One day I found the marriage record for Thomas Edward Bates and Elsie Pearl Mumberson, the parents of my maternal grandmother Martha Jane Irene (nee Bates) Schell.  As I perused the document on the screen and started entering the information into my database, I did a double take and had to look closely at the computer screen in front of me to ensure that I was correctly reading the date of marriage.  The date was listed as 'Jan 11 05' and was registered 'Jan 19 1905', consistent with the registration dates of the other entries on the page.

Why was I surprised at the date?  All my life I knew my grandmother's birthdate to be June 5, 1905.   That birthdate was confirmed by her birth registration.

This would mean that my great grandmother was several months pregnant with my grandmother at the time of the marriage.  Certainly not scandalous today, but in rural Ontario in 1905?  Similar circumstances for great-grandparents on my father's side in the 1870s, but the family never kept it a secret.  Was this a known detail in the Bates/Mumberson families and I had just never heard of it?  Or had I found the proverbial skeleton in the family closet?

The next day I phoned my mother to ask if she had been aware that her grandmother was pregnant when she got married. She admitted that she had not been aware of that detail "but it would explain alot" as well as being hypocritical on their part.

When I asked her what that meant, her response was that her mother and grandmother were always judgemental and critical of unmarried females and "shot-gun" weddings.  She also speculated that it would also explain why those two women had done certain things over the years.  Although Mom did tell me what she meant (more skeletons), some is still unproven speculation on her part or small town gossip which I have not yet been able to prove - so I won't publish it here.

Since that day of discovery, I found a newspaper article published January 19, 1905 when the small town (New Lowell) news reported:

"Jan 15 - A quiet wedding took place on Wednesday last, when Miss Pearl Mumberson was married to Thos. Bates of Brentwood.  The ceremony was performed at the bride's home here by the Rev. Mr. Follett.  The best wishes of the community are extended to the young couple."

The newspaper article also confirms the January 1905 marriage date.  Given the time period, I have to assume that if the community was extending best wishes to the couple, Pearl's pregnancy was not public knowledge.  But I'm sure there would have been a lot of finger counting of the months between January and June when baby Martha Jane Irene was born on June 5, 1905.