PBS launched it’s new genealogy based show yesterday called “Genealogy Roadshow.” As an avid and interested genealogist with more than 30 years of experience plus a bunch of courses and conferences under my belt, I considered this to be ‘must see’ viewing for me.
The ‘Roadshow’ title immediately suggested to me the lines of folks seen on The Antiques Roadshow, each hauling an old family treasure in the hope that an expert would provide good news about the treasure’s remarkable value and place in history. The Genealogy Roadshow doesn’t disappoint – there are the long lines of folks seen outside the show’s venue but, rather than carrying family antique treasures, they come with family stories and questions about relationships and connections.
D. Joshua Taylor and Kenyatta Berry serve as the experts who present the genealogical findings that answer the family history questions on the show. I think they both do an admirable job of presenting and explaining the genealogy evidence found through what had to be an exhausting amount of research. Both Josh and Kenyatta also do, in my opinion, a even better job in representing the genealogical community. They are not just clever but they also have a sense of humour and an ability to communicate a lot of information concisely, perhaps too concisely.
On the critical side, the show covers a lot of stories in it’s fast paced format. Perhaps a few less stories and more depth would work better?
While viewing the show, I was left puzzled as to how the guests were selected. It was clear that there had been some preliminary event when potential guests would have offered their family history queries however if I didn’t know what I know about genealogy, I might have been left with the impression that the census records, city directories, archived letters would just appear on online.
That certainly seemed to be the impression of New York Times television reviewer Neil Genzlinger whose tepid review of the show appeared on September 22, 2013. In his review, Genzlinger states, “No frequent-flier miles are racked up by the guests on “Genealogy Roadshow.” Mostly, its experts just show them computer screens full of census pages and such (research they could have done themselves with a little search-engine savvy).”
Now I know where I’ve gone wrong. I just need a little search engine savvy. I’m sorry to disappoint Neil but I think I have more than a little search engine savvy in addition to a pretty good idea of the type of records to look for and how to read them but still I can’t find all the answers to some of my family’s questions and mysteries.
“Genealogy Roadshow” might benefit from spending a little bit of time looking at the back story, that is the research process used to uncover the answers to the puzzles being solved for the on-air guests. For example, how did an unknown first cousin of a woman inquiring about the father she didn’t know, just happen to be in Tennessee in order to step out from a group of onlookers with a two inch thick album of photos and mementos specially prepared for the occasion.
“Genealogy Roadshow” succeeds in showing that answers are possible but I think the show needs to do more to explain how to make possible a reality.
What were your first impressions of the show?
The Faulkner Lineage – from Ellen to Edmond
In my last post, I included the photo below of Ellen standing beside the gravestone of her 7X great grandfather Edmond Faulkner, the earliest of Ellen’s ancestors to leave Europe and settle in the New World.
Edmond left England around 1639 and settled in Massachusetts. He co-founded Andover, Massachusetts and was a founding member of the first church in Andover. Edmond died in Andover in 1687.
The following is Ellen’s ancestral line back to Edmond:
1. Ellen Louise Wagner m. Ian Hadden
2. Carl Francis Wagner (1917-1994) m. Olive Theresa Evelyn Latimer (1920-1997)
3. Charlotte Marion ‘Lottie’ Faulkner (1890-1977) m. Louis Jacob Gordon Wagner (1886-1968)
4. Gilbert Wellington Faulkner (1856-1932) m. Sarah Blair (1864-1898)
5. Francis Dwight Faulkner (1811-1872) m. Eleanor Ann Kimmerly (1821-1896)
6. Sylvester Faulkner (1780-1863) m. Mary ‘Polly’ Cram (1781-1858)
7. Peter Faulkner (1743-1829) m. Chloe Cram (1750-1840)
8. Timothy Faulkner (1704- abt. 1746) m. Deborah Farnum (1702-?)
9. John Faulkner (1654-1706) m. Sarah Abbott (1660-1723)
10. Edmond Faulkner (1624-1687) m. Dorothy Raymond (abt. 1624-1668)
Family History Sneaks Into Our Vacation Trip
My wife knows that somehow, in some way, I will find a family history angle to pursue whenever and wherever we go away on a trip.
For the second year in a row, Ellen and I have traveled by car to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. These ‘vacation’ trips have been for the primary purpose of attending the annual open house at the Hope for Wildlife animal rescue and rehabilitation centre. We became aware of Hope for Wildlife through a television series about the efforts of it’s founder Hope Swinimer and the many volunteers working to rescue, rehabilitate and release Nova Scotia wildlife. We certainly appreciate the great efforts made by these folks to return injured and orphaned animals back to the wild.
This year, we changed our travel plans by choosing a route for the journey that took us through the United States. In past, we have traveled to the Canadian maritime provinces using an all-Canada route. This year’s route allowed us to change the scenery and allowed me the opportunity to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, achieving a tick mark on my ‘bucket’ list.
Typically, we have driven for two long days to arrive at our maritime destination but now, since both Ellen and I are retired and can take the time, we slowed down and allowed ourselves four or five shorter days of travel by car. This year, the route we selected took us from our starting point in Ontario through New York state, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, back into Canada through New Brunswick and finally Nova Scotia.
On the second night of our trip, we stayed in Lexington, Massachusetts. I noticed on our drive there that many of the names of the towns we passed were connected in some way to Ellen’s ancestors, her roots running deep in the New England states. At our hotel that night I used our iPad with the RootsMagic database app along with the Google maps application to locate the cemetery in North Andover, Massachusetts where Ellen’s 7X great grandfather, Edmond Faulkner, is buried.
Using the location information, I programmed my GPS unit to direct us the next morning to about where the cemetery ought to be. So there we were, at the start of our third day on the road, standing in the Old North Parish Burying Ground.
There was only one way to find the grave of Edmond Faulkner – walk the cemetery, checking the headstone inscriptions as we went. Fortunately, this cemetery is not too large and within about ten or fifteen minutes, I found the gravestone for Edmond.
Edmond Faulkner died in 1687. The headstone that now marks his grave was erected in 1905, I’m assuming as a replacement for a thinner, likely weather faded stone that was originally in place. The current gravestone is thick and heavy, bearing a bronze plaque that reads (my transcription):
To The Memory Of
EDMOND FAULKNER
Who was born in Kingsclear, England.
He came to America and settled
in Andover.
He was one of the founders of the
first church in Andover in 1645.
Died January 18, 1687.
Erected by descendants of the
seventh generation.
In 1905 (this latter date is chiseled into the stone below the bronze plaque).
I still don’t know the names of my 7X great grandparents but Ellen is more fortunate. Here she is at the grave of her 7X great grandfather Edmond Faulkner.
Visiting Granny
It has felt like we have hit a period of time when Ellen and I have attended more funerals than at any other time I can remember. We have even had funeral times conflicting with other funerals that we also wanted to attend. These are funerals for friends and former work colleagues who we have lost.
Last week, we attended the funeral of one of Ellen’s friends, a woman who died at the very young age of 46, leaving her husband and young sons grieving her loss.
The funeral was held at the Pine Hills Cemetery visitation centre in Scarborough (now part of Toronto), Ontario. This is also the cemetery in which my paternal grandmother is buried.
Agnes Little was born in Greenock, Scotland and immigrated to Toronto in 1928 with the grand sum of $10 in her pocket. I still shake my head in amazement when I think of the courage she had as a 20-year old young woman leaving the only home she had known to travel “half way around the world” in search of a brighter opportunity.
As her eldest grandchild, I had the chance to know ‘Granny.’ Maybe not all that well as I was only just approaching my fourth birthday when she lost her battle with cancer, but I do vividly and fondly remember her.
Granny was buried in Pine Hills Cemetery so, after the funeral, I took advantage of escorting Ellen to Granny’s grave in order to make ‘proper introductions.’
Granny possessed a beautifully thick Scottish brogue that she referred to as her passport. She was only four feet, ten inches tall but she was a force in the family. She was only 50 years of age when she left us but she is not forgotten and legacy lives on.
Don’t Blink, You Might Miss It! – Lingelbach Cemetery
If you blink, you just might miss the Lingelbach Cemetery, a small cemetery located just east of the village of Shakespeare, Ontario.
Last month, while en route to the Merner family reunion, I almost missed it. Of course, I wasn’t expecting to see it either.
When planning our trip to the family reunion, I knew that our route would take us through one of Ellen’s ancestral towns, New Hamburg, Ontario, and so, I allowed time for us to visit the Riverside Cemetery there (I documented this stop in a previous post). After leaving Riverside Cemetery and new Hamburg, we journeyed along; Ellen likely happy that my cemetery roving was finished and me, well, I was happy to have finally turned Riverside Cemetery into something more than a name on a record.
My “Oh My God!” exclamation caught Ellen off guard as we traveled down Highway 7/8 towards Stratford, Ontario and our eventual destination of the reunion location in Seaforth, Ontario. No, I explained, nothing was wrong but I had just seen the sign for Lingelbach Cemetery, something we definitely had to stop and explore on our trip home.
Lingelbach Cemetery is small, well maintained and is located on the corner of the highway and regional road 104, just outside the eastern boundary of Shakespeare. Like Riverside Cemetery is was just a name, albeit a bit of a strange name, that I had seen many times contained in death and burial records for some of Ellen’s ancestors. Now it was real and I had a chance to walk it’s few rows of graves, occasionally stopping to photograph the grave of a known ancestor and pay my respects to them.
Below is one of the ancestral graves found, that of Israel Eby (1850 – 1903) and his wife Mary Anne Witwer (1854 – 1932), Ellen’s first cousin, three times removed.
Fun With the 1921 Census of Canada?? Finding the Foley and Gaull Families
Well, the day finally arrived. The images of the 1921 Census of Canada became available through Ancestry.ca yesterday at 2:00 p.m. EDT and I immediately began the process of searching for family members.
Ancestry is working on a nominal index for the census records but that searchable index is estimated to not be available for about two or three months. In the interim, the 1921 Census of Canada images are available indexed on a geographic basis. Ancestry describes this geographic index this way, “For the 1921 census, each province was divided into census districts. These districts were divided into sub-districts. Districts were roughly equivalent to electoral districts, cities, and counties. Sub-districts were typically towns, townships, and city wards.”
As my paternal Hadden family members did not arrive in Canada until 1923, I focused on finding my maternal Foley ancestors. I knew that one of my maternal great grandfathers, John Foley and his family lived on Pickering Street in the east end of Toronto.
I chose the Province of Ontario and the Toronto East district. This provided me with a list of 70 sub-districts to choose between, including the inmates of the Toronto ‘Don’ Jail. Some of the sub-districts had geographic boundary descriptions, in rather fine print, that assisted me in eliminating them from my search. I also grew up on Pickering Street so I know all the various street names in the neighborhood. Nothing seemed to match; nothing seemed to be even remotely close geographically.
Convincing myself that I was simply misreading or misunderstanding the sub-district listing, I began browsing through the images of the Toronto East sub-districts. No, I had been correct. The enumerated streets were in Toronto’s east end but still quite a distance from Pickering Street.
A moment before I was about to inform Ancestry that they had forgotten to upload my great grandparent’s sub-district, I took a moment of forced calm to again review the available district list. At the bottom of the list I found York East and scrolling the the sub-district listing I saw street names attached to sub-district 37 that were from my old neighborhood.
Finally, in sub-district 39, I found Pickering Street!
Listed on page 17 of the sub-district census record, living at 96 Pickering Street, was my great grandfather John Foley, his second wife Annie (nee McElroy), and three of his children – Gerald (my namesake misidentified in the census record as Clarence (Clarence was married and was found living in his own home at 9 Pickering Street), my then 23-year old grandmother Gertrude, and John Joseph Foley.
All of the frustration in locating known family members dissolved But who else was living in the area?
Scanning through the census pages, I found George Gaull, my paternal Hadden great grandmother’s brother. George was a driving influence in my family’s decision to settle in Toronto’s east end after their immigration from Scotland and a few years of farming in Saskatchewan. George and his wife Mary (nee Coulson) can be found living at 67 Pickering Street, a house from which he operated his grocery store. With them was their one-year old son George Leonard ‘Lenny’ Gaull as well as George senior’s sister Elsie Findlater and brother William Fowler Gaull. I knew that Elsie had lived in Toronto for some time before returning ‘home’ to Scotland but I was unaware that William Gaull had joined his siblings in Canada. According to the record, William arrived in Canada in 1920 and in 1921, he was working as a labourer at a lumber yard, perhaps the lumber yard that was located just a few blocks away from their house.
Patience, something I don’t possess a lot of at times, ruled the day. If you are going to search images that are not yet indexed, it can handy to pack a little extra patience in your tool box.
Riverside Cemetery, New Hamburg, Ontario, Canada
Earlier this month, Ellen and I attended the Merner Family reunion, held in Seaforth, Ontario. You can read more about the reunion and our participation by clicking here.
After having researched Ellen’s family history for several years, there are certain places that I just feel compelled to visit. Perhaps it’s because I have entered the same village or town name into my genealogy database or maybe it’s an intriguing family event that I hope a visit might allow me to feel like I am experiencing the event in its proper context.
Riverside Cemetery is one of those places. For many years, as I have ‘found’ more of Ellen’s Merner ancestors, typically they have been buried in New Hamburg’s Riverside Cemetery. Even many of those ancestors who had moved away from the New Hamburg community, were returned to their ancestral town for burial.
The trip to the reunion location took us right through New Hamburg so I couldn’t resist the temptation to locate the cemetery and try to find the graves of Ellen’s ancestors whom I have come to know so well.
Riverside Cemetery is located in the south end of the town, away from the business section located north of the highway. It is a large, well maintained cemetery which, with some pre-trip Google map planning and a GPS unit, was very easy to find. Unfortunately, we visited on a Sunday so there was no office staff available to provide directions on where to locate the graves I wanted to find. Even though it was possibly the hottest day of the year, I was okay with that as I am like a ‘kid in a candy store’ when it comes to walking around an ancestral cemetery searching for family members; and, I found Merners, lots and lots of Merners.
It is important to note, if you are planning a trip to this cemetery, that the east side of the cemetery is also known as Holy Family Cemetery; the eastern part serving as the Roman Catholic section. Although the Merner family as well as the other main branches of Ellen’s family tree were predominantly Methodists or Lutherans, there were many Roman Catholic Merner family members. The graves of these family members were eventually located in the eastern Holy Family section.
Below is a photo of Ellen at the grave of her 3X great-grandparents, Jacob Emanuel Merner (Muerner) and his wife Susannah Schluchter. Jacob died in 1869 and Susannah in 1875. Their gravestone is well worn and the inscription is not in English but their names, dates of birth and death, as well as their ages at death are clearly legible.
Perhaps the most touching family gravestone was found at the graves of Jacob Ernst and his wife Clarissa Merner. Jacob and Clarissa are buried together in Riverside Cemetery along with their son Walter who died in 1901 of appendicitis at the age of just 14. Below is a photo of the statute erected as a memorial to Walter. The base of the memorial statue is inscribed “Our Darling Boy.”
Earl Burchatzki’s Hole-in-One History
Recently, I was in New Hamburg, Ontario and specifically I was visiting Riverside Cemetery.
While I have seen photos of Riverside Cemetery through websites such as Find-A-Grave, this was my first time visiting and searching for the gravestones of Ellen’s ancestors who had lived and died in the area.
While wandering through the cemetery (on one of the hottest days of the year!), I came across the gravestone for Earl W. Burchatzki and his wife Grace A. Irvine. Neither Earl nor Grace have any family connection to Ellen or I but their gravestone gave more information about them than most. In addition to providing Earl and Grace’s years of birth and death, their gravestone provided their date of marriage – September 29, 1945, likely I’m assuming soon after Earl returned home from military service in World War 2.
Okay, maybe that’s not so remarkable in and of itself but the inscription on the reverse side of the gravestone shows the pride and love Earl (again I’m assuming) had for the love of golf.
On the reverse side of the gravestone, neatly chiseled and preserved for future generations to see are the dates and lengths of the two holes on which Earl achieved a hole-in-one at the Foxwood Golf Course in nearby Baden, Ontario.
The Merner Family Reunion – July 14, 2013
For several decades, a Merner family reunion has been held in southwest Ontario. Typically, about 50 descendants of Jacob Emanuel Merner and his wife Susannah Schluchter, gather to catch up on family news, spend fun time together, and share a meal. A few years ago, on the reunion’s 50th anniversary, between 200 – 300 Merner descendants attended. This year, the reunion gathering was held on Sunday, July 14th in Seaforth, Ontario. Ironically, Ellen and I have been to the town of Seaforth previously on a genealogy quest as her direct maternal family line, the Latimer family settled in Seaforth following their immigration from Ireland. The Merner family is one of Ellen’s paternal ancestral lines.
One set of my wife Ellen’s 3X great grandparents are Jacob Emanuel Merner and his wife Susannah Schluchter. The descendants of Jacob and Susannah Merner have been documented in Ruth Merner Connell’s book on the Merner family genealogy. As I mentioned in previous posts, Ellen’s family was not documented in the book because, well, simply put, whomever in her family might have been contacted by Ruth Connell in the early 1970’s didn’t reply to the inquiry.
Fortunately that changed this year. One of the reunion organizers, Marg (Merner) Nicholson decided to search out some information about Senator Samuel Merner, one of Jacob and Susannah’s children. Ellen is descended from Samuel’s sister Anna Merner, whereas most of the reunion participants are descended from a younger brother, Gottlieb Merner. As a result of her information search, Marg found my blog post about Samuel and his connection to Ellen. Emails were subsequently exchanged between Marg and I and the invitation to the family reunion was extended and accepted.
The reunion was held at the Seaforth Golf and Country Club where family members were able to enjoy a round of golf together while their children participated in various games at a nearby park. The event was capped off with a barbecue dinner. Below is a photo of Ellen (centre) with her new found cousins and family reunion organizers Liz Bartliff (left) and Marg Nicholson (right).
What a great experience to find and meet so many family members who warmly welcomed their long ‘lost’ cousin!
Finally! My Journey Through Ruth Connell’s Merner Genealogy Is Complete
Back in mid-April, I happened upon a book compiled by the late Ruth Merner Connell on the Merner family genealogy. Ruth’s effort to produce the book must have been enormous.
The book, published in 1976, is about 600 pages long, all hand typed (no computer word processing software available in those days) and includes old family photos and an index of the 2000 Merner family members that Ruth was able to document.
Ruth Merner Connell is my wife Ellen’s third cousin, once removed. Their common ancestors are Ellen’s 3X great grandparents, Jacob Emanuel Merner and Susanna Schluchter. It is these common ancestors that Ruth Merner Connell used as the focal point of her family research, essentially setting out to identify and document all of the descendants of Jacob and Susanna.
Ruth did not enjoy modern social media opportunities, no Facebook page, no Tweets, and no email. She completed her project through ‘snail’ mail and numerous trips to cemeteries and archives.
When I found Ruth’s book, I undertook to enter the information she had compiled into my genealogy software database. Now, some two and one half months later, I have finished the task. Entering all of the information into my database is not without risks. It’s a bit like copying someone’s public family tree, like those found and much maligned, on the Ancestry.com site. I not only entered Ruth’s genealogy information but ran the risk of entering all of her mistakes and fact errors as well.
In order to mitigate this very real risk, I checked her facts as I entered the information by taking advantage of using online databases and record collections. Certainly I found some errors in dates, for example a birth or death date being incorrect by a day, but for the most part Ruth’s information is accurate. She received the information she published directly from the family members that she was documenting. Ruth also cited her sources although certainly not in the citation form that would be preferred today. On each page Ruth listed where she obtained her information; from family members, family bibles, cemetery records, etc.
As a result of completing my task of entering the Merner family information, my database has swollen to 15,763 people in 5105 families. And, perhaps most importantly, I have entered the source of the information for each and every fact that was entered. I have uploaded this updated family tree to Ancestry.com as a public member tree.
The sad note on the Merner genealogy that Ruth published is that on page 272 of her book, Ruth lists Ellen’s great great grandparents, Anna Merner and Jacob Staebler. There is also a note from Ruth on the page: “No contact has been made on this family.” The result is that Ellen’s family is not included in the book beyond the information about her great great grandparents.
This may be remedied though as there are efforts underway to update Ruth’s book. I hope to do my part in assisting in those efforts in any way that I can or may be asked.