On May 17, 1916, at Aneroid, Saskatchewan, Canada, two young men decided to do their part in the war effort. Peter or ‘Pete’ was 23 years old and his younger brother James or ‘Jimmie’ was just 21 years old. Both had been born to Andrew and Helen Gammie (see Seeing Helen Shand) in their native Scotland. They had accompanied their parents to the far off land of Saskatchewan, Canada where free land and a new life, full of promise and opportunity awaited. I don’t think anybody told them about the depth of cold during a prairie winter.

Pete was the largest of the two brothers. Standing 5 feet, 9 inches in height, he had piercing blue eyes and light hair (pictured below). Jimmie was a bit shorter at 5 feet, 8 inches and had brown eyes and black hair (pictured below). Both listed Quimper, Saskatchewan as their current home and the home of their next of kin, their mother Helen Gammie. Pete and Jimmie were found, probably not surprisingly, to be medically fit when examined by the army doctor.

James ‘Jimmie’ Gammie in Saskatchewan in an undated photograph

Peter ‘Pete’ Gammie

It is unclear as to what occurred but in June 1917, Pete Gammie was sent home as unfit for medical reasons, possibly due to battle injuries. His younger brother, Jimmie stayed in France to fight but sadly became one of the war casualties on September 28, 1918 and was buried in France.

The family photo of Jimmie Gammie was identified for me by Alexander Gaull Hadden, Jimmie’s nephew, who lived on the homestead in Saskatchewan from 1923 – 1927. The Pete Gammie photo is from the local commemorative book Ponteix Yesterday and Today, page 831.

For Canadian researchers, there is a great Canadian website called Our Roots that describes itself as “a library, archive, museum and school all in one.” On the site you can “check the collection to find Canadian local histories in French and English.” Our Roots is “a national network of libraries, universities, colleges, archives, historical associations, businesses and individuals [that] have generously donated time and copyright permission to have their materials digitized” lead by the Universities of Calgary and Laval. The site operates a bit like the Internet Archive site, allowing users to search its digital book collection through a series of search boxes.

I used the site often and as Ellen’s family has far deeper Canadian roots than my own, I have usually had success in finding important documentation about the Wagner and Breithaupt families in particular. My family’s Canadian experience is 20th century, dating back to 1907 when Helen Gammie (nee Shand), my great-great grandmother immigrated from Scotland to the prairies of Saskatchewan in order to homestead. My searches of Our Roots for information or references to my ancestors that might be contained in a local history have been fruitless. Until now!

I recently tried one more time, this time using the term/surname “Gammie” to search the text of the full Our Roots collection. There were some ‘hits’ that the database provided me although I had very low expectations that I would find anything of any use until I stumbled on to a local commemorative history written by a committee to celebrate Ponteix, Saskatchewan. I recognized the town name as one that my ancestors had a connection to. There, on page 831 of Ponteix Yesterday and Today: Ponteix and District Volume 2, was a photograph of Helen (Shand) Gammie (below) as well as her husband Andrew Gammie, their son Peter and his wife Elva.

Helen Gammie (nee Shand) (1864 – 1951)

Andrew Gammie (1861 – 1926)

The book claims the photos were taken when Andrew and Helen were 19 years of age. I frankly doubt this to be accurate as it seems more likely to me based on the formal clothing they are wearing that the photos were taken around the time of their marriage in 1890 when Andrew was 29 years old and Helen was 25 years of age. The ages of 29 and 25 also seem to more accurately reflect the maturity of the subjects in the photos.

Helen gave birth to my great grandfather, Alexander Shand Hadden in 1883, shortly before her 19th birthday. Alexander’s father was John Hadden, himself only 17 years old at the time of his son’s birth. Helen and John did not marry but Andrew Gammie appears to have helped Helen take care of Alexander, listing Alexander as his step-son in the 1891 Scottish Census.

What a treasure it is to finally see my great-great grandmother – after more than 30 years of searching for her!

If you don’t already use RootsMagic 4 but would like a chance to win a free copy of the software program along with the companion book Getting the Most Out of RootsMagic 4, please head on over to The We Tree Genealogy Blog where Amy Coffin is giving away, through a draw, a copy of RootsMagic that she received at the recent RootsTech conference.

As Amy says, “The fairest way I can think of to give everyone an equal chance is a random drawing. Send me an email at amybean2 at gmail dot com with RootsMagic in the subject line. You can enter now through 11:59PM Central Time on Tuesday, March 1, 2011. Each email will be numbered in the order in which they landed in the email box. On Wednesday, March 2, I will randomly draw and announce the winner.

Most parents struggle with choosing the perfect name for their baby. I know that my late wife Karen and I did each time we were expecting an addition to the family. Each of our three children have names that were chosen very deliberately. Books are written to help expectant parents with this task and, in many jurisdictions, governments release annual lists of the most popular names given to babies derived from birth registrations.

In my parental family, the task of naming the babies was completed on a more ad hoc basis. There are no other ‘Ian’s in the family that I have found so clearly the Scottish naming convention was abandoned early in the name selection process. No, my father settled on Ian because he wanted to choose a name from which a shorter or derived form could not be made. He wanted the name to stand alone unlike for example Donald becoming Don or James becomes Jim or Jimmy – Ian is simply Ian – or so he thought. He was mortified when I was a young kid to hear my friends call me ‘E’, their short form for Ian. Shockingly, my family, including my father, picked up on the shorter ‘form’ and ‘E’ became my name around the house. My maternal Irish grandmother had a tough time with the name ‘Ian,’ apparently exclaiming “Glory be to God, he’s calling him Isaac.” (Not that there’s anything wrong with Isaac!).

My middle name is Gerald. This name was selected because my mother’s favourite uncle was her mother’s brother, Gerald Foley. Little did my parents know that Gerald was not his name. No, I believe in order to later confuse family historians, my mother’s family made it their habit to use their middle names, in whole or sometimes in part. Gerald Foley, the uncle I was named after, was in reality Louis Fitzgerald Foley – Louis after a grandfather and Fitzgerald was his mother’s maiden name. He shortened his middle name and went by Gerald. His brother was even more inventive when he chose to go by Clarence rather than his given names of William Dorsey. Where the name Clarence came from is still a mystery.

My brother Bob owes his name to me, not our parents. Bob was the fourth son born into our family. My parents had named their sons Ian, Brian, and Stephen and Bob, the 4th son, was to be Donald. I was 5, almost 6, years old when Bob was born and can still recall answering the phone at my maternal grandmother’s house when my father called to tell me I had a new baby brother named Donald. I explained, apparently emphatically, to my father that he and Mom could call the baby Donald all they wanted but I was calling him Bob – after my best friend, Bob Dobson who lived across the street from us. After a bit of back and forth about the name of the baby (“No Ian, the baby’s name is Donald” “You call him what you want, I’m calling him Bob”) , my parents apparently gave in and my brother was named Robert – just as I had instructed. A very empowering experience for a 5 year old!

While I enjoy the predictability of the Scottish naming convention while searching out my paternal ancestors, I have come to realize that there are potentially great family stories to be told about the naming of babies. So, how have you decided on baby names and how did your parents decide on your name? Perhaps it’s time to document the stories before they become lost memories.

Yesterday, I shared the special relationship that I had with my ‘Aunt’ Alice Leblanc. Today, while getting in some very early spring cleaning, I found a letter from ‘Aunt’ Alice to my mother, which I will confess was improperly stored in a 1970’s gum-glue, plastic sheet covered page photo album. Mea culpa to all the cringing family archivists!

The letter is dated on my birthday in 1962 (the writing of the date appears to be something that my mother did after she received the letter and decided to keep it). It reads:

“Dear Anna,

I hope you will forgive Allan for not going to the party [this refers to my birthday party]. I can’t talk him into it. I know he would like to go, he likes to be with Ian but he doesn’t like party’s (sic) or a crowd. I said to Ian, do you mind if Allan don’t (sic) go, he said, oh no, I’ll still get eleven present (sic) anyway, ha ha. It was so funny I laughed my head off. He’s really enjoying himself here today. He’s watching Allan work at his investment down the basement (sic). And he’s waring (sic) the gas mask in case something will explode. He says when he first came in this morning, he says I’m seven today but I’m not big. I’m not as big as I thought I’d be. He sounded so dissapointed (sic). Well Anna excuse the writing and I hope you will excuse Allan and the small gift. We’ll see you sometimes.

So long, Alice”

While I can’t say that I remember the visit that day, I do remember so much of the time that I spent with Aunt Alice.

In my last post, I introduced ‘Doc’ and ‘Momsy’ Morgan who ‘adopted’ my wife Ellen into their family and very clearly treated her as their own daughter. This type of special family relationship steps outside the blood lines that we will follow with our genealogy yet they are, I suspect, very common place.

In my family, a special relationship existed with ‘Aunt’ Alice and ‘Uncle’ Alban Leblanc. Alice was, and for that matter always will be, Aunt Alice. There is no blood relationship nor relationship through marriage between Alice and I. It turned out that Alice was the best friend of my maternal grandmother, Gertrude O’Neill (nee Foley). As a child it mattered not to me what the relationship involved. I only needed to know that in my 6 or 7 block walk home at lunch time or after school that I first had to pass Aunt Alice’s house (pictured below in a photo captured from Google Earth) and then my grandmother’s house before I was home. That provided a lot of spoiling opportunity for me!

Alice and Alban had a tragic family tale. They were from New Brunswick and as Acadians, their ‘mother’ tongue was French. They married in New Brunswick, settled down and in time, they had three children. My mother told me that a fire swept through their house and the three children were killed. Perhaps because it was too painful to remain, they relocated to Toronto where Alice became my grandmother’s best friend and eventually my ‘aunt.’ They did have another child, a son they named Allan. Allan was about eight years older than me and in some ways felt like a big brother. Allan had a troubled marriage and so one day he disappeared and literally was not heard from again. Alban believed that Allan was hurt or had died because he couldn’t believe that Allan would ‘do that to his mother.’

Unfortunately, genealogy database software doesn’t seem to have an easy way to record these types of relationships. Most will allow additional parents to be recorded so, for example, I could include the Morgan’s relationship to Ellen. But there is no place for my Aunt Alice, other than perhaps a note and frankly that does not do the relationship justice. Similarly, genealogy software doesn’t really allow for non-traditional relationships. Not all families have a Mom and a Dad – sometimes it’s a single Mom or perhaps two Moms or two Dads. In Ontario, Canada where I live and increasingly in more and more jurisdictions, you can marry whomever you love but in my genealogy software someone has to be recorded as ‘husband’ and someone as ‘wife’.

Facebook, a popular social networking tool especially so for genealogists, now allows relationship status to be set as a ‘domestic partnership’ or a ‘civil union.’ Hopefully my genealogy software will catch up and provide me with the same options for the special family relationships that exist in my family.

I first met Dr. Bruce Evan ‘Doc’ Morgan in 2002. I had started dating Ellen and she took me to visit ‘Doc’ and his wife, Agnes Jean ‘Momsy’ Morgan (nee Barry) (pictured to the right together in 1992). ‘Doc” was a patient at the Parkwood Hospital in London, Ontario. ‘Doc’ had been confined to the hospital’s veterans program area as the result of a serious stroke that took away his ability to practice as a surgeon and forced him into retirement. ‘Doc’ and ‘Momsy’ were like second parents to Ellen having ‘adopted’ her into their family many years earlier. I will never forget ‘Doc’s’ first words to me – “You better take good care of her. She’s part Morgan you know.” It was all I could do to refrain from jumping to attention, saluting, and belting out “Yes, sir!”

‘Doc’ was a veteran of World War II having served as a 19 year-old navigator on bombers in the Royal Canadian Air Force, flying missions deep into German territory. Following the war, he took advantage of a government program for returning war veterans and agreed to serve in the army who in turn agreed to fund his enrollment in medical school. ‘Doc’ was a large, imposing man and there is no doubt in my mind that everyone knew who was in charge when ‘Doc’ Morgan was in the operating room.

‘Doc’ was born in Hamilton, Ontario, the son of a doctor, on January 30, 1924 and while in his teens became smitten with Agnes, who preferred to go by ‘Nan’, also a Hamilton, Ontario native. ‘Momsy’ enjoyed telling me of their courtship and I enjoyed seeing the twinkle in her eyes as she recalled those early years with Bruce. It seems that a dance was scheduled to be held at the local youth club and Nan had accepted the invitation of a young man to attend the dance when Bruce asked her to go to the dance with him. She explained to Bruce, gently I’m sure, that she already had a date for the dance. Bruce did not accept no for an answer and found a solution – he went to the young man and asked him if he could take Nan to the dance instead. Whoever that young man was, he agreed to Bruce’s request, perhaps out of fear. Thus began a courtship that included, according to Nan, a lot of walks through their Hamilton neighbourhood, talking about the styles and decor of the different homes they passed.

‘Doc’ and ‘Momsy’ were married on December 27, 1943 and passed away one year apart, each two days away from Valentine’s Day. ‘Momsy’ passed away peacefully holding on to ‘Doc’s’ favourite sweater, looking forward to dancing with her Bruce again.

The other day, I decided to get busy and sort through a drawer full of photos and documents that I had been neglecting for far too long. Amongst the photographs were souvenirs from graduations, school photos (the kind your kids wish you hadn’t saved because they didn’t like the way they looked in grade 10), and documents that I had long forgotten.

Two in particular spoke to my infant years and made me wonder how I had survived.
Below is the card the hospital used to label my bassinet. I was born at St. Michael’s Hospital in downtown Toronto, Ontario. It was the hospital where my mother trained and worked as a registered nurse so it was only natural that she went there when it was time to welcome me into the world. The cards had been donated to the hospital by the Carnation food company and my card shows that my mother was in Room 6AS (‘S’ for south). I was born on March 3rd at 11:52 a.m. and weighted in at 8 pounds and 11 ounces (or as fishermen would say – “a keeper”). I was also 23 and one half inches in length.

The doctor who delivered me was Dr. Solmes (my mother spoke often about her friend Dr. Gerry Solmes) and he used “low forceps” for my birth, a procedure my mother told me about quite often as it apparently caused bruising on my temples (which some have suggested might explain a lot).

While it is not a birth certificate, it is a birth record that is a little out of the ordinary!

My mother had me seen in childhood by another doctor friend, Dr. Hoare, the pediatrician. I remember Dr. Hoare making house calls to check in on my brother Stephen (see “I Remember Stephen” from November 2009). Dr. Hoare was a stern looking man who provided my mother with the prescribed baby routine pictured below. Dr. Hoare’s ‘prescribed’ routine was given to my mother on August 6, 1955, apparently a short time after his office was changed from a 6 digit to a 7 digit telephone number (just to make me feel really old).

It seems that Dr. Hoare thought strained meats and vegetables would be exciting to me. They are not and never have been. The thought of strained beef liver or heart simply does not excite me but, here in writing were the instructions my mother was provided ostensibly to promote my health. Even the so-called deserts leave much to be desired: mashed ripe banana, strained stewed prunes and junket – according to Wikipedia, junket was the a preferred food for ill children during most of the 20th century. Notice it says ill children, not healthy children.

Another fascinating document to have that speaks to a past era of child rearing and makes me wonder how I survived childhood!

During the first season of Who Do You Think You Are?, I wrote an episode by episode review of the shows, just like many others in the genealogy community. I thought that this season I would resist the temptation. Okay, so I lasted a week before breaking down and wading into some of the current dialogue.

Who Do You Think You Are?, the NBC network’s genealogy related television show (shown in Canada on the City TV network of stations), tells the story of a celebrity in each episode as they trace their family history. It appears that the producers of the show heard the collective voice of the show-supporting genealogy community loud and clear on two matters. Unlike season 1 episodes, the two episodes of season 2 to air so far have not been slowed by recaps following each commercial break. In addition, genealogists and historians appearing on the season 2 episodes have been careful in their handling of delicate, original documents by wearing gloves or using similar techniques to avoid hand touching the records.

Episode one of season 2 featured the ancestry quest of Vanessa Williams while episode 2 featured the story of country singer Tim McGraw’s family. Both episodes can legitimately be criticized for making genealogy look a lot easier than it is for us mere mortals. The shows seem to lack an acknowledgment that it took hours of research by a team of experts, assembled just to research the celebrity’s family, for a document of interest to be found.

Vanessa Williams was generally thought to be more engaged than Tim McGraw in the family history process and discoveries. I’m not convinced that Vanessa’s note-taking meant she more engaged in the process. I’ve seen The Blind Side and Tim McGraw seems to be a natural displaying a muted persona. My friend and terrific genealogy blogger Marian Pierre-Louis, author of Marian’s Roots and Rambles in her blog post In Defense of Tim McGraw, makes the case that while the Tim McGraw episode may not have been as good as the Vanessa Williams episode, it was still still really good. The McGraw episode perhaps would appeal more to men than the Vanessa Williams episode that might appeal more to women.

My conclusion: both episodes achieve the result they set out to achieve, that is, they are entertaining. They are certainly not technically correct in their presentation. In the Tim McGraw episode, it is fair as genealogy ‘technicians’ to criticize an eight generation jump that happened with a single brushstroke. It is even easier to criticize the broad sweeping assertion that McGraw’s ancestors were connected to Elvis Presley’s because both sets of ancestors were Palatines who came to what is now the USA around the same time. If it were that easy, I would have my fully sourced research completed back to Adam and Eve including connections to 45th great Grampa Hadden who liked to paint things on the walls of caves and from whom cousin Michelangelo got his artistic flair.

I try as best I can to recognize that these television shows are about engaging the viewing audience and providing an hour of entertainment. On that level, they succeed. They are not instructional videos. Whether or not they should be more instructional is a different debate, perhaps for a different time. For now, I’m content to sit back and be entertained by the family histories.