Wordless Wednesday is a genealogy blog theme used by many to share bits and pieces, usually photos, connected to their family history. My contribution today is a photo of Andrew (Andy) Gammie Hadden, his wife Louise and their children taken in the 1920’s at their ‘home’ in Garrick, Saskatchewan, Canada. Garrick is a small hamlet about 366 kilometres (or about 230 miles) north of Regina, Saskatchewan. Andy married Louise and remained in Saskatchewan when his immediate family, which included his brother and my grandfather, moved east to Toronto, Ontario.

The photo was likely taken by my great uncle, and Andy’s older brother, Alexander (Alec) Gaull Hadden during a visit. The ‘log’ home was built by Andy on land that he was homesteading. No running water, no electricity, no telephone – and it remained that way into the 1980’s when Louise was finally convinced by her children to have a phone installed for emergency purposes only!

I must admit that I really enjoy finding the wills of ancestors, maybe even more than census reports or birth, marriage, and death records. Wills just seem to have a way of providing information about a family and its lifestyle that other documents, while very valuable as sources, just cannot provide. Wills might typically have only been written by landowners or those with something to leave that they wanted to direct to particular family members. As I have not yet directly linked my ancestry to royalty or nobility but rather to farm servants, I haven’t had high expectations that I would easily find family wills.

As described by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, we are saddened at the loss of “Canada’s last living link to the Great War.” John Henry Foster ‘Jack’ Babcock (pictured right), Canada’s last World War 1 veteran, passed away on Thursday, February 18th at the venerable age of 109.

On February 1st, 1916, John Henry Foster Babcock enlisted for the Canadian Over-Seas Expeditionary Force in Kingston, Ontario. He gave his date of birth as July 23, 1900 and despite the easy math involved in determining he was 15 years old at the time, was able to claim his age to be 18 years. He stated that was born in Lober Township, Ontario and that his mother, Mrs. J. T. Babcock was his next of kin, living at the family home on Perth Road (just north of the city of Kingston). He was only five feet, four inches in height, signed his attestation as Foster Babcock and was accepted as a recruit in the army!

Well, the army eventually figured out that he was underage so rather than going to the front, he was sent to Halifax, Nova Scotia to unload military vehicles. Although he eventually did make his way to England and was prepared to go to the front, the armistice was signed ending the war before he had that chance.

Jack Babcock lived most of his life in Spokane, Washington but never lost his love for Canada. He is survived by his wife, Dorothy, two children, two step-children, 16 grandchildren, and a number of great grandchildren.

We shall not forget!

Here’s a new and fun way to share your old family photos – Shape Collage. This software application is free to download in a basic form. Just click on the “Download Shape Collage” – the file download will begin automatically. It took only a few seconds for the file to download for me. Double-click on the saved file that you downloaded to begin the installation and follow the on-screen instructions, similar to other software products.

The free version will produce collages in some standard forms – rectangle, heart, circle, or choose a text symbol, or even better, select “more” and design a custom shape of your own. Selecting photos to include in your collage is as simple as dragging and dropping them onto the photos ‘window’ or by clicking the add (+) button, located on the left side below the photos window and then individually selecting from the desired digital photos from your photo folders. The software provides a preview opportunity so if you don’t like what you see, you can try something different or try different shapes until you find something that works best for you.

Once you like what you see, click on the “create” button and the collage will be formed in the centre window. The software allows you to save your collage(s) as image files in a JPEG format. Collages that are created and saved using the free version include a “shapecollage.com” watermark. Upgrading to the ‘Pro’ version for personal use adds features including the benefit of no watermark, if it bothers you. The cost of the ‘Pro’ version is reasonable at only $25.00.

The above collage was created using the ‘rectangle’ shape option and just 9 family photos. Shape Collage allows you to use hundreds of photos in each collage. The collage below used the same 9 photos but was shaped using the ‘text’ shape option that I set to the letter ‘H’ (for Hadden, of course). In both, you can see the watermark, touching the collage image in lower centre of the sample above and not touching any photos as it is placed at the bottom right of the collage below.

This application provides yet another way to display and share all of those old and current family photos in as creative a way as you please. The fact that there’s a free version certainly makes it worth a try. (And for those that might worry about such things, I have no affiliation with Shape Collage whatsoever).

Sir Michael Street in Greenock, Renfrewshire, Scotland is the seat of my paternal grandmother’s family – the Littles. Number 22 Sir Michael Street to be specific. This little street, originally called Allisons Lane after John Allison, a mason and early land owner was subsequently re-named Sir Michael Lane then Sir Michael Street after Sir Michael Stewart of Blackhall, the third baronet. Located in the core of Greenock, it was home to at least three successive Little generations.

James Little and his wife Dorothea (nee Carson), my great great grandparents, can be found in 1901 ‘sharing’ the address with the Canning, Galbraith, and McDougall families. While Dorothea would today be described as a ‘stay at home mom,’ James was employed at the local shipyards as an iron driller. Their son, John, then 20 years of age, worked in a marine engine shop while their 18 year old daughter Sarah and Dorothea’s sister, Rebecca worked as spinners at the local rope works. Their youngest children James, 12, and Dorothea, 9, both attended school along with their cousin, Rebecca’s daughter, twelve year old Annie Carson.

The undated photo above right, shows the neighbourhood likely around 1900 and specifically shows Tobago Street as seen from Sir Michael Street. It was on Tobago Street that Dorothea Carson had lived with her first husband Thomas Comiskey. They had married in April 1869 at 4 Sir Michael Street but just four months later, Thomas died of variola (smallpox). In 1878, she had married James Little and, after living a few streets away, they moved back ‘home’ to Sir Michael Street to raise their family.

It was from 22 Sir Michael Street that James and Dorothea’s daughter Janet married John Triggs in 1898 and from the same house that my great grandfather James (jr.) as a 17 year old married 16 year old Margaret Mitchell in 1906. It was also from the family home on Sir Michael Street that my grandmother, Agnes Little left Scotland in 1928 for a new life in Canada.

The house at 22 Sir Michael Street no longer is standing, torn down no doubt to make way for more modern structures but the legacy of the Little roots on Sir Michael Street live on.

In 1881, Alexander Bean Hadden was a general merchant “employing two boys” and living at Bainshole, Insch, Aberdeenshire. The Bean middle name was not recorded at his christening, although one of the ‘witnesses’ was a man named Alexander Bean, likely a very close friend of the family. In fact, the middle name of Bean only appears in one record that I have found to this point – the marriage registration of his daughter Mary in 1884.

Living with Alexander in 1881 according to the Scottish census records for that year, was his wife Jane (Mathieson) and their children: Alexander, Jane, John, Annie, Isabella, Helen and Mina (Jemina). Also living in the Hadden household was a grandson, Albert A. Green who was the son of their daughter Jane. The two boys that Alexander employed were in fact two of his sons – Alexander, aged 22 and, John who was 15 years of age. Two years later, John would become a father himself when his son Alexander Shand Hadden, my great grandfather, was born.

When Alexander Shand Hadden left Scotland in 1923 with his family to live in Canada, this was the extended Hadden family that he left behind. Alexander was raised by his mother Helen Shand and Helen’s husband, Andrew Gammie. I’m not certain that Alexander knew much of his Hadden aunts and uncles so there weren’t any family photos or letters to help descendants, like me, to picture our Hadden family ancestors.

Through the magic of the Internet and posted family trees on the Ancestry website, that changed for my branch of the Hadden family. The connection – a real, live, honest-to-goodness Hadden cousin – and not only that but photos! So courtesy of Alan and Mary Cope, my ‘Aussie’ cousins, I can present my second great grandaunts:

From left, Isabella Simon Reid (Hadden) Cameron who as it turns out was the first Hadden to immigrate to Canada (in 1907), Ann Mathieson (Hadden) Gordon, and at the far right, Helen (Hadden) Moore. Second from right is Helen’s daughter Kitty (Moore) Taylor and Kitty’s daughter Isobel. The photo was taken in 1923 when the sisters returned to Scotland for a family reunion. I find it ironic that just around the time the Hadden sisters were likely reuniting, their nephew, my great grandfather Alexander Shand Hadden was leaving Scotland forever. It would be more than 85 years before the family branches would reconnect as a benefit of technology, shared genealogy information and collaboration.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that my immediate family wrote things down – no diaries, memoirs, or journals to provide interesting facts and family anecdotes. If you’re lucky enough to have some of these or old family letters, treasure them! I do however have an electronic copy of the memoirs of Sara (Caskey) Breithaupt and I’ve referred to them in earlier posts about the Breithaupt family, cousins of my wife.

Sara Caskey married my wife’s second cousin twice removed, Louis Orville Breithaupt, in November 1919 (Louis and Sara are pictured on their wedding day above left). Louis went on to become a very public figure in his hometown of Berlin, later Kitchener, Ontario – first as an alderman, then mayor and Member of Parliament, and finally as the vice-regal Lieutenant Governor of Ontario. Although Sara was not a ‘blood’ relative, she also lead an incredibly interesting life, one that is interesting to research for at minimum some of the historic connections in it.

Sara was born in Youngstown, Mahoning County, Ohio in 1894. She was able to trace her maternal family roots back to a second great grandfather, George Scott, a cousin of Sir Walter Scoot, the famous Scottish novelist and poet. In 1841, George’s daughter and Sara’s great grandmother, Sarah Ann immigrated to the USA with her husband William Bonnell and the eldest three of seven children (the youngest four children were born in the USA). Their arrival in New York City on March 8th, 1841 ended a difficult six week voyage according to family stories. Eventually the family found its way to Youngstown where successive generations found prosperity.

Sara Caskey’s father, Herbert served as the General Secretary of the YMCA and in that position was asked to move his family from Youngstown to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1901. In 1908, Herbert left the employ of the YMCA to work with the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions in New York City. However, in 1909, Herbert was asked to help the church in Toronto on a temporary basis. When this assignment took on a permanent form, Sara, her mother and brother joined Herbert in Toronto where Sara attended the Havergal private girls school. Sara completed a college education in Ontario before she and her family moved back to New York City in 1916.

In New York City, the Caskeys lived in a Central Park West apartment and Sara enjoyed the cultural life that the city offered at the time, particularly opera at the Metropolitan Opera House. The apartment building the family lived in “formed a three sided courtyard where singers and musicians would come to perform and the tenants would throw coins down to them.”

“One day a man sang several songs and Mother remarked about his beautiful voice, said he deserved more than the usual sum. I do not know how much she threw him, but we were amused the next day to read in the paper that a friend of Caruso’s had dared him to try it – said he wouldn’t be able to make a living. Mother was glad she had been of help!”

By this time, the United States had entered World War 1 and shortly before the war’s end, Sara became engaged to an officer-in-training, Ogdon Purves. Following the armistice, Sara “found Ogdon much less interesting out of uniform” and so their engagement ended.

Church work returned the Caskeys to Toronto in 1919 and not long afterwards, Sara married a former college acquaintance Louis O. Breithaupt and began a new series of life adventures.

Okay, I admit it – I have a Facebook page. In fact, I’ve had a Facebook page for a long time. I heard about Facebook through my children who talked about their friends, connections, groups and status. Facebook then became for me simply a way to keep track of my ‘young’ adult children who lived various distances away from the family home.

Over the last year or two, my use of Facebook has been less about what the ‘kids’ are up to and more about connecting with genealogists. I still keep ‘track’ of the kids, checking their status and viewing new photos of life events but now I am connected with other genealogists and some newly acquainted cousins. Groups have now become the apparent third wave of my Facebook use.

More and more institutional use is occurring with Facebook such as the Family History Library, RootsMagic, Genealogy Guys Podcast and Ontario Genealogical Society pages that provide a quick and efficient means of spreading news about service and product features to reach ‘friends’ and ‘fans’ quickly.

I was recently invited by a ‘friend’ to join the “Scarborough, Looking Back” group. Scarborough was at the time I was growing up, the eastern suburb of the city of Toronto (since amalgamated into the city proper). My parents moved our family to Scarborough when I was nine years old so I have many fond memories of friends and events through my teen and early marriage years.

The group has taken to posting old photos from around Scarborough and one that got my attention is of the ‘old’ Birchcliff Theatre (shown below).

The theatre opened in 1949 – in fact the marquee notes that 1949’s “Down to the Sea in Ships” starring Lionel Barrymore was the current movie. Unfortunately, the theatre couldn’t keep pace with the multi-screen theatre era and was torn down in 1974. I remembered this theatre for two reasons. First, sometime in the early 1960’s my parents dropped me off with a friend so that we could enjoy the Saturday matinee, a Disney movie as I recall, while they went shopping. When the movie finished, my friend and I exited the theatre into a winter snow storm (I live in Canada after all!) and no parents picking us up were to be found. In those days without cell phones, I had no way of phoning home to see if there was a problem. And being young, with ‘penny’ candy available, I didn’t save a dime for use in the case of such an emergency. I knew that the theatre was located on Kingston Road and that Kingston Road would take make to the street my house was on – I just had to guess at the right direction of travel. Fortunately, I guessed correctly and after what felt like a very long walk (probably a little over a mile), I walked in through the front door of my house. My parents felt awful, for how could they have forgotten their child. I don’t think I took full advantage of their moment of weakness – ah, lost opportunities!

The second reason for remembering the theatre – the first house I bought backed onto what had been the theatre’s parking lot.

The important point in all of this is to take advantage of the ever changing landscape of information that continues to build your family history – the anecdotes, the images – all are part of the fabric. You just never know when the source of the unexpected discovery.

It can be frustrating when you have an ancestor’s name, year of death plus the location and, the civil registration records for the area are fully indexed with links to the digitized record images but the death record can’t be found. Experience teaches us to try variations of the surname – still no luck.

I typically start broadening my search parameters. Maybe I didn’t have the right year after all so I search the year I believed the event occurred plus or minus some years (I will usually use two years for this purpose). If I’m convinced about the year of the event, I will broaden my location criteria from searching in a specific town to searching in a province or state – or in desperation, I will ‘ask’ for the records of everyone by a certain name who died anywhere in the year I think is correct. The ‘desperate act’, by the way, usually returns more results than can possibly help so its not recommended!

Susannah Horton’s death fell into this category. Susannah was born in 1808 in Sydney Township, Canada West (now the Province of Ontario), the daughter of Jonathan and Hannah Horton. Susannah married Archibald Guffin likely around 1827. Between 1828 and 1849, Archibald and Susannah had six children – two boys and four girls.

Family information indicated that Susannah (Horton) Guffin died in January 1876 in Hastings County, Ontario, Canada. As civil registration commenced in Ontario in 1869 and as Ancestry.ca has the Ontario death records indexed with the original images, obtaining a copy of Susannah’s death record image was going to be easy. Unfortunately, even when searching for any Guffin who died in 1876, the closest result offered is for Elizabeth Giffin who died in another part of the province.

Well, fortunately, Alaric (Ric) Faulkner has come to the rescue. Ric along with John Carew are co-Faulkner family researchers (Faulkner is my wife Ellen’s paternal grandmother’s family). Ric found Susannah’s death record – indexed under “Griffin.” Susannah died in December 1876 – so the family information was cutting her life by almost a full year – in Belleville, Ontario.

Below is part of the death record image and its easy to see how someone might have misread the Guffin surname (indexers are human!) as Griffin. It’s also easy to see the importance of checking all or ‘as many as you can think of’ surname variations as sometimes the one you least expect to be helpful may be the one that finds that ‘missing’ record. Excuse me now while I go and update my source citations for Susannah!

In my haste with my last post, I forgot to include some additional, and I think, important information. So the ‘forgotten’ in today’s post title refers to me and, I hope, is not a sign, with an upcoming birthday, of things to come.

In mentioning Lisa Louise Cooke’s podcasts, I failed to mention that Lisa will be speaking at the Ontario Genealogy Society’s annual conference, this year being held May 14 – 16 in Toronto, Ontario. This year’s program is themed “Essentials, Innovations, and Delights” and includes an opportunity to join a pre-conference program on Thursday, May 13th. On-line registration is available and a pretty impressive line-up of speakers will be presenting. I’ve attended these conferences in past and can assure you that they are fun and informative – and, of course, this year you have a chance to meet Lisa!

I also wanted to recommend another podcast series, this one from the National Archives of the United Kingdom. This podcast is particularly beneficial if you have British ancestors as it provides a series of presentations based on the Archives records collection. My ancestors are almost entirely from north of the border in Scotland but as I’ve learned, there are ‘British’ records that from time to time include Scots. I have found the podcasts of particular interest to me though as they do a terrific job of setting historical context that give just that little bit of a better glimpse into what life might have been like for my ancestral family. While you may find some presentations a bit academic, many are filled with great British humour. If only the National of Archives of Scotland would do the same!

And finally, I’m a big fan of Scotlands People, the portal into Scotland’s genealogical records. I know from discussion with archivists that making record indexes searchable on-line and providing access to record images on a pay-as-you-go fee basis is seen as a model to be copied. Such a system not only provides ease of access to the records but provides revenue for the archives operation. My research has certainly benefited and many a family mystery has been solved by being able to retrieve, view, and save electronic images of Scottish family records. Unfortunately, I’ve found that the search criteria available from some record types are too broad, resulting in too great a number of results. I’ve used the website for several years and the criteria really hasn’t changed. For example, the criteria for births includes only: surname, forename, sex, year range, county, and district. If you aren’t certain of the location, you may find yourself using a lot of pay-as-you-go ‘credits’ viewing documents that are not the one you need. I’d love to see parent’s names added to this criteria. It’s doable and would certainly be helpful.

It’s likely that I’ve forgotten something else but if I have, it will just have to wait!