I recently attended a small lecture on starting research in genealogy put on by the Riverdale Historical Society, where I was one of roughly twenty people in attendance. I brought the average age down considerably: family ancestry isn’t of overwhelming interest to young
people, at least not enough for them to attend lectures and actively pursue research. The presentation was given by Kevin Bowers, a theatre history professor at Sheridan College, and an active member of the Ontario Genealogical Society. Bowers began researching his family history at the age of 20 in the 1970s as he was studying in England, his ancestral land.
“I started in the days when research involved going to the library and taking out a book,” he says, referring to the catalog of online tools now available for ancestry searchers.
While he took interest at a particularly young age, Bowers agrees that there aren’t many 20 year-olds mapping out their family tree; twenty-somethings tend to be focused on school, careers, relationships, and social lives. “It really isn’t a natural thing to combine all of this with an interest in what was going on with your family 100 years ago,” he says.
With his words in mind, I was at a party recently, chatting with friends about our respective backgrounds. When I shared with them the story about my ancestor‘s journey to Canada some expressed great surprise, and most barely knew where their own parents were born (seriously).
I am fortunate to come from a family that is interested in its genealogy on both parents’ sides. As a result, some of the preliminary research has been done, and stories have been passed down to me.
At the turn of the century, Canada was advertised to the masses in Europe: “Free land for all! Work for all!” For new immigrants, a quarter section of land (roughly 160 acres) was theirs for the taking – a $10 registration fee and a promise to reside on the land for three years was all it took.
In 1903 my maternal great-grandfather, Jean Baptiste, sought adventure and opportunity in the great unknown: the rugged, untrodden land of western Canada. At 24, he had a bundle of clothes and the equivalent of ï¬ve Canadian dollars when he said goodbye to his life in France, and boarded a ship for New York City. He took a train northwest across the continent and disembarked in Wolseley, Saskatchewan. He painstakingly walked 40 kilometres from Wolseley to the town of Montmartre, a community founded by French settlers an hour east of Regina. There, he staked out his share of the prairies and immediately got to work, establishing his land and homestead. He built a sod house and dwelled there alone for the ï¬rst ï¬ve years, making a life for himself in his adopted country.
In 1908 he journeyed home to France to marry and collect his sweetheart, my great-grandmother, Rosine. They came from neighbouring towns in Central France – both nestled in a valley, the surrounding area was lush and green with forests and rolling hills. In 1908 she arrived at her new sod house, in the middle of the barren Saskatchewan prairie – supposedly, as the story goes, she never smiled again a day in her life.
While it seems as though it was somewhat tragic for Rosine, their story is one of adventure, courage, perseverance, and prosperity. They went on to run a successful farm and had 7 children, one of whom is my grandfather.
While this story has been written out and is kept safe within a large photo album in my parent’s collection, it is also a story I’ve heard my grandparents and aunts re-tell, and one that I’ve inquired about, asking additional questions. I want to know all I can about my great-grandparents who uprooted their comfortable lives in France for a new one, full of hardships on the Canadian prairies.
But why is it that researching ones genealogy typically becomes an interest in retirement when there are fewer people around to answer the important questions? The time to start is when grandparents and other relatives are around to scour photo albums with and pass down information and stories from the past.
Living relatives are a fountain of information, and if you learn from them now, you won’t have to search for answers later. Bowers suggests quizzing grandparents, discovering which family members hoard the important family documents, letters and boxes of old black and white photographs. Start by searching through them, asking questions about the people in the photos and the references in the letters. Ask grandparents about their grandparents; in doing so, you’re travelling back four generations.
Through discovering his own ancestry, Bowers has found out that his mother’s side of the family is related to the Brown family of Haworth, great friends of the Brontë family. “Branwell Brontë [the brother of writers Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë] was a drinking buddy of my very distant cousin John Brown, and Martha Brown was a servant in the Brontë household. You never know where this interest will take you.”
This past December on a trip to France with my aunt, we visited the towns that my great-grandparents, Jean Baptiste and Rosine, came from. We saw the house where Rosine was raised: it is a large stone house perched on a hill, with brilliant views of the valley below. When I stood there gazing out across her homeland, I understood her struggle to smile in Canada; she seemed to have it pretty good in France.
Bowers believes that because he now knows where he has come from, he has a better idea of where he is going in his own life. His advice is to start as easy as possible, and to use the breadth of online tools to your advantage. “Research methods in 2012 are so different from 30 years ago when I started,” he claims. “You have the internet. You have Google. You have Google Books, Google Maps. You can look to see if an old house is still standing in England. So much prep work can be done before you even leave your home.”
Ancestry.ca is a good place to start, and there’s also Findmypast.com, both of which charge for membership to access their millions of records. But you may not know how many free online resources there are, like FamilySearch.org, for example. It’s one of the largest genealogy organizations in the world, and is run by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; their commitment to helping people connect with their ancestors is rooted deep in their beliefs.
Some of the best places to ï¬nd information is to look through census data, birth, death and marriage certiï¬cates, and wills and military records. The British site, FreeBMD.org.uk, provides the Civil Registration index of births, marriages and deaths for the U.K., free of charge. FreeREG.org.uk (parish registers) and FreeCEN.org.uk (census data) are also offered as part of the same project.
Other resources include Family Tree Magazine and their online education program, Family Tree University, which offers online courses, independent study and webinars in genealogy. At the Toronto Refernce Library and North York Central Library, Ancestry.ca access is free.
Delving into your past is a commitment, and there is a large margin for error – one mistake can result in climbing up another family’s tree! It can be a painfully slow process, says Bowers, but it’s ultimately a pilgrimage through history.
So ask your aunts, uncles, grandparents, parents and family friends. Look on the back of photographs for scrawled names and dates. Take notes.
I’m sure Jean Baptiste and Rosine would be proud.
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Dominique knows a lot about things and writes about them for Toronto Standard. Follow her on Twitter at @domlamberton.
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