Ed and I spent yesterday in the Park area around the Bytown Museum down by the Rideau Locks at the table for the Ontario Genealogical Society, Ottawa Branch. It is the one event that we try to do every year as our helping out bit with the branch. It didn't seem as busy as other years down in the booth area but a walk back up to the top of the locks did demonstrate that there were a lot of people there. Perhaps one doesn't remember well year after year. I certainly had a hoarse voice by the end of the day so must have done quite a bit of talking. A lot of people were interested in tracing their family trees and I always give the sage advice to look at FamilySearch first and pop in your grandparents/great grandparents names to see if there is anything there for them. Their records are very extensive from many many countries around the globe.
This holiday marks the beginning of the "dog days" of summer as we gradually move into the Fall. It was cool yesterday and I was wrapped up in a big shawl all of the day. The wind off the water was cool.
It is always interesting to meet people with seven, eight and nine generation Canadian ancestry like my husband. Their roots are now deep in this country and many of them have ancestry from all over northern Europe and the British Isles also like my husband. Their ancestor stories have long been forgotten which is rather a shame. Growing up with all the stories of my ancestral families coming to Canada was fun although my own ancestry is very short here with just my mother, her father and his mother actually being born in Canada - all the rest come from 12 different English counties and more further back in time (Devon, Somerset, Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, London, Surrey, Warwickshire, Staffordshire, Leicestershire, East Riding of Yorkshire, Cumberland) with each of the groups coming as five separate waves and my first being my 3x great grandparents Routledge (both surname Routledge and 2nd cousins once removed with their nine children, son in law and two grandsons) in the summer of 1818 from Bewcastle, Cumberland, the next my 2x great grandfather Robert Gray coming from Etton, East Riding of Yorkshire around 1832 (and he married a Routledge daughter), then my 2x great grandparents John Pincombe from Bishops Nympton, Devon and his wife Elizabeth Rew from Selworthy, Somerset with their five children landing at the Port of New York in January 1851 and coming overland to southwestern Ontario by March 1851 (and their son William Robert Pincombe married a daughter of Robert Gray and Mary Routledge - Grace Gray), then my grandmother Ellen Rosina Buller arrived in 1908 from Birmingham, Warwickshire and she married John Routledge Pincombe son of William Robert and Grace, finally my Blake grandparents - Samuel George Blake of Upper Clatford, Hampshire and Edith Bessie Taylor (aka Ada Bessie Cotteril Rawlings) of Kimpton, Hampshire with their son and my father who married the daughter of John Routledge Pincombe and Ellen Rosina Buller. All of their stories were passed down to me as a child.
Before the days of television we used to sit around the fireplace in the evenings before bedtime and my parents and grandparents would talk about their families. I think that that must have also been the case for the ancestors of many of those I met today but gradually over time the "older" stories didn't get passed on probably because there were exciting new stories to tell of the families that were closer in time. I try to remember to tell the stories to my own children but life is busy and one can see how that happens . . . . the stories disappear into the wells of time. Hence this blog of mine which is my living memory which I back up rather regularly. But I wonder if anyone would ever read my now over 1100 blogs!
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