Last week I had \u201cone of those days.\u201d I woke up stiff from a rogue bed spring, had a much too serious conversation before I was truly awake, and then proceeded to hit a road-block in every chore I had set out for the day. Seeking relief, I decided to pick up my family history research for a moment or two. Yes, I know, I just completed a major family history project and have umpteen other pressing concerns. I was only going to poke around a little on a new branch: my Scottish ancestors.<\/p>\n
When beginning research, the starting point is always with the present and what you already know; then you proceed to work backwards in time. I began by finding all the Canadian census records for my Granny\u2019s family. This gave me birth-dates for some of the family and locations where they had lived. I knew she was born in Manitou, Manitoba, so, I started by looking for resources specific to the area. I found a treasure trove at the Pembina Manitou Archive<\/a>\u00a0which allows searches by community, era, or record type.<\/p>\n I researched the Manitou community, but saw only a passing reference to my family. Sadly, I found no evidence that they had associated with the great social activist (and one of the Famous Five), Nellie McClung, wife of the Manitou pharmacist. I looked for issues of the Manitou newspapers around the dates of family births, marriages and deaths, but did not find any mention of my people. I then took another look at the marriage registration of Granny\u2019s parents, which I already had, and noticed that the residence of the Reverend who married them was listed as the nearby community of Morden.<\/p>\n Fortunately, the archive did have a Morden paper of the right vintage to potentially contain a report of the marriage. I eagerly read through it, and was thrilled to find a description of the festivities:<\/p>\n There was a large gathering of friends and relatives present for whom a sumptuous marriage dinner was provided. In the evening, the younger members of the party conveyed [the groom] and his bonny bride, the belle of the Mountain, to their new home where the young folks spent a happy evening, as Manitoban young folks know how, music, games, tripping the light fantastic, &c and what for no \u2014 Long life and happiness to the young couple.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Besides this fabulous account, there were also significant details: the wedding occurred at the home of the bride\u2019s widowed mother in the locality of Thornhill. This gave me another area to investigate. Referring to a map of Manitoba, I found the settlements of Manitou, Morden and Thornhill, were very close to each other, so the puzzle pieces of my ancestors\u2019 lives began to fall into place.<\/p>\n I then looked for local histories of these communities on other websites like Our Roots<\/a>\u00a0 and Manitobia<\/a>. I also did a google search for Thornhill, Manitoba and found the title of the local history book. Unable to track it down online or in my local library, I made an interlibrary loan request. Who knows what details about my ancestors\u2019 lives are contained within it? I do have to wait about a month for the loan to arrive, though. So, I guess there will be time for me to tackle all those chores that I could not complete before I began my latest family history quest.<\/p>\n It is true that I spent more than just a few moments conducting the research I\u2019ve outlined above, but the success I experienced turned my day around and gave me energy to face the hurdles that had seemed so insurmountable before. It also gave me a great idea about how to spread the joy. When my aunties and uncles open up the Valentine\u2019s Day cards I am sending, they will find a surprise: the newspaper clipping about their grandparents\u2019 wedding. Perhaps they will read it aloud in a false Scottish brogue and giggle about the \u201cbonny bride\u201d!<\/p>\n This article was originally printed in the<\/em>\u00a0BERGEN NEWS<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0and is being reprinted with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week I had \u201cone of those days.\u201d I woke up stiff from a rogue bed spring, had a much too serious conversation before I was truly awake, and then proceeded to hit a road-block in every chore I had set out for the day. Seeking relief, I decided to pick up my family history…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peyerl.ca\/quill\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peyerl.ca\/quill\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peyerl.ca\/quill\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peyerl.ca\/quill\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peyerl.ca\/quill\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.peyerl.ca\/quill\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":312,"href":"https:\/\/www.peyerl.ca\/quill\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions\/312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peyerl.ca\/quill\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peyerl.ca\/quill\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peyerl.ca\/quill\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}