Uncle Peg’s Chronicles
September 21, 2023
“Baked Beans,
Buckwheat Pancakes with Maple Syrup, and Freshly Caught Trout”
This photo made me smile this week. These are the
grandchildren of Jim and Audra Oksen, taking advantage of the nice fall
weather.
I
am grateful to Mary Holmes Davis this week. She sent me this email after
reading last week’s chronicle: “Good
one! I always enjoy your descriptions of the relatives you meet in
person— makes you realize what a long line of interesting and varied people who
were our forbears. You make them and those who came before us so real.”
Making them real – that is probably my number one goal, and I’m glad I
succeeded last week.
Thanks
also to Jane Williams for sharing some of our history in our Facebook group. I’ll
be comparing it to what I have in my tree.
~
Bronze,
Silver, Gold (and maybe Platinum) Answer
Thank you to the two brave souls who
ventured a guess in my bronze, silver, and gold quiz of last week. Annmarie got
it right. The answer is bronze. Why? Is
it because the person who gave you their research is not a good researcher? No,
not at all. Bronze is nothing to kick at unless maybe there are only three
people running the race and the third huffs and puffs to the finish line sixty
seconds later. (That would be me.) But we all make mistakes, even people years
ago, when they gave information to the census taker or records keeper. I’m
forever adding or deleting a century or so to my dates, and that is one of the
reasons I need an editor. Just copying
research is not research, in any endeavor. Research involves work, time, effort.
Think digging six feet deep into the ground with a shovel, working up a good sweat
and getting dirty. We need to verify information by comparing sources and making
the soundest decisions we can. Plus, new information is unearthed in archives and
attics all the time. Reviews are important. That’s just a bit of the reason.
When someone, including me, shares their research with you, be very grateful. Consider
it a clue or a segue and take it up to the next level, which is silver. I wish there
was something in between silver and gold, or maybe we could add platinum,
because I don’t think we ever truly attain perfection in genealogy.
An
example from this week. I sent Missy Corda a family group sheet and asked her
if she would verify it and add details for her nephews and nieces. Bless her,
it was only a short time when I had my answers. Bronze, silver, or gold? Do I
trust Missy’s judgement, and am I satisfied with it? Absolutely, and yes. I
am not asking for this, from Missy or anyone else. I am satisfied with
bronze in cases of the living. I won’t even put my own children’s certificates
in a public forum like Ancestry. What would kick it up a notch? For children –
a copy of a birth certificate. A copy of a baptismal certificate, if there is
one. As long as the child is still living, what more could you ask for? To me,
that would be gold or platinum, but only temporarily. If and when that child grows
up and marries, a copy of the marriage certificate needs to be added. And so
on, and so forth. We refer to those “just a piece of papers” as vital records.
As my
favourite bank branch manager, or leader, as he preferred to be called, drilled
into us: “Do your due diligence.” I add to that, use your common sense.
~
A Christmas Project Request
Missy Corda posted this in our Facebook
group this week. “We want to do
something very special for my Nana for Christmas. Her pride and joy is her
photo room; we want to update her family photos. Please help me by sending me a
cute family pic you would like her to have.” I clarified. Missy would like
photos of the greater family, complete with explanation of who’s who is in the
photos. Missy’s Nana is Sharon Oksen, sister to Glenn, Kristin, Marie and
Patricia, and mother of Jim – those are her folks in the Facebook group. Sharon
does not use the computer, so we can’t spoil the Christmas surprise. Eleanor
started the ball rolling – let’s make this a fun project for Sharon’s
Christmas. If you are not on Facebook but would like to send along a photo,
email it to me and I’ll forward it to Missy.
Thanks to
Eleanor and Jeanni for sending photos, and those of you who messaged Missy
directly that I don’t know about. I’ll try and get one of myself at the
dedication of the observation deck at the Holmes Brook on Saturday. Here’s
hoping the weather cooperates.
~
Featured this week are Brenda Holmes Batchelor
and Erin Vasseur. I do know these ladies.
Last time I saw Brenda was last summer, when
her family came to New Brunswick to lay their Mum beside their Dad in the
Maplewood Cemetery in Petitcodiac. Brenda’s parents are Jim and Phyl (Davidson)
Holmes, and they are in the Charles R Holmes line. She is married to Nicholas
Batchelor and is the mother of Nigel and Sarah. Nicholas’s job with GM took
them to several Canadian provinces to live, and they settled just as far away
from me as they could, in British Columbia. Brenda is also one of our
genealogists and sometimes does some editing for me.
Last time I saw Erin, my firstborn, was a few
weeks ago, when she came home to see her nephew, Winston. Oh yes, the rest of
us as well. She’s a natural at her title of auntie, and as she reads to W,
everyone gathers round to watch and listen. I think it’s a natural ability but
she had much practice after university when she went to Taiwan to teach ESL.
She now lives in Nova Scotia and works for an accounting firm. Daughter of Bill
and Peg Vasseur, sister of Julie, sister-in-law of Marc, descendant of Charles
R Holmes, and world traveler. Minimalist with many country’s stamps in her
passport.
~
News From Holmes
Serenity – Bridgette Oksen Artellan – Sabrina Oksen –
James L and Sharon S (Holmes) Oksen.
~
My genealogy goals for this week were to:
- Chronicle
several times, and publish on Thursday morning.
- Keep
writing my next article for Generations, which is about the will of
William Lotham. Francis Holmes is mentioned in his inventory both as owing
money and being owed money.
- Continue
indexing old New Brunswick obituaries and death notices for the NBGS
website project.
- Spend
a bit of time on Moore family research.
- Think
about and make lists for a welcome back in person party for our genealogy
society branch in October. It will have a book theme – old
genealogy/history books on a popup library display, and a for sale table
for books we longer need. Two short speakers, five to ten minutes each
tops. Leftover time will be for reacquainting and meeting new people, and
looking at books.
- Find
fourthree speakers for January to May of 2024, for the genealogy society. - In
the evening, after chores are done, edit the
Fanny Holmes Ballantyne family (first daughter of Daniel and Charlotte)Maggie and Billy Snider family (second child of Daniel and Charlotte) the same way I did the Louisa, William and Carrie lines. No rush on that.
I worked on my Lotham article this week, but
I’m not sure how much of it will interest you at this point. For you
cartographers, I found this hand-colored map which intrigued me. You can make
it bigger by going to the link. Date is 1766, 121 years after the date of death
of Lotham. Can you locate Stamford, where Francis Holmes lived from at least
1648 to c. 1675? And Norwalk, where his son Richard lived? It’s a beautiful
map. The link is below the map.
https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/2040295
~
To complete the review of the James W
Ballantyne and Frances Ann Holmes family, I have added a couple of sources to
the gallery on Ancestry. One is the marriage record from Westmorland County
Marriage Records (public access) and Fanny’s baptism record at the New
Brunswick Genealogical Society Anglican Church Records (private access).
~
My revision work on Margaret Eliza Holmes and
her husband, William Oliver Snider, won’t take too long as I wrote a story
about them a while back. That was my first and last attempt at historical
fiction, but I sure did enjoy the research and writing process. I do want to
review Uncle Billy’s ancestral chart, and plug my numerous newspaper snippets
safely into their Ancestry galleries. After I complete my “Where There’s a
Will” series for Generations, I will write an article about Uncle Billy
and Aunt Maggie and their fishing lodge, Riverbank. The guest book that Karl
gave me is now scanned and safely digitized in the New Brunswick Genealogical
Society website under Photo Galleries – Places and Events – Riverbank Fishing
Lodge.
Uncle Billy and Aunt Maggie married later in
life and had no children. They were related to each other through the Ketchums,
and together they lived with and cared for their four single aged Ketchum aunts
and uncles in Portage Vale; then lived with a nephew and some of his family for
a while. After a short break, in which they must have found their big house a
bit quiet, they turned it into an inn of sorts. Think home made baked beans,
buckwheat pancakes with maple syrup, and freshly caught trout from the Ketchum
Brook. Yummy.
They passed away and are buried in Hill Grove,
where they were visiting Maggie’s brother and his wife, Charles R and Phoebe J
(McMonagle) Holmes. They died within days of each other; Aunt Maggie on January
21, 1916, and Uncle Billy on January 24, 1916.
~
Another week is come and gone. Hurricane Lee
wasn’t as bad as they thought he would be, at least in my home town. Weather
looks good for my Petitcodiac visit on Saturday. And today, I remember my Mum.
Today is her 101st birthday; the second birthday she is gone from
us. I’m still telling the stories, Mum.
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