Uncle Peg’s Chronicles
November 16, 2023
“They Saw No Value”
This photo made me smile this week. This is Missy (Oksen) Corda and her
niece, Serenity. Serenity is the daughter of her sister, Bridgette, and Rocky
Rodriquez. They are in the William N Holmes line.
WHERE IN THE WORLD IS (WAS) .
. .
Pictures snatched without
permission.
Jerry Holmes was in New York for a whirlwind visit. He
took in a concert and visited his Uncle John Tresner and his grandfather, James
Tresner. He’s home now. Thanks to Jolynda for the photo on the top. Brady is in
New York City, on the bottom. Both Jerry and Brady are in the William N Holmes
line.
GRATITUDE
What a lovely email to wake up to: “I feel fortunate to receive the chronicles, that I like to thank you
even if I don’t have a lot to say.” You
said a mouthful, Marvin! Did my old heart good.
DRAWN FROM A HAT
Featured this week are
Amy Davis and James Fenwicke Holmes.
I met Amy in
2016 and I do enjoy her Facebook. We have some likes in common. We both like
music, although she’s been singing for much longer than I have. She sings in
the The Capital Hill Chorale, which has its own Facebook group and provides
beautiful music of different genres. She’s passionate about books, and like me,
enjoys a children’s book as much as an adult book. And she loves travelling
around towns and villages in Maine (etc) with her Mom, Mary Holmes, of the
William N Holmes line. See more about Amy and Mary further along in the
chronicle.
I also met James
Fenwicke, better known to me as JF, at the reunion. He enjoys working
with people, both in his early days with autistic children and in his
audiologist career. He loves camping and hiking the California coast and the
Big Sur, as well as long bike rides. When time permits, he plays his guitar
with friends and is currently working on his third album of original rock
music. Dr. Holmes is the son of Brian Holmes and Jolynda Tresner, of the
William N Holmes line.
MY GENEALOGY GOALS
- Compile the family Christmas letter.
- 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. This will now have to wait a while. See the 2024 – 2028 article.- Spend
a bit of time on Moore family research.
- Find
fourtwoone speaker for January to May of 2024, for the genealogy society. - In
the evening, after chores are done, edit the Maggie Holmes 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.
Since Postmedia, in its corporate wisdom, has
removed New Brunswick archived newspapers and a much history of common folks of
New Brunswick, I now have no indexing to do. I await the NB probate records. I’ve
been working on Lotham.
LOOKING
AHEAD
1924 to
1928
Those are the
years that our great or great-great grandparents spent renewing their
relationships that had somehow fallen by the wayside but with organization,
letter writing, and challenging travel – by hook or by crook – they managed to
come together again. They discovered and rediscovered their family ties. And
then, one by one, they died, and many of those ties died with them.
2024 to 2028
How easy is it
to lose our history? How can we protect it?
THE FRAGILITY
OF FAMILY HISTORY
Several years
ago, I wrote a creative fiction booklet based on historical fact, vital
statistics, newspaper clippings, and family lore (stories told to me by my
mother). (Jeanni still has a few copies available. It was not a best seller and
I won’t be delving into that type of genre again.) It was about Uncle Billy and
Aunt Maggie, who I’ve been focusing on for several weeks by sharing the history
of Uncle Billy’s ancestors. If you’ve never read archived newspapers, you’re
missing out on great historical research and wonderful reading in general. Oh
my, the rabbit trails I took. Billy and Maggie died in 1916. I recall reading
about how the military would commandeer the church services – their alter call
was for fresh young soldiers to join the cause of the war to end all wars.
Four days’
notice over a long weekend when they were closed. I never gave our archived New
Brunswick newspapers a second thought, figuring we’d have access to them
forever. Four days and they will no longer be on our website, says the new
owners of our New Brunswick newspapers. Our Facebook group members and our NBGS
executive are not at all pleased. After looking into the matter, it seems that
they might outsource them, but it is not a priority.
Although I did
take our papers for granted, in the back of my mind has been this niggling doubt:
our newspaper is shrivelling away to nothing. If it ceases to exist, what will
happen to our archived newspapers? Well, perhaps the outsourcing is a blessing
in disguise. I suppose it depends on who they outsource it to, and if they
actually do.
Websites come
and website go. Ancestry has been sold. Family Tree Maker, the same. FamilySearch
has become a wiki; mind you, it has a wonderful archive of old tomes. Rootsweb,
where I plunked down my first family tree, gleefully adding other people’s
trees to my own until I had to delete it and start anew, is gone. “I’m my own
grandpa” had become my Rootsweb theme song – substitute grandma for grandpa.
But, where will
you find your ancestor’s stories and sometimes their vital stats? The local
history of their era and place? I’m not talking about our famous politicians,
explorers, inventors, actors and sports figures ancestors, but our everyday
folks. The ones who paid their taxes, traveled the trails, used the inventions,
watched the movies and plays and games of the famous people. You’ll find them
in the birth, marriage, graduation, death notices, and obituaries. You might
see a mention of the soldiers going off to war, or worse, coming home in a box.
You’ll find them if they do something for their community or commit a crime.
You’ll find them in those wonderfully wordy weekly gossip columns, having tea
with their neighbours. Old newspapers are where you’ll find the history and
stories of our everyday, ordinary folk.
Our family
history is fragile. Our newspapers are vital. Shall be in New Brunswick eventually
be left with only the scrapbooks of our ancestors, with the clippings mucilaged
or yellowed scotch taped or straight pinned in? My grandmother’s clippings are
glued and taped and pinned over a copy of an old weekly that was spared the
outhouse. My grandfather purchased school scrapbooks for his clippings. Some
are on microfilmed at various locations.
Michele Falkjar
is well-known to NB genealogists, and had this to say in our Facebook group: “My
husband used to be the IT director at Brunswick News and the digital archives
was a pet project of James Irving and, as a family genealogist, my husband was
thrilled to take on the project. Unfortunately, it is true that the archives
are no longer going to be offered by Postmedia. When they bought Brunswick
News, they saw no value in offering the archives as an add on to the newspaper
subscriptions and decided there would be no further digitizing of older
newspapers. Apparently, they won’t be adding current publications to the
archive either . . . We can only hope Postmedia sells access to the historic
newspapers to somebody like Newspapers.com or some other entity.”
Here is a piece
of our history. Mr. Alfred Steeves was born in 1843 in New Brunswick, and died
in 1918 in Massachusetts. I don’t have the date of the article but it would be between
1909 and 1916, when Uncle Billy ran his fishing lodge and the time frame that I
researched.
Who is Mr.
Alfred Steeves? Who will be the first to tell?
MORE DISTAFF
LINE
(because it’s
fun)
Amy and Mary
I wish my
Family Tree program provided just a spear line and a distaff (or spindle) line.
I was so surprised (although I shouldn’t have been) last week when my distaff
line took me to France. I was also surprised that none of my family seemed to
be surprised. I decided to do somebody else’s distaff line just for fun, to see
where it would go. As I had picked Amy’s name out of the hat, I chose her. Her
mother, Mary Holmes, shares the distaff line, of course. Off I went to
Scotland, England, and Ireland, dragging Amy and Mary along with me. I did the
research quickly and it begs some further digging to verify, if they are
interested. The last lady’s name may be Roy or Rowe, according to other family
trees, rather than Ray. And James Holmes, husband of Catherine Wedden,
intrigues me to know more. Is he the James Holmes who went down with the vessel
Pakenham on October 28, 1858? (For all my googling, I can’t find mention of
that wreck.) Or, did Amy’s James Holmes have the exact same death date as
another James Holmes? Is he the same James Holmes who won the Arctic Medal for
Arctic service in the 1850s? I cannot pin it on him yet. The two Holmes names in your maternal lineage are unrelated. Correct me
if you see any errors.
Here’s your
tentative distaff line, Amy and Mary.
Amy Davis
– Mary Lynk Holmes (born Maine) – Dorothy Louise Lynk (born
Maine) - Blanche McTavish (born New Brunswick) – Isabella Holmes
(born New Brunswick, father born Scotland) – Catherine Wedden (born New
Brunswick, father born England) – Elizabeth Ray (or Roy or Rowe) – born
Ireland.
OUR FAMILY HISTORY LESSON
Continued from last week’s chronicle
William Oliver Snider’s Ancestry
I don’t know too much yet about William’s ancestors,
but they were the immigrant ancestors from Switzerland or Germany.
William Oliver Snider (c. 1827 – 1916) – son of Elias
Snider Jr (1782 – 1856) and Deborah Ketchum – son of Elias Snider Sr (1754 –
1811) – son of Johann Jacob Schneider and Mary Magdalena Lang (baptized c.
1732). Johann was the son of Christian Schneider and Mary was the daughter of
Elias Lang – and that is where the name Elias came from.
Johann ‘Jacob’ Schneider and Mary Magdalena Lang had
the following sons and daughters. The dates should all be considered circa for
now. I have taken them from a source that recommends that they be verified and
Find a Grave, which differs for some. All were born in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. All came to New Brunswick except Christian, who stayed in
Pennsylvania. Martin later went to Ontario.
Martin 1753 – 1828
Elias Sr 1754 – 1811
Christian 1756 – 1827
Baultus 1757 - 1809
Peter 1758 – 1830
Barbara 1762 –
Mary 1764 - 1855
Jacob 1773 – 1854
MY APOLOGIES, but . .
.
You’ve read all that
before, and I’ll get back to it. I spent my research time on Lotham this week.
Here’s an article about Robert Beadle, crook. He goes into the Lotham article,
and thanks to Mr. Royal R Hinman, author, I have a bit more ammunition to call
Lotham “Latham.” This triggered some rather interesting to me conversation on
Facebook this week, in regards to the stolen sacks and butts of sacke.
“BEADLE, (Beedle,)
ROBERT, of Wethersfield, was an early settler. He stole gunpowder from Mr.
Blackman, of Stratford; two sacks from widow Foot; from Thomas Welles, two sacks;
from Richard Mills, he stole one blanket, and from Thomas Tracy, one sack, for
which he was adjudged to restore double for each theft acknowledged by him, and
to be severely whipped, and branded in his hand, upon the next Wednesday, Dec.
12, 1644; and for his loathsome demeanor on the 5th day of March,
1644, he was adjudged on the next lecture day to be severely scourged and kept
in the house of correction two weeks longer, and then again whipped, and be
then bound to appear every quarter court, and be whipped, until the court
should see some reformation in his conduct. On the 17th day of May,
1649, Robert Beedle and Cary Latham, were warned to appear before the court for
suffering an Indian to escape, who had been committed to their charge for safe
keeping. In March, 1645, William Latham was charged, by the desire of Mr.
Robins, in his inventory of debts, £1, 14s., for having delivered Robert Beedle
at Fisher’s Island, by order of court.”
It is interesting to me that William Lotham was called
William Latham. I am suspicious that his name is spelled in error on the
transcription of his probate, but I cannot see the original.
Pages 164 and 165 at https://archive.org/details/catalogueofnames010hinm/page/164/mode/2up?q=Latham
~
I am starting to
think about the Christmas newsletter that goes out to every person for whom I
have an email address, and will also be in the Facebook group, probably via the
blog.
For your
contributions – the theme this year is “our ancestors’ Christmas.” Not our
memories, but memories of our parents and/or grandparents that have been handed
down to us orally or written in their own words. If you don’t have those types
of stories, is there a recipe you make at Christmas time that you know came
from someone who came before you? Photo of grandparents at Christmas time? Your
stories can be happy, sad, jolly, punny, whatever. Use your imaginations. Of
course, if they didn’t celebrate Christmas for any reason, a seasonal memory
such as Hanukkah is good, too. I will be sending out an email or FB post in
early December, asking for this. You get some extra time to think about it. This
is for our in-laws’ ancestors as well.
It doesn’t matter if
you’ve told the story before. Family history bears repeating. Never roll your
eyes at stories someone has told many times before. When those stories cease,
you will miss them. “Around this table we always tell the same old stories.” Credit
is due to my cousin Sue. This is me, writing at the table she referred to
(without the extra leaves), but any table will do.
This is your
opportunity to preserve our history.
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