Uncle Peg’s Chronicles
November 9, 2023
“Where he Went for Penny Candy”
GRATITUDE
I am grateful to all five of you who replied in some
fashion to last week’s chronicle; it’s always special to know somebody reads it.
Especially to Cliff Marks – in our group but not in our DNA to my knowledge –
you never know with those Portage Vale folks of ours. They were a tightly knit
community. We have a joint interest in Portage Vale – me for my relatives who
lived and died there, and him, not only for his relatives but also, it’s the
rural place of his childhood, plus he’s interested in the people, the early
industries, the churches and graveyards, the little store in the house that was
sold to his family members after Uncle Billy and Aunt Maggie died, and where he
went for penny candy. (I remember where I went for penny candy too – O'Neils -
do you?) Cliff grew up in the house across from the Pioneer Cemetery that has
been all cleaned up. I told you about that last fall and showed you photos last
summer.
Cliff inquired about the land grants of Elias Sr, and the
other names on them. He’s helped me on occasion but I am a relative novice
about land grants – I will agree with him – the petitioners probably included
Snider cousins. Actually, all this writing about the Sniders is basically to
answer the question – why? I know the who, what, when, and where Uncle Billy
grew up and lived his entire life, but, why? I doubt I’ll ever know.
WHERE IN THE WORLD IS (WAS) . . .
Pictures snatched without permission.
KATHERINE’S POETRY
This is the last poem in her book.
DRAWN FROM A HAT
Featured this week are
Jerry Holmes and Lois McCoy.
I met Jerry in
2016 at our Maine gathering. Jerry, as many of you know, comes from a musical
family. He’s the son of Brian Holmes and Jolynda Tresner, and a jazz musician
in his own right, often sporting a saxophone in his Facebook posts. I’m betting
he can concoct a great cup of coffee as well, as he manages a Starbucks. And,
of course, there’s his cat. Jerry is in the William N Holmes line.
I haven’t had the
pleasure of meeting Lois yet, but I have met her parents, Byron and
Annmarie Holmes, and so have you if you attended the gathering. She posts
occasionally on Facebook, enough for me to “know” a bit about her and her family
– her husband Wesley McCoy, and her children who are quickly growing up - Luke
and Emma. She likes going to concerts of, you know, bands of my generation.
Last one I see was The Boss. And what really intrigues me is Emma’s interest in
cemeteries. Looks like the genesis of a passion, actually. Annmarie speaks of
it often. Lois is also in the William N Holmes line.
MY GENEALOGY GOALS
- 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.
- 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.
I focused on finding speakers and went back to
the will of Lotham. I also bought a new black ink cartridge for my printer.
Cost: $93. I’ll be doing even more reading on the computer screen, and will
only print for editing when I feel quite confident that I’ve done my best.
That’s, of course, when I find most of my errors and changes that I need to
make. Not to bore you with Lotham yet, but this week I figured out two of the
men who I had given up on as impossible to find. Good thing I have lots of time
for him.
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. I want to celebrate those five years in some
fashion.
2024 to 2028
But. (That’s a great little word.) Does this hold any
interest for you? I’m still pondering, but would love to hear your thoughts and
ideas.
WINSTON AND ELLIE’S
DISTAFF LINE
A Work in Progress
A distaff (or spindle) line is an old word for the
matrilineal line – the maternal line of ascent. The comparative male line is
called the spear line. As you know, I do love old words. If you look at an
ancestral chart, you see, on the left, one person; then, reading to the right, two
people; four people; eight people; sixteen people, and so on for as much paper
as you have to write on. The middle fills up, and generally, has a few gaps. The
spear line runs across the top. Whatever your surname/maiden surname is, will
follow that line to infinity or to the last person you can locate. The surname does
not change (unless for some reason the person changed it – but it would still
originally be the same, following the DNA path). Along the bottom, every name
theoretically changes. Those are the womenfolk who birthed us.
“Dit” translates in French to “called.” A lot of French
people did this to their surnames, for one reason or other. Suzanne’s father
was Gauvin, but when Suzanne moved to New Brunswick, it was slanged to Govang.
I’m not sure why the Guay was changed to a longer name – it could be to tell
one Guay apart from another Guay, (punny) and her father may have been from
Gaston or Caston – something like that. I think Lauretta Smith was of English
origin, and Martha Smith of Irish. Sarah ‘Caroline’ Steeves was of German
origin. Quite a mélange, and that from just one person!
I worked on my granddaughter’s distaff line
this week, as one of Ellie’s middle names is Minnie, after my grandmother. It
is initial research and a work in progress – I have it going back to France,
but I have not verified it all. If it is correct – and I should be able to tell
from Quebec church records, the following are the youngest people who share
this distaff line (shared beginning with Minnie) with Winston and Ellie. I
found this complicated to figure out – hope it’s right.
Erin Vasseur (my
daughter)
Winston and Ellie
Ray (my grandchildren)
Paul Moore (my
brother)
James and
Joseph Booth (sons of my sister, Patrica Moore Booth)
Dan Davis (son
of my cousin, Susan Lutes Davis)
Benjamin,
Katelyn, and Jillian Jones (children of Karen Davis Jones and grandchildren of Susan
Lutes Davis)
Timothy
Steeves (son of my cousin, Cindy Lutes Steeves)
Sebastien and
Simon Sawler (grandsons of Cindy Lutes Steeves)
Allison Bell
Sherman, Madeline Bell (daughters of my cousin Jennifer Lutes Bell)
Ellie and
Winston Ray – Julie Vasseur – Margaret Moore (me) – Margaret Holmes – Minnie
Colpitts – (that’s as far as the following pedigree chart goes)
Lauretta Smith – S Caroline Steeves – Martha Smith – Suzanne Gauvin dit Govang
– Marguerite Guay dit Gastonguay or Castonguay – Marie Angelique Morin – Marie
Ambroise Bergevin – Marie Peton born France 1651, died Quebec 1728.
For comparison,
I chose Sebastien and Simon Sawler, grandsons of Cindy Lutes Steeves.
Sebastien and
Simon Sawler – Sarah Steeves – Cindy Lutes – Nancy Holmes – Minnie Colpitts . .
.
Should Ellie
eventually have a child/children, they will share this distaff line, and so on
for females. Winston’s potential children will not.
Should
Sebastien and Simon eventually have a child/children, they will not share this
distaff line – it will be the line of their mother.
The following is Winston and Ellie’s spear and distaff lines for five
generations. Spear (or paternal, if you prefer), along top; distaff, or
maternal, along the bottom.
All of you – everybody – has lines like this with different names on them.
Not everybody can find those names, but they did exist, even if they are
forgotten.
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.
Most of the children of Jacob and Elias Sr gave
similar names to all of their children. Hence, Cliff’s curiosity.
I am still working on the children of Elias Jr and his
two wives. I think there’s some errors in the on-line trees and I want to make
sure I have them correct. Some fall into place in other instances in our tree.
Portage Vale folks are like that.
This week I focused on the children of Elias Snider
and Deborah Ketchum. If you’ve been following along, you know that we have lots
of Ketchum ancestors. Deborah Ketchum was the sister of Frances Ketchum, mother
of our Charlotte Hoyt Holmes.
Elias married Deborah Ketchum about 1810. This is
based on assumption, so give or take. All children were born in New Brunswick.
Deborah died in 1831. About the time of the marriage of Elias and Deborah,
Sarah Kinnear was born. Elias married Sarah Kinnear in 1834.
A compilation from other
trees as well as the website chignecto.org:
With Deborah
Ketchum
Mary Eliza (no
dates) m. Edwin Goslin
Frances (c
1811 – 1837)
Susannah (c
1815 - ) m. Andrew Kinnear
Gertrude (c
1817 - )
Jane (c 1821 –
1892) m. Andrew Dale Weldon
George (1824 -
) note there are two George Sniders born that year; the other to Peter Snider
Margaret (1825
– 1872) m. John Davidson
Charles
Douglas ((c 1826 – 1893) m. Susan Jones; actually, she was Susan Perry.
William Oliver
(c 1828 - )
With Sarah Kinnear
Adelaide
Amanda (1835 - ) m. Thomas Sharp Sproul
Joseph Bliss
(1836 – 1837)
Edwin Vail (c
1837 -)
Ward Chipman
(1841 - ) m. Ruth Burnham Fawcett
Laliah Ann
(1850 – 1924) m. George Fletcher Fawcett (brother of Ruth Burnham Fawcett)
Who I currently have
in my tree, which is a work in progress and subject to change:
With Deborah Ketchum
Susannah
Caroline (1814 – 1900) m. Andrew Kinnear
Margaret (1816
– 1872) m. John Davidson
George (1824 -
)
Charles
‘Douglas’ (1825 – 1893) m. Susan Perry
William Oliver
(c 1827 – 1916) m. Margaret Eliza Holmes
With Sarah
Kinnear
Adelaide
Amanda (1835 - ) m. Thomas Sproul
Ward Chipman (
1841 - ) m. Ruth Fawcett
Joseph Bliss (
-1837)
Where
to begin? I decided to start with the Anglican Church Records. I checked both
“Snider” and “Snyder,” which was a good thing to do, as I found some under both
spellings. The Anglican Records Project is at the NBGS website. Non-members can
see the index; members can see the index and a scan of the record. For now, you
need a separate login to view these records.
I
found the following records:
Baptisms:
Gertrude
Snyder baptized 28 Sep 1817, mother’s name not given, parish of Sussex and
Norton. Caution.
Charles
Douglas Snyder baptized 8 April 1826, mother Deborah
William
Oliver Snider baptized 17 May 1829. (His tombstone states that he was born in
1830.)
Adelaide
Amanda baptized 25 March 1837, mother Sarah
Ward
Chipman baptized 23 October 1842, mother Sarah
Burials:
Mrs.
Elias Snider buried 17 January 1831
Frances
Snider buried 26 October 1837, no parents given
Joseph
Bliss buried 25 March 1837 aged 13 months, therefore probably born c Feb 1836
~
I
wrote the following in a little series I’m doing in the NBGS Facebook group.
Yesterday, R Murray shared a link to help with writing
memoirs. I took this away from it: "Each memoir must also have a key
takeaway." I'll add to that, each piece of writing. I like books of any
sort that leave me with a nudge or a wonder or a need to research something,
etc - do you?
So, as I write possibly a few times about fixing up the family of Elias Snider Jr of Portage Vale in my tree, it is my mission to leave you with a takeaway. No, you do not all relate to Elias Snider, Jr; I know that. But, perhaps you might learn some means to help you in your own research. Or, kickstart you to go back and fix up your tree, one family at a time. Or, maybe just a warm fuzzy feeling for the day. Who knows?
As you add names to your genealogy, do some of those names stick out from the others? If so, why? What is it that makes you want to dress up those particular bones? Probably, like me, each person like that provides a different reason.
In the other trees, I found Laliah Ann Snider, born to Elias Snider and his second wife, Sarah Kinnear, when Elias was 68 and Sarah, 41. The child before her was about 9. I must admit, I was skeptical. Without DNA confirmation, I may as well accept it as truth, based upon what I found. And, what I found was readily available, once I found clue #1.
Which was, drumroll . . . the 1861 census. As some of you who research Portage Vale know, the 1861 census records seem to have gone missing. But, what I found, was that after Papa died when Laliah was six, she and some of her siblings moved from Portage Vale to Salisbury, and that census record provided a validation for Laliah and two of her brothers.
Her sister, Amanda Adelaide (actually, I believe, Adelaide Amanda), age 26, had married Thomas Sharp Sproul, age 27. They had two children and a servant. In addition, Sarah Snider, age 52, described as her mother-in-law, lived with Adelaide Amanda (or vice versa) and Thomas.
Filling up the house of this young couple was Edwin Vale Snider, age 24, brother-in-law of Thomas; Ward Chipman Snider, age 20, ditto; and Laliah Ann Snider, sister-in-law, age 11.
Fist pump. From then on, the details fell into place. I'm not completely satisfied; I haven't found her marriage record to George Fletcher Fawcett yet, or the 1871 census. One clue, starting in 1881: she is associated with the Baptist church. I probably won't find her burial in the Anglican records. She had several children and lived in Killams Mills, where she died in 1924. Fortunately. her parents are listed, as was a son, Bliss, the informant. Named for her brother who died at age of 13 months, Joseph Bliss, perhaps? This is a good luck story, or better yet, a good digging story - would that they all fall into place so nicely. A few more details and I'll move on.
My takeaway for this is mostly for novices, but we can always use a review.
I found Laliah spelled several ways, and I'm still not sure the spelling is correct. I didn't find her in the Anglican registers, which of course, can have errors as well. I tried using just the letter "L". Can't find someone for looking? See if you can find some siblings and follow through with them. Don't want to clutter up your tree with collateral people? You can always delete.
Be skeptical, but open-minded as well. Trust your instincts. Given the age of her parents, Laliah could be a granddaughter, but she is not a main focus so I will leave her as is. If she was in my direct line, I would work on her further. As is, I think I can safely say that what I have for Laliah in my tree is correct, based on the documentation I have found.
If you descend from Laliah or
anyone else you find in my tree, do your own due diligence. Don't just copy.
Look at my sources if you wish, but one of my guidelines for myself is: Do your
own research. Laliah rests
peacefully in the First North River United Baptist Church. Her Find a Grave #
is 209135366 has a photo of the tombstone of George, his first wife, and
Laleah. Based on the spelling on her stone, I will change the spelling of her
name to Laleah in my tree. Mind you, there are mistakes on headstones.
~
And that, my friends, is it for another week.
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