August 30 - The US connections.

In the Kelly/O'Toole side of the family, I have met with two ardent family historians. Pat Smuck lives in Florida, but her grandmother Alice O'Toole Vetter lived with husband Lou in several spots including Vancouver.

It was here that they hosted the wedding of Hilda Mary (Lol) O'Toole and Bill Russ in 1948.

This was particularly interesting to me when I noticed Granny Atherton sitting beside Lol ( to her left) , and JJ's head peeking put of the crowd at the back. Beverly Kelly Scott sits in the front row on the far right side with Pat Smuck's mother beside her. Kathleen Myers Millman is in the same row sitting 2nd from the left as you look at the photo. Kathleen is Mary Daunais' mother. Alice Vetter is in the back row beside Grandpa Jim.

Interesting to think that the Athertons and Kellys mixed it up when my own family had absconded to Edmonton. Pat Smuck will get her mother to tell us who else is in the picture.

The other K/O association I have made is with Bobbie Campbell whose great -grandmother was Mary Kelly, Jim's sister. Bobbie's mother was a Moffet (?at) and she has been researching the Kellys etc. since 1979!

There remains some mysteries about the Kellys which I hope to address when Paul and I visit Bracebridge in October to get a hold on the family numbers and when they left to go to N. Dakota. It seems Grandpa's Jim's grandparents stayed behind as they are buried in Nottawasaga - while his parents, at least his father. went to ND as well.

Met and spoke at length last evening via Facebook with Murray Atherton, Cyril's son. Sent me the family tree he has developed and I sent him pics from the ancestry.ca website of the Wichmann and Joyce family - lots of pics especially of TC and Maud.

Also downloaded a family tree done by someone at that family tree that added some more information especially about Margaret Mary Atherton whose nickname was "Teenie". I remember visits from Teenie and Willard in Vancouver - the same???

Tomorrow I try to find Terry Atherton Fennessey.

August 29 - Who's out there?

To date I have connected with four distant relatives whom I found on ancestry.ca. They range from the quite close (3rd or 4th cousins) to those who are very distantly related but have lots of information about the family's origins.

Derek Atherton is one of the latter. He is from the UK and has been working on the Atherton One-Name Study for 2 years. I found him while trying to suss out information on Great Uncle William Joseph, the Montreal historian who was educated by Jesuits and wrote a 3 volume history of Montreal which we have currently but which is being returned to Tony.

Derek has over 10,000 names of Athertons going back a substantial time. Our family line goes back to a James Atherton born mid 1700's with 6 children of whom Aaron, born in 1801 in Lancashire is the next ancester.  Aaron's 6 children include William, who is born in 1924. Wiliam's son Joseph, born in 1847, is JJ's father and my great-grandfather.

I have connected with Derek on Facebook as well as on ancestry and his One-Name website. Murray Atherton (see below) and Lorne Atherton grandson of Peter have connected with Derek as well. Bill thinks he may have contacted him as well at some time.

A couple of puzzles this website has helped unravel include information about Dad's brother Ernie (Ernest John) The site shows no mention of wife but had three daughters (Patricia (Pat Hean?), Jean (Jean and Charlie Thompson?) and Beverly - whom I think are seen in the family puzzle picture - which means that the fellow beside JJ is probably Ernie - 14 years older than Dad.

Another puzzle for me was around TC Atherton (Great Uncle Ted) as the Kellys seemed to know him well and he is mentioned in dad's book. He married Maud and had 7 children - Cyril who died in 1991 - and whose son Murray is in touch with Tony through Facebook; Mary Evelyn who married Ernest Gagnon died in 1997  with no children (?); Theodore Bernard Atherton who died in 1983 and who had a son Ted; Rita Wilma (Reet) Atherton who married John Wichman and whose pics(including Great Uncle Ted)

are posted on ancestry.ca by daughter?; Leo Atherton who had 5 children - Dorothy, Mary, Cathy, Lindy and Edward - born 1959 and died in 2003; Peter born in 1923 who died in 1991 and who had 7 children: Gregory, Lawrence, Mark, Brian, Kevin, Jane and Jerome all born in the 50's and 60's. TC last child was Patrick on whom there is little information.

In 1907, it was probably to Ted and Maud's place in Calgary that Joseph and Sarah came when they emigrated to Canada with Nellie and her son Johnny, Margaret and Bessie. Ted himself emigrated in 1904/05 and came to Trout Lake to work with JJ. He was the 1st one to tell JJ about his drinking etc. then he left to go to Calgary.

Johnny later signed up and died in December of 1916 at the age of 18. His information and gravesite in France can be found at Canadian Veterans Virtual Memorial.

Next posting will be about the Kelly/O'Toole connections I have made.

August 28 2011 - Recording Family History

Over at DRIVE CAMP EAT, I chronicled the trip west of this 60's couple enjoying camping again in the new millenium.

Along the way I unearthed some family roots and found I was becoming quite fascinated with the geneology game.

Fast forward 6 weeks and I have joined Ancestry.ca on a Mozilla Firefox browser since this website is NOT supported in Safari (!!) and started two trees Kelly/O'Toole and Sanagan nee Atherton., plus joined  Tribal Pages with a tree -  Sanagan Atherton Family.

What is missing is a record of the process - what I did when to achieve the results. The trees don't capture this so I hope this blog will.

Listening to a podcast this am about geneology and technology, it appears that this is not new and that tons more folks are getting on the bandwagon. Therefore there are more tools like GENI podcasts to which I have subscribed. That podcast lists many resources so will start to investigate these. There is also a call to join local geneological societies and I will check out the Bruce County's. I'd certainly like to access more free sites as ancestry.ca can be quite expensive and won't link with its American counterpart ancestry.com without additional subscriptions.

I hope this information is helpful to other would-be family historians and maybe my own family as they navigate their personal histories but mostly it will provide me with a record of my progress - or lack thereof.