... continuing a small series on less-than-exhaustive searches for two mysterious George Porters.
One George disappeared from Upper Canada about 1800; another George surfaced in 1814, outlined here. Family origins for both are unknown. Two previous “Persons of Interest”have already been introduced. The Rifleman was said to be from Pennsylvania; the Blacksmith apparently originated in New England.
Speaking of Porter families in New England, one branch produced some prominent figures in the Buffalo and Erie County area of New York ... which is where? ... across and upriver from our George Porter the Carpenter’s first appearance in Newark (long since renamed Niagara-on-the-Lake but often referred to as simply Niagara). The next Persons of Interest:
The Surveyor
Augustus Porter (1769-1849) was born in Connecticut, the son of Col. Joshua Porter (born 1730, son of Nathaniel) and Abigail Buell.[1] The six children of this couple, by various accounts, do not include a George. Augustus was a surveyor who arrived in western New York in 1789 and became well-acquainted with the region.[2] His brother Peter B. Porter (1773-1844) later joined him, both purchasing extensive lands along the Niagara River to become pioneer residents, developers, and wealthy businessmen of Black Rock (Buffalo) and Niagara Falls. Augustus eventually became a judge and Peter became a general in the military, which are huge (and shameful) over-simplifications of their respective lives.[3]
The Person of Interest Part:
Number one, George the Carpenter named his second son Augustus. Not your run-of-the-mill name (the first son was David). The name does not occur in his wife’s family. It seems to be rare among the New England Porters. No use asking about baptismal sponsors ... George quite successfully avoided all contact with church and clergy in Newark and York. Number two, a descendant recalls a family tidbit that George himself had been engaged “as a surveyor” at one time. Number three, the Niagara proximity features again—but that is a given with all persons of interest. Residents on each side of the Niagara River were well aware of each other’s activities and considerable traffic—economic and social—went back and forth. References to leading citizens were published in newspapers on both sides.
When George the Carpenter’s son Augustus was born about 1798, the family was in the town of York. But George still had some unresolved property claims in Newark. Did he pull the name Augustus out of a hat? Or did it come from his own unknown, now forgotten, ancestral line? Or could it be he deeply admired a well-known entrepreneur across the river? A man, coincidentally, with the same surname ...
The Surveyor’s year of birth makes him a contemporary of the Carpenter. Augustus from Connecticut was unlikely to be the captured Rifleman in 1794, if we are to trust the report of the Rifleman being a “native of Pennsylvania.”
The Other Surveyor
Admittedly, I am hung up on the name Augustus. So hung up I might suspend credibility with this one. In 1788 Augustus Jones (c1757-1836) was sworn in as a Crown surveyor near Newark.[4] From 1791 to 1800 he served as chief surveyor for the old Nassau District of Upper Canada which encompassed the Niagara peninsula and well beyond. Augustus came from a family settled in Newburgh, in the Hudson River Valley, and had trained as a surveyor in New York City.
Does it defy possibility that, when George the Carpenter first came to Upper Canada, he worked on Jones’ survey crew for a year or so? If Augustus Jones actually recorded the names of his axe men, chain bearers, and so on (few surveyors seemed to do this in their working diaries), it might give us a reason for the naming of George’s son ... assuming he had great respect for Jones.
The earliest surviving survey diary of Augustus Jones is from the winter of 1793 with no names of the men he hired.[5] His 1797 diary, at work on the Grand River, illustrates the occasional reference to the largely nameless employees: “one of the hands” was bitten by a rattlesnake, and applying some roots to the wound “made the man easy.”[6]
Both scenarios for naming a child Augustus—the surveyor in New York State, and the surveyor in Upper Canada—would eliminate the name as a clue to family origins.
Now that I’ve taken up this much space, the promised Doctor will have to wait till next time. It’s not all bad to have your imagination working for you when the target keeps dodging. But the circles around the bulls-eye target expand wider and fainter. Perhaps these preliminary surveys of “Persons of Interest” will clarify where more disciplined and focused research should apply.
[1] Albert Welles, History of the Buell family in England: from the remotest times ...(New York: American College for Genealogical Registry, Family History and Heraldry, 1881), 108 and 110. [Dates of birth vary slightly in other family accounts.]
[2] James Harvey Hotchkin, A History of the Purchase and Settlement of Western New York (New York: M.W. Dodd, 1848), 14.
[3] Charles Mulford Robinson, The life of Judge Augustus Porter, a pioneer in western New York, by his great-grandson, Charles Mulford Robinson (Buffalo: Buffalo Historical Society Publications, 1904).
Bob Kostoff, “Porters Prominent Locally,” Niagara Falls Reporter (http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com : accessed 17 June 2010), 2 August 2005.
[4] “Augustus Jones,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography (http://www.biographi.ca/ : accessed 23 September 2010).
[5] Crown Land Survey Diaries, Field Notes and Reports, “regarding a survey of Burlington Bay to the Forks of the Thames,” [Augustus Jones, January-February 1793], RG1-59, vol. 47, no. 614; Archives of Ontario microfilm MS 7438.
[6] Correspondence and Memoranda Relating to Surveys, “Survey at the River Ouse for Capt. Brant,” [Augustus Jones, from August 1797], RG 1-2-1, vol. 46, 75-76; Archives of Ontario microfilm MS 7438.
Some of the books can be viewed on Google Books or Internet Archive.
© Brenda Dougall Merriman, 2010.
05 October 2010
24 September 2010
Cemeteries Part 12: Greyfriars
Pretty heady stuff for a break before returning to the library. Somehow, turning in to Bobby’s pub instead would have been more fun. Self: Work a little harder at photographic skills.
A couple of places for some good shivers are Edinburgh’s Dark Side and Greyfriars Graveyard.
19 September 2010
McFadyen Part 13: Murder & Circumstantial Evidence
We family historians get quite excited at discovering a black sheep. Why do we react that way?
Well, we know our ancestors weren’t all boring, diligent farmers and blacksmiths and housewives and students and salesmen and clerks and milliners. One might think so from the too-often little we can dig up about them. Someone who disturbed the norm, caused problems, or attracted attention, usually in a negative way, ... in so doing created written and remembered versions of the event(s). It works the other way as well: ancestors who did something admirable, beneficial, or creative also leave their marks.
Our ancestors were human and faulty like us. Finding written sources about bad acts gives us some insight not only into the individual, but perhaps also about the effect on the family and the community. Dealing with an ancestor and event a couple of generations ago, we have distance from the original emotional consequences and pain. The following became of interest because of the name, although there is no family connection.
It’s a matter of record that a man called Neil McFadyen murdered James Kerr in Nova Scotia in 1848. What “record”? I have only two sources relating the story with slightly differing details. The Life and Adventures of Detective Peter Owen Carroll by N. Carroll McIntyre was my first encounter.
This version implies MacFadgen met James Cair right off the boat, so to speak, at Pictou, and took him to his home at Blue Mountain [written in the vernacular, the author uses phonetic surname spellings]. The next day Kerr was murdered for the cash he carried to purchase some land. The body was soon found but not identified until Kerr's father arrived from Scotland to search for his son. Identification was made from some of his clothing but more significantly by a lump on his jawbone from a childhood accident. It was known that McFadyen was the last person to see the victim.
The other version is a narrative of the coroner’s inquest in Nova Scotia Archives & Records Management (NSARM). I have a partial transcription without an archival reference. To me, it appears to be what a newspaper reporter might have published. Here we learn that Neil McFadyen arrived in Cape Breton with his father’s family in 1827 from the Isle of Tiree. He married a McKinnon woman (no first name) in 1830 and moved to “Moose River near the Garden of Eden, a lonely place in the back settlements of Pictou County” where he built a log house. He had “a number of children.” With a minor history of theft incidents, he went to work at a lumber camp in Chaleur Bay, New Brunswick. That’s where he met the unmarried Kerr, whose dream was to buy a farm, and beguiled him with tales of good land back in Pictou. Apparently Kerr’s father was already on this side of the Atlantic, in New Brunswick.
Two months or more elapsed until Kerr’s father and a brother were alarmed enough by the lack of communication to come to Pictou. Identification of the decomposed remains was dependent on clothing details. Then Kerr's vest and other possessions were found in McFadyen’s home, so Neil McFadyen went to trial on circumstantial evidence. He was convicted and hanged on 20 December 1848. My enquiry to municipal authorities revealed the improvised hanging took place on the beach at Pictou where he was buried under the sand with no marker.
Two derivative sources ... telling us something about Kerr and his family but not so much about the perpetrator. A descendant would be looking for potential court records, newspapers, census returns, to try to form a more complete sense of the man. We’d like to think McFadyen’s wife and children eventually overcame this trauma and found some normalcy in their lives.
Well, we know our ancestors weren’t all boring, diligent farmers and blacksmiths and housewives and students and salesmen and clerks and milliners. One might think so from the too-often little we can dig up about them. Someone who disturbed the norm, caused problems, or attracted attention, usually in a negative way, ... in so doing created written and remembered versions of the event(s). It works the other way as well: ancestors who did something admirable, beneficial, or creative also leave their marks.
Our ancestors were human and faulty like us. Finding written sources about bad acts gives us some insight not only into the individual, but perhaps also about the effect on the family and the community. Dealing with an ancestor and event a couple of generations ago, we have distance from the original emotional consequences and pain. The following became of interest because of the name, although there is no family connection.
It’s a matter of record that a man called Neil McFadyen murdered James Kerr in Nova Scotia in 1848. What “record”? I have only two sources relating the story with slightly differing details. The Life and Adventures of Detective Peter Owen Carroll by N. Carroll McIntyre was my first encounter.
This version implies MacFadgen met James Cair right off the boat, so to speak, at Pictou, and took him to his home at Blue Mountain [written in the vernacular, the author uses phonetic surname spellings]. The next day Kerr was murdered for the cash he carried to purchase some land. The body was soon found but not identified until Kerr's father arrived from Scotland to search for his son. Identification was made from some of his clothing but more significantly by a lump on his jawbone from a childhood accident. It was known that McFadyen was the last person to see the victim.
The other version is a narrative of the coroner’s inquest in Nova Scotia Archives & Records Management (NSARM). I have a partial transcription without an archival reference. To me, it appears to be what a newspaper reporter might have published. Here we learn that Neil McFadyen arrived in Cape Breton with his father’s family in 1827 from the Isle of Tiree. He married a McKinnon woman (no first name) in 1830 and moved to “Moose River near the Garden of Eden, a lonely place in the back settlements of Pictou County” where he built a log house. He had “a number of children.” With a minor history of theft incidents, he went to work at a lumber camp in Chaleur Bay, New Brunswick. That’s where he met the unmarried Kerr, whose dream was to buy a farm, and beguiled him with tales of good land back in Pictou. Apparently Kerr’s father was already on this side of the Atlantic, in New Brunswick.
Two months or more elapsed until Kerr’s father and a brother were alarmed enough by the lack of communication to come to Pictou. Identification of the decomposed remains was dependent on clothing details. Then Kerr's vest and other possessions were found in McFadyen’s home, so Neil McFadyen went to trial on circumstantial evidence. He was convicted and hanged on 20 December 1848. My enquiry to municipal authorities revealed the improvised hanging took place on the beach at Pictou where he was buried under the sand with no marker.
Two derivative sources ... telling us something about Kerr and his family but not so much about the perpetrator. A descendant would be looking for potential court records, newspapers, census returns, to try to form a more complete sense of the man. We’d like to think McFadyen’s wife and children eventually overcame this trauma and found some normalcy in their lives.
12 September 2010
26 August 2010
Hands On Scotland: Inverness, Culloden, and Digression
It was a grey, rainy day when we found our way to Culloden Moor near Inverness. The site of the last battle fought on British soil has been preserved, not without difficulties over the years, by the National Trust of Scotland. Properties in private hands had to be acquired, a slow process. Many clan organizations and corporate donors have assisted financially for the Culloden Battlefield Memorial Project (we noted Garfield Weston among them).
If you have the slightest Scottish blood, you’ve likely heard of Culloden: the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie; the slaughter of the Jacobite army; the subsequent savage attempt at genocide by Butcher Billy, the Duke of Cumberland; the final disintegration of the clan system. The date of 16 April 1746 lives long in memory wherever Highlanders dispersed.
Lindsey Bowditch et al., Hilary Horrocks, ed., Cuil Lodair/Culloden (Edinburgh: The National Trust for Scotland, 2010), 6.
The Culloden Visitors’ Centre was recently rebuilt with a roomy café and large shop; recordings are available for walking the field itself and each monument thereon. A multi-media walk-through in the Centre details both the government and the Jacobite views of events leading to the climactic battle, very informative with contemporary citations. It’s good that we allowed plenty of time for lingering and absorbing. My disappointment was in the room that proposes to give you a sense of the battle, with sound and film on all four sides to capture the essence. Maybe it works for others, but it didn’t come close for me, because ...
My “personal” history of Culloden began many years ago with John Prebble’s iconic book Culloden. Then I learned about, and rented, the amazing BBC film Culloden (a website worth reading if you’re Scots or a film fan) by Peter Watkins, based on Prebble’s meticulous research. Made in 1964, Watkins’ then-innovative device was to follow the action as if a television crew were present at the scene more than 250 years ago. It was one of the first films to employ documentary style of a historical event, and to my mind still the most stunning ever (static image below from the website hardly begins to give the sense of the action).
Nostalgia: In 1982 the Ontario Genealogical Society (OGS) held its Annual Seminar at the University of Guelph.
The theme was Scottish—what else? given the university’s renowned Scottish Studies program and its enviable McLaughlin Library collection, arguably the largest outside Scotland itself. Since OGS did not have a branch in Guelph at that time, three members agreed to run the event: Allan Hayne was the seminar chair, Harold Doan was the registrar, and yours truly was the program chair. My first thought was that we must have Donald Whyte. And so we did! It was perhaps his only invitation to Canada and he was as thrilled as we were. Happily for posterity, George Neville, then editor of OGS’ Families, colluded with Donald to publish his Canadian-visit diary in the same issue of Families with the seminar proceedings (Vol. 21, No. 4, 1982). Thus began Donald's fortuitous association with OGS.
At one point in the Saturday afternoon program, I arranged for the film Culloden to be shown. The impact the second time (for me) was as forceful and disturbing as the first. Near the end of the film and after the battle, as I recall, a woman called Agnes MacPhail was “interviewed.” Her traumatic shock was so real after what we’d seen, I was not the only one in tears (again). On leaving the theatre, Bruce MacPhail said to me in an emotional daze, “That was my ancestor!” The moment stays forever with me. Bruce had married a very attractive MacFadyen, a former neighbour of mine, which really has nothing to do with this story. Nor with my McFadyens as best we knew at the time. But you know I love to toss the name around.
Donald Whyte’s diary displays his low-key humour and his delight with his entire stay, recalling so many various OGS members of those days and the correspondents he could meet in person. May I add that the banquet entertainment, the MacCrimmon piper son of another esteemed neighbour, was well received (Donald: “If he had a fault, it was a certain lack of modesty, but he received a tremendous ovation.”) I only throw that in because the piper will come up in a future blog. Donald is missed by many friends and associates around the world.
Post-digression, the BOOKS in the Culloden Visitors' Centre shop!! More weight-breakers for airline luggage allowance! The National Library of Scotland shop and most bookshops couldn't hold a candle to this. Now, lovely stacks of them sit mourning for the spare time I promised them. There’s a Fraser in No Quarter Given✱ calling for my attention. A Gaelic primer and a Lowland Scots dictionary. Numerous Hebrides compilations. I need a Highland hermitage month.
And of course I’ve neglected Inverness, the obvious place to stay for a visit to Culloden. Brief as it was. Family history and whisky-tasting were not our only pursuits. The search for live, hot, bagrock (pipe-rock?) music was not doing too well since live music is frequently not available until weekends and somehow we kept missing the boat, er, bagpipes. Then we met Bridge Street in Inverness and scored with The Gellions, “the oldest pub in the Highland Capital.” Grrreeee and glee! The whole street was alive with the music from the pub. Schiehallion, the band. I know it’s not to everyone’s taste, therefore I spare you a link you might automatically click on and have to watch a lot of beer-soaked Invernessians packed like sardines attempting cool dance moves ... “Schiehallion New Year 2010 (2)” on YouTube has the piper working hard, but falls short of a live experience on a more prosaic night. Better you should have a link to Red Hot Chilli Pipers (PIPERS not PEPPERS!).
✱ Alastair Livingstone of Bachuil, Christian W.H. Aikman, and Betty Stuart Hart, editors, No Quarter Given: The Muster Rolls of Prince Charles Edward Stuart’s Army, 1745-1746, 3rd ed. (Glasgow: Neil Wilson Publishing, 2009) ... it IS available in the colonies ...
Three photographs by CDM and BDM July 2010; the University of Guelph photo is from somewhere on its website that hides from me now.
Lindsey Bowditch et al., Hilary Horrocks, ed., Cuil Lodair/Culloden (Edinburgh: The National Trust for Scotland, 2010), 6.
CThe Culloden Visitors’ Centre was recently rebuilt with a roomy café and large shop; recordings are available for walking the field itself and each monument thereon. A multi-media walk-through in the Centre details both the government and the Jacobite views of events leading to the climactic battle, very informative with contemporary citations. It’s good that we allowed plenty of time for lingering and absorbing. My disappointment was in the room that proposes to give you a sense of the battle, with sound and film on all four sides to capture the essence. Maybe it works for others, but it didn’t come close for me, because ...
My “personal” history of Culloden began many years ago with John Prebble’s iconic book Culloden. Then I learned about, and rented, the amazing BBC film Culloden (a website worth reading if you’re Scots or a film fan) by Peter Watkins, based on Prebble’s meticulous research. Made in 1964, Watkins’ then-innovative device was to follow the action as if a television crew were present at the scene more than 250 years ago. It was one of the first films to employ documentary style of a historical event, and to my mind still the most stunning ever (static image below from the website hardly begins to give the sense of the action).
Nostalgia: In 1982 the Ontario Genealogical Society (OGS) held its Annual Seminar at the University of Guelph.
At one point in the Saturday afternoon program, I arranged for the film Culloden to be shown. The impact the second time (for me) was as forceful and disturbing as the first. Near the end of the film and after the battle, as I recall, a woman called Agnes MacPhail was “interviewed.” Her traumatic shock was so real after what we’d seen, I was not the only one in tears (again). On leaving the theatre, Bruce MacPhail said to me in an emotional daze, “That was my ancestor!” The moment stays forever with me. Bruce had married a very attractive MacFadyen, a former neighbour of mine, which really has nothing to do with this story. Nor with my McFadyens as best we knew at the time. But you know I love to toss the name around.
Donald Whyte’s diary displays his low-key humour and his delight with his entire stay, recalling so many various OGS members of those days and the correspondents he could meet in person. May I add that the banquet entertainment, the MacCrimmon piper son of another esteemed neighbour, was well received (Donald: “If he had a fault, it was a certain lack of modesty, but he received a tremendous ovation.”) I only throw that in because the piper will come up in a future blog. Donald is missed by many friends and associates around the world.
Post-digression, the BOOKS in the Culloden Visitors' Centre shop!! More weight-breakers for airline luggage allowance! The National Library of Scotland shop and most bookshops couldn't hold a candle to this. Now, lovely stacks of them sit mourning for the spare time I promised them. There’s a Fraser in No Quarter Given✱ calling for my attention. A Gaelic primer and a Lowland Scots dictionary. Numerous Hebrides compilations. I need a Highland hermitage month.
✱ Alastair Livingstone of Bachuil, Christian W.H. Aikman, and Betty Stuart Hart, editors, No Quarter Given: The Muster Rolls of Prince Charles Edward Stuart’s Army, 1745-1746, 3rd ed. (Glasgow: Neil Wilson Publishing, 2009) ... it IS available in the colonies ...
Three photographs by CDM and BDM July 2010; the University of Guelph photo is from somewhere on its website that hides from me now.
22 August 2010
16 August 2010
Hands On Scotland: KIllin
Killin sits in the Scottish Highlands of what used to be Perthshire but after a boundary shift, is now in the Stirling Council region. The beautiful back roads feature almost-hidden quaint B&Bs, evidence of the Trossachs’ popularity as a holiday retreat from the major urban areas. This is Rob Roy McGregor country. The village I was expecting turned out to be more like a 21st century town. Note to self: Stop living in the 18th century. Killin now includes the former surrounding villages of Monemore, Ballechroisk, and others.
Cousin Lizzie had given very good directions to the old churchyard. Take the path beside and around the back of the hotel which now oddly sits between the church and its burying ground. I already knew that little trace of my Perthshire Frasers awaited. Our mutual gt-gt-gt-grandfather Duncan Fraser lies there (where else would he be?) but no stone is visible. His daughter Janet and her husband seem to be the only sign of several Fraser generations.
This is the parish church of Killin and Ardeonaig, built in 1744, so one solace was that Duncan was baptized here in 1783, and his father John in 1751. The ruins of the mediaeval church that existed by 1317 are in the midst of the burial ground, no longer visible.
A bonus was the memorial erected to the Reverend James Stewart who would have served at the time of the baptisms. His memorial sits in its own enclosure near the front of the church. Note the tribute to his translation of the Bible into Gaelic: this was a major, major contribution to Highland society.
Back to the burial ground: The older stones are so unkempt and uncared-for, enough to make you cry. Mature trees have grown over many, hiding them. Few of the still-standing stones are decipherable. And naturally there could be plenty lying beneath the sod. The "programme of inspection and repair" and even the "footpaths" are not in evidence.
Members of the Scottish Genealogy Society (SGS) transcribed gravestones here in 1965. Their publication, South Perthshire Monumental Inscriptions, does not include the stone of Janet Fraser and her husband Alexander MacFarlane in the Killin cluster of eight burying grounds. Clearly legible now, the omission is puzzling. Was the stone illegible in 1965? Has someone cleaned it since?
The paucity of Fraser names in the entire SGS publication—flawed as it may be—is startling to me. Here I thought I was at the source of my Perthshire Fraser line. (I have to keep saying “Perthshire Fraser line” because I likely have two Inverness-shire Fraser lines :-) Cousin Lizzie and I don’t know where our Duncan’s probable grandfather, a prior Duncan, came from. The absence of most Highland parish registers before the mid-18th century casts that renowned fine Highland mist over us.
Here is the modern jazzed-up version, with extensions, of the smithy built by Janet Fraser’s husband in the 1880s. Janet herself descended from blacksmiths, father Duncan and grandfather John, but this is not where they worked. Now “The Old Smiddy”is a coffee shop cum teahouse with rooms to let.
The Breadalbane Folklore Centre is situated in Killin, paying tribute to St. Fillan of Gaelic tales, and to the clans that flourished here—McNab, McGregor, Campbell. A 17th century claymore is among the displays, having been preserved by McGregor descendants. Perhaps a relic once held by Rob Roy himself?
More thinking to do. Why am I getting this sinking feeling that gt-gt-gt-grandad Duncan’s grandfather may have drifted into Killin from Inverness-shire where the Lovat Frasers were concentrated? Lizzie has reached the same hypothesis. He would have been a young and healthy age at the time of the Battle of Culloden. Note to self: Get a grip on your imagination; new Fraser posting needed.
More thinking to do. Why am I getting this sinking feeling that gt-gt-gt-grandad Duncan’s grandfather may have drifted into Killin from Inverness-shire where the Lovat Frasers were concentrated? Lizzie has reached the same hypothesis. He would have been a young and healthy age at the time of the Battle of Culloden. Note to self: Get a grip on your imagination; new Fraser posting needed.
09 August 2010
Hands On Scotland: Edinburgh
At last, my goal in Edinburgh. The Historical Research Room, part of the National Archives of Scotland. The morning walk took less than my estimated ten minutes ... if you disregard the fact that I first went to General Register House instead of to the Garden Entrance for the search rooms, which information I had read several times in advance and apparently forgot in the majesty of it all. I was greeted kindly and registered with a temporary pass to access the locker room. The same reception person was equally kind in issuing me with a one-pound coin for the locker in exchange for the strange, useless shrapnel in my purse.
By the time I got upstairs—lots of stairs, these are high buildings—my official reader’s ticket magically appeared when another reception person examined my confirmation order for manuscript materials. She then waved me off to the Hysterical Search Room without a road map. I saw some signage for a while, but managed to lose myself briefly in a few dead-end cubby holes and the other reading room occupied by legal types. Or maybe that was on one of my trips back and forth.
Not many people were in the appointed stately room at that hour, but they were intent on what they were doing (because they knew what they were doing). An archivist assigned me to table 22. There were three archivists or facsimiles most of the time, each of whom had different functions I began to realize. The one in charge of document retrieval produced my documents in snappy fashion.
There I was, staring at fragile 200-year old papers folded into that stiff state that every historian fears will disintegrate at the first touch. Approaching the archivist who brought me the material, I asked, “Do you have gloves for handling?” He demurred, “We don’t normally use them.” I tried to hide my surprise (and terror, if chunks of irreplaceable history are going to fall on MY designated table spot). At least I was not having a language/accent problem.
After something like four hours in one very large batch of negative searches—nevertheless contributing to my hypothesis, mostly demolishing it—I decided to have some copies. To be negotiated with the archivist in charge of copies. The best option was to pay and have them mailed. That means money which was downstairs in my locker because I had diligently observed the pencil-and-paper-only code. When I found the locker again, forgetting to memorize the return trail upstairs, the next event had to be finding a bank machine.
A kindly gentleman in the first receptionist’s lobby, a sort of greeter, was more than pleased to direct me to the adjacent shopping mall which required a circuitous route taking five minutes to explain. They are all so kind. On my way, a few remaining pieces of my annoying shrapnel paid tribute to a piper attracting tourists for photos.
At the end of the day I had satisfactorily pursued the desirable manuscripts and online resources. Various copies to follow. I might add they have not arrived yet, unlike photocopies from the National Library of Scotland which were in my mailbox the day after I returned home. The garden entrance is quite lovely, and I was touched to see the memorial to the Mitchells, many of whose monumental inscriptions—cemetery transcripts in North Americanese—I have hoarded over the years.
The National Library doesn’t mess around; they send first class mail. That said, the NLS receptionist was not as kind as the NAS people. She insisted everything goes in the locker except pencil-and-paper. The librarian in charge of photocopies, though, was sympathetic and friendly and agreed that a purse with all your worldly ID in it was eligible for carrying about, although she didn’t know my purse resembled an overstuffed hiker’s backpack. The Library also has many stairs to climb, which I probably did three or four times. Up and down while waiting for book retrieval (they have many enticing articles for sale in their shop), up and down for photocopy money.
Now I’m thinking I didn’t sign out from the National Library of Scotland. Might they still be looking for me?
Did I mention I was in Edinburgh? Ahhhhh. A great Old Town with, surprise, tons of stairs. We’re talking serious climbing. On my way up and down to the Scottish Genealogy Society I spotted some intriguing restaurants with outdoor terraces—dinner potential. Not wanting to admit I’m a lapsed member of the SGS, at their office I requested certain of their monumental inscriptions publications. The volunteers who maintain the office were almost astounded but joyful when I added I wanted to buy them. Four of us spent an entertaining half hour learning to use their credit card machine. A mutually congratulatory and bonding experience, all in all. The excess weight to my take-home luggage made the airline personnel beam with pleasure. No doubt about it, I was dispensing happiness everywhere I went.
Promises of sin, depravity, and ancient murder mysteries will have to wait for another time. When I stop counting stairs in my sleep.
Not many people were in the appointed stately room at that hour, but they were intent on what they were doing (because they knew what they were doing). An archivist assigned me to table 22. There were three archivists or facsimiles most of the time, each of whom had different functions I began to realize. The one in charge of document retrieval produced my documents in snappy fashion.
There I was, staring at fragile 200-year old papers folded into that stiff state that every historian fears will disintegrate at the first touch. Approaching the archivist who brought me the material, I asked, “Do you have gloves for handling?” He demurred, “We don’t normally use them.” I tried to hide my surprise (and terror, if chunks of irreplaceable history are going to fall on MY designated table spot). At least I was not having a language/accent problem.
After something like four hours in one very large batch of negative searches—nevertheless contributing to my hypothesis, mostly demolishing it—I decided to have some copies. To be negotiated with the archivist in charge of copies. The best option was to pay and have them mailed. That means money which was downstairs in my locker because I had diligently observed the pencil-and-paper-only code. When I found the locker again, forgetting to memorize the return trail upstairs, the next event had to be finding a bank machine.
A kindly gentleman in the first receptionist’s lobby, a sort of greeter, was more than pleased to direct me to the adjacent shopping mall which required a circuitous route taking five minutes to explain. They are all so kind. On my way, a few remaining pieces of my annoying shrapnel paid tribute to a piper attracting tourists for photos.
Now I’m thinking I didn’t sign out from the National Library of Scotland. Might they still be looking for me?
Did I mention I was in Edinburgh? Ahhhhh. A great Old Town with, surprise, tons of stairs. We’re talking serious climbing. On my way up and down to the Scottish Genealogy Society I spotted some intriguing restaurants with outdoor terraces—dinner potential. Not wanting to admit I’m a lapsed member of the SGS, at their office I requested certain of their monumental inscriptions publications. The volunteers who maintain the office were almost astounded but joyful when I added I wanted to buy them. Four of us spent an entertaining half hour learning to use their credit card machine. A mutually congratulatory and bonding experience, all in all. The excess weight to my take-home luggage made the airline personnel beam with pleasure. No doubt about it, I was dispensing happiness everywhere I went.
04 August 2010
Hands On Scotland: Isle of Coll
Removed to https://camelchaser.blogspot.com/2014/12/my-island-home.html
10 July 2010
Lift Off
I know, it seems like I’ve been leaving for weeks, right? You have no idea how I can work myself up about packing the suitcase, seizing the right moment to buy foreign cash, instructions to leave for interim plant watering volunteers and mail collectors, the slew of emergency numbers-addresses-information-itinerary to disperse to anyone mildly interested.
My buddy The Educated Genealogist and I are of like minds when it comes to travel, especially conference attending. We understand the importance of shoe selection. Colour coordination is everything. Each top has a bottom to go with it. Accessories need infinite consideration. Many bits from the grooming collection must have those zip-lock baggies. All that. It’s advisable to take rest breaks between planning each outfit.
Excellence in suitcase packing is surely a sign of the mature traveller. T-shirts with writing on them are so not cool. For a slice of summertime wardrobe wisdom while away from home, see this delicious photo of senior activists, taken by Marq Frerichs at the recent G20 demonstrations. It appeared in Torontoist’s “Boulevardier” section of their Style Notebook.
We could all use a model for dress code standards. Proving once again, experience = confidence. (Too bad we can't see their sign.)
Mais je digresse. I stare at the suitcase. No apron there yet. The Reeboks went into the suitcase three times, removed for the third time. Packing principle: Heavy, bulky, clumsy, is to wear airborne, not to pack. Sometimes packing principles interfere with style principles. How glam do I look departing from broiling sauna weather in shoes the size of bricks and my heavy, all-purpose winter sweater. I know, it’s not winter over there, but what about evenings north of the 56th parallel.
While I’m not going to a convention, some genealogy is involved. It behooves the profession to look competently put together. A couple of notches above flowered capris. Adding one item means removing another. The dress goes in, one top gets heaved. How many socks should I bring? I can wash them, can’t I? Get rid of the mousse. No, I need it. Where is the insect repellent? Do they wear sandals in the Hebrides?
You can tell that weather has a role in packing. Personally, I am deeply disappointed that The Weather Channel and The Weather Network and Yahoo Weather are unsynchronized and indecisive regarding forecasts and averages. If averages mean anything any more what with climate change. Do I really need the sweltering rain jacket that doesn’t breathe? Ditch that; replace with lightweight folding umbrella.
Don’t forget the gifts. Those little guest soaps cunningly shaped like maple leaves. Uh-oh. What if someone with no English (and my sign-language skills are deficient) tries to eat them? Rush back to the shop and substitute maple sugar candy. Safer.
Staring at the suitcase again. A weight allowance of 23 kg is a challenge when you have books, family history, maps, manuals, and masses of notes. Why do the cords and plugs necessary for electronic sustenance weigh pounds apiece? Find the adaptor. Should I bring the vitamins? How many earrings are enough? Which hat is crushable?
Notice I didn’t mention the Carry-On. Worthy of its very own blog post, but time runneth short. The contents will be on my shoulder or my back for the duration with, of course, all that paper telling me what to do if I become dismembered or lose everything.✱ As long as it contains tranqs for a couple of looooong ferry crossings, I’m good. Assuming I get to meet the North Sea face to face. Don’t stint on the wine, dear flight attendant.
My inner child is screaming. Are we there yet?
✱ Trust me, I am not sending panic emails from Europe asking you for money :-D
My buddy The Educated Genealogist and I are of like minds when it comes to travel, especially conference attending. We understand the importance of shoe selection. Colour coordination is everything. Each top has a bottom to go with it. Accessories need infinite consideration. Many bits from the grooming collection must have those zip-lock baggies. All that. It’s advisable to take rest breaks between planning each outfit.
Excellence in suitcase packing is surely a sign of the mature traveller. T-shirts with writing on them are so not cool. For a slice of summertime wardrobe wisdom while away from home, see this delicious photo of senior activists, taken by Marq Frerichs at the recent G20 demonstrations. It appeared in Torontoist’s “Boulevardier” section of their Style Notebook.
Mais je digresse. I stare at the suitcase. No apron there yet. The Reeboks went into the suitcase three times, removed for the third time. Packing principle: Heavy, bulky, clumsy, is to wear airborne, not to pack. Sometimes packing principles interfere with style principles. How glam do I look departing from broiling sauna weather in shoes the size of bricks and my heavy, all-purpose winter sweater. I know, it’s not winter over there, but what about evenings north of the 56th parallel.
While I’m not going to a convention, some genealogy is involved. It behooves the profession to look competently put together. A couple of notches above flowered capris. Adding one item means removing another. The dress goes in, one top gets heaved. How many socks should I bring? I can wash them, can’t I? Get rid of the mousse. No, I need it. Where is the insect repellent? Do they wear sandals in the Hebrides?
You can tell that weather has a role in packing. Personally, I am deeply disappointed that The Weather Channel and The Weather Network and Yahoo Weather are unsynchronized and indecisive regarding forecasts and averages. If averages mean anything any more what with climate change. Do I really need the sweltering rain jacket that doesn’t breathe? Ditch that; replace with lightweight folding umbrella.
Don’t forget the gifts. Those little guest soaps cunningly shaped like maple leaves. Uh-oh. What if someone with no English (and my sign-language skills are deficient) tries to eat them? Rush back to the shop and substitute maple sugar candy. Safer.
Staring at the suitcase again. A weight allowance of 23 kg is a challenge when you have books, family history, maps, manuals, and masses of notes. Why do the cords and plugs necessary for electronic sustenance weigh pounds apiece? Find the adaptor. Should I bring the vitamins? How many earrings are enough? Which hat is crushable?
Notice I didn’t mention the Carry-On. Worthy of its very own blog post, but time runneth short. The contents will be on my shoulder or my back for the duration with, of course, all that paper telling me what to do if I become dismembered or lose everything.✱ As long as it contains tranqs for a couple of looooong ferry crossings, I’m good. Assuming I get to meet the North Sea face to face. Don’t stint on the wine, dear flight attendant.
My inner child is screaming. Are we there yet?
✱ Trust me, I am not sending panic emails from Europe asking you for money :-D
07 July 2010
Wordless Wednesday
Just the thing for a long flight.
Robert Irwin, Camel (London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 2010).
Not to be confused with
the UK progrock band. But both are nice.
Not to be confused with
30 June 2010
George Porter Part 3: The Rifleman; The Blacksmith
The circle widens around my target, George Porter—George Porter the Prisoner, that is. We don’t know anything about his family and almost nothing about his associates. But there are several what I call Persons of Interest in the same time period and areas. A prior posting for background information is here. More musings ...
The Rifleman
On 12 October 1794, Thomas Small reported to Alexander McKee of the British Indian Department that a rifleman called Porter, “native of Pennsylvania,” had been brought to McKee at Swan Creek.[1] The Americans and the British were still engaged in territorial hostilities up until 1796. The man Porter had information about The Glaize (Indian confederacy headquarters; now Defiance, Ohio) and Fort Defiance. Porter was to be transferred as a prisoner under the care of “Tuscarora George” to Brownstown where Upper Canada’s Lieutenant Governor Simcoe and McKee were due for a meeting with Indian allies. Simcoe had left Newark on 17 September for Detroit and points south to attend. Brownstown was in today’s Wayne County, Michigan, across the river from Amherstburg, Upper Canada.
The Person of Interest Part:
We don’t know this Porter’s first name. After his meeting of 1794 with a reported 2,500 Indians, Simcoe returned to Newark at the end of October. Did Porter accompany Simcoe back to Newark? He was not described as a deserter on either side, so as a civilian perhaps he usefully redeemed himself. Riflemen and other frontiersmen were frequently familiar with Indian tribes and languages. Could he have been hired by military commander Colonel Gordon at Newark after this incident in October 1794? That is, could he be the George Porter later jailed in 1814, or related to him somehow ... the George Porter who was associated with Indians in the western district? He was unlikely to be our George the Carpenter who in 1794 was building his first house in York. There is no George Porter as a head of household in the 1790 census of Pennsylvania.
The Blacksmith
Lebbeus Porter first appears in Newark in 1795, requesting an Upper Canada land grant.[2] He is described as a blacksmith in various documents. On 29 December 1799 he married Ann Adams in Newark.[3] By 1800 he had received a grant in Oxford Township (“Oxford on Thames”) but was having a conflict of claims with Ebenezer Cook.[4] In 1802, he was living in Queenston along the Niagara River.[5] The dispute re land ownership must have been resolved, because Lebbeus sold the south half of lot 15 concession 1 Oxford West Township in November of 1805, when he was a resident of Onondaga, New York.[6] After that, he seems to disappear from the Upper Canada scene. He was apparently one of the petitioners to establish a Masonic Lodge in Salina, New York, in December of 1807.[7]
The Person of Interest Part:
If Internet dabbles are to be believed, men called Lebbeus—and yes, there are several of them—are accounted for in families that expanded from Connecticut and Massachusetts. Superficial exploration does not reveal a Lebbeus with a brother George, nor a space on the multi-branch Porter family tree this particular man would fill.[8] Yet his presence on the Canadian side of the Niagara River coincides closely with George Porter the Carpenter. Lebbeus’ marriage date could mean he was a contemporary in age. So it’s a distant possibility that Lebbeus’ family origins could be George’s origins, probably being no closer than cousins. Nevertheless, George the Carpenter still does not “fit” into known New England families. A weak and undeveloped hypothesis but perhaps deserving of more attention.
NEXT Persons of Interest: The Surveyor! The Doctor! (... hiatus in series till further notice).
[1] E.A. Cruikshank, The Correspondence of Lieut. Governor John Graves Simcoe (Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1931), vol. 5, 113-114. Cruikshank was citing Claus Papers, vol. 6, 229-231.
[2] Upper Canada Land Book A, 1792-1796, p. 232; LAC microfilm C-101.
[3] Dan Walker and Fawne Stratford-Devai, Vital Records of Upper Canada/Canada West, Vol. 1, Part 2, Niagara District, 1792-1849 (Delhi, Ontario: NorSim Research and Publishing, 1999), 114; citing St Marks Anglican (Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario) register of baptisms, marriages and burials,1792-1815. The original register is also available on AO microfilm MS 545 reel 1.
[4] Upper Canada Land Petition, P bundle 5, no. 54, Lebbeus Porter; LAC microfilm C-2489.
[5] Upper Canada Land Book D, 1798-1802, p. 775; LAC microfilm C-101.
[6] Oxford County Deeds, Old Series, nos. 100 and 101, Porter to Nichols; AO microfilm GS 2458.
[7] R.W. Gary Heinmiller, History of Masonry in Onondaga County (http://www.onondagadistrict.org/History.htm : accessed 18 June 2010).
[8] Joseph W. Porter, A Genealogy of the Descendants of Richard Porter, Who Settled at Weymouth, Mass., 1635, and Allied Families (Bangor, ME: Burr & Robinson Printers, 1878), digital images, Google Books (http://books.google.ca : accessed 19 June 2010).
© Brenda Dougall Merriman, 2010
The Rifleman
On 12 October 1794, Thomas Small reported to Alexander McKee of the British Indian Department that a rifleman called Porter, “native of Pennsylvania,” had been brought to McKee at Swan Creek.[1] The Americans and the British were still engaged in territorial hostilities up until 1796. The man Porter had information about The Glaize (Indian confederacy headquarters; now Defiance, Ohio) and Fort Defiance. Porter was to be transferred as a prisoner under the care of “Tuscarora George” to Brownstown where Upper Canada’s Lieutenant Governor Simcoe and McKee were due for a meeting with Indian allies. Simcoe had left Newark on 17 September for Detroit and points south to attend. Brownstown was in today’s Wayne County, Michigan, across the river from Amherstburg, Upper Canada.
The Person of Interest Part:
We don’t know this Porter’s first name. After his meeting of 1794 with a reported 2,500 Indians, Simcoe returned to Newark at the end of October. Did Porter accompany Simcoe back to Newark? He was not described as a deserter on either side, so as a civilian perhaps he usefully redeemed himself. Riflemen and other frontiersmen were frequently familiar with Indian tribes and languages. Could he have been hired by military commander Colonel Gordon at Newark after this incident in October 1794? That is, could he be the George Porter later jailed in 1814, or related to him somehow ... the George Porter who was associated with Indians in the western district? He was unlikely to be our George the Carpenter who in 1794 was building his first house in York. There is no George Porter as a head of household in the 1790 census of Pennsylvania.
The Blacksmith
Lebbeus Porter first appears in Newark in 1795, requesting an Upper Canada land grant.[2] He is described as a blacksmith in various documents. On 29 December 1799 he married Ann Adams in Newark.[3] By 1800 he had received a grant in Oxford Township (“Oxford on Thames”) but was having a conflict of claims with Ebenezer Cook.[4] In 1802, he was living in Queenston along the Niagara River.[5] The dispute re land ownership must have been resolved, because Lebbeus sold the south half of lot 15 concession 1 Oxford West Township in November of 1805, when he was a resident of Onondaga, New York.[6] After that, he seems to disappear from the Upper Canada scene. He was apparently one of the petitioners to establish a Masonic Lodge in Salina, New York, in December of 1807.[7]
The Person of Interest Part:
If Internet dabbles are to be believed, men called Lebbeus—and yes, there are several of them—are accounted for in families that expanded from Connecticut and Massachusetts. Superficial exploration does not reveal a Lebbeus with a brother George, nor a space on the multi-branch Porter family tree this particular man would fill.[8] Yet his presence on the Canadian side of the Niagara River coincides closely with George Porter the Carpenter. Lebbeus’ marriage date could mean he was a contemporary in age. So it’s a distant possibility that Lebbeus’ family origins could be George’s origins, probably being no closer than cousins. Nevertheless, George the Carpenter still does not “fit” into known New England families. A weak and undeveloped hypothesis but perhaps deserving of more attention.
NEXT Persons of Interest: The Surveyor! The Doctor! (... hiatus in series till further notice).
[1] E.A. Cruikshank, The Correspondence of Lieut. Governor John Graves Simcoe (Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1931), vol. 5, 113-114. Cruikshank was citing Claus Papers, vol. 6, 229-231.
[2] Upper Canada Land Book A, 1792-1796, p. 232; LAC microfilm C-101.
[3] Dan Walker and Fawne Stratford-Devai, Vital Records of Upper Canada/Canada West, Vol. 1, Part 2, Niagara District, 1792-1849 (Delhi, Ontario: NorSim Research and Publishing, 1999), 114; citing St Marks Anglican (Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario) register of baptisms, marriages and burials,1792-1815. The original register is also available on AO microfilm MS 545 reel 1.
[4] Upper Canada Land Petition, P bundle 5, no. 54, Lebbeus Porter; LAC microfilm C-2489.
[5] Upper Canada Land Book D, 1798-1802, p. 775; LAC microfilm C-101.
[6] Oxford County Deeds, Old Series, nos. 100 and 101, Porter to Nichols; AO microfilm GS 2458.
[7] R.W. Gary Heinmiller, History of Masonry in Onondaga County (http://www.onondagadistrict.org/History.htm : accessed 18 June 2010).
[8] Joseph W. Porter, A Genealogy of the Descendants of Richard Porter, Who Settled at Weymouth, Mass., 1635, and Allied Families (Bangor, ME: Burr & Robinson Printers, 1878), digital images, Google Books (http://books.google.ca : accessed 19 June 2010).
© Brenda Dougall Merriman, 2010
17 June 2010
Hands On Scotland: Dead Ancestors in Edinburgh
This post isn’t so much about the ancestors per se as it’s about frenzied preparations for two days of research at General Register House in Edinburgh. That’s the one at the east end of Princes Street. As opposed to the one at the west end of Princes Street, imaginatively called West Register House. NAS. National Archives of Scotland. My hotel is thankfully nearby, as memorized from a colourful and distracting street map, so I calculate a maximum 10? minute walk after breakfast heading east. No dallying at shop windows along the way.
Historical Search Room, General Register House, Edinburgh; http://www.nas.gov.uk
Anticipation of an adventure, they say, is half the fun. Who said that, anyway? It may be the only fun. Time constraints allow for two days at NAS, within the specified hours of 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Every minute is precious. Who knows how much time is eaten up with registering (passport type photos required), orientation, filling out forms, and waiting for retrievals and printouts. Never mind the important in-between part of computer and microfilm searching.
My primary research goals are at the one facility. I pursue Donald McFadyen relentlessly in the perhaps mistaken hypothesis that he served in a militia unit during the 1790s. A previous search of the Breadalbane Muniments was negative, so I apply myself to the collections of the Earls of Airlie and Maclaine of Lochbuie. There are muster and pay rolls for the Breadalbane Fencibles and the Argyllshire Volunteers among them. Somewhere among the meters-long shelving of estate papers. White gloves time, I believe.
My Frasers will receive some attention at GRH since my little expedition has been ordered to make an ancestor detour to Killin in Perthshire. Cousin Lizzie paved the way for me—metaphorically speaking—into a village that may have looked like this when our mutual Duncan Fraser (1783-1867) was the village blacksmith.
Monemore Cottages, Killin, Perthshire; postcard.
I go to GRH armed with specific catalogue references. One collection alone took two days of trawling the online finding aid through hundreds of items. This is the fun part? Not that I’m complaining ... thank you, gods of the NAS for the finding aids! The kinks in my neck and shoulder muscles should recover just in time to assist my pilot in keeping the transatlantic Airbus aloft for seven hours (Monty Python helps ... “Always look on the briiight side ...”).
My confidence is still a little shaky that I will understand the accents and vernacular of the native Scots. More archival time eaten up if I embarrass myself by asking them to repeat what they said several times. Or I could pretend to get it the first time, and proceed as if transmission went well. That usually lands me in some hopeless or hilarious (in hindsight) contre-temps but then again it could be a good diversion from intensive, eye-crossing research.
Edinburgh is really the only place on the itinerary that demands absolute research discipline. But only until 4:45 p.m.! What then? The map is mesmerizing. It promises historical sites of sin, depravity, and ancient murder mysteries. Whisky tasting and tartan weaving. Greyfriars Bobby. Campbell’s Close. Grassmarket. Deacon Brodie’s Tavern? Malt Shovel Inn? Ahhh ... the Hebridean Bar; surely a place for Celtic music.
Dominic Beddow and Claire Littlejohn, The Illustrated Edinburgh Map (Harper Collins Publishers Ltd., 2007).
Now that I’ve put myself on the published record, we know there must be follow-up. The netbook may or may not decide to obey me but I have Luddite backup. The adventure will unfold, as my granny never said but someone’s did, the good Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise. Being translated means Icelandic volcano, hold your temper, eh? I mean aye.
Anticipation of an adventure, they say, is half the fun. Who said that, anyway? It may be the only fun. Time constraints allow for two days at NAS, within the specified hours of 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Every minute is precious. Who knows how much time is eaten up with registering (passport type photos required), orientation, filling out forms, and waiting for retrievals and printouts. Never mind the important in-between part of computer and microfilm searching.
My primary research goals are at the one facility. I pursue Donald McFadyen relentlessly in the perhaps mistaken hypothesis that he served in a militia unit during the 1790s. A previous search of the Breadalbane Muniments was negative, so I apply myself to the collections of the Earls of Airlie and Maclaine of Lochbuie. There are muster and pay rolls for the Breadalbane Fencibles and the Argyllshire Volunteers among them. Somewhere among the meters-long shelving of estate papers. White gloves time, I believe.
My Frasers will receive some attention at GRH since my little expedition has been ordered to make an ancestor detour to Killin in Perthshire. Cousin Lizzie paved the way for me—metaphorically speaking—into a village that may have looked like this when our mutual Duncan Fraser (1783-1867) was the village blacksmith.
I go to GRH armed with specific catalogue references. One collection alone took two days of trawling the online finding aid through hundreds of items. This is the fun part? Not that I’m complaining ... thank you, gods of the NAS for the finding aids! The kinks in my neck and shoulder muscles should recover just in time to assist my pilot in keeping the transatlantic Airbus aloft for seven hours (Monty Python helps ... “Always look on the briiight side ...”).
My confidence is still a little shaky that I will understand the accents and vernacular of the native Scots. More archival time eaten up if I embarrass myself by asking them to repeat what they said several times. Or I could pretend to get it the first time, and proceed as if transmission went well. That usually lands me in some hopeless or hilarious (in hindsight) contre-temps but then again it could be a good diversion from intensive, eye-crossing research.
Edinburgh is really the only place on the itinerary that demands absolute research discipline. But only until 4:45 p.m.! What then? The map is mesmerizing. It promises historical sites of sin, depravity, and ancient murder mysteries. Whisky tasting and tartan weaving. Greyfriars Bobby. Campbell’s Close. Grassmarket. Deacon Brodie’s Tavern? Malt Shovel Inn? Ahhh ... the Hebridean Bar; surely a place for Celtic music.
Now that I’ve put myself on the published record, we know there must be follow-up. The netbook may or may not decide to obey me but I have Luddite backup. The adventure will unfold, as my granny never said but someone’s did, the good Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise. Being translated means Icelandic volcano, hold your temper, eh? I mean aye.
04 June 2010
McFadyen Part 12
My previous post here outlined my ancestor identification problem, despite having a rather serendipitous resource to work with. For those who have satisfactorily identified an ancestor in the 1776 list for the Isle of Coll, a bigger leap is back to 1716, the next list (of adult males). That’s a duration of sixty years, about two generations.
How likely is it that an adult male in 1716 would be present in 1776? Um ... only if he were about 75 years old or over, right?! More likely that one of the McFadyens in 1716 was the father or even the grandfather of one of the parent candidates of 1776, of my Donald-the-pensioned-soldier.
Personal names of my Donald’s sons are all I have to make rather wild speculations. They were:
Lachlan (1798), Angus (1801), Roderick (ca.1802), Hector (ca.1809), John (1816), Donald (ca.1818).
The 1716 list for the Isle of Coll was created following the successful suppression of the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion.[1] The Sheriff of Argyll and his assistants tallied and supervised the disarming of male inhabitants in his districts, including the western islands. The surrender of Maclean officers on Coll took place at Breacachadh Castle. The result listed all males of military age on Coll whether they had taken part in the rebellion or not. One of those McFadyens in 1716 was almost certainly my ancestor. Who were the men? As distilled (without the slight notations), the list shows:[2]
• Donald Mcphaden at Breckachie [Breacachadh];
• Angus Mcphaden, a confessed rebel sick at ffell [Feall];
• Hugh Roy Mcffaden at ffell;
• Angus McPhaden in Breckachie;
• Angus Mcffaden his son at ffell;
• Charles Roy (ruadh) at Ardnish.
All of these men were located in proximity to the Maclean castle stronghold, supporting their historical allegiance to Maclean of Coll and some, no doubt, members of his traditional bodyguard.
What can I tell from this list? Going by naming customs alone, one of those four men (in bold) could be my Donald’s grandfather, or even great-grandfather. The names Hugh and Charles did not pass down in my line. None of the three candidates for Donald’s parents in 1776 lived in one of those mentioned townships, and one candidate was deceased at the time, forever un-named. Because parish recording virtually begin in 1776, there is no way to attempt true analysis in the depths of the eighteenth century. The fragments of parish entries 1733-1735, when patronymics were still being used sporadically, are not of help.
Trying to make rational hypotheses in eighteenth century Collach families is where the proverbial brick meets wall. Too many gaps for reasonable connections. Some of that vaunted Highland oral family history would be welcome right about now. Oh, where to find a genuine McFadyen sennachie?
[1] Nicholas Maclean-Bristol, editor, Inhabitants of the Inner Isles Morvern and Ardnamurchan, 1716 (Edinburgh: Scottish Record Society, 1998), 164-166. The source of the list is in Sheriff Court Records of Argyll, SC 54/22/54, National Archives of Scotland.
[2] Maclean-Bristol, “Special MacFadyen Issue,” West Highland Notes & Queries, Series 3, No. 5, November 2002, 4.
How likely is it that an adult male in 1716 would be present in 1776? Um ... only if he were about 75 years old or over, right?! More likely that one of the McFadyens in 1716 was the father or even the grandfather of one of the parent candidates of 1776, of my Donald-the-pensioned-soldier.
Personal names of my Donald’s sons are all I have to make rather wild speculations. They were:
Lachlan (1798), Angus (1801), Roderick (ca.1802), Hector (ca.1809), John (1816), Donald (ca.1818).
The 1716 list for the Isle of Coll was created following the successful suppression of the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion.[1] The Sheriff of Argyll and his assistants tallied and supervised the disarming of male inhabitants in his districts, including the western islands. The surrender of Maclean officers on Coll took place at Breacachadh Castle. The result listed all males of military age on Coll whether they had taken part in the rebellion or not. One of those McFadyens in 1716 was almost certainly my ancestor. Who were the men? As distilled (without the slight notations), the list shows:[2]
• Donald Mcphaden at Breckachie [Breacachadh];
• Angus Mcphaden, a confessed rebel sick at ffell [Feall];
• Hugh Roy Mcffaden at ffell;
• Angus McPhaden in Breckachie;
• Angus Mcffaden his son at ffell;
• Charles Roy (ruadh) at Ardnish.
All of these men were located in proximity to the Maclean castle stronghold, supporting their historical allegiance to Maclean of Coll and some, no doubt, members of his traditional bodyguard.
What can I tell from this list? Going by naming customs alone, one of those four men (in bold) could be my Donald’s grandfather, or even great-grandfather. The names Hugh and Charles did not pass down in my line. None of the three candidates for Donald’s parents in 1776 lived in one of those mentioned townships, and one candidate was deceased at the time, forever un-named. Because parish recording virtually begin in 1776, there is no way to attempt true analysis in the depths of the eighteenth century. The fragments of parish entries 1733-1735, when patronymics were still being used sporadically, are not of help.
Trying to make rational hypotheses in eighteenth century Collach families is where the proverbial brick meets wall. Too many gaps for reasonable connections. Some of that vaunted Highland oral family history would be welcome right about now. Oh, where to find a genuine McFadyen sennachie?
[1] Nicholas Maclean-Bristol, editor, Inhabitants of the Inner Isles Morvern and Ardnamurchan, 1716 (Edinburgh: Scottish Record Society, 1998), 164-166. The source of the list is in Sheriff Court Records of Argyll, SC 54/22/54, National Archives of Scotland.
[2] Maclean-Bristol, “Special MacFadyen Issue,” West Highland Notes & Queries, Series 3, No. 5, November 2002, 4.
29 May 2010
Habeus Corpus
One little “back story” illustrates—for the uninitiated—the trail a diligent family historian must sometimes follow to reach the authentic source for one fact. Citing a source gives the reader of the family history an idea of how grounded that fact is, how much weight it carries as evidence. It tells the reader what the source is, who created it, and where it is.
The fact I needed to verify was:
George Porter the prisoner was released from the York Jail in July 1814 on a writ of habeus corpus.
Where did that piece of information—that fact—come from? I first saw it in a typescript monograph and could have cited it as my source:
Charles Black, "Register of Persons Connected with High Treason, During the War of 1812 With the U.S.A" (monograph, 1926); Archives of Ontario, MU 1368.
Some researchers might stop here as having cited an “authority,” but was it really? What Black did was compile a list of people. A compilation is derived from material in a prior existing source. There was no footnote or citation to where he obtained the information. However, in his text, Black made reference to “AO Term Book, steel case 7” which seemed to apply to the fact I wanted.
Therefore I might have elaborated my citation as:
Charles Black, "Register of Persons Connected with High Treason, During the War of 1812 With the U.S.A" (monograph, 1926), Archives of Ontario, MU 1368; citing AO Term Book, steel case 7.
That sounds more authoritative to the reader, n’est-ce pas? But does it tell the reader what the source actually is? What was it Charles Black actually viewed to give him that information? One asks oneself, what is an AO Term Book? What is a “steel case 7”? Most readers would be nonplused to judge the merit of such a source. Or where it is located.
How to proceed from there? Well, I suspected the AO referred to Archives of Ontario (although the designation is also used for [British] Audit Office archival material). Then it seemed logical that only a judge could have issued such a writ. I knew from experience with provincial records that the Court of King’s Bench handled treason cases. Into the finding aid I went for Archives of Ontario’s court records. Yes, term books exist for the right period. Then a trip to see the source on site. No steel cases, though. The original books are now housed in acid free boxes, and I found what I wanted in box 7.
My eventually footnoted citation should probably appear something like this:
Upper Canada, Court of King’s Bench, Rough Term Books, 1794-1855, Book 7 (1812-1816), 14 July 1814: Decor, Fowler, and Porter; Archives of Ontario (AO), RG 22-127-0-7.
The rough term books are transcripts of court clerks’ records of decisions from the judicial bench. They are the closest contemporary records we have for trial results, since detailed trial proceedings—as we know them today—rarely exist in the nineteenth century. Hopefully that citation will tell the reader that a court record is a sound source to support my fact, and provides the necessary information for retrieval of the same.
Tracking ancestors is not all a family historian sometimes has to do. Tracking the provenance of a piece of information sometimes becomes necessary and is good research practice. Thanks for the clue, Mr. Black, but not for the prolonged hunt!
The fact I needed to verify was:
George Porter the prisoner was released from the York Jail in July 1814 on a writ of habeus corpus.
Where did that piece of information—that fact—come from? I first saw it in a typescript monograph and could have cited it as my source:
Charles Black, "Register of Persons Connected with High Treason, During the War of 1812 With the U.S.A" (monograph, 1926); Archives of Ontario, MU 1368.
Some researchers might stop here as having cited an “authority,” but was it really? What Black did was compile a list of people. A compilation is derived from material in a prior existing source. There was no footnote or citation to where he obtained the information. However, in his text, Black made reference to “AO Term Book, steel case 7” which seemed to apply to the fact I wanted.
Therefore I might have elaborated my citation as:
Charles Black, "Register of Persons Connected with High Treason, During the War of 1812 With the U.S.A" (monograph, 1926), Archives of Ontario, MU 1368; citing AO Term Book, steel case 7.
That sounds more authoritative to the reader, n’est-ce pas? But does it tell the reader what the source actually is? What was it Charles Black actually viewed to give him that information? One asks oneself, what is an AO Term Book? What is a “steel case 7”? Most readers would be nonplused to judge the merit of such a source. Or where it is located.
How to proceed from there? Well, I suspected the AO referred to Archives of Ontario (although the designation is also used for [British] Audit Office archival material). Then it seemed logical that only a judge could have issued such a writ. I knew from experience with provincial records that the Court of King’s Bench handled treason cases. Into the finding aid I went for Archives of Ontario’s court records. Yes, term books exist for the right period. Then a trip to see the source on site. No steel cases, though. The original books are now housed in acid free boxes, and I found what I wanted in box 7.
My eventually footnoted citation should probably appear something like this:
Upper Canada, Court of King’s Bench, Rough Term Books, 1794-1855, Book 7 (1812-1816), 14 July 1814: Decor, Fowler, and Porter; Archives of Ontario (AO), RG 22-127-0-7.
The rough term books are transcripts of court clerks’ records of decisions from the judicial bench. They are the closest contemporary records we have for trial results, since detailed trial proceedings—as we know them today—rarely exist in the nineteenth century. Hopefully that citation will tell the reader that a court record is a sound source to support my fact, and provides the necessary information for retrieval of the same.
Tracking ancestors is not all a family historian sometimes has to do. Tracking the provenance of a piece of information sometimes becomes necessary and is good research practice. Thanks for the clue, Mr. Black, but not for the prolonged hunt!
23 May 2010
12 May 2010
More George Porter: The Carpenter, The Prisoner
Turn-of-the-nineteenth-century George Porter in Upper Canada: One man, or two? Or three? Almost every researcher who pursues ancestry beyond their grandparents will find an example of this classic genealogical problem—“same name” occurrences in one general vicinity and time frame. The attempt to identify same-name individuals in any documented circumstances can lead into unexpected research routes and complicated associations. Previous posts outlined some of the known life of George Porter whom I will call The Carpenter: building one of the first dwellings in the town of York, and comparing his signatures with a later George Porter.
Alert readers generally concurred that the signature comparison seems to indicate two men, even if only by the formation of the capital G initial. And yet ... one G (in 1796) seems to “match” the 1814 signature. It’s on a petition stating George (The Carpenter) has a 26x18 dwelling frame ready for a York town lot. Not enough to assert that the later man might have been “our” George The Carpenter, returning like a ghost from an absence of fifteen years. If they are indeed two different men, their origins and ultimate fates are still a blank. Birth, parents, spouse, and death are the missing primary information in all but one instance.
The Carpenter
Most of the information in prior posts is not repeated here, but George Porter was evident in Newark and York between 1792 and 1799.[1] Self-described as a carpenter and a former sergeant of militia, he was busy claiming town lots in both communities while inhabiting a farm on the outskirts of York on the Don River. In 1795 a man of this name received a preliminary location ticket for lot 5 concession 3 in York Township.[2]
Only one George Porter ever shows up in the early York population lists which begin 1797. By the time he disappeared, George left behind in York his wife Dorothy (Vanalstine) Porter and three surviving small children. His wife may have remarried and lived out her days in Thorold Township on the Niagara peninsula. One of George’s post facto in-laws by marriage was Benjamin Fairchild, an interpreter in the Indian Department. [3]
The Prisoner
George Porter was in the York jail in February 1814, accused of stealing Indian property in the aftermath of General Procter’s 1813 retreat from the western settlements (again: here). The events for which he was arrested apparently took place in the Lake Erie area, London District. Several clues in his petition asking to be released were interesting.[4]
One, he said he’d been in the province for 20 years, which takes him back to 1794.
Two, he said he’d been recommended as a civilian employee to Colonel Gordon of the 26th Regiment. Gordon was the commander of the “upper” frontier posts for an undetermined time in the early 1790s.[5] Newark was a hub for the military presence. Carnochan reports Gordon’s attendance, along with Governor Simcoe, at an important Indian meeting in 1792 in Newark. [6] Gordon returned to Newark for the duration of the War of 1812. He had transferred to the Royal Scots regiment, on duty at Fort George. So George The Prisoner could have met with Col. Gordon before/during the War, ... or in the early 1790s.
Three, George said he’d been granted lot 5 concession 1 in York Township, a strikingly similar description to what was supposedly one of The Carpenter’s claims in 1795. Was the slight change in concession number maybe a memory lapse after some twenty years? Whatever, lot 5 in the 1st concession east of Yonge Street “with broken front East of the River Don” was firmly in the hands of a William Cooper from 1794 to 1799.[7]
Four, George’s petition—a number of lines on the right hand side drifting into illegibility—referred to “one dagard[,] a person who had left his family at P[resk] Isle and came there and Lived with a squaw ...”. Essentially, he blamed “Dagard’s” woman for his current incarceration.
Indications are that this man had spent time in Newark (and possibly York) before 1800. His close association with Indians during the War of 1812 may have developed much, much earlier. He is quite likely the man in Delaware Township, London District, in 1809, owing a small tax.[8] George The Prisoner was released on 15 July 1814 by the Court of King’s Bench on a writ of habeus corpus, along with Joseph Fowler and Jacob Decowr (sic), all of the London District.[9] Clearly, their offenses were insignificant relative to the hanging that some traitors faced. One wonders if “Decor” could be interpreted as “Dagard.”
You can spot many puzzling and frustrating items in the stories thus far. It would seem doubtful to us that a man would desert his family in York only to have the nerve to start another life off in the London District. Word would get around! And yet while they seem like two different men, there are potential (real?) intersections in their lives.
Disclaimer: This is an exercise to keep the brain fog at bay; I have no vested interest in the characters. Maybe a proper article will eventually form itself from this intermittent series of musings. Reasonably exhaustive research sometimes looks endless. In order keep this post a reasonable length, more posts will be upcoming as the circle widens around the targets.
NEXT: Persons of Interest: The Rifleman! The Surveyor! The Blacksmith! The Doctor!
... all Porters, all in the same places.
[1] Nassau District Land Board minutes (1792), Vol 5, p. 180; LAC microfilm C-14027. Upper Canada land petitions P Misc/16, Vol 390; P2/43, Vol 400; P2/30, Vol 400; P4/18, Vol 400a; P4/17, Vol. 400a; P Misc/29, Vol. 399; LAC microfilms C-2484, C-2489, C-2488. Christine Mosser, ed., York, Upper Canada, Minutes of Town Meetings and List of Inhabitants, 1797-1823 (Toronto: Metropolitan Toronto Library Board, 1984), 5 & 13.
[2] Archives of Ontario, Ontario Land Records Index. York Township Papers for concessions 1 and 3 do not contain any reference to a George Porter.
[3] St Marks Anglican (Niagara-on-the-Lake) registers, Fairchild-Muir marriage (1806); AO, MS 545 reel 1. (Margaret Vanalstine was previously married to John Muir). Benjamin Fairchild, death notice, Christian Guardian, 11 April 1838, p. 91.
[4] Correspondence of the Civil Secretary (Upper Canada Sundries), RG 5, A 1, pp. 7871-7872; LAC microfilm C-4543.
[5] “Infantry I: Regiments of Foot 1st through 50th,” British Regiments in Canada (http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~crossroads/regiments/regiments-infantry.html :
accessed 28 April 2010). The 26th was stationed in Canada and Nova Scotia from 1787 to 1800. The Royal Scots served throughout the War of 1812.
[6] Janet Carnochan, History of Niagara (1914; reprint Belleville, Ontario: Mika Publishing, 1973), 191-192; citing “Michigan Historical Society publications.” Gordon is not mentioned in Indian meetings at Newark in 1793 or 1795.
[7] Cooper’s survey and warrant, York Township Papers, pp. 36-39, AO, MS 658 reel 533.
[8] Alexander Fraser, ed., “Minutes of the Court of General Quarter Sessions of the Peace for the London District, 1800-1809, 1813-1818,” Twenty-Second Report of the Department of Public Records and Archives of Ontario (Toronto: Legislative Assembly of Ontario, 1934), 120.
[9] Court of King’s Bench, Rough Term Books (1812-1816), AO, RG 22-127-0-7. Actual trial proceedings have not survived from this era.
© Brenda Dougall Merriman, 2010
Alert readers generally concurred that the signature comparison seems to indicate two men, even if only by the formation of the capital G initial. And yet ... one G (in 1796) seems to “match” the 1814 signature. It’s on a petition stating George (The Carpenter) has a 26x18 dwelling frame ready for a York town lot. Not enough to assert that the later man might have been “our” George The Carpenter, returning like a ghost from an absence of fifteen years. If they are indeed two different men, their origins and ultimate fates are still a blank. Birth, parents, spouse, and death are the missing primary information in all but one instance.
The Carpenter
Most of the information in prior posts is not repeated here, but George Porter was evident in Newark and York between 1792 and 1799.[1] Self-described as a carpenter and a former sergeant of militia, he was busy claiming town lots in both communities while inhabiting a farm on the outskirts of York on the Don River. In 1795 a man of this name received a preliminary location ticket for lot 5 concession 3 in York Township.[2]
Only one George Porter ever shows up in the early York population lists which begin 1797. By the time he disappeared, George left behind in York his wife Dorothy (Vanalstine) Porter and three surviving small children. His wife may have remarried and lived out her days in Thorold Township on the Niagara peninsula. One of George’s post facto in-laws by marriage was Benjamin Fairchild, an interpreter in the Indian Department. [3]
The Prisoner
George Porter was in the York jail in February 1814, accused of stealing Indian property in the aftermath of General Procter’s 1813 retreat from the western settlements (again: here). The events for which he was arrested apparently took place in the Lake Erie area, London District. Several clues in his petition asking to be released were interesting.[4]
One, he said he’d been in the province for 20 years, which takes him back to 1794.
Two, he said he’d been recommended as a civilian employee to Colonel Gordon of the 26th Regiment. Gordon was the commander of the “upper” frontier posts for an undetermined time in the early 1790s.[5] Newark was a hub for the military presence. Carnochan reports Gordon’s attendance, along with Governor Simcoe, at an important Indian meeting in 1792 in Newark. [6] Gordon returned to Newark for the duration of the War of 1812. He had transferred to the Royal Scots regiment, on duty at Fort George. So George The Prisoner could have met with Col. Gordon before/during the War, ... or in the early 1790s.
Three, George said he’d been granted lot 5 concession 1 in York Township, a strikingly similar description to what was supposedly one of The Carpenter’s claims in 1795. Was the slight change in concession number maybe a memory lapse after some twenty years? Whatever, lot 5 in the 1st concession east of Yonge Street “with broken front East of the River Don” was firmly in the hands of a William Cooper from 1794 to 1799.[7]
Four, George’s petition—a number of lines on the right hand side drifting into illegibility—referred to “one dagard[,] a person who had left his family at P[resk] Isle and came there and Lived with a squaw ...”. Essentially, he blamed “Dagard’s” woman for his current incarceration.
Indications are that this man had spent time in Newark (and possibly York) before 1800. His close association with Indians during the War of 1812 may have developed much, much earlier. He is quite likely the man in Delaware Township, London District, in 1809, owing a small tax.[8] George The Prisoner was released on 15 July 1814 by the Court of King’s Bench on a writ of habeus corpus, along with Joseph Fowler and Jacob Deco
You can spot many puzzling and frustrating items in the stories thus far. It would seem doubtful to us that a man would desert his family in York only to have the nerve to start another life off in the London District. Word would get around! And yet while they seem like two different men, there are potential (real?) intersections in their lives.
Disclaimer: This is an exercise to keep the brain fog at bay; I have no vested interest in the characters. Maybe a proper article will eventually form itself from this intermittent series of musings. Reasonably exhaustive research sometimes looks endless. In order keep this post a reasonable length, more posts will be upcoming as the circle widens around the targets.
NEXT: Persons of Interest: The Rifleman! The Surveyor! The Blacksmith! The Doctor!
... all Porters, all in the same places.
[1] Nassau District Land Board minutes (1792), Vol 5, p. 180; LAC microfilm C-14027. Upper Canada land petitions P Misc/16, Vol 390; P2/43, Vol 400; P2/30, Vol 400; P4/18, Vol 400a; P4/17, Vol. 400a; P Misc/29, Vol. 399; LAC microfilms C-2484, C-2489, C-2488. Christine Mosser, ed., York, Upper Canada, Minutes of Town Meetings and List of Inhabitants, 1797-1823 (Toronto: Metropolitan Toronto Library Board, 1984), 5 & 13.
[2] Archives of Ontario, Ontario Land Records Index. York Township Papers for concessions 1 and 3 do not contain any reference to a George Porter.
[3] St Marks Anglican (Niagara-on-the-Lake) registers, Fairchild-Muir marriage (1806); AO, MS 545 reel 1. (Margaret Vanalstine was previously married to John Muir). Benjamin Fairchild, death notice, Christian Guardian, 11 April 1838, p. 91.
[4] Correspondence of the Civil Secretary (Upper Canada Sundries), RG 5, A 1, pp. 7871-7872; LAC microfilm C-4543.
[5] “Infantry I: Regiments of Foot 1st through 50th,” British Regiments in Canada (http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~crossroads/regiments/regiments-infantry.html :
accessed 28 April 2010). The 26th was stationed in Canada and Nova Scotia from 1787 to 1800. The Royal Scots served throughout the War of 1812.
[6] Janet Carnochan, History of Niagara (1914; reprint Belleville, Ontario: Mika Publishing, 1973), 191-192; citing “Michigan Historical Society publications.” Gordon is not mentioned in Indian meetings at Newark in 1793 or 1795.
[7] Cooper’s survey and warrant, York Township Papers, pp. 36-39, AO, MS 658 reel 533.
[8] Alexander Fraser, ed., “Minutes of the Court of General Quarter Sessions of the Peace for the London District, 1800-1809, 1813-1818,” Twenty-Second Report of the Department of Public Records and Archives of Ontario (Toronto: Legislative Assembly of Ontario, 1934), 120.
[9] Court of King’s Bench, Rough Term Books (1812-1816), AO, RG 22-127-0-7. Actual trial proceedings have not survived from this era.
© Brenda Dougall Merriman, 2010
29 April 2010
27 April 2010
Otto Freibergs Redux
Sveiks! This older post has been updated for the 28th edition of the Carnival of Central and East European Genealogy, ... "War Stories." Hosted by Discovering Latvian Roots, I am bound to support Antra who has been immensely enlightening and helpful! Her blog and her projects are models for those of us separated from ancestors by distance and language.
15 April 2010
The Enigmatic George Porter
Comparing signatures to help identify ancestors is an interesting technique for family historians when faced with two or more ancestors bearing the same name. Obviously, one must have some existing documentation to enable such an evaluation. And even if a signature match looks good, it’s not strong enough evidence to stand alone, for sure.
I’m requesting assistance (issuing a challenge?) for some sharp eyes and/or students of paleography. First, the background.
George Porter was active in the town of York (later Toronto) and Newark (Niagara-on-the-Lake) between 1792 and 1799. He was the only George Porter around in those earliest days of Upper Canada (Ontario). He married, had four children, and disappeared without leaving any recorded trace of such events. What we do have are the numerous petitions he made to government authorities in order to acquire land in the developing province. And some bare-bones population lists for York.
George was self-described as a former sergeant of militia and a carpenter. Unhappily for us, no-one recorded where the militia service occurred. Because he first appeared on the Niagara peninsula, a logical suspicion is that he crossed over from New York State. That leaves his prior origins open to several eastern U.S. states or even beyond. He never claimed to be a Loyalist which is “negative information” and helpful in its own way. The timing in 1792 coincides with Lieutenant Governor Simcoe’s appeal to Americans to come and settle on free land in Upper Canada.
Two of George’s sons were named David and Augustus. It’s very tempting to connect George to Porter descendants of a Connecticut family where the same forenames occur. Tempting, but George does not seem to slot nicely into that family’s framework. This, despite the fact that an Augustus Porter was his contemporary, a surveyor who worked for the Holland Land Company at one time, and became a prosperous pioneer along the American side of the Niagara River.
When George disappeared by 1800 from the town of York (and everywhere else inasmuch as current searching ascertains), he left a wife and three surviving children. There’s a good deal of mystery about the wife/widow which is a whole ’nother story. The Porter children are largely unaccounted for until they began marrying in York from 1816 onward.
To the point here (click to enlarge).
George Porter petition, Correspondence of the Civil Secretary (Upper Canada Sundries), RG 5, A 1, pp. 7871-7872; Library and Archives Canada microfilm C-4543.
The signatures on the left were made by our George Porter on his various land petitions at Newark or York. The signature on the right was made by a man who “appeared” in the London District, fourteen years after George disappeared. Could George in 1814 be the same man? I’m conflicted. Tell me what you think about the signatures.
I might be happy if the consensus is NO—George remains lost and I have only the wife/widow problem to deal with. I might be happier if the consensus is YES—but the mystery would only deepen.
The context for the man of 1814 does him little credit. He was in jail for illegal possession of cattle and horses, taken from some Indians during General Procter’s 1813 retreat from the invading Americans. It was all a misunderstanding, George said, and au contraire, he was saving the livestock from the enemy. He rambled on about the Indian who “gave” him the animals—a man who had deserted his family—how he, George, had been assisting impoverished Indians, how he could even reclaim some government cattle from among them, and would like to join the government’s Indian Department. George was doing his level best for a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Despite the poor condition of the document, a few names were decipherable that looked like clues for further research. But his reference to the commander of the 26th regiment—to whom he had allegedly been recommended for a civilian job—was very strange. The 26th regiment was nowhere near Upper Canada during the War of 1812 from everything I can gather!
Digging into abstruse records with potential genealogical value continues. The Upper Canada Sundries consist of correspondence received by the province’s Civil Secretary. One hopes to find outgoing correspondence relating to this case. If only the Archives of Ontario would find the missing papers of General Drummond, administrator of Upper Canada in that period! This case is not over yet.
2011 Note: I've no idea why this illustration disappeared from the blog for some time. It's been re-inserted 27 March 2011.
I’m requesting assistance (issuing a challenge?) for some sharp eyes and/or students of paleography. First, the background.
George Porter was active in the town of York (later Toronto) and Newark (Niagara-on-the-Lake) between 1792 and 1799. He was the only George Porter around in those earliest days of Upper Canada (Ontario). He married, had four children, and disappeared without leaving any recorded trace of such events. What we do have are the numerous petitions he made to government authorities in order to acquire land in the developing province. And some bare-bones population lists for York.
George was self-described as a former sergeant of militia and a carpenter. Unhappily for us, no-one recorded where the militia service occurred. Because he first appeared on the Niagara peninsula, a logical suspicion is that he crossed over from New York State. That leaves his prior origins open to several eastern U.S. states or even beyond. He never claimed to be a Loyalist which is “negative information” and helpful in its own way. The timing in 1792 coincides with Lieutenant Governor Simcoe’s appeal to Americans to come and settle on free land in Upper Canada.
Two of George’s sons were named David and Augustus. It’s very tempting to connect George to Porter descendants of a Connecticut family where the same forenames occur. Tempting, but George does not seem to slot nicely into that family’s framework. This, despite the fact that an Augustus Porter was his contemporary, a surveyor who worked for the Holland Land Company at one time, and became a prosperous pioneer along the American side of the Niagara River.
When George disappeared by 1800 from the town of York (and everywhere else inasmuch as current searching ascertains), he left a wife and three surviving children. There’s a good deal of mystery about the wife/widow which is a whole ’nother story. The Porter children are largely unaccounted for until they began marrying in York from 1816 onward.
To the point here (click to enlarge).
The signatures on the left were made by our George Porter on his various land petitions at Newark or York. The signature on the right was made by a man who “appeared” in the London District, fourteen years after George disappeared. Could George in 1814 be the same man? I’m conflicted. Tell me what you think about the signatures.
I might be happy if the consensus is NO—George remains lost and I have only the wife/widow problem to deal with. I might be happier if the consensus is YES—but the mystery would only deepen.
The context for the man of 1814 does him little credit. He was in jail for illegal possession of cattle and horses, taken from some Indians during General Procter’s 1813 retreat from the invading Americans. It was all a misunderstanding, George said, and au contraire, he was saving the livestock from the enemy. He rambled on about the Indian who “gave” him the animals—a man who had deserted his family—how he, George, had been assisting impoverished Indians, how he could even reclaim some government cattle from among them, and would like to join the government’s Indian Department. George was doing his level best for a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Despite the poor condition of the document, a few names were decipherable that looked like clues for further research. But his reference to the commander of the 26th regiment—to whom he had allegedly been recommended for a civilian job—was very strange. The 26th regiment was nowhere near Upper Canada during the War of 1812 from everything I can gather!
Digging into abstruse records with potential genealogical value continues. The Upper Canada Sundries consist of correspondence received by the province’s Civil Secretary. One hopes to find outgoing correspondence relating to this case. If only the Archives of Ontario would find the missing papers of General Drummond, administrator of Upper Canada in that period! This case is not over yet.
2011 Note: I've no idea why this illustration disappeared from the blog for some time. It's been re-inserted 27 March 2011.
11 April 2010
(Almost) Silent Sundays
C2 often laments the lack of public art in Halifax. Here's one for her:
18 Yonge Street, Toronto; photograph BDM March 2010.
04 April 2010
Fashion Fads
The 9th Edition Carnival of Canadian Genealogy features “Canadian Fashion Fads.” Hosted by Looking4Ancestors, all the entries will be presented after 16 April. Bet this will attract a ton of submissions. This post could have some appropriateness for Easter when it was customary to don a new bonnet to go to church and/or walk about town in expectation of fine weather.
Any females amongst us remember fuzzy synthetic sweaters in the 1950s? Ancestors of today’s fleece tops? I was almost hysterical because my mother deemed them firetraps that could scorch me to death (honour thy parents won the day). Ditto the short-lived must-have very see-through sleazy nylon blouses. One had to have a wardrobe of slips for modesty’s sake with said short-lived fashion moment. Remember slips? Having to wear one so your skirt or dress wouldn’t cling? ... youngsters now shaking their puzzled heads at life before the great jeans revolution.
Instead I feel much more inclined to highlight a more bygone era which produced fashion substantial enough for the occasional modern lapse into retro nostalgia. When girls wore GIRL things. When some of them had mothers who made their clothes and had to suffer wearing them.
My mother posed for this ca.1925 so all the relatives back in Europe could admire the couture. I can’t say how Canadian it was, what with maternal grandmother probably sewing her fingers to the bone over her imported fashion magazines. Somehow I sense that Mom might have had hysterics at the thought of wearing this to where? School? Check the cool shoes. Where on earth did they come from? Not Thunder Bay.
This must have been a little later. The teenager posed for another demonstration of the good life in Canada. Despite the solemn pose, you can see the flapper era beginning with all the influences it spread. Fab hat! Grandma was really knocking herself out.
Mom in the 1930s (the overseas relatives are insatiable). I try hard to imagine what that coat was made of. And hey, is that a precursor on her head of the trapper’s hat popular today? Nevertheless, I think this girl just wants to go places and have fun.
Fast forward to matron status. I just had to show this. Taken by a street photographer in Vancouver, 1940s. Remember street photographers? It must have been windy. Otherwise that would have been a very strange hat. But get a load of the furs. A load of foxes. Where are they now? I could use a few to stop the drafts in my window. Anyone recognize the Vancouver street?
So ends a little venture into Canadian fashion of one era. Until I can find some of those 50s and 60s amusements. Almost makes me yearn for the days of dressing up to go to balls. You supported those events because they were good causes and you did glamour. Now we mostly get glamour vicariously from celebrity watching.
Any females amongst us remember fuzzy synthetic sweaters in the 1950s? Ancestors of today’s fleece tops? I was almost hysterical because my mother deemed them firetraps that could scorch me to death (honour thy parents won the day). Ditto the short-lived must-have very see-through sleazy nylon blouses. One had to have a wardrobe of slips for modesty’s sake with said short-lived fashion moment. Remember slips? Having to wear one so your skirt or dress wouldn’t cling? ... youngsters now shaking their puzzled heads at life before the great jeans revolution.
Instead I feel much more inclined to highlight a more bygone era which produced fashion substantial enough for the occasional modern lapse into retro nostalgia. When girls wore GIRL things. When some of them had mothers who made their clothes and had to suffer wearing them.
My mother posed for this ca.1925 so all the relatives back in Europe could admire the couture. I can’t say how Canadian it was, what with maternal grandmother probably sewing her fingers to the bone over her imported fashion magazines. Somehow I sense that Mom might have had hysterics at the thought of wearing this to where? School? Check the cool shoes. Where on earth did they come from? Not Thunder Bay.
So ends a little venture into Canadian fashion of one era. Until I can find some of those 50s and 60s amusements. Almost makes me yearn for the days of dressing up to go to balls. You supported those events because they were good causes and you did glamour. Now we mostly get glamour vicariously from celebrity watching.
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