Aunt Lucy was my Mom's aunt and she was my Grandma's sister.
Aunt Lucy was a very tiny English lady who was very able to look after herself. She wore her iron gray coat and hat...a straw hat in the summer and felt hat in the winter. She always wore a substantial pair of shoes.
In the late 40's early 50's Aunt Lucy visited our place every year...usually late fall. A series of letters would be exchanged and arrangements made. Aunt Lucy would be picked up from the train. She had two large and heavy suitcases. We liked to see her come as she was a great visitor. She was a talker and had lots of stories.
After a ten days or two weeks she would move a couple of hundred miles down the line to where her twin daughters and grandchildren lived.
She would stay there about a month and then travel to the west coast. There she had two sisters and a son. She went from place to place and visited and in the late winter she would travel back to Winnipeg.
To us kids there were mysteries. We didn't know what happened to her husband. We didn't know how she made a living. We didn't know how she became this tiny independent English lady.
As kids we didn't know much about aunt Lucy .
So why am I telling you this. I recently got Ancestry and found aunt Lucy and a bit about her life so I can piece together a story about her.
She came to Canada in about 1900 and they decided to farm as there was lots of good cheap land. In 1914 she was left as a widow with five children with her youngest child only two years old. I'm not sure what she did after that but records show that she was in the same area as the farm. Somehow she raised 5 kids. I would guess that she received some support from relatives.
Later on she moved to Winnipeg as some of her children lived there. Now When she visited us and went on to the coast she probably still lived with family as she was able to leave her place.
So with a little inference it was fun to put together more of aunt Lucy's life.
So far with ancestry I've found much more than I thought I would. I know I won't find any famous or high class people. The people on my Dad's side of the family were peasants who farmed. The people on my mother's side seem to have been farm workers in England. For example, my Grandpa did butchering. When a farmer was going to butcher an animal my grandfather was called and did the job.
