ANCESTRY

     A few posts ago I told you that I had started looking into my ancestry. There were some questions that I wanted answers for.

    It's taken me some time to learn the system. Slowly I'm learning how to bump into things and find what is there.

   I was always curious as to why my Great Grandpa on my Dad's side did not have relatives here except for his own family. He came to this country in 1902 and over the years brought all of his seven adult children here. I did not hear anything about any of Great Grandpa's siblings. Had they come to North America and gone to the states and were lost track of? I think they could all read and write in the German language and probably other languages. They learned to read and write from the church. So lack of written skills should not have been a problem.

    Well, the other day I found a family tree that contained my older relatives.  It went back the great, great grandpa. However , what it showed is that all my Great Grandpa's siblings died in Poland. He had four sisters and the all died fairly early. One of them lived into here early 30's. The oldest sister may have had children but we don't know who she married.

    So as you find one thing, you  are immediately looking for something else.

     It's interesting.

AUNT LUCY

       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. 

ANCESTRY

     I recently wrote a post telling of my early Father's Day gift. My son in law got excited about a project and no little issue like it's not Father's Day would stop him. 

    Well, the stopping issues started with me. My computer skills are not great. So here it comes. Ancestry sends an email. The email asks you for your information to sign into the program. My first problem was that it would not accept my postal code. It insisted on a zip code. We are used to those problems. So phone for help. It turned out that the helper and help requester were both at about the same level of expertise. She asked me to do all kinds of things that even I knew had nothing to do with the problem. 

    The problem was that I was looking at an email that she knew nothing about. She would ask if I could see something? Well, no I wasn't on that page. She apparently was not aware that ancestry sends out an email first.  

    Finally she was able to look at my account and tell me that I was in business as she could see everything in my account. But I say how do I get into the program? With that she left me as she had been with me for an hour. So I thought things over and said ah ha I know what to do. I did know what to do but my pass word had been mangled. There was no way I could reset my pass word from their system. One more call. I got the nicest guy in the whole telemarketing world. I did complement him highly.

    So off I went to look at ancestry. 

    My maternal grandfather was a rather dour little Englishman. I never heard him talk about relatives . So very quickly I found him with his three sisters and his parents. So the first thing I found in minutes was my great grandfather on my mother's side.

     My Grandpa is on the left. It's the only photo I can find of him.

    My biggest disappointment? I couldn't find myself! Isn't that vain?

   Maybe the next program I get, I will be able to register without a problem.