St patricks day!!!

[Sheilajeanne]

13 hours ago, chuck123wapati said:

We are all a tiny bit of almost every ancestor before us and i also think if we all knew our historic past there would be much less racism and hatred in the world.

Very true! All of us except for indigenous people were immigrants at one time, and my German/Irish ancestors were also refugees.

The only one of my dad's family to fight in WWII was my eldest uncle, who helped to liberate Holland. Farmers were exempt, as the livestock needed looking after, and someone had to grow food to feed the people. My dad went to enlist, but they saw shadows on his lung x-rays and told him he had TB, and essentially sent him home to die. 

It must have been dust from the threshing on the farm because, as a teacher, he frequently was tested for TB, and the tests were always negative. He did develop respiratory problems in his old age, probably due to all that dust he inhaled before leaving the farm (farmer's lung). He lived to be 89, just missing his 90th birthday be 3 weeks!

Another uncle worked on the home front for the RCMP, helping to track down Nazis and other foreign agents.

[Handstitched]

5 hours ago, Sheilajeanne said:

(farmer's lung).

For shearers, its ' silicosis ' . Not very well known and not talked about enough in the  sheep shearing industry .  I was part of it for a time. Glad I left it. 

19 hours ago, chuck123wapati said:

i have two Welsh families of Morgan's in my ancestry

Any relation to ' Captain Morgan' , as in rum ??  Just .....thought I'd ask....    

At the end of the day, well all  have something in common . We love friendship, fellowship , leather, food, drink,  Mother Nature & the great outdoors. And who knows, we may even be related  somewhere along the  long looooooong line   

HS

[Sheilajeanne]

The dangers of farming are not well known to the general public. Injuries from livestock or farm equipment are all too common - one of my uncles broke both his ankles when his pant leg caught in the hay elevator. He also accidentally ran over one of his son's with the disc harrow, when the boy fell off the back of the tractor!   He suffered from farmer's lung in his old age, but still managed to outlive all of his siblings. And that's JUST one of the six families who stayed in farming! (There were 10 kids in my dad's immediate family.)

Out of those six families, some of the grandchildren farmed for awhile, but as of today, they have all taken other safer and more lucrative jobs. One quit due to several friends dying of cancer. This got him concerned over the many chemicals farmers are exposed to, especially the pesticides. I think my father's youngest sister's grandson may be doing dairy, judging by what I see on his FB timeline, but I don't talk with him, so I'm not sure. I know his dad worked as a welder after his parents sold their farm.

[chuck123wapati]

 

10 hours ago, Sheilajeanne said:

Very true! All of us except for indigenous people were immigrants at one time, and my German/Irish ancestors were also refugees.

The only one of my dad's family to fight in WWII was my eldest uncle, who helped to liberate Holland. Farmers were exempt, as the livestock needed looking after, and someone had to grow food to feed the people. My dad went to enlist, but they saw shadows on his lung x-rays and told him he had TB, and essentially sent him home to die. 

It must have been dust from the threshing on the farm because, as a teacher, he frequently was tested for TB, and the tests were always negative. He did develop respiratory problems in his old age, probably due to all that dust he inhaled before leaving the farm (farmer's lung). He lived to be 89, just missing his 90th birthday be 3 weeks!

Another uncle worked on the home front for the RCMP, helping to track down Nazis and other foreign agents.

As you learn some real life history through genealogy you will find some surprising stuff indeed. Many countries sent their criminals and poor to the Americas to get rid of them, Germany and the UK especially. Many of Irish decent came as indentured servants, ( nice name for a slaves) and were thought at the time lower or as low in stature as the African slaves. Life wasn't easy for the poor back then and basically only two classes of people rich or poor. Free poor folks were farmers mostly because if they didn't farm they would starve that's all they had.

[Sheilajeanne]

Coming to Upper Canada was definitely a good move for my 'anchor ancestor'. If he had remained in Ireland as a tenant farmer, he never would have owned the land he farmed, nor would he have had anything to pass on to his children. In Canada, he was able to get 200 acres of land from the government for free, as long as he developed it within a certain number of years. Not an easy task when the land was all virgin forest!

He did rather well for himself, In 1861, the first year for which I have a census record, he was living in a brick house while his neighbours were still in log cabins. 

The two biggest surprises I've found so far are that my great grandmother's first husband was assistant editor for The Mail, a Toronto newspaper which eventually merged with George Brown's Globe to become The Globe and Mail. The Globe and Mail is one of Canada's best known newspapers. His mother also worked for The Mail, as a reporter. This would have been a very unusual job for a woman back in the 1860's. She had to work,  however, as her husband had died. 

Secondly, I recently discovered there's a stained glass window in the church I attend that's dedicated to the parents of one of my great uncles. Both he and his father were physicians, so the window is dedicated to St. Luke.

 

 

Edited May 11, 2022 by Sheilajeanne

[fredk]

On 5/10/2022 at 5:28 AM, Sheilajeanne said:

Very true! All of us except for indigenous people were immigrants at one time, . . . .

Even they are immigrants, the first of many, about 17,000 - 16,000 years ago!

On 5/10/2022 at 3:43 PM, chuck123wapati said:

 

. . .  Many countries sent their criminals and poor to the Americas to get rid of them, Germany and the UK especially. Many of Irish decent came as indentured servants, ( nice name for a slaves) and were thought at the time lower or as low in stature as the African slaves. . . . 

Very little is made of this. During the 'Highland Clearances' from about 1680 to 1850 tens of thousands of Scots were forcibly sent to the Americas [ all of the American continent, Welsh were sent to South America ] mostly as 'indentured' servants. Several thousand never survived the sea journey. The ships used were on their last journey, The Scotch land owners chose cheap ships for the job. Upon arrival in the Americas the slaves were to be sold and the ship broken up and sold as scrap. These ships were small, about 120 ft long at the water line and 40 ft wide at the beam. Hundreds of people were crammed on to them - in the same manner the black-man was transported

My home town participated in this slave trade. The town was a major sea port back then and ships from Scotland called in for fresh provisions before making the Atlantic crossing. It was chosen for this as the land owner and harbour owner was Scotch and was involved in the 'clearances' himself.

The people of this town saved at least 1700 people on one occasion. The ships used to just stop and anchor off-shore. But on this occasion a terrible big storm came up, the 3 ships were beached and the slaves taken off and housed in local farmers barns until the storm passed. Over the next 4 days 1700 people, all the slaves, 'disappeared' ! The local magistrate fined the local people for the 'loss of the cargo due to not securing the barns',  but as the barns were actually owned by the local land lord he had to pay the fine to himself !

And these 'indentured' slaves got their own back - the Scotch and Irish were present in great numbers in George Washington's Continental Army which beat the pants off the British in the AWI [1775 - 1783] 

[Sheilajeanne]

My husband's family were victims of the Highland clearances. Fortunately the leader of their clan, Lord Hamilton, was a member of Parliament. He petitioned the government to help those who had been displaced, and was refused.

So, using his own money, he bought a ship, and chose those he though were best able to adjust to life in the New World. The plan was for the immigrants to reach Niagara-on-the-Lake, but the owner of the boat hired to take them to Lake Ontario* was a real scoundrel. He let them off in the middle of the wilderness and told them Niagara-on-the-Lake was just over the hill!

The whole party would have died if the local indigenous people hadn't helped them and shown them how to survive. My husband still had a letter in his possession where one of the women wrote back home, saying, "We had a slightly better winter this year. One bairn survived..." He remembers his mother showing him that letter and saying, "YOU are descended from that 'one bairn'!"

This group of immigrants went on to found Hamilton, Ontario. 

I forgot to mention earlier that my husband was a cadet with the RCAF, and went through university on the Reserve Officer Training Plan. When his training was finished, he decided not to accept a commission. 

He also worked as an engineering draftsman on the DEW line in Labrador during the Cold War.

*The rapids in the St Lawrence River were impassable, so it was necessary to travel overland, then hire a second boat. The St. Lawrence Seaway solved that problem!

Edited May 14, 2022 by Sheilajeanne