Turtle Lady Genealogy: Week 3 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks; Prompt

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Prompt: Longevity

Longevity does not particularly favor my side of the family. My parents died in their mid sixties.

My family tree is on several different online sites. One of the exciting things is that these programs can pull together statistics on the family. I was quite excited to see that my oldest individual was 108 years old. But he was from the eighteenth century which seemed highly unlikely to me that someone could live that long back in the day. I dug a little deeper and found that I had not given him the correct death date.

I have decided that my paternal grandmother will be the ancestor of the longevity award for this story. She lived 91 years old.

Elisabeth was born on a Mennonite colony in Manitoba. Her parents were part of the first huge Mennonite immigration to Canada prairies, in their case Manitoba. Elisabeth's parents immigrated July, 1875. Her parents were born in South Russia which I believe is now where the Ukraine is located. Mennonites have always been on the move migrating away from persecution and in pursuit of land and a country that would allow them the freedom to practice their faith. In my opinion, it was their belief in pacifism that kept them moving. As each country (Prussia, Russia, and Canada) went to war, it wanted the Mennonite men to enlist in their armies. The Mennonites would move on to a place that would promise them the right to their pacifism.

Elisabeth was born approximately 6 years after her parents immigration to Canada. In this particular family line, she was the first natural born Canadian. Canada was only l4 years old and Manitoba only part of Canada a mere 11 years before her birth.

By the age of 4 the Louis Riel rebellion was fought and lost by the rebellions where upon Louis Riel was hung.. During her 18^th year the Canadians were involved in The Boer War. She would live through WWI and WWII.

During her lifetime she would see the development of transportation from the colony horse and buggy to motorized vehicles. Trains were being sent across Canada. The first sustained manned flight had taken off and indeed she would be almost 80 when the first manned space flight took place. In her late 80s she would have heard about the first “man on the moon” landing. What did she think about this?

She survived the 1918 Spanish Flu as well as the Asian and Hong Kong flu of the mid twentieth century.

By the time she was 15 the Klondike gold rush was well underway. She would live through the dirty thirties and the depression which impacted her and her husband's life in the colony of Hague, Saskatchewan.

Elisabeth was alive when Sir John A. MacDonald was serving as prime minister of Canada. In fact she would live under 13 different prime ministers in her life time.

In this context of history her longevity seems so much more than a mere 91 years of life. It was a lifetime of pivotal historical moments that impacted who she was, how she lived, where she lived and maybe in that there is a clue to her longevity besides just good genes.

Wendy