Week 3 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks; Prompt - Longevity

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

Elizabeth Dueck / Dyck 1881–1972 

 Birth 13 JAN 1881 • Borden, Manitoba, Canada 

Death 16 JAN 1972 • Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Week 2 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Favorite Photo

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge

Vivian Peters

Week Two – Favorite Photo

Who is your favorite child? They might as well challenged me to this question. It was difficult to pick just one photo.

I chose a picture of my biological maternal grandfather. He is known by many names but he is what I consider my brick wall that probably got me into this whole genealogy life.

His name was rarely mentioned around grandmother McLaughlin . She was named Maria (Mary) Katherina Krikua and was born June 8, 1903 in Warrenburgh, Russia and died August 8 1989 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Mary's family immigrated to Canada in the fall of 1911 where they resided in Rosthern, Saskatchewan for a few years before moving onto Winnipeg. Mary was just 18 years old when she married this man. Her family did not approve.

While I was growing up he was referred to as Pat Sullivan. My mother called him by many other descriptive names and the only one that I can probably share was that “hot headed Irishman”. It was my aunt that pointed out in those days everyone called men of Irish descent - Pat or Patty.

Doing my due diligence I decided to order Mary's wedding certificate from the Winnipeg Vital Statistics office. It didn't help that Mary was listed as Krikow and not Krikau. When it arrived I finally had a name for him. Bob Windsworth Sullivan and he was 29 years old on their wedding day of April 11, 1921. It states he was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. I did some mental gymnastics and decided he was born in 1892. His father was listed as William Sullivan and his mother was Mathilda Olteri and both of them born in Ireland. Shouldn't that be enough to get some information of him off the internet, but alas I came up with very little.

The June 1, 1921 Canada census listed him as Robt. Wentworth Sullivan. The census says he was 30 and his birth year was circa 1891. I presume his birthday was somewhere between the wedding and this census. It is listed that his parents were born in the USA as well as himself. His year of immigration to Canada was 1912. They also said he was “chief” (sic) on a dining car. It took me awhile to understand that this was meant to be chef.

This is where the plot thickens. Family lore is a funny thing. I never heard this from my grandmother's mouth but my oldest and youngest sibling recall snippets of it and it went like this; Bob, Pat, Robert was a chef and he worked on the railway line that ran between Winnipeg and Saskatoon. During this time Mary and Pat resettled in Saskatoon while his work took him back and forth. We understand that Pat married a second women in Winnipeg – a wife at each end of the line. He was a bigamist? As I like to say oi vey!!! Apparently somehow the wives found out about each other and charged him with bigamy and sent him to jail at Stony Penitentiary in Winnipeg.

I have learned this truth, if women are scorned, hurt or betrayed by their spouse their is no wrath equal to it. Plus they take pleasure in erasing all memorabilia of this person who wronged them. Many years later I was given Grandmother's important papers. In the box was grandma's marriage certificate which was ripped up the center not quite splitting it in two. By the way on this marriage certificate he listed his name as Robert Windsworth Sullivan.

I spent many a year looking for divorce and court cases that might prove this family folk lore true. Thus far I have not been successful and was beginning to think it was just good old family folk lore even though my aunt Phyllis (Mary's daughter in law) vehemently disagreed with me and urged me to continue looking.

This past year I decided to order my mother's ( Lydia Vivian Peters nee Sullivan) birth registration. After several months it finally arrived and with more surprises about her father. My mother was born on April 19, 1922. Her father is listed as Patrick Sullivan and the most startling thing is his address as written on the registration form. Father's residence: Stony Mountain Penitentiary. His occupation: prisoner. He is a 31 year old Irish American who apparently was born in Los Angeles, Cal. What the heck. Grandmother was living at her parents place.

The folk lore has strings of truth. But he was in jail within his first year of marriage. I have as yet to order any court documents which I think could possibly shed more light on this man and possibly more contradictions.

The family folk lore continues in that he moved on to Kamloops British Columbia where he remarried and had many more children. As more information became available on line I continually looked for a death certificate of a one Robert et aliases Sullivan. In 2011 I found a death certificate for a Robert Wentworth Sullivan who died in Chilliwack. How many people have a middle name of Wentworth. I ordered the certificate and once again I am not ready to say that this is conclusively my grandfather. His place of death was in the unemployment insurance office of Chilliwack. He died on November 24, 1952 of atherosclerotic heart disease. He was a cafe chef and it listed he had been a chef all his life. He was a married male Canadian Irishman who was born May 29 1887 in Truro, Nova Scotia. He had only been in British Columbia for the past 10 years. The informant was his wife's brother and he knew nothing of his parents.

The photograph has a note on the back by an unknown author. “Taken at the back of the Barry Hotel by P.S. baby father on April 14 -1924. She is 1 year 11 months and 25 days old. Dear don't destroy this picture. Save it for baby to show it to her when she is much older. Barry Hotel Saskatoon.”

Pat Sullivan has taken a picture of his daughter, my mother. Vivian has such an impish pose for her father. The note on the back suggests that Mary was already unhappy in her marriage by the fact that someone wanted her too keep the photograph to show Vivian when she was older.

Wendy

The Back of the Above Photo

Robert W Sullivan and Maria K Krikau Wedding Day

Week 1 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Start

Preamble
52 ancestors in 52 weeks. This is a challenge that I just became aware of this past week. You are given a very vague prompt upon which you can write a story from your genealogy that can be about a particular ancestor or not. The idea as I understand it is to write something about our ancestors which pulls them from the binders and the password protected web family trees that we have and rarely share. I like it. Of course it was started at the beginning of the year and I will need to catch up but here we go with the first prompt.

Start
Thirteen years ago while I was on a break from my paid employment I enrolled in a Beginner's Level Genealogy class through the local library. Perhaps that was the beginning of all this madness that some call passion. I was hooked.At the end of the first class, the instructor said to us; “Start at the beginning, start at home and start with what you know.” I found this rather odd because I came to find what I did not know. However I went home and started a simple family tree. It was appalling how little I knew. I knew my siblings and their spouses names, I knew birth dates for some of the spouses and names of my nieces and nephews. Further I discovered that I had no documentation for anyone in the family in my possession.
We all have that one person in the family who is the keeper of important papers. At this time both my mom and dad were already gone. In my case it was my younger sister who had all the valuable documents.  Also my oldest sibling was the wealth of the oral knowledge of the family. Over the years their contributions have been invaluable to me. Thus my first simple tree started with myself, my spouse and children and my siblings and their spouses and children. I fleshed out their vital statistics and found myself quite proud of this little achievement. It was more work than I anticipated however I was proud of this family tree. I learned about my immediate family and really looked forward to taking it to the next level – grandparents.
Wendy