Read to the bottom for How to Use this Blog . I have been exploring genealogy since I was little, listening to all the stories told by Aunts Connie and Helena, Cousins Ann and Howie and Maurietta, Uncles Leonard and Arthur. There were m ore dead people in the stories than live ones, and they were lots more fun. This was way before it was anyone's hobby, when I was the only one who was interested. Sneaking into the Archives underage and running around graveyards. I was lost to the present, either reading books about Pilgrims or building stories in my head. Always asking, asking, asking. "How is he related to us? Who is their mother? What was her name, and her name, and her name? " While Aunt Anna said, "I don't want to find out anyone was arrested for stealing sheep." Now I find I know more stories about more people than anyone else. And I have more photos of other people's grandparents than anyone else, thanks to a mother who started taking pictures wh...
As I wrote this, I heard the voices of my grandmother and her sisters telling me about their lives. In Chapters One and Two, we met Sarah Rushton walking her land grant in Westchester, Nova Scotia with her daughter Elizabeth and grandchildren. Sarah, her husband Jeremiah, and his family had run a successful cordwaining business in New York City during the Revolutionary War, but were exiled as Loyalists at the peace. Promised a land grant in Nova Scotia as a soldier with the Westchester Refugees, the family boarded a ship for the unknown. Elizabeth, fretting over her own husband's plans to move the family to Upper Canada, asked, “How do you know when to go? What do you bring to a new life in the wilderness?” The Story of the Evacuee’s Wife...a fictional look “Then what happened, Grannie?” Eddie wanted to know as the family continued walking along the land grant’s path. “Did the big ship bring you right here?” He looked around them at the narrow fast-flowing brook. “No, silly...