Grandma's Granny's Family Album

 Two years ago, when we could all still travel, I went to Kings County Nova Scotia very excited.   I intended to find a treasure chest of genealogical info, fairly quickly and easily.  For 20 years, we had all been wondering if Hannah Susan West Rushton had been born in Nova Scotia or Prince Edward Island, and if in Nova Scotia, where? and if in PEI, why? (see West Pedigree chart)  The West name and the Scholfield (Susan's mother) name were very popular in Kings County.  I had previously found online a wonderful book called A History of King's County, Nova Scotia, Heart of the Acadian Land, Giving... the title is so long that no one even knows the whole thing.  It was written by A. W. H. Eaton in 1910, in that romantic scholarly language of noble souls and stout hearts that historians used 100 years ago.  I have ordered it and it is currently en route to my house for some indulgent Christmas reading. So I happily entered the Kings County Museum in Kentville, NS, to find a....b

 Desperate times call for desperate measures...... We don't have any proof that Levi West is the father of Hannah Susan West Rushton, so we have to get creative.  But will all that creativity pass the proof test? (see West Pedigree chart) Levi and the woman who I creatively believe is his wife, Pheby Scholfield West, do have a lot of kids, and all those kids have better records than Susan does.  (except Aaron, his are worse). I started off thinking that Susan only has 2 siblings, Aaron and Harding, who are 6 and 23 years younger than she is.  Very odd.  Odd for a family to only have 3 kids.  A 23-year spread between oldest and youngest is pretty wide, but not that unusual for the time.  What is strange is if Harding is 17 years younger than the second-youngest child.   Harding West, born in Pugwash, father Levi West born in Pugwash, mother unknown I feel better when I find Levi West living with Nathan West, who is most likely -No Proof!- his son, and their daughter Mary Jane West,

  Where is the proof??? Remember that I sent in to the historian Generation 10 - Hannah Susan West Rushton.   (see Rushton and West Pedigree charts) The problem with Susan is that we don't have a contemporaneous birth record, like a baptism record or a government birth record.   The Bible record that we have for her birth seems to have been written by her husband Thomas after they got married.  Even worse, he wrote the wrong year, 1838, and later had to go back with a pencil and change the 8 into a 2! I can't figure out how to put it right side up, sorry. So, the historian is not too happy about that. Every record that we do have, 5 censuses and a death record, give a different year for her birth, and different places of birth too.  Neither is any more specific than the province, Prince Edward Island or Nova Scotia.  I don't think that is such a big deal, but apparently the historian does. A bigger problem is that we have absolutely no proof that Levi West is Susan's fa