I've been plugging away at the family tree stuff pretty heavily, mostly at www.ancestry.com. They make it pretty easy, and really, they must have some pretty amazing software running that site. As soon as you put a person on your tree, the site scans all the other member trees and all the records they have access to and it makes suggestions of data and connections to other family members based on what it finds. So if you find a good vein, you can go back several generations in half an hour or so. That's just what I've been able to do in a couple cases. Here are some of my findings.
My maternal grandmother, Elizabeth, never said much about her father Sheridan. So little, in fact, that all we knew about him was his name, and his wife and kids. Thus it has been for, oh, eighty years or so, I guess. But last night, I found Sheridan and his parents, siblings, and grandparents. It turns out that he was a teacher at some sort of residential school or institution at the age of 25. Another 25-year-old teacher there was Anna, whom he eventually married. This showed up on a data sheet from the 1900 Federal Census. It shows a fellow listed as "Head" (of household?), his daughter, various servants, Sheridan and Anna as teachers, then a long list of children from 7-17 years who are described as "inmate"! As it happens, Sheridan and Anna got married in 1900 -- a workplace romance, apparently!
As for Anna, her paternal grandfather's middle name was Ross, and his mother's maiden name was Ross. This caught my attention a bit. You see, a few years back we were planning a Kirkin' of the Tartan service at CPC, and I wanted to get a tartan stole for the event. Problem was we never knew what clan we were associated with. We knew we had some Andersons in the mix, so that was a possibility. I dug around some and found a subclan called "Duthie" connected to Clan Ross. It turned out that the Andersons were also associated with Ross. The Ross tartan was a handsome green pattern, which would make for a good stole that could be used most of the year. So I got Clan Ross tartan for my stole. Now here I find some Rosses in the family line. Followed them back another three generations, and found John, who was born in 1685 in Scotland! Well, his father, John, was born in 1658 in Angus, Scotland, and died at the Battle of Boyne in Londonderry, Ireland -- where we expect to find some Douthetts! And his wife was born in Aberdeen, near where we will be staying Scotland. All four of their parents were born in Scotland as well, as were at least a couple of the grands, going back to 1608. So picking Clan Ross seems to have been a good guess! By the way, in the 1845 or so, William Parsons, the third Earl of Rosse set up the largest telescope in the world (which held that title for 100 years) in, if I'm reading this right, Armagh, N. Ireland, where it is said Joseph Douthett came from. These are the things that make this process a lot of fun!
My paternal great-grandmother was Sarah, and she married WG. Last night I followed Sarah's mother's side - the Pierce family. There were a variety of spellings, but I'll try to get back to that later. Four generations of Pierces back (most of them named John), there is a wife named Maria Delamater, born in New York State in 1696. Her grandfather was Claude de la Maister. It turns out Claude was born in 1620 in France, was a Protestant, and fled in the Huguenot persecutions. He went to Canterbury, England, for a short time, then to Amsterdam for a while where he met his wife, Hester DuBois, whose father was French but who was herself born in Canterbury, then moved to Holland. It was Claude and Hester who made the trip to New York. Their son Johannes married Ruth Waldron, whose parents were both from Holland. So, I guess I've got some Dutch. Explains a few things, even if it is from four-hundred years ago.
This is also interesting, because I had found some stuff earlier (which I thought I had blogged, but I guess not) that the Douthetts had come from France, where they were, yes, Huguenots! They scattered to Canada and Wales during the persecutions, going from Wales to England and Scotland, then on to Ireland and America. So it seems to me I have three hundred fifty years of Protestant heritage behind me. I'm afraid the woman I talked with last week at St. James is going to be disappointed.
There are still plenty of slots to fill on the family tree, and I still have hopes of finding the missing link from Joseph to Ireland. Nevertheless, I think there will be plenty of stuff to look up and look at, now knowingly, in Ireland and Scotland. So stay subscribed!
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