Canadian Thanksgiving

For those of you reading this who do not live in Canada, this past Monday was Thanksgiving in Canada. To my Canadian readers, Happy Thanksgiving!

Our holiday lands on the second Monday of October each year, in contrast to that in the United States which is the fourth Thursday in November. Like the one in the US, it is a celebration of the end of harvest and a time when families get together. In some areas there may be parades.

It has been a national holiday here since 1879 when the Canadian Parliament designated the celebration with legislation. The date was not fixed at the time, though. The current date of the second Monday was established only in 1957. It has been marked by Canadians wherever they may have been around the world for a century and a half.

 

Members of the Canadian Expeditionary Force celebrate Thanksgiving in the bombed out Cambrai Cathedral in France in October 1918

Our traditional menu is similar to that in the US, other than in localities where different produce may be grown. Normally there is roast turkey (we had ham this year) with stuffing and cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy (ours was cheesy potatoes for a change), sweet potatoes (my favourite) and autumn vegetables (there were carrots and peas on our table). Dessert, brought by our nephew’s wife was apple pie (a traditional fall fruit) and ice cream (good anytime).

It was the United Empire Loyalists, coming from the US after the American Revolution who brought us delights like the turkey and often consumed pumpkin pie. And probably those great sweet potatoes as well! Thank you!

Historically, apparently the first celebration in our part of the world (North America) was by Sir Martin Frobisher in 1578 during his search for the Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic Islands. In later centuries French and English settlers organized feasts of thanks in the early autumn, sometimes sharing them with their indigenous neighbours. Surviving Pilgrim settlers at Plymouth Colony, in what is now Massachusetts, held their first harvest feast in October 1621.

The event in both Canada and the US now feature football games although we do not think that any of the original participants of the festivals played the North American variety. Children may well have played with balls, perhaps even kicked one around as their parents and ancestors had done for centuries before.

Thanksgiving is for families. Whether they are small or large, include several generations of just immediate family members, it is a day set aside to celebrate just being together.

I hope yours was a Happy Thanksgiving, too, this year...or will be in a few weeks.

If all the Devon baptisms were on FMP!

Recently on the Rootsweb list there was discussion about the availability of Devon, England parish registers online. Several people offered suggestions about where information might be found. Some lamented on the fact that there was no one site where they could go to see all the records. All the comments about and leading up to this subject can be found in the DEVON-L Archives for September.

By the way, these kinds of lists are great for continuing discussions on various subjects, in particular specific families and research techniques. I know many people are moving to social media outlets such as Facebook but I find the Rootsweb and other similar discussion forums valuable because each message is delivered right to my inbox. And I can choose which area, subject or even names I want to connect with on different lists.

Of particular note, though, was the response from Terry Leaman, the Chairman of the Devon Family History Society (DFHS), who commented about what was available on the Society’s website for members and the great work that has been done by volunteers over many decades to make data accessible for researchers.

I thought Terry’s comments were worth reproducing here. I have benefited from having information transcribed by DFHS members. I have also done a lot of transcribing of parish registers and censuses in the Devon region and know about the time it takes to go through the hundreds of pages of records and decipher hard-to-read entries.

Because I do not live anywhere near Devon, I really appreciate the work that DFHS members have done over the years, especially the locals some of whom I know have spent countless hours in the archives offices. Membership in the DFHS is one I find of great value and will definitely keep.

Terry’s comments:

What people need to understand is that, whilst it is a legal requirement for parish registers to be housed in a suitable storage facility, it is not a requirement to put them online. Many of the indexes/transcriptions on FindMyPast (FMP) that are not linked to images came from the Devon Family History Society and are the work of volunteers over a forty year period.

Family History Societies were some of the first organisations to start indexing registers that were not permitted to be filmed by the LDS. Most of the IGI for Devon at that time was the result of filming published books by the likes of the Devon & Cornwall Record Society.

The DFHS continues to index data not available online at this time. This includes the 52 parishes for which the images are in the members' only area of the Society website. The LDS were refused permission to film these but Devon FHS were allowed to. There are two parishes where permission has been totally refused to digitise the registers.

DFHS volunteers are also working on the Methodist registers in both North Devon and Exeter record offices, as well as a number of civil cemeteries- Torquay & Ford Park Cemeteries are already on FMP thanks to DFHS volunteers.

It is a major concern that Family History Societies are losing members because of online resources, Family History Societies (out of public view) constantly liaise with Record Offices or in the case of Devon and Somerset with the South West Heritage Trust, to ensure that family history is not forgotten,   BUT if they don't survive who will step forward to fill the gap? Who will continue indexing those obscure records that would not otherwise be done- see the Devon Social records on FMP.

As to transcription errors, if you could see some of the atrocious writing that is encountered you would understand why errors happen. One register we've encountered recently looks like the writing is upside down and back to front- IT IS honestly that bad. It is easy IF you are looking for a specific name in a parish. It's a lot easier to read something if you know what it should say.

Terry was describing the efforts and trials of the Devon society but his comments probably equally apply to every other family history society.

If you are using and getting a lot out of transcriptions perhaps you might think about volunteering to do some of that work. You do not have to live close to where the societies are to help.

Natural Disasters and Family Misfortunes 7: Disease

One may not always equate disease with natural disasters, other examples being earthquakes or hurricanes, but they are part of the history of people and communities and they are a product of nature, in these cases a most virulent kind that does not involve the destruction of property.

The world does not see epidemics of the scope that existed before the discovery of vaccines or development of modern hygiene practices. But even into the 20^th century, in many regions where our ancestors lived, communities were often attacked by diseases. If you want to count the types and numbers of epidemics that we know about just in recorded history, there is a list on Wikipedia (List of Epidemics).

Very commonly in past centuries, smallpox, cholera, influenza and plague killed thousands of people, sometimes millions, before they were checked or ran out of steam. Today most are confined to less-well developed regions of the world, where living conditions are poor and good hygiene virtually non-existent. In developed countries we have learned how to control or eradicate most of them through maintaining ourselves in better health and with inoculations. We still see small pockets of sicknesses we thought we had rid ourselves of in areas where people have determined they do not need vaccines, but thankfully they are small in number.

Family historians will undoubtedly come across examples in their own families where ancestors contracted and even died of diseases we don’t hear much about any more. I wrote about the Scourge of Phthisis (Tuberculosis) in 2015 and how it had killed great-grandmothers of my wife and me. I have come across references to this particular malady in many records.

I know that the main community in which my Shepheard ancestors lived – Cornwood, Devon, England – according to the church burial register, was visited by cholera, measles, typhus, smallpox and whooping cough. These were recorded only by two incumbents in two periods between 1770-1772 and 1799-1823. We do not have causes of death in church records for the other years between 1685 and 1993 but can reasonably surmise that, at least in the early centuries, disease was also a factor in the deaths of residents. A high proportion of the deaths in this area, prior to the 20^th century, were children and infants as I described in a post title Trends in Ages of Death in Cornwood Parish, Devon in 2015.

One of the last major epidemics in modern times was the Spanish Flu in 1918-20. Estimates put the death toll between 75 million world-wide. Not since the Plague of Justinian in 541-545 (25-50 million, 40% of population) or the Black Death in 1346-50 (75-200 million, 30-60% of population), has the number been so high. Hundreds of thousands more died during the Great Plague of the 1660s. Early European explorers brought diseases with them to foreign shores, unleashing devastating results to indigenes populations, completely eradicating many communities. While this was not strictly caused by only natural conditions, the result was the same.

Not all death or burial records indicate what the causes of death were. In the case of many people, especially children dying within a short period it may be useful too look at whether disease was the reason. Information about those events may be found in newspapers or other historical publications.

Disease, particularly when widespread is no less a disaster than an earthquake or hurricane. While not caused by geologic or atmospheric processes it is still a part of nature.