Growing up With Cousins

My father’s extended family was very close. Twelve cousins, born within 11 years of each other, grew up together. They played with each other, at least in groups of similar ages. They went to school in the same country classrooms, again for the most part. One of each of their parents were siblings, all of whom had arrived in Alberta together around 1910-11. Two other cousins were born much later, one in 1925 and one in 1935. While much loved, they were not as close as those first dozen.

My great-grandparents, Newton and Margaret Thompson, had six children together between 1885 and 1902. Margaret had another daughter from a first marriage. All the children were born in North Dakota. Two infants died, one in 1892 and one in 1902. The rest grew up in a very close family. The oldest three married in North Dakota, the youngest two in Alberta.

 

Children of Newton and Margaret Thompson – left to right: Mae, Maud, Carrie, Charlie, Ethel – ca 1925

When Newton and Margaret Thompson decided, in 1909, to come to Canada, to take advantage of the homesteading opportunities, all of their children were on board with the idea as well. He bought two sections of land from the Canadian Pacific Railway near Keoma, Alberta. Charlie, Carrie and Mae came up with Margaret in 1910. Maud and Ethel followed, with their new husbands, by 1911. All the families participated in farming of the original two sections of land, later acquiring other close-by farms in the area where they raised their families.

Isaac Newton Thompson (1859-1937) & Margaret Mary Anderson (1857-1919)
The Children	Mary Maud (1882-1960)	Charlie (1885-1929)	Alice Ethel (1887-1959)	Carrie Jane (1889-1959)	Elizabeth Mae (1898-1985)
The Cousins	Margaret Carrie (1909-1933)	Isaac Charles (1912-1974)	Lloyd Willis (1912-1974)	William Calvin (1914-1983)	Robert Newton (1919-1967)
	Elizabeth Victoria  (1912-1947)	Irven Palmer (1913-2000)	Hazel Jean (1916-2011)	Edward Newton  (1916-1997)
	Albert Lester (1916-1999)	Bernice Margaret  (1918-1998)		Marion Elizabeth (1919-1919)
	Mary May (1920-2012			Evelyn Ethel (1926-1926)
	Gladys (1925-2014)			Ethel Mae (1935-   )

Two children of Newton and Margaret died as infants: Florence (1892) and Eveline (1902)

Growing up I always knew my dad had these cousins, but I really never figured out their real relationships and how close they all were to each other, until I started on my own family history research journey.

The families all lived very close to each other in the Keoma-Irricana-Kathyrn (KIK) area so there were ample opportunities for them to socialize and for their children to get to know each other well. And they did that whenever possible. Grandma and Grandpa Thompson were their to oversee the little ones on many occasions, living as they did, near the centre of their children’s farms.

 

Grandma Margaret Thompson with Lloyd and Ike at the Thompson Keoma house in 1913

Margaret (back), Lloyd, Ike and Elizabeth at the Thompson Keoma house in 1913

As I indicated, the cousins grew up together – played together, went to school together, visited with each other at family gatherings, attended community social events together – in other words, became close friends. Hazel, one of my father’s cousins, actually introduced him to my mother. And another cousin, Albert, was the best man at their wedding. Mom's maid of honour, Virginia, was the wife of Dad’s brother. I believe that every cousin who still lived in the KIK area, as well as a few who travelled from elsewhere, was at their wedding and can be seen in the wedding party photograph I published in my blog post of October 7, 2014. I might have a difficult time actually pointing each of them out, though.

 

Eight cousins at a family gatherings in 1926 – left to right: Bill, Irven, Ted, Lloyd, Elizabeth, Bernice, Ike and Hazel 

I think that the KIK community in which the cousins grew up might have been much like the old parishes in Devon, England where my Shepheard ancestors lived. The church(es) were central to the social events; family interactions were common and important; cousins grew up together and knew each other well. I even have one example of first cousins marrying each other – John Shepheard and Jane Treby Shepheard tied the knot in 1791, in Cornwood parish, Devon.

Almost all of that group of cousins are gone now. We remember them through recorded stories and photographs. The generation following did not have the opportunity or luxury of getting to know their cousins quite as well. As with many communities, after the children grew up they went their separate ways, many moving to faraway places. Rarely did they ever get a chance to get together as a group without travelling some distance. 

 

Children, with spouses, and grandchildren of Jimmy and Carrie Shepheard at Campbell River, British Columbia in 1956

Cousins of my generation are only occasionally in contact with each other. Time and space have more or less permanently separated us. Among the next generation, there is even more distance. The opportunities to visit even their first cousins, let alone participate in broader family events, practically never present themselves.

 

Children, with spouses, and grandchildren of Bill and Norma Shepheard gathered in Sherwood Park, Alberta in 1981

We take those kinds of visits for granted now but they were, and are still an important part of growing up and being reminded of who you are and where you come from. 

Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is a past Editor of Chinook, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Family Histories Society. Wayne also provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated

Origin of Easter Eggs

OK, so Easter is over now, the bunny is gone and all you have left are some eggs. But how did eggs get associated with Easter?

For the answer you have to go back to the early rules of the Catholic Church, in particular those surrounding the period of Lent. I wrote about some of the prohibition of eating certain foods in the lead-up to Easter in my blog post of January 27, 2015. Religious laws of both the Catholic and Protestant churches actually came out of older Jewish practices. Eating flesh or meat products was particularly forbidden during certain days although, in England in the 16^th and 17^th centuries this had more to do with protecting the fishing industry than religious reasons.

At any rate, other products, such as eggs and milk were also on the list of foods to be avoided because they came from animals whose flesh was also eaten. This put the farmers in a bit of a bind because they could not stop the chickens from laying eggs and, with no one to eat them, the stockpile grew.

Finally at Easter, with eating prohibitions lifted, poultry owners could distribute the eggs. With so many in abundance by that time, the price would have dropped significantly. The answer was to just give them away, quickly, while they were still reasonably fresh and edible. And so the tradition was established!

How they got to be coloured is a whole other story which you can read about here and here and here. And that Easter Bunny? Check him out, along with the eggs, here and here.

 

Picture uploaded from Pinterest.

 Hope you had a Happy Easter!

Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is a past Editor of Chinook, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Family Histories Society. Wayne also provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated.

Our Dogs Are Part of Our Family

My family has always had dogs – and a few cats too. They were and are part of our family, sometimes to the chagrin of our children who now, as adults, think we lavish too much attention on them.

 

Tess, a brindle Cairn Terrier and Robbie, a West Highland White Terrier from their perch in the living room, 2010

I recently came across a new chart called the Diagram of Dogs which you can purchase through Pop Chart Lab. It basically shows the Family Tree of dogs and how they are all related. If you have to, you can buy a wall chart for cats as well. I was curious about how our two little critters fit into the family of dogs.

Scottish Terriers on the Diagram of dogs

The Scottish Terriers occupy a small corner of the chart between the Irish, Welsh, English and Russell Terriers. Terriers, as a group are typically small, very active and fearless animals, although you wouldn’t know it by looking at mine.

There have been lots of scientific studies of domesticated dogs, of course, how they evolved from the wild species inhabiting many parts of the world millions of years ago. I could not believe how many there are in fact. A 2002 article in Science, on the mitochondrial DNA of dogs purported to show that most of our pets descended from “Old World gray wolves” and that humans may have domesticated them as far back as 29,000 years ago. You can read the results of this particular study online here. Another article by Elaine Ostrander and Robert Wayne, in Genome Research in 2005, and available here, offered this chart on the evolution of dogs from DNA analyses.

 You can find pictures of dogs in paintings, on sculptures, on tiled wall murals and illustrated in books that go back thousands of years attesting to their place in the families and affairs of people.

 

Clockwise from top left – cave drawing, Egyptian, Medieval, Greek

With regard to genealogical studies of your own family, there is an indexes to Ireland Dog License Registers on FindMyPast which may add to a family history. Some people even include such documents on their online family trees (search dog license on Ancestry). And occasionally you find people who list their pets on the census.

 

Glasspoole family, living in Bryansted Alperton, Middlesex, England, with Spot the dog, Tom the cat and eleven Wyandotte chickens

More personally, here are photos of the dogs that were all important members of my family and for whom I really should have paid more attention and taken more care.

 

Left - my sister, Janice and me with Sandy, a golden Cocker Spaniel, 1953; right – Janice with Sandy, 1956

Buddie, a black Cocker Spaniel, 1969

Augie, a Siberian Husky, 1971

Augie with my daughter, Tamara, and a litter of puppies, 1972

Top left – Keltie, a West Highland White Terrier, 1988; bottom left – 1992; right, with Linda, 1993

Left – Robbie, 2004; right - Tess, 2005

Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is a past Editor of Chinook, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Family Histories Society. Wayne also provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated.

Reference:

Leonard, J. A., Wayne, R. K., Wheeler, J., Valadez, R. Guillen, S. & Villa, C. (2002). Ancient DNA Evidence for Old World Origin of New World Dogs. Science, 298, pp. 1613-1616.

Ostrander, E. A. & Wayne, R. K. (2005). The Canine Genome. Genome Research, 15, pp. 1706-1716.