More and more I find
myself writing on genealogy rather than events or places. This is
fine except I do not consider myself a professional genealogist,
nor do I aspire to be one. When I began my research of the
Dunnville area, I looked in old newspapers for names familiar to
me and if I found a death notice or marriage, I would record it in
my notes and add it to my genealogy program. Soon I began
connecting those names to others for whom I had no personal
interest, other than they in some way were connected. This led to
what has become a rather large data base of nearly seven thousand
Dunnville area people and another three thousand of my relatives
loosely connected to many of these Dunnville people.
The
program I use is Family Tree Maker, a rather popular software for
this type of thing. It permits me to add seemingly unrelated
individuals, and provided I have other connecting family members,
the software makes the connection. Suddenly, two people who pass
each other on the street daily find they are 2nd 3rd or even 5th
cousins! Whenever I meet someone who ask me if I have any
information on a family, I check it out and if the questioner has
email, they get a response. More and more that response is a
positive one. At the Port Maitland Festival of History in July, I
had a couple of those requests. One was from Faith lannandrea, Nee
Shank. I knew I had a little bit of Shank family info as I have
collected the Siddall genealogy rather extensively and I knew
Annie Irene Siddall was the first wife of the late Emery Shank.
Emery was a well-known fire and brimstone preacher in this
area and founder of the Shank Tabernacle and Sunday School. Annie
Siddall died young leaving one child Muriel Lorraine. Emery later
married Mary Scott, a fabulous lady who preached right along side
him and whom I have written about in earlier articles.
Faith
asked me to send her what information I had, which I did. This
usually leads to a month or so long email relationship. In this
case my contact with Faith, led me to a secondary source. I
forwarded Faiths inquiry to Sylvia Weaver co-chair of the local
Ontario Genealogical Society - Haldimand Branch. Sylvia knew just
what to do with it. She passed off my email to Doris Thomson, the
secretary of that organization, who. . ., guess what? Doris is a
descendant of Mathias Shank and Catherine Everett, Faith's
grt-grt-grand parents. Remember in the last couple articles, I
told you in a small town you had better be careful what you say
about someone, as everybody is related to someone in some way. Not
more than twenty-five feet from my booth at the Port Maitland
Festival of History, was Doris Thomson, Nee Huber. There was
Faith's 2nd cousin only a few short feet from her, ready to help
anyone who asked for genealogical information and neither of them
knew each other. Had Faith asked Doris instead of me, she would
have met her cousin and made some great family connections. Their
meeting will happen and I am pleased to have played a part in
putting two long lost cousins together.
The above
sentence would have been a great ending to this short story, but
it is only the beginning. Darryl our newspapers managing editor
will not give me enough space to write the whole story in one
article. It seems Doris Thomson and I have found ourselves in one
of those email relationships as I pester her for every teeny
detail on her families genealogy. She made the mistake of thanking
me for connecting her to Faith and then wrote this. "My
grandparents are Lloyd Huber & Effie Shank. I have lots of
history on the Huber, Shank, Gilson and Carpenter lines."
Me thinks me is going to add a few hundred new names to
Dunnville's genealogy and connect even more families. Already I
have learned Doris's late husband and father of her two children
was Thomas Meyer. My next email to Doris is to find out if she is
related through him to a cousin of mine, Joann Armstrong, Nee
Meyer of Cayuga.
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