Links Family History Blog

Who was my grandmother's unknown father?   Family secrets and a burning question that has been whispered throughout my youth: just who was my paternal grandmother's father? That my grandmother was illegitimate was one of those open secrets in the family that no one talked about. I'm not certain that even she knew who her father was.  But like a stone being thrown into a pond -- whatever the intent was in keeping it quiet -- the waves that the secret created has had a real impact on her children and grandchildren. I personally feel a sense of loss of family connection and history, a sense of being robbed of something that can never be fully reclaimed. My uncle, aunt, and father never got to know their grandfather and they grew up thinking their grandmother was their "aunt"; we grandchildren (my brother and paternal cousins) were robbed of knowing our great-grandfather and of having anything but a distant-aunt relationship with our great-grandmother. The unfairness ...

Introducing the TULLY family. The TULLY family (on my father's maternal side) arrived in Canada - specifically Lower Canada - from Scotland around 1817. They settled in the region of Huntingdon, Quebec and were part of a migration of British immigrants to North America that took place over a number of years following the War of 1812. The Canadian founder of the TULLYs in my family was 5th-great grandfather James TULLY. He was born about 1780 in Morebattle, Roxburghshire, Scotland and died in Huntingdon, Quebec, Canada in 1856. His spouse, Newton Rebecca BUCKHAM (1782-1854), was also of Roxburghshire, Scotland. Two of their daughters married into two other Scottish-Canadian founding families in Quebec, the ELDERs and the TAYLORs; and two of their children (first cousins James Tully ELDER and Jane Alexis TAYLOR) married in Ontario, then later moved to the new province of Manitoba about 1883 to farm. My paternal great-great grandfather was their son William John ELDER (1874-1959). Res...

I appreciate your patience. After taking a months-long break from blogging to attend to some family issues, I will soon return from hiatus and begin posting new ancestor profiles and research insights shortly.  Preparing to break through some brick walls! Join me as I  continue to work on the Acadian, Cole FANs, DIY Genealogy, and Founder series;  the COLE Name Study; and  begin to dive into the use of new-to-me research methods such as location scans and using DNA to enhance my efforts.  I hope to see you soon as I continue to share my journey of discovery.

Step 2: Scan Letters and Envelopes. This post continues the Saving Letters mini-series that started with  Saving Letters - Why Do It?  followed by  Step 1: Cataloguing .  In this post, Step 2: Scanning,  I set out my considerations and the method I follow for scanning my letter collection.  While I don't want to over-complicate this step, it is also not quite as simple as it might seem. Things to think about and decisions to make about the scanned files themselves include: Equipment and setup to perform the scans. Computer (or other) storage capacity for saving scanned files. Quality and readability of the scanned images. Potential obsolescence of the scanned file format(s). Backing up scanned images. Subsequent steps, transcribing and filing the scans, will be the subject of future posts -- so stay tuned! Working through this process gave me: a better comfort level that the letters would be preserved even if the originals were lost or destroyed; confi...