Links Family History Blog

One of the biggest challenges I have encountered in my family history research has been tracing my  Irish Palatine  ancestors. While many Irish Palatine families are well-documented, the Cole family is not one of them. Combined with the unique challenges facing those researching their Irish roots, gathering reliable and verifiable data has been problematic. The following timeline summarizes key details I have pieced together of the Cole family's journey from Germany (possibly Assenheim) to Canada, with a later focus on Canadian family line founder  Henry "Harry" Cole (abt 1790-1849). 1709 (Emigration from Germany) Several thousand Palatine immigrants (Lutheran faith) fled Germany and arrived in London, England. Four candidates for my family's first Cole ancestors arrived in these waves of immigrants: Henry Kolb (May sailing),  who arrived with his unnamed wife and three daughters along with a younger man named Arnold Kolb. Johan Kohl (May sailing),  aged 24 and ...

Welcome to Links Family History's first post!   With this blog, it is my aim not only to share the results of the past 15 years of researching my family's history, but to collaborate with others with similar research interests in the hopes of breaking through some pretty challenging brick walls.  Future posts will be broadly organized into the following branches of the family: Brant, Browett, Cole, Despins, Elder, Hutchinson and LeComte. This is not intended to re-duplicate my family tree (which is publicly available on Ancestry.ca  and contains over 4200 individuals). Instead, it is my intent to focus on individuals' stories and to research family themes such as Scottish settlers in Québec, my recently-discovered Acadian connection, Irish Palatines' journey from Germany to Canada, or Ontario and Western Canadian pioneers, for example. I am not formally trained in genealogy research, so I am not an expert. But through practising this addictive hobby over the past decade...