Persistence Pays

Roses
January 5, 2008

My husband surprised me with a bouquet of roses so I'm sharing their beauty with you. These vividly coloured roses found a place in the centre of the dining table bringing the room to life. What a contrast they provided against the greyness of the past few days. He always has such good taste :)

A lot of information can be gathered from one source even if that source is only two lines! Yesterday after a few days of searching through ship manifests I found my great grandparents! They travelled from their home in Leicester, England to Liverpool, England some 151.16 km northwest as the crow flies. The departed on June 18th 1909 aboard the Empress of Ireland owned by the Canadian Pacific Railway. There were a total of 1189 passengers. The SS Contract Ticket number is given. [A clue for searching antique shops.] No British Bonus was paid to the steamship booking agent. They arrived in Quebec on June 25, 1909 at 2:30 pm with twenty dollars in cash. His and hers occupations in England were given. This was already known but one more piece of confirmation. My great grandfather continued that occupation in Ontario however the ship's manifest indicates their final destination was to his father's. They settled in that community and remained there until their deaths (confirmed information). His father's occupation in Ontario is given something I already knew but this confirmed it. What isn't known is if my great grandfather worked for a brief time with his father (likely) and I'm assuming they lived with his parents until they were settled. She did not continue in her occupation in Ontario but rather set about having a family but from the date of the birth of their first child, they waited to get settled. The religion was listed as Church of England (Anglican) for both and that remained the same in Ontario for my great great grandfather. Some of the children and my great great grandmother converted to Baptist. I'm not sure why but in due time this information will be uncovered as well. So this record gave me new information as well as confirming information already known.

This record did not uncover the reason for immigration but knowing the underlying dynamics of English families I can say that my great grandparents immigrated because my great great grandparents had already immigrated. What I don't know is the exact date or ship by great great grandparents arrived on nor do I know why they immigrated or why they chose the area they did in Ontario to settle. So I'm now going through the ship manifests for the approximate year of immigration based on my great great grandfather's obituary notice. That means I will have to check the year before and the year after if I don't find them but all indication points to 1907 as the year of immigration. Hopefully when I find the record there will be some indication as to why they immigrated to Canada. Again I can make educated guesses based on information collected but I'm looking for actual proof.

I ordered the war records for two of my great uncles from another line on Monday. Apparently there can be a lot of great information including letters home in these records. My great great grandparents [noted above], a different line had two sons who served in WWI. One was reported missing but was later found in a French hospital. So when we get back from vacation, I will order both of their records as well. There should be some pretty interesting information some of which will provide more clues. And so the search continues...