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Showing posts from February, 2022

Born on St Patrick's Day: Happy 115th Mary

They say that its good luck to be Irish, and that the luckiest of all are those who are born on St Patrick's Day. No doubt this is what was said the day that my great grandmother was born. However, her life was not necessarily filled with the good luck that the superstition had predicted. As much as she had a hard life, her life was also an "ordinary" one of a young British immigrant to Canada. Despite that, the simple life she led in youth was filled with fun. She embrace the changing times, new found freedoms, and innovations. Its the heirlooms from that chapter of her life that fascinate me the most because they show aside to her that none of my relatives knew - a woman who was happy. So today, I am going to share the side of her that one of those heirlooms tells. I have a small black autograph book that was hers.  At almost 100 years old, the book binding has all but disintegrated yet the leather cover is in near pristine condition and the partially bound pages are al...
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MyHeritage In Colour: How to Bring Vintage Photos to Life

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Old family photos are one of the most personal types of records. They tell us what someone looked like, how they dressed, and give us a valuable insight into their personality and everyday life. The main challenge is that many old photos were developed in greyscale (black and white). By adding colour we can bring the picture to life.  Currently MyHeritage offers four photo editing tools.  1. In Colour 2. Photo Enhancer 3. Repair 4. Animate For the scope of this post I'm only going to be discussing the first three.  In Colour: The tool itself is quite easy to use, all you need is an account (no membership required) and a picture that has been saved as a .jpg file. Once uploaded you will see half your picture in colour and the other half in the original greyscale. By dragging the slide bar left, you can reveal the full colour image.  There are a few limitations of the tool. More specifically, small patches of colour may be missed, or deep colours such as black may take...
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WW1 and Canada's Conscription Crisis: How to tell if they served willingly

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 As World War 1 waged on, Canada was faced with a major problem. The once constant stream of volunteers was drying up. The remaining men on the home front were hearing about the horrors of war and did not want to endure the same fate. Many of them had already experienced the loss of a brother, father, or friend. The government knew that they had to intervene if they wanted to keep supplying men to the front lines. They decided to enact forced conscription by passing the Military Service Act in 1917. This act allowed the government to force any man between the ages of 20 and 45 to report for active service. Some of these men were later deemed medically unfit, however the vast majority were pressed into service overseas.  So the question is, how can you tell if your ancestor served willingly? The answer lies on their attestation papers. Depending on if they were conscripted or not, they were presented with a different set of attestation papers. Those who were not conscripted wer...
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The 1915 Niagara Trolley Accident: an Unofficial List of the Vicitims

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I wrote a post many months ago about the 1915 Niagara Trolley accident and have published several updates since then. Part of my continued research into this disaster involved compiling a list of names of the victims as well as those who were involved. Like my previous post, this one is likely to undergo several updates as I continue to further my research into this topic.  I first stumbled upon this disaster when I was researching one of my relatives. The entire event perplexed me. Like many things on that side of my family, the past was something that we just didnt talk about. I have since learned that this is an incredibly common trait in British families. The only reason that I made this discovery was because I have access to the ProQuest newspaper database. Hopefully this unofficial list will aid other researchers in learning their families role within this disaster.  The disaster involved two Sunday school church groups - one from St John Presbyterian, and the other fro...
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Ford's Folly and the Slum of Little Hell

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Battersea: The Sinkhole of Surrey During the Victorian Era, Battersea had gained the reputation as being “the sinkhole of Surrey” due to its widespread poverty and slum-like conditions. Many of the poor in Battersea were subject to irregular income from the building trades. For a family to scrape by in the winter they would have to apply thrift spending during the summer. This was often complicated by the reliance on alcohol which was used as a means of escape from the depression of living in such widespread poverty. The irregular income caused many of Battersea’s poor to frequently be on the move. On average a family lived in one place for less than two years before moving no more than a few streets away. After hopping from neighbourhood to neighbourhood the family would eventually return to where they were once exiled from, moving in only a few doors away from their former address. Ford’s Folly and the slum of Little Hell In Keith Bailey’s report Orville Road, Battersea: a Victor...
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Researching Addresses that no Longer Exist

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Ever since I was young I have said that I wanted to see the place where my ancestor's lived. I never cared if it was a castle or if it was a broken down shack in the woods. What I cared about was that feeling I get when I am able to stand somewhere that one of my ancestor's did many years ago. I spent the past four years researching where in England my ancestors lived with the hope that one day I will be able to go there and experience this feeling. Like many people, COVID had other plans. Its been a year since I initially was planning to take that trip and it seems like it might be at least one more before it can happen. In the mean time I have been revising my route and furthering my research. One of the first things that I do when I get an address for where one of my ancestor's lived, is search for it on Google Maps. Depending on where you are researching, the area may have changed so much that it is almost unrecognizable when compared to when your ancestor lived. For ex...
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Courting Disaster: The 1915 Niagara Trolley Accident

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The worst electric rail crash in Ontario’s history and the  3 rd  worst in Canadian history (at the time)  occurred at Queenston Heights in Niagara Falls on July 7 1915 . In total the crash of car number 685 claimed the lives of 15 people and was responsible for injuring 130 people.  To put the scale of the accident into context, more lives were lost and more people were injured during the 1915 trolley accident than British soldiers during the battle of Queenston Heights.  The main occupants of the trolley were members of Toronto’s Wood Green Methodist and St John Presbyterian Sunday school groups. The two church groups had organized a day trip to Niagara Falls for the approximate 1,100 parishioners (majority of which were women and children). The accident occurred when the two groups were on their way home.  All day the weather had been ideal for taking portraits and going picnicking, however towards the evening hours (approximately 7:15 pm) it began to ra...
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