COUSINS

       My son in law has become very interested in genealogy. He's a hard worker, meticulous and knows the rules. When his mother died he looked around and discovered that he knew or knew of very few family members. 

      There are websites that give you much information on your family. Be careful. Not all of it is correct. This is where my sil gets to work. He likes to show that information he finds is correct so it has to coincide with other information. I am interested in genealogy but am not dedicated enough to do the research.

    The sil put out a news letter and used the term second cousin and second cousin removed. I thought ah ha. I've heard these terms all my life but don't really know what they mean. What I did know is that there were many different definitions for "second cousin." People seemed to follow their own rules. The sil laughed and said that he got the labels off a genealogy site.

    Then my daughter, who was siting beside him, got her phone out and had information on any kind of cousin you imagine. There are charts that help you go through the cousin maze. 

    Cousin definitions and labels go in two directions. There's vertical which goes by age and horizontal which shows the distance from a common grandparent.

    I will go no further. You can get out of your depth in a hurry when it comes to labeling cousins. 

   Check the internet and you will easily find charts.

   Another snag with cousins is that various cultures have different labels for cousins. 

    I think some of you will take the bait here and try and label cousins.

    Have fun. 

VISIT

            I had a pleasant visit with one of my brothers today. It doesn't take long before the topic of conversation changes to family history or local history. 

           My three brothers still live and farm where we were born so they've lived in one location for  long time. 

           Many , many changes have taken place. The local district was about 4 by four miles. When the original homesteaders arrived early in the last century there were approximately 23 families. So there were 23 farmsteads and families. 

         Today there are 2 farmsteads in that area where at one time there were 23 farmsteads so we have much to talk about. My nephews live on the 2 farmsteads that are occupied. We're all interested in who lived there. 

        Local histories have been written but that does not cover all the people who lived in the area. So off we go trying to make some connections and sense of what we know. 

      One wonders about the people who lived there. Where did they come from? Most people in the area came from Ontario. Hw long did they stay in the area? What made them leave? A walk through the cemetery brings up more questions. Some families lost one member and then moved on . The grave has been left and the memories are gone. 

     Now we may not discover much new information. We did think about going over some of the old farmyards with a metal detector!

   It made for a pleasant visit. 

         

WHAT WOULD GOTTLIEB THINK?

        Gottlieb brought his family here for some very solid reasons. He wanted to be able to practice the Lutheran faith. He wanted to maintain the German language. He was a pacifist and did not want to participate in war or armed forces. The family needed the opportunity to find more land so that they could farm.

       In the late 1980's Virginia found more than 900 of us. This included all the in laws. 

       Less than 50  of the family still live at Esk. 

This photo was taken in the late 1950's with some of my Grandpa's family including Grandpa. In the photo are three of Grandpa's sons and three of his daughters. There were many good family times , usually around a big turkey dinner.

      So now very few of us are members of the Lutheran church. Very few of us speak German. Many of his offspring have served in the armed forces. One of his grandsons was killed in the Second world war. My son was in the reserve forces. Very, very few of his family are famers. Two and a half of my brothers are farmers

     So what would Gottlieb think of this situation? I think he was forward enough thinking to see that with all the changes it was a good decision for the family. If one looks back at what happened where they were living you can see that they had a much better opportunity in Canada. Things were very unsafe in central Europe for many years .

    I have some errors that I have to correct. Some of you picked up the errors. My Dad was not in the nursing home for 18 years. He was in a nursing home for five years. He had very good quality of life until his mid eighties. 

    I've been most surprised at the reaction to this series of posts. I was surprised at how many were missing most of their family history. I was the nerdy little kid who sat around and listened to my Dad's stories and all the people who visited him. I've always been interested in Western Canadian history. I've always liked local history. My brothers went outside and played and had a good time which was a normal choice. 

    This is Dad's family in 1966...four sons.

AUNT LUCY

       Aunt Lucy was my Mom's aunt and she was my Grandma's sister.

       Aunt Lucy was a very tiny English lady who was very able to look after herself. She wore her iron gray coat and hat...a straw hat in the summer and felt hat in the winter. She always wore a substantial pair of shoes.

      In the late 40's early 50's Aunt Lucy visited our place every year...usually late fall. A series of letters would be exchanged and arrangements made. Aunt Lucy would be picked up from the train. She had two large and heavy suitcases. We liked to see her come as she was a great visitor. She was a talker and had lots of stories.

    After a ten days or two weeks she would move a couple of hundred miles down the line to where her twin daughters and grandchildren lived.

     She would stay there about a month and then travel to the west coast. There she had two sisters and a son. She went from place to place and visited and in the late winter she would travel back to Winnipeg. 

    To us kids there were mysteries. We didn't know what happened to her husband. We didn't know how she made a living. We didn't know how she became this tiny independent English lady. 

    As kids we didn't know much about aunt Lucy .

    So why am I telling you this. I recently got Ancestry and found aunt Lucy and a bit about her life so I can piece together a story about her.

   She came to Canada in about 1900 and they decided to farm as there was lots of good cheap land. In 1914 she was left as a widow with five children with her youngest child only two years old. I'm not sure what she did after that but records show that she was in the same area as the farm. Somehow she raised 5 kids. I would guess that she received some support from relatives.

    Later on she moved to Winnipeg as some of her children lived there. Now When she visited us and went on to the coast she probably still lived with family as she was able to leave her place. 

   So with a little inference it was fun to put together more of aunt Lucy's life. 

   So far with ancestry I've found much more than I thought I would. I know I won't find any famous or high class people. The people on my Dad's side of the family were peasants who farmed. The people on my mother's side seem to have been farm workers in England. For example, my Grandpa did butchering. When a farmer was going to butcher an animal my grandfather was called and did the job. 

ANCESTRY

     I recently wrote a post telling of my early Father's Day gift. My son in law got excited about a project and no little issue like it's not Father's Day would stop him. 

    Well, the stopping issues started with me. My computer skills are not great. So here it comes. Ancestry sends an email. The email asks you for your information to sign into the program. My first problem was that it would not accept my postal code. It insisted on a zip code. We are used to those problems. So phone for help. It turned out that the helper and help requester were both at about the same level of expertise. She asked me to do all kinds of things that even I knew had nothing to do with the problem. 

    The problem was that I was looking at an email that she knew nothing about. She would ask if I could see something? Well, no I wasn't on that page. She apparently was not aware that ancestry sends out an email first.  

    Finally she was able to look at my account and tell me that I was in business as she could see everything in my account. But I say how do I get into the program? With that she left me as she had been with me for an hour. So I thought things over and said ah ha I know what to do. I did know what to do but my pass word had been mangled. There was no way I could reset my pass word from their system. One more call. I got the nicest guy in the whole telemarketing world. I did complement him highly.

    So off I went to look at ancestry. 

    My maternal grandfather was a rather dour little Englishman. I never heard him talk about relatives . So very quickly I found him with his three sisters and his parents. So the first thing I found in minutes was my great grandfather on my mother's side.

     My Grandpa is on the left. It's the only photo I can find of him.

    My biggest disappointment? I couldn't find myself! Isn't that vain?

   Maybe the next program I get, I will be able to register without a problem.

I GOT MY FATHER'S DAY GIFT YESTERDAY!

    Yesterday I received my Father's day gift from my son in law (sil). That's right!

    It works like this. My sil's mother died about a year ago. Apparently both his parents were not interested in family or relatives. I believe the family was quite small. Very few relatives attended her memorial. When the  sil's mother died about a year ago he started to look up the family.

    The sil has become very interested in researching family. As my daughter says he's gone down a rabbit hole. Every time I talk to him he's excited about what he has found.

    The sil knows that I'm interested in family history so he gave me a subscription to a family ancestry site that he uses.

    So now I'm off to find out all kinds of new things. Before 1990 my father's family did a family tree and they located over 900 of the family.

   My father's side of the family were German Lutherans who came to Canada from Volhynia in the Ukraine. Great Grandpa brought all his married children to Canada over a period of 15 years. Great  Grandpa had four sons and four daughters.

      Grandma and Grandpa about 1946

    First a couple of family members were sent out to scout the area. They sent back good reports and their wives and children were sent out. As money was gathered for fares others  made the trip. The  Mennonites in southern Manitoba were a great help to the family.

    After a number of years all of them relocated to the Esk area in Saskatchewan. Two of the families moved on from Esk but two sons and three daughters spent the remainder of their lives at Esk.

    Now my three brothers and some of their children are the only family members left in that area.

   Anyhow I expect to find a few things I didn't know. Maybe some of my followers come from German Lutheran families from the Ukraine!

  Anyway, thanks to my sil for an early Father's day gift.

PASSING ON FAMILY HISTORY

     My son-in-law' mother died this fall. Her illness and deteriorating health was a nightmare. Along with this was an added disaster of finding that business affairs were not looked after or up to date.

    The critical things have been looked after and now the hard work begins to clean out and dispose of a life time of memories contained in a house.

    My son-in-law is an only child so all responsibility is on his shoulders. Going through a house sorting out things can make your head hurt. He had asked his mother to write on photos. Very little was done and you can't look over your Mother's shoulder to see that she does what you ask.

    So I received an email this morning suggesting that I write on my photos and anything else of family significance. My photos have all been written on.

    Now what my son-in-law was actually talking about is family history and how it is passed on or not passed on. He was reacting to his own loss of family history. I could have written the same thing when my father passed away. I wasn't prepared to ask him much as I hadn't been thinking about it. By the time I started asking questions it was too late. He couldn't recall what I wanted to know.



    Now that I'm elderly, what am I doing about passing on family history? Not much! First, I assume that my kids know much more than they do. Second: I think that there are many things that are of no interest to them. Third: I'm busy and so are my kids. Fourth: I'm not encouraging my kids to ask about family history. Fifth: I think I have many more things that I'm interested in.

    So our family history is very poorly passed on to  the next generations. We've had some degree of literacy for hundreds of years. Now we have wall to wall literacy with the Internet and yet we are doing a poor job of passing on family history. But we have also become spread across the globe. My ancestors came from England and the Ukraine at the beginning of the last century. Today we are global and not only spread across the globe but more mobile than ever.

    There are cultures with only oral history and they seem to have stories from hundreds or thousands of year ago. They live together in large extended families and tell the stories. They know what to tell and repeat it many times. 

    So to my son-in-law, I will go to work and label things and try and leave some information about the things I have.

    I have written many things on this blog about my family history. Is anybody going to go through it to get some understanding and picture of the life I've lived? 
    
   So to my son-in-law, I will go to work and label things and try and leave some information about the things I have.

How Grandma got to Canada

     After my last post telling about my Grandma's story telling ability, I started thinking about how she got to Canada.

    Grandma arrived in Canada about 1902. The real story happens before she got here.

    My ancestors moved to Russia/Ukraine in the late 1700's. Catherine the Great asked Germans to come to farm and show Russians and Ukrainians how to farm more productively. My family were devote Lutherans. They were pacifists. They were promised they could keep practising their Lutheran faith, keep their German language and not be made to join an army.  Over the next 100 years these things eroded away depending on the location. For example, my Grandfather was in Russian army. Land had become scarce and this meant that their children would not have the opportunity to farm and this meant that they had very little opportunity to make a living. Canada was giving land away. They did not have cash so free land looked like a golden opportunity.   All the Germans learned to speak Russian and many learned Ukrainian.

   My Great Grandfather was fearful that they would lose these rights. To him they were absolutely mandatory. They began to think about where to move so that they could maintain their beliefs.Two of the family were sent to Canada to look at the prospects of moving to Canada. They came back with a positive report. Plans were made and by 1900 some of the family had moved. Great Grandpa was the organizer and leader. Great Grandpa had all his adult children and their spouses move to Canada. Many of the in-laws of his children also came with this large family.

    So this is how my Grandma came to Canada. She was not part of the decision making group. Some of her relatives were left behind. She kept in contact with them. My Dad also kept the contact up.

  Now over a hundred years later, probably none of great Grandpa's family speak German. Very few of them follow the Lutheran faith. Many of them have been in the armed forces. Several of Great Grandpa's grandchildren fought in WW II. What would great Grandpa think today? Would he be happy how things turned out? He was a great leader and I think he would agree that he made the best decision by moving to Canada.

What Should We Ask Our Elders?

     On my last post I confidently stated that we should make a list of questions to ask our parents and grand parents. After I published the post I thought, " What would I write down?" I had to stop and think about it. Maybe it's not so easy to make up a list of questions. We have the nagging thought in the back of our head that we would like to know more of our parents and grandparents. But what do we really want to know?

   So the first thing I considered was the age of the son or daughter and parents and grandparents. Questions kids would ask would be different than what adults would ask.  Answers would be different depending on the ages. These days some grandchildren are not that familiar with grandparents.

   I would make up a list of general areas I would interest me. Then I would  say tell me something about the games you played as a kid. This can be a conversation where one answer leads to another question.  ...games at home, school or with friends.

    School would be a big one. My Dad lived less than half a mile from the country school he went to. For some time he lit the fire so the school would be somewhat warm when the other kids got there. I heard this story many times. I didn't hear about his teachers or what they learned. He spent one year in high school where he boarded in town. He wasted his time in the pool room. He did not return to high school. He had regrets about wasting this opportunity.

    He talked about the food they ate and how good it was. What was the food?

   My Dad road freight trains. What was it like?

   I knew small pieces of Mom and Dad's life but not much detail. Our best hope is to fill in some of the detail.

   I have children in their 40's and grandchildren in their teens. What would I want them to know? Remember, I'm going to have to prompt them to ask questions. Funny situations have come up. My Mom kept all my report cards . My daughter was looking at the report cards and said,"Dad, you had poor marks!" I think we have to be ready to tell some things we are not proud of. 

   Other areas I would pencil in for ideas would be: happy times, sad times, work as a child, travel, disappointments, favorite people in their lives, challenges, friends, siblings, grand parents. I like to hear about daily life. My kids should hear about how I milked cows or road horses. They should hear about harvest and cutting hay. They should know about my shenanigans. I was a rascal. 

   This is by no means a complete list. It should grow.

   What questions would you put in your list?

A Discovery Far Back in My Genealogy

       Two areas of interest to me are local history and my family tree. I read a tremendous amount of local and western Canadian history. I have done little genealogy research but others have and I find their discoveries fascinating.


     The relatives on my father's side were German  Lutherans who went to the Ukraine and Russia at the end of the 1700's. They were invited by Catherine the Great to come and farm so that more food could be produced in the area to feed the people. They were also used to teach the Russian and Ukrainian people agricultural methods that would be more productive. The Germans were promised  three  things: keep  the German language, practice their Lutheran faith and not serve in the army. These people were very devout and so their religious faith was most important to them. Language is what helps a  culture to survive. These Lutherans were pacifists and did not want to participate in any war. 


     Over the years gradual changes took place. Finally, it was required that the Germans would have to join  the Russian army. My Grandfather was in the Russian army. In the late 1800's many of the German people began looking for some other place to live. Land was available in the United States and free land was available in the Canadian west. My family, the Kleins, sent some of the men over to investigate the opportunities. They liked what they saw and sent back information for the this large family to come to Canada. From about 1898  to 1910 my family came to Canada. My Great Grandfather brought all seven of his adult children and their families. 


     I was never able to find anybody beyond my Great Grandfather. I wanted to know if he had brothers or sisters. I wanted to know who his parents were. All records were kept by the Lutheran church. 


     The other day I stumbled upon a website that had what I was looking for and more. One section of my family had done the research and got back as far as my Great, great, great,great Grandfather! How about that? Was I excited to find this information. George who as the greatest was born and died in the 1700s and no dates were found for his birth or death. Gotlieb  was my Great, Great, Great Grandfather and was born in 1791 and died in 1856. To me this was amazing information.


     Now a friend read this and wanted to know what they did. Were they rich, horse thieves, swindlers or drunks? I had to tell him that I really didn't know but my suspicion was that they were hard working peasants.  So I didn't find any surprising things in the closet but it was super just to find their names. 

The Devastation of Exclusion

          Today I met an acquaintance who I haven't seen very often in the last while. We exchanged greetings and the next topic which came up was "his hobby which has gotten out of control."

          His hobby is genealogy and he has become involved with the provincial group and spends much time on it. As many of you know  you can become totally absorbed in the research of your family history. I admit that I have more than an average interest in family history.

        We had a very pleasant chat and both had difficulty in leaving to go on with other obligations.

        He gave me a website to research to see if I could find more information on my family. I had looked at this website three years ago and had forgotten why I hadn't pursued it . I looked at the website today and put in some of my family names and all of them came back "No records found."  How devastating! It's like we don't even exist! Now I know I'm being overly dramatic. We are a large German family who came from Russia to Manitoba and then Saskatchewan. My great grandfather came with all of his adult children. We did a family tree in the mid 1980's and were able to discover 970 descendants. I was really surprised to see that we were not on this website.

       So being excluded lead me to some other examples of exclusion. I was a junior high school teacher for 37 years. My heart always went out to the little kid who was chosen last or totally left out of a group. Many times a kid came to me close to tears because their birthday was missed in the announcements on the intercom. That was always an easy fix. I would say we'll tell the office right now and a smile would return to the tormented little face.

       My Dad was born in Saskatchewan in 1912. In the early 1960's he wanted to travel to Europe so applied for a pass port. The reply he received was devastating. "Mr. Kline , we have absolutely no record of you!" My Dad thought that his Dad had forgotten to register his birth. My Dad at this time had filed income tax for almost thirty years. My Dad then had to scramble and find records from old school registers to prove his age. In due time he received his pass port. My Dad found the whole issue humorous but nevertheless he had been left out. In later research I found that his Dad was not at fault for forgetting to register him. The birth registrations in Saskatchewan from 1910 to 1912 had many omissions. Deaths and marriages were complete but some how the birth registrations were a complete mess.

      In relation to Dad's story he said , "That's why I never got a letter from the government to join the forces for World War II." If he hadn't applied for a passport he would have found the problem when his old age pension was due.

      So a pleasant chat on genealogy got me off on a tangent about the devastation of being excluded. Some people have enough ego to roll with being excluded and others are completely destroyed.