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Week 24: Artistic

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 ARTISTIC I have made mention before of the needlework crafts done by my mother, Eveleen "Sis" Allen (nee Schell).  As a young girl she learned the usual knitting and crotchet as well as tatting from relatives.  Unfortunately, I cannot remember if it was her paternal grandmother, Mary Schell (nee Deadman), who lived with them (the woman was quite ill her last few years of life) or one of her many aunts that frequently visited.  Some of the lessons may have come from her mother, Irene Schell (nee Bates) but for most of my mother's childhood her mother was busy helping on the family farm as well as providing room and board for one of the local teachers.  Mom used to say that she and her sister Lena were rarely given cooking lessons by their mother as the woman would be rushing to get the meal done and did not have time to teach her daughters.  So I suspect there was similar limited time for teaching needlework. Growing up, I would see my mother knitting and c...
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Week 23: Wedding Bells

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 Wedding Bells The Brentwood United Church bells rang on June 11, 1949 when two local families were united in marriage with the wedding of William John Allen married Pearl Mary Eveleen Schell (my parents).  The groom was known as Jack and the bride Sis by family and friends.  Both families had lived in Brentwood for generations and there are still family members, on both sides, living in that small hamlet in Simcoe County, Ontario.    George & Irene (nee Bates) Schell, Sis (nee Schell) & Jack Allen, Gertie (nee Cooper) & Harry Allen   The bride was only 19 and the groom was 26 and had dated for a few years before getting engaged in 1948.  Being from the same small community, they had known each other all their lives.  The wedding party included the groom's brothers Les (as Best Man), Ivan (as an Usher) and sister Mary as flower girl.  The bride's sister Lena was Maid of Honour and their brother Bud was an usher.   The recepti...
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Week 22: Reunion

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 REUNION I have been fortunate to have grown up in a family that valued family gatherings.  As a child, I did resent having to travel 4 hours (each way) every holiday weekend back to my grandparents.  However, as my interest in genealogy and family history developed, I appreciate having grown up knowing not just my aunts, uncles and first cousins, but the aunts, uncles and first cousins of both of my parents.  My parents were from the same small community in Simcoe County, Ontario and both families lived in that area for several generations.   Before my time, the Allens (my fathers side) had started an annual family reunion at a provincial park near Barrie Ontario.  It was established as the descendants of my great-grandparents: William Daisley Allen and Mary Jane Woodland.  My grandfather, Henry "Harry" Woodland Allen was the youngest of 12, so there were many many descendants as Harry as well as many of his siblings had large families themselves....
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Week 21: Military

 MILITARY The military has had minimal impact of my ancestors - even during the two World Wars.  The men were either not at the right age or were exempt because of religious beliefs or being farmers contributed to the war efforts by continuing to tend their farms.   Several of my aunts did marry World War II vets, but only one blood uncle served in World War II.  My uncle Ab was the older brother of my father.  They were the oldest of 10 children and grew up relatively close.  As a young man, Ab left the family farm to work in Toronto and my father stayed to continue working on the family farm.   I knew that Uncle Ab did serve in World War II, but never knew the circumstances until the time of his death in 2011.  When Ab was first drafted, his employer got him an exception as the factory was contributing to the war effort.  His employer was prepared to get another exception when Ab was drafted a second time.  But Ab turned down his ...
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Week 20: Wheels

 WHEELS Although most of my ancestors were farmers, the automobile industry had been important to my extended family for a couple of generations in the last century. My maternal grandfather, George Schell, was the eldest of 10 children (6 boys, 4 girls).  In 1916, at the age of 21, he took on the responsibility of running the family farm in Simcoe County, Ontario and looking after his widowed mother and younger siblings.  Several of his brothers eventually left the family farm to work in the auto industry factories in Michigan and Ohio.   One of the brothers, Will, eventually returned home, married a local girl and farmed near the Schell farm.  Another brother, Wes, also eventually returned to Ontario to marry a girl from a nearby community and eventually operated a gas station in Brooklin Ontario.  I can remember stopping in there when travelling with my grandparents in the 1960s. Two brothers, Alf and Ed, stayed in the US working in the auto industry...
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Week 19: At the Library

 At the Library I worked for over 35 years in several academic libraries at Queen's University (starting in 1976 when I was in high school until my early retirement in 2013) and 2 years at the John Archer Library at the University of Regina.  The time at Regina was in the Interlibrary Loan unit and one of the positions I held at the Bracken Health Sciences Library at Queen's was in the Interlibrary office.  What a great experience for someone interested in genealogy research!  Although I never worked in the departments, the Documents Unit at Queen's is also a depository for Canadian government publications - so I had access to microfilmed census before digital records were available on the internet.  And Special Collections and Rare Books department had various genealogical related material as well.  Guess how I would spend my coffee breaks and lunch hours? For the last few years that I lived in my hometown of Kingston Ontario, I spent a lot of time at the ...
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Week 18: Institutions

 INSTITUTIONS Most of my ancestors, generation after generation were farmers.  By my father's generation, some were leaving the family farms and working in various trades.  So it was a very big deal when my older brother, Garry, graduated in 1974 from Queen's University with a Bachelor of Commerce degree.  My mother's brother and his family attended the graduation along with my parents, myself and younger brother.  Neither set of grandparents were able to attend, but one of our grandmothers had my brother's graduation photo published in every community newspaper available to her. Queen's University, located in Kingston Ontario, was established in 1841 by a Royal Charter issued by Queen Victoria.  It's original name was Queen's College at Kingston.  Kingston is known as 'Limestone City' and most of the original buildings at the university were built with limestone.  It is still a beautiful campus, despite buildings constructed for the past few deca...
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