52 Ancestors 2025

 Week 6: Surprise Anyone doing research into the family history will eventually encounter at least one surprise and probably more than one.  I certainly have.  Sometimes the surprise is pleasant and sometimes it may reveal a black sheep in the family. One of cousins who lives in the area of many of our ancestors frequently texts me with a name and wonders if it is an ancestor or distant cousin.  Over the years, I have been able to confirm that an acquaintance of hers or daughters is indeed a distant cousin, usually with the common ancestor being our 3rd Great-grandparents Benjamin Schell & Mary McGill.  Given that this couple had a large family and most of their children had large families and continued through the generations, there are a lot of distant cousins still living in the Simcoe County area of Ontario Canada. My surprise came one Saturday night when my cousin forwarded me a link that her daughter had sent her.  The local newspaper has a column...

 CHALLENGE What would my ancestors find challenging?   My first thought was the challenges experienced by my immigrant ancestors.  What made them decide to leave the homeland?  What did they encounter aboard ship travelling across the Atlantic Ocean from Europe to the New World?  What did they encounter once they arrived in the New World and foraged into the wilderness to establish their homestead? Unfortunately, most of the immigration took place in the late 1600s for the Van Hornes, mid 1700s for the Schells, early 1800s for the Allens and mid 1800s for the Bates and Mumbersons.  I do not have family stories passed down the generations of their personal stories and challenges.  I do not even know the story behind of what spurred the Coopers to leave England for Wales and then Ontario in the early 1900s. So I have decided to focus on my grandparents, George Schell and Martha Jane Irene Bates, with some details flushed out by comments and stories ...