Reviewing and analyzing a family history document for a second time is almost always valuable and eye-opening due to the facts and information that you can see which might have been overlooked for some reason on the first read.
While entering information about Patrick Graham and his wife Catherine (nee McRae), my second great grandparents in my maternal family line, there was information, particularly from census records that provided new leads to deepen my knowledge of the lives of their children.
Patrick, a tailor by trade, had immigrated to Upper Canada (now Ontario, Canada) sometime likely in the 1830's. Catherine was born in Glengarry County of what is now Ontario in 1822. I don't know when nor how they met but they married around 1838, according to Roman Catholic marriage registers. Their first child was James, born in 1842. Three daughters were to follow, including my great grandmother Margaret, born in 1854.
The census record for the family in January 1852, (the 1851 census in Canada was delayed) shows the family living in a frame house in the village of East Gwillimbury, north of Toronto, and oldest child and only son James going to school. About ten years later, the 1861 census records show that the family had moved about three miles west to the village of Holland Landing and that James had left school, moved north to the town of Barrie and was an apprentice shoemaker.
Sometime before 1870, James married Mary Ann Duffy and around 1870, they welcomed their first child, William, into their family. James had also taken up a new profession - that of innkeeper. In 1871, James and Mary Ann were living in the village (perhaps hamlet?) of Essa, Ontario, due west of Barrie. No mention is included in the record of the name of the inn that he kept and despite searches through various histories of the area at that time, I can find no mention of James or the inn.
Tragedy struck however on May 17, 1874 when Mary Ann gave birth to their second child, also a boy, and both mother and child died. According to the death registrations, the unnamed baby boy died within "a few minutes" of birth followed soon after by his 25 year-old mother.
Sometime before 1878, James re-married, this time to Mary Guilfoyle. James and Mary had three daughters, Catherine Louise, Mary Isabella, and Anna May. Over the next 25 years, James continued to live in the Simcoe County, Ontario area, occasionally moving between some of the area's small towns and villages. His profession during this time was always listed as Hotel Keeper. James passed away of heart failure at the age of 61, on June 19, 1903.
Looking at a record for a second time, in this case, a census record, lead to a cascade of new information, and records, connected to this family. My intention is to continue hunting for records about James' hotel as my gut instinct is that there have got to be some fascinating stories about life in the hotels of that era. The Barrie, Ontario library has an on-line obituary index showing that there are two local newspapers that contained obituaries for James. Unfortunately, other than giving the name of the newspaper and date of the obituary, no other details were available but it may be the best place of start. I can feel a field trip coming on!
There's one other good reason to look at a record a second time. If we procured the record when we were beginners, we may not have known what to look for, how to interpret it, or understood it. With a few years of experience, when we look at it again, we will have a better understanding of some things that we may have overlooked before. It's happened to me more than a few times.
ReplyDeleteGlad you found some leads in your second viewing of documents.