Visiting Granny

It has felt like we have hit a period of time when Ellen and I have attended more funerals than at any other time I can remember. We have even had funeral times conflicting with other funerals that we also wanted to attend. These are funerals for friends and former work colleagues who we have lost.

Last week, we attended the funeral of one of Ellen's friends, a woman who died at the very young age of 46, leaving her husband and young sons grieving her loss. 

The funeral was held at the Pine Hills Cemetery visitation centre in Scarborough (now part of Toronto), Ontario. This is also the cemetery in which my paternal grandmother is buried.

Agnes Little was born in Greenock, Scotland and immigrated to Toronto in 1928 with the grand sum of $10 in her pocket. I still shake my head in amazement when I think of the courage she had as a 20-year old young woman leaving the only home she had known to travel "half way around the world" in search of a brighter opportunity.

As her eldest grandchild, I had the chance to know 'Granny.' Maybe not all that well as I was only just approaching my fourth birthday when she lost her battle with cancer, but I do vividly and fondly remember her.

Granny was buried in Pine Hills Cemetery so, after the funeral, I took advantage of escorting Ellen to Granny's grave in order to make 'proper introductions.'

Granny possessed a beautifully thick Scottish brogue that she referred to as her passport. She was only four feet, ten inches tall but she was a force in the family. She was only 50 years of age when she left us but she is not forgotten and legacy lives on.

Don't Blink, You Might Miss It! - Lingelbach Cemetery

If you blink, you just might miss the Lingelbach Cemetery, a small cemetery located just east of the village of Shakespeare, Ontario.

Last month, while en route to the Merner family reunion, I almost missed it. Of course, I wasn't expecting to see it either.



When planning our trip to the family reunion, I knew that our route would take us through one of Ellen's ancestral towns, New Hamburg, Ontario, and so, I allowed time for us to visit the Riverside Cemetery there (I documented this stop in a previous post). After leaving Riverside Cemetery and new Hamburg, we journeyed along; Ellen likely happy that my cemetery roving was finished and me, well, I was happy to have finally turned Riverside Cemetery into something more than a name on a record.

My "Oh My God!" exclamation caught Ellen off guard as we traveled down Highway 7/8 towards Stratford, Ontario and our eventual destination of the reunion location in Seaforth, Ontario. No, I explained, nothing was wrong but I had just seen the sign for Lingelbach Cemetery, something we definitely had to stop and explore on our trip home.


Lingelbach Cemetery is small, well maintained and is located on the corner of the highway and regional road 104, just outside the eastern boundary of Shakespeare. Like Riverside Cemetery is was just a name, albeit a bit of a strange name, that I had seen many times contained in death and burial records for some of Ellen's ancestors. Now it was real and I had a chance to walk it's few rows of graves, occasionally stopping to photograph the grave of a known ancestor and pay my respects to them.

Below is one of the ancestral graves found, that of Israel Eby (1850 - 1903) and his wife Mary Anne Witwer (1854 - 1932), Ellen's first cousin, three times removed.

Opening Up Canada's West

One of the challenges that I have faced researching both my family lines as well as those of my wife, Ellen, is the relative young age of Canada. This is especially problematic due to the involvement of our family branches in Canada's western, specifically the prairie provinces.

My Hadden family ancestors first immigrated from Scotland to Saskatchewan around 1907 when Helen 'Nellie' Shand and her husband Andrew Gammie took up a homestead near Aneroid, Saskatchewan. I have recounted previously, how in 1923, my great grandfather Alexander Shand Hadden answered his mother's call for some help and he left Scotland with his wife and children and put down Canadian roots that I can now call my own.

I have not yet found Helen and Andrew in the 1911 census records but they appear in the 1916 census records of the Canadian prairie provinces.

Saskatchewan only became a province on Sept. 1, 1905, meaning that are only three publicly available set of census records - 1906, 1911, and 1916. As my family was still in Scotland in 1906, I'm limited to the two remaining record sets.

But (!) thanks to a stalwart group of volunteers, additional Saskatchewan information for genealogists is becoming available - one plot at a time! I have found through the Saskatchewan Cemeteries Project website a small treasure trove of burial locations, date information and numerous gravestone photos of many Latimer ancestors (Ellen's family). A special thanks to volunteer Val Thomas who photographed and indexed the Benson Cemetery, the final resting place for several of Ellen's relatives.

The Saskatchewan cemeteries site contains the transcriptions of more than 1,000 of the province's more than 3,300 cemeteries so while there is still lots of work to do before the 'project' is complete, great work has already been done and made available. The site provides a listing of the transcribed cemeteries along with the municipality to which they are associated.

More than just cemetery transcriptions, the site also includes an obituary index with links to the obituary text that unfortunately does not seem to allow the 'copy and paste' function. This technological aspect is in my opinion not helpful. However, the obituaries, if you find one connected to your family as I did with Ellen's Latimer relatives, are typically full of great information about family members but also about the deceased and their life in the community.

Keep up the good work Saskatchewan Cemeteries Project volunteers!