"A Family Secret No More" - Susan Saulny

Here is an article recently published about a woman who discovered a family secret that went back 3 generations about "passing" - spurred by her reading of the new Pope Leo about a year ago, and comments about his genealogy including that his black/ Creole ancestors in New Orleans left by train and settled in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century. This struck a chord with her and she realized that was what had happened to her long-lost great-uncle Edward DeGrange, explaining why she didn't know about him/ why he was never discussed by her family in New Orleans. 

So many families have secrets like this - sometimes across a "color line," and sometimes the dividing element is religion or language, a hidden sexual / gender orientation or birth outside of marriage... this is not to sensationalize but to normalize that we all have unknown stories in our families... I have found some in my own family. Recovering and trying to reconstruct what happened is a way to honor the struggles and sorrows that our ancestors endured, and to reflect on how we can change the way we react to unexpected family events or developments. Happy reading! 

Canada's one-generation limit removed... many are seeking to confirm and claim their Canadian citizenship

 This post will be short, because I am really busy! Busy with lots of clients who are looking to have a genealogist find the proof and present it in a report that will (hopefully - no guarantee) pass muster with the Canadian citizenship officials to claim being Canadian even many generations back. Hear this radio piece about it here and feel free to ask me questions! 

La Francophonie

 

La Francophonie - French culture !

Well, March went by fast, and I meant to post something about "La Francophonie" - which just means, for monolingual English speakers, the French-speaking world. March was the month of La Francophonie, and I've been thinking specifically about the French-Canadian version, since so much of my genealogy research, for my own family and for clients, is based in French-speaking Canada, mainly what is now the province of Quebec, although not only Quebec. Globally there are 321 million speakers of French, and they are on every continent. 26 different countries have French as an official language. 

In Canada, as of the most recent Census, in 2021, those whose first language is French comprise 22% of the population, over 8 million people. (Canada's population is almost 37 million.) 

Almost 10.7 million Canadians can converse in French.

Nearly 1.7 million young Canadians are studying French as a second language. 

6.6 million Canadians (18% of the population) are bilingual (English and French).

The rate of bilingualism is highest in Quebec (46.4%) and then New Brunswick (34%). 

New Brunswick is the only Canadian province which is officially bilingual. 

Canada is officially bilingual, but each province also has its own language policy.

47.6% of Francophones are bilingual.

9% of Anglophones are bilingual. 

11.5% of Allophones (those whose first language is neither French or English) are bilingual in English and French. 

This information came from Wikipedia, Canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/settle-canada/francophone-communities/history.html, and from StatsCan. 

 For women's history month...

I find that often, clients want to research their patronymic line - the line of ancestors going back with a surname/ last name - in my case it would be the Green line. This can be very rewarding, to go back and see all the previous generations of your last name, but don't forget about your female ancestors! I have found some of the most interesting and unexpected things while tracing female lines in my family tree. There is so much to discover about your ancestry, not limited to those ancestors who carry your, or your family's last name. Don't forget the women! 

This book, by Sharon DeBartolo Carmack, is a great resource for how to research the women in your family tree, and ways to get around the fact that women's identities were, and are, often hidden - because of taking a husband's last name (and even his first name - i.e. Mrs. James Hamilton gives you hardly any idea of who this woman is). Another reason why women's identities in records was hidden was because they were deemed not important. Often before the twentieth century, obituaries were only for men. There were other ways in which women were hidden from records as well, and DeBartolo Carmack outlines ways to get around those, how to ask yourself different questions, how to chip away at that lack of records and dig deeper. If you are having trouble finding records about your female ancestors, this is definitely worth taking a look! 

Reading for Black History Month, new database!

 The Color of Family: History, Race, and the Politics of Ancestry

by Michael O'Malley 

is about how people end up on one side of the "color line" in the US, a line that was policed for centuries, but especially after the Civil War was over - think the "paper bag test" and the "one drop rule"... Michael O'Malley, the author who identifies as a Philadelphia Irish American, found that he had "colored" ancestors in Virginia, because of the way the color line was policed, and particularly profiling a "zealous eugenicist"Walter Plecker, who ran Virginia's Bureau of Vital Statistics in the first half of the 1900s. O'Malley explores his own racial assumptions but also how, with the coming of the modern age, the documents used to establish identity were freighted with the racial agenda of these bureaucrats and also the private business agenda of the companies that now control these documents - ancestry.com to be precise. There is much food for thought here, in a book both personal and historical. It goes to the heart of the American experiment, especially its racial dimensions.

I tried to include a photo of the book cover... had technical difficulty. Apologies!

Also, I have just become aware of a new database of genealogical information about people who were enslaved in western Missouri (Jackson County especially), leading up to the Civil War. This database is an amazing resource for those who believe they may have ancestors who were enslaved here in the Kansas City area. It is free to use; a great addition to resources in tracing black genealogy in the Midwest. 

In-person research - so fun!

 

In January I've been doing some in-person research (which doesn't always happen since so many historical records relevant to genealogy research are digitized), but here we are - nothing like handling old volumes (with care), and imagining the hands that touched them back in the day. These volumes are from the 1880s and 1890s - city directories. Well, it's now February, so on to my next post soon - Black History Month. 

Acadian Remembrance Day

 

Yesterday was Acadian Remembrance Day (December 13), and I have been reading these books, to really drill down into the history of the Acadians and their expulsion and diaspora. It is such a complicated and tragic story (and I've posted about this history in an earlier post about writing my family history). I only recently realized that I have Acadian roots, but that perhaps explains why I have always been fascinated by it and by the "Cajun" culture of Louisiana... it's one of the many diaspora communities of Acadians. Many tried to and did return to the Maritime provinces of Canada which were/are the Acadian homeland (for those who don't know, that's New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and even a bit of southwestern Newfoundland). Just thinking about the lost history, the planned forgetting and the more recent attempt to recover the history and genealogy of the Acadian people. One great website is Acadiann, another is acadian.org. I recommend diving into these if you are interested. If you have a French sounding last name in your family tree, it is possible that you have Acadian roots. It's not the same culture as "French Canadian" or Quebecois, but a separate history and culture that developed on the maritime edge of northeastern North America in the 1600s and 1700s. Happy reading! Vive les Acadiens!