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Messages - mongrel-diaries

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The Common Room / Re: How long have you been researching your family tree?
« on: Tuesday 22 July 08 00:20 BST (UK)  »
Aulus my apologies..just realized in a seniors moment that I mispelled your moniker..
I was distracted by that Newcastle Ale I poured for a toast to Genjen and her Mom's memory lane..

..
mongrel

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The Common Room / Re: How long have you been researching your family tree?
« on: Tuesday 22 July 08 00:08 BST (UK)  »
No genjen, that's not daft..it's the best part of  gathering memories of our elders, and more importantly, with our elders while they still walk with us.. walking down memory lanes with old folks, having them describe their "firefly moments"....  I've gained so much from elders .. we who weigh these things are "different"..perhaps it's a vestigial cultural thing..Druids, Medicine Woman, the tribal story teller ..the one with the memories of the tribe..if that's daft..well what the heck..I'll drink a pint of ale to that..

and Aulua:
I'm touched..it's a token confessional point of view from the dysfunctional  and voluntarily disenfranchised ..we have fun with it..
from what I remember of the Latin,.."insane" or "in sane" means to be within ones own mind..and i've found that weighing the essence of our blood and soul across the centuries will certainly bring that on in spades..

cheers from
the mongrel puppy of the second litter..

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The Common Room / Re: How long have you been researching your family tree?
« on: Monday 21 July 08 12:44 BST (UK)  »
Yes Mom's interested..Her family history has always been hung up on the 1800's and I've undertaken to fill in some blanks..I have fleshed out a long detailed history on my Dad's side..that part that he referred to in the 1940's as the "abdicated mennonites and mongrel mohawks.." Indian wars and pilgrims caught up in real estate struggles..
I just inherited two large boxes of papers and photos from the Belfast side of Mom's family..this all came out of nowhere..came to the mongrel they did because no one else was interested..which brought me to explore this group..she sparkled when i told her about the folks here and on the Belfast Family forum and how much had been gathered in just the last week.
She has slid further away since losing her eyesight but when I enter her dreamworld with stories about her grandparents in Belfast or Newburgh Scotland she comes back at least momentarily to talk about things with clarity.
She corrected me on the pronunciation of the Irish village and of her grandmothers Gaelic name yesterday. If the question confuses her she goes off topic. But there are ways to trigger her attention and bring her back.
Exploring her family history seems a small but important part of her "medicine".
I'm sure the veterans of this science would agree that individuals as much as institutions have difficulty absorbing and processing all the hard as well as inspiring truths about their past. I have found that most difficult with my generation of Veterans of the Cold War and Vietnam so I really can't judge the older ones.
The uplifting moments..I call them firefly moments..when I look into the eyes in a photo of some ancestor caught in some adventure of life..or discover a reference, like 20 years ago when reading on a history of the 1600's Rogerene pilgrims of an ancestors name in a study .
oops..better get towork..
Ron, Mongrel son of the Empire...

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The Common Room / Re: How long have you been researching your family tree?
« on: Monday 21 July 08 06:31 BST (UK)  »
delightful conversation..permit a comment from a new guy..

the question was asked yesterday in the chat room and all i could think was.."decades"...
i've written essays to myself..when no one else is listening.. about the attention deficit disorder caused by all that mulling about in multidimensional time travel..about the obsessive compulsive disorder and cultural autism of seeking the roots of genetic and cultural programming in the family bones.
1947, when the teacher asked us to think about where we each came from, I scooted down the dirt road back to the farm and posed the question to my Dad standing beside the wood stove.." are we English or Irish..?" cause that's all I had ever heard my mother talk about.. to which he responded, looking directly into my eyes.."You're a mongrel..wear it proudly.."
explaining to 89 yr old Mom today some of the details unfolding in this most recent exploration of her roots..

following threads back through Indian wars, religious wars, civil wars, dislocations, removals, very large world wars and depressions..all the variations of our silly human pathologies spawned in conflicts over religion and real estate.. just looking for bloodlines, ancestors in the clues.. the inlaws and outlaws alike..i came to one final conclusion..history is a big friggin lawnmower and we're the village lawn..

On the other side of it..Granmas from the Mohawk were right after all..all earthlings are mongrels.."one blood, one spirit.." (a matriarchal society might have done it with a gentler hand..)

thank you all for your entertaining discussion..
apologetic mongrel, colonial son..

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Armagh / Re: Irish Horsemen of Armagh
« on: Sunday 20 July 08 04:18 BST (UK)  »
yes well the serendipitous gathering of talented folk here are clearing the hearsay and family mythology..
Two folks have sent items that give  birth records from Down..the clarification of the Robert Arthur of 1879 is the Arthur in my list..found a death record of his daughter a Captain Mary (Scott) Bishop which lists her father as Colonel R.A. Scott..
It appears i will have to change the Horseman of Armagh to something else..perhaps the "Irish Cowboys" as they appear to have been known in the Drumheller area of Alberta   ..  and perhaps move my discussion to the Belfast forum that Christopher pointed to

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Armagh / Re: Irish Horsemen of Armagh
« on: Saturday 19 July 08 07:24 BST (UK)  »
second effort to say thanks to all you marvellous folks..lost 1st detailed note..too late in the day and brain tired.
 intrigued by Robert Arthur born 1879..I have no listing of this one..but will certainly follow that up..thanx for the tip.

Robert had "7 parcels of land"..  purchased second block, three parcels, 4 had come down thro the family from 1753..where they raised horses for the British Cavalry..Howard's stories from childhood memory were that it was close to the sea .. Roman ruins nearby..the clues from the notes folks here have sent will help to locate that old homestead..

10 of the family, a "maid, Miss Maitland moved to Canada turn of the century with Robert Arthur and Annie Cree Scott, .. and photos..from  list of 11 children born in Ulster. extracted from  hearsay and handwritten notes

Fred : engineer..settled in Niagara Falls:  head of Carborundum only son killed in WWII

James R : engineer Westinghouse, son history and english prof.

Alfred H  : no children..(engineer, Chile, Argentina, on railway construction across Andes, 1920's)

Howard H : no children,(seated right side of photo
horse drawn artillery at Pashendale and Vimy): Dr of Chiropractic Med. New Liskeard, Ontario

George Calvin: no children..third from left in photo (Lord Strathcona Light Horse Calvary) Horseman, taught trick riding to early forms of the Mounted Police in Western Canada

Walter  :     (died in the Niagara Schoellkopf Hydro plant project)                 

Edwin   :     (also died in the Schoelkopf plant project

Earnest Ainsley : 4 daughters, 1 still living, 1st on the left of photo.. ( grandfather); architect-engineer approx. 1911 to 1918..hotels for the Cdn Pacific Railway)

Arthur :    2nd from left of photo.. Colonel, Lincoln and Welland Regt's ..1st WW, reputedly standing with Dr. Mcrae of Flanders Fields fame when they were gassed..died young..1930's)

Gertrude  : ( died in Ireland from a schoolmaster's blow at age 11)

Jean : the girl in the photo settled in Niagara Falls..married a Lawyer, Queens Counsel, two children now in late 80's

Interesting lot of stories and I expect to explore further.
Here's a photo of George Calvin Scott of Belfast area.. in alberta 1920's on his horse "ranch"..a lot of cabins in the middle of a prairie..

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Armagh / Re: Irish Horsemen of Armagh
« on: Friday 18 July 08 02:01 BST (UK)  »
umm..maybe a bit of a Luddite but I'm not clear what "IGI" stands for..
at any rate the Robert Arthur I am working with was 1839..he was married, had kids and a large hunk of real estate by 1879..and he also might have been off in India doing the Queen's bidding about that time as he was a military chap as well..
regards..Ron,  the mongrel diarist

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Armagh / Re: Irish Horsemen of Armagh
« on: Thursday 17 July 08 22:57 BST (UK)  »
Thankyou Mary..it certainly could be..I have an 1870 date for their marriage..still looking for the dates of the births of their 11 children but I believe most of that is buried in these boxes of papers..

Apparently they lived on the family property of "4 parcels of land" purchased by the family originally in 1753..Robert purchased another three parcels of land adjacent to that not long after they were married.

thankyou again..
Ron
mongrel diarist

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Armagh / Irish Horsemen of Armagh
« on: Thursday 17 July 08 08:20 BST (UK)  »
I was delivered some large  collections of photographs and archival material from my mother's grandparents family, Robert Arthur Scott , 1839-1920, and Anna Cree, 1852-1934, of Belfast area and 10 sons and daughters.  The material covers from Belfast about 1900 to the 1930's and Western and Northern Canada and the  First World War.
They entered the Port of New York about the turn of the century, then to Canada, built a large home in Niagara Falls. Part of the family homesteaded in Alberta, bringing horse breeding stock. They also purchased a dairy and fruit farm in Fonthill, Ontario, where Robert passed in 1920.
 I have a large collection of their gentleman cowboy adventures in the Drumheller, Alberta  area, the horses, the roundups, the breaking in, the gathering for the horses to be sold to the First World War Cavalry and so on.
A captive story of gentleman cowboys, farmers, engineers and calvarymen, and soldiers that essentially disappeared by the mid thirties...
I was a young mongrel farm boy listening to their early efforts at ranching in the west and the disastrous machine that fractured their dream..the First World War. I appear to be the last refuge for the stories of a family with few threads left here. I'm still looking here.

 I suspect that there are Scotts in the Belfast region that would be from their original families and I would be thrilled to hear from you and to share some of this archive.

As I expect this will require some meticulous efforts, the winter snows will likely unfold before I have a lot of time to sort and scan all the photos..and construct the necessary website to load all this for public sharing..but i can share selective bits and lay some groundwork for folks to share in and around the busyness of paying the rent and looking for a farm to start our retirement career.

I have done some cursory research on the original horse breeding side of the family going back to 1753. I have a lot of names and dates and places...My mother, now 89, is the last she says of seven generations of horse people. They lost all that with the first world war, the plagues and epidemics and the Depression and the fragmentation of the new postwar reality.
respectfully....colonial son..

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