My journey to find my family tree
“The Road goes ever on and on
— J.R.R. Tolkien
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can.”
This is about my journey to create my family tree, which can be found here: https://canadashoplands.tribalpages.com/tribe/browse?userid=canadashoplands&view=9&ver=14
I recently visited Cornwall, mostly to spend time with a good friend, but also to visit some of the places I’d read about in my family history.
We started in Fowey and stayed at the Safe Harbour Inn, right across the street from the Fowey Almshouses where my great great Aunt Sarah live the last 20 years of her life.
We walked from Fowey to Tywardreath, likely on the same footpath my great grandpa’s family used and visited the church. I couldn’t find the exact location of the places they lived from the censuses. I found the grave of Susan Geach, the wife of the farmer my great grandpa John worked for when he was 11 years old, but no Shoplands since most of the churchyard is very old and overgrown.
There is a quaint pub across the street and my friend and I popped in for a drink before heading back to Fowey. Chatting with the bartender, I mentioned where I was from and that my great grandfather John Shopland came from Tywardreath. She looked at me and slowly said, “My father’s brother married Jean Shopland,” I name I knew from the family tree connections on familysearch.org as John’s brother Henry’s granddaughter.
So we compared notes, she showed me where the family farm was (the Thorncliff from Ethel’s postcards) and as my friend an I were marvelling at the fortune that took us into the New Inn, she came out from the back with a phone and said, “Your cousin Maggie wants to talk to you.” Maggie and I had a marvelous chat and she gave me her brother’s information so we could compare notes on the family tree. Eventually we left the pub and went to the old Shopland farm.
I have since contacted my cousins and shared many photos. 🙂
As I said in my last post, my grandpa Bert fought overseas in WWI. He never talked much about it; all I knew growing up was that he was wounded in the leg and once, when he was checking gas masks, a shell went through the tent right beside his head. Later I found out from reading Alice’s family history that he visited his cousins in Cornwall during the war and wanted one of them to come back with his as his wife. She apparently thought life in Canada would be too hard and stayed in England.
Bert enlisted July 15, 1915, and trained with the 63rd battalion until they sailed for England on the S.S. Metagama, arriving May 5, 1916. On July 6, 1916, Bert was assigned to the 9th Battalion at Shorncliffe. The 9th was a reserve battalion, designated to provide reinforcements for units in the field. He received his orders for the front and joined the 49th Battalion in France on July 17, just over a year since he’d volunteered.
The 49th Battalion was also know as the Edmonton Regiment and had been fighting in France since October 1915. Bert likely guessed he’d be assigned to it as he enlisted in Edmonton and was from northern Alberta. When he arrived, the Battle of the Somme had been going on for about two weeks. The 49th was billeted in Ypres at the time before moving up for training. My grandpa had a little over two weeks with his unit before moving to the trenches August 4. His first day must have been horrifiying. The war diary of the regiment reads ” Enemy active with trench mortar which threw bombs into trenches 47-51 causing 10 casualties, 1 of whom was killed. Enemy artillery shelled front line and supports intermittently throughout the day. No damage. ” Except to the 10 casualties.
A couple days later they attempted an unsuccessful raid on German trenches and were eventually relieved on August 11. After intense training with other battaltions, the 49th returned to the trenches for the Battle of Flers-Courcelette, which was seen as a victory for the Allies.
However, in the first four days of the attack, the casualties suffered by the Battalion were:
“Five Officers KILLED, Twelve wounded
38 Other Ranks KILLED, 179 Other Ranks wounded
19 Other Ranks missing, Making a total of 253 casualties for the Battalion.” After which the regiment was sent back to support until Oct 2 near Albert where they were only in the front line for one day after suffering another 63 casualties when the Germans retook Regina Trench.
The 49th was part of the next assault to retake Regina Trench on Oct. 8. The battalion’s diary reads, ” After an eight minutes barrage, in conjunction with R.C.R.’S on the right, the Battalion attacked the Regina Trench, but was met with fierce Machine Gun and Rifle fire from front and flanks, and was very severely handled by the enemy. Elements of the Battalion reached Regina Trench and were seen no more. Those remaining of the Battalion held Kenora Trench, parts of Zollern Graben and shell holes in front of the enemy’s wire until evening, when they were relieved by 42nd Battalion R.H.C. Casualties: 8 Officers and 213 Other Ranks. ” This was my grandpa’s 14th day on the front lines and he was one of the “213 Other Ranks” wounded that day. He was hit in the back of his right thigh and in the buttocks (just like Forest Gump)
Le Touquet Paris Plage was a seaside resort town and the Grand Hotel and Casino was used for the No. 8 Red Cross Hospital https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/69874-red-cross-hospitals/
From there Bert went back to England, spending a month in hospital in Leeds and then convalescing at Epsom. Epsom was a convalescent hospital for the Canadian troops; it was the largest one in Britain with over 2500 beds.
Bert was discharge from Epsom just after Christmas but returned to hospital a month later.
He was eventually discharged from the hospital again at the end of March, 1917 and assigned to the Canadian Convalescent Depot at Bramshott Common.
Bert was eventually assigned to the 3rd Division Employment Company due to his inability to march and returned to France sometime in the summer of 1917. The employment companies performed a wide variety of duties (traffic control, salvage operations, water police, road building), formed burial and salvage parties, worked in sanitary sections, divisional baths, Church Army and YMCA huts and ammunition dumps.
But sometime before this he managed to get enough leave to travel the 220 miles from Bramshott to Tywardreath and visit his Uncle Henry’s family.
My aunt recently gave me a box that held mementos Grandpa kept. In the box was a photograph, three postcards and an antique framed valentine.
The first postcard was dated September 23, 1918.
The Frank Ethel mentions is probably Bert’s brother who was shot in the head on August 29, 1918, fracturing his skull. Frank’s records have an entry Sept 22, 1918, from Reading Hospital saying he was progressing favourably.
The next postcard is dated a few days later, September 26.
I assume the next is the last postcard even though it’s undated as Ethel talks about some of the boys finally coming home. This card had a much more romantic tone.
Bert left France for England December 18, 1918 and was stationed at Witley Camp. I assume it was shortly after this that Ethel told him she wasn’t coming to Canada with him, whatever her reason. He sailed for Canada February 22, 1919, never to see his beloved Ethel again and eventually married 15 years later at the age of 44.
My grandma used to tell us of her uncle Bob Tucker and his son Archie who lived across the road from them in Meanook. She recalled playing with Archie, who was about the same age, until his father was killed in WWI after which he moved to Seattle. This was the last she heard of him.
One of the pictures I found in Grandma’s house, which I mentioned earlier, was of Bob Tucker in military uniform. Grandma had also told me that her uncle served as a piper in the Boer War before he was married.
Then the internet became more accessible and over time, more service records from WWI and earlier became available on the Archives of Canada website.
So I started with records from the South African Campaign and found his enlistment.
Robert married Maggie McLean (who was actually from Scotland) and their son Archie was born in Meanook July 23, 1907. But Maggie died of tuberculosis in September of 1914 and Robert enlisted for WWI October 1915. Archie was left in the care of his Aunt Annie.
My great great uncle Robert was assigned to the 63rd Battalion and sailed to England on the S.S. Metagama April 22, 1916, the same as my grandpa Bert (other side of the family). Once in England, Robert was assigned to the 9th Battalion and Bert to the 49th.
On August 10, 1916, Bob was assigned to the 13th Field Ambulance and sailed for France the next day. He served with the ambulance unit until November before being transferred to the 72nd Battalion Seaforth Highlanders on November 9 at the tail end of the Battle of the Somme. After the Somme, the Canadians and the 72nd moved to Vimy Ridge.
During the month of January the Battalion had every opportunity of becoming acquainted with the Vimy Ridge landscape as seen from their side of the operations. The war diary shows in a line or two for each occupation of the trenches what the men were doing. But only those who were actually present know what this meant in determined courage and steadiness. Day and night the enemy were given no rest. They never knew at what hour a raid would be begun. They never knew whether artillery preparation meant a mere feint or was the preliminary for the rush of a party of bombers. On the part of the Canadians there was the mud to contend with. For though the mud of Vimy Ridge was not the agglutinative compound of the Somme, it was still mud to be reckoned with, and men came back from their spells in the trenches covered with it. - excerpt from History of the 72nd Canadian Infantry Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders of Canada BY BERNARD McEVOY AND CAPT. A. H. FINLAY, M.C 1920
It was during this that Bob was “dangerously wounded” on January 10, 1917. He was sent to the #6 Casualty Clearing Station where he succumbed to his injuries the next day.
One of the first archived records I discovered was the marriage of Edward Tucker and Mary Ann Bowtell. This was a stepping stone as it had the names of both their parents.
I knew Edward was from Ilfracombe and found a record in the International Genealogical Index ( index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City) of Edward Tucker christened Feb 7, 1836 in Ilfracombe, son of Wm. Show Tucker and Eliz. Show seemed like a unique middle name and sure enough, there in the IGI was Wm. Show Tucker marrying Eliz. Boyles in Ilfracome Dec 27, 1812.
As more records were digitized, I was able to look at the originals, not just an index. William’s middle name was not Show, it was Snow.
Next came the actual church records. William’s birthplace is listed on the 1841 and 1851 census as Instow, Devon and his birthdate is recorded as 1791. Birthdates were often estimated in censuses of the time, so it was no big deal that the baptism was in March 1788. Until I found the infant William Snow Tucker’s burial in June of the same year.
Not my William Snow then, but I was sad for the many parents of the time who lost children so young. But two years later, William and Elizabeth had twins, Edward and another William Snow baptized in August of 1790.
Again, they use the middle name Snow. And sure enough, William Tucker married Elizabeth Snow in Instow January 1 1779.
Going further back, I can only find one William Tucker of the right age and one Elizabeth Snow, so I am assuming they are the right ones.
“William Shopland, born in Somerset in the early 1800s, married a Miss Squire and moved to Par, Cornwall. They had three boys and five girls, including Marie, Agnes, Henry, John Squire and James. John Squire was born August 24, 1849 in Par, Cornwall. The family ended up in Par, Cornwall, where William worked in the lead and tin mines. One daughter married a Mr. Andrews and they lived in Fowey, Cornwall, and another daughter married Mr. Philips and lived in Plymouth, England. One of William’s daughters was seen in an almshouse near Par during WWI. Agnes married a Thompson and lived in Toronto, Ontario. James came to Canada and took a concession near his brother John’s in Duncan on Vancouver Island, BC. He went to Victoria in 1892 for the Fall Fair celebration, contracted small pox, returned to Duncan and died. He was buried in an unmarked grave by John.
John left home at age 12 or 15 and signed on as a cabin boy on a sailing vessel. He sailed nearly all the waters around Europe, spending most of his time sailing in the waters of the Mediterranean, with two trips to both Norway and Sweden. He returned home as Second Mate and stayed for 6 months, leaving after a disagreement with his father. He signed on as a deck hand on a ship bound for New York, deserted the ship in New York and went to Toronto, where his sister Agnes lived. It was there he met the Salkeld family and their daughter Jane.
In 1869, he travelled west and got a job tending a carload of sheep destined for Victoria via San Francisco. On arriving, he hired himself to a sheepman named Keddy who was in the smuggling business. They would get the sheep from San Juan Island, USA, and then dump them overboard when they reached Vancouver Island. John’s job was to count them in the morning and herd them over the rocks from Oak Bay to Beacon Hill Park, BC (now part of Victoria). When Keddy returned to England, John bought his property and started his own farm.
John wrote to one of the Salkeld brothers when the CPR was completed in 1885, asking if Jane was still single and to tell her how he felt. He received an encouraging reply and returned to Goderich in late November with John Oliver (future premier of BC). They bought a carload of sheep and cattle and Oliver took them back to BC. John and Jane were married in the Goderich Anglican Church on December 16, 1885.” from Shopland 1850-1985 by Alice Shopland, John Squire Shopland’s granddaughter.
This is the Shopland history I started with. The first thing was to find John Squire’s birth record.
So William’s wife Miss Squire was Mary and John was born in St. Teath, about 50 km from Par on August 17, 1849 instead of August 24. Next I found their marriage record.
The BDM index of England has three girls born to William and Mary in Beaford, Elizabeth in 1844, Maria in 1845 and Agnes in 1847, two of the names in Alice’s history and the name of the third.
They would have moved between 1847 and 1849, so I looked for them in Cornwall in the 1851 census.
And in 1861
The family is now in Tywardreath, which is in the Par area. The children living with William and Mary are Sarah, Frank, Henry and James. Which makes it four daughters, not three and a Frank. The 1861 census has Elizabeth as a servant in the Thomas household in Towan, St. Ausell, Agnes a servant of Ann Brokenshaw in Fowey and John a cow boy for John Geach in Tywardreath. They went to work young.
I looked for more birth records and found Sarah, born in 1851 in the Camelford District (of which St. Teath is part) Caroline born and died in 1854, Frank born in 1856 in Tywardreath died in 1864 and William Henry, born in Tywardreath in 1857.
Alice stated that two of the daughters married, one to a Philips in Fowey and one to an Andrews in Plymouth. Elizabeth married John Sweet in Stoke Damerel, Plymouth in 1870 and Maria married Isaac Vivian in 1868 in Tywardreath, a short walk from Fowey. Sarah, who lived in the Fowey Almshouses from at least 1901 until her death in 1919, never married. I’m not sure where the name Andrews or Philips came from, but I know Sarah lived in the almshouse in WWI, likely because she was a servant for Rev. Collyns in Tywardreath in 1871 and Methodist minister William Bagrie in Ashton under Lyne, Lancashire in 1891.
Agnes married John Thompson, also from Cornwall, in 1871 in Toronto and James died of smallpox October 28, 1892 in Duncan, BC, just like Alice wrote.
I recently visited Tywardreath and will discuss my discoveries in a later post. It was very exciting!
The Hopps family history after they came to Canada had also been recorded by other branches of the family as well as information in the history book of the area. That was were I found a picture of my three times great grandparents William and Ellen Hopps and their daughter Hannah.
William and Ellen and their son William (my great great grandfather) can be easily traced through Canadian census records. But the only record I can find of the younger William’s marriage to Mary Ann Livingston is on the 1861 census where marriage year is one of the questions.
Deaths and burials are where they is some debate. The first date of death I found attached to Mary Ann Livingston Hopps was Nov 18, 1899, Eugenia Falls, Grey, Ontario, Canada. But this is the grave of Fanny Brock, who married William’s brother John. Definitely not the same person. Then the 1901 census records were made public and I found William with his son James (spelled Hoppe) in Fleming, Assiniboia East (now Saskatchewan) widowed. So Mary Ann did die between 1891 and 1901. Then it was easy as I found her grave in the findagrave database in Fleming.
And on the same page is William’s death, September 19, 1908, unfortunately with no photo.
So one down.
The senior Hopps’ deaths and burials seemed easy. The location and photo of their memorial in the Durham Cemetery, Grey County, Ontario, seemed straightforward.
and on the other side:
People want the easy answer and this is it. William and Ellen lived in the area, died and were buried there. But further investigation turned up William’s will and probate, which states:
” In Her Majesty’s Surrogate Court of The County of Grey Be it Known that on the seventeenth day of May in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine, the last Will and Testament and Codicil of William Hopps, late of the Township of Bentinck in the County of Grey, Yeoman, deceased, who died on or about the Tenth day of March in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eighty nine at Gainford in the County of Durham, England…” So he didn’t die in Ontario after all.
His will gets even more interesting. The first will was signed October 17, 1887, right after Ellen’s death. He divides the majority of his estate between his three sons, John, Frank and William, and one of his daughters, Hannah (pictured about). He leaves one dollar apiece to his other daughters and small bequests to the children of Hannah, Frank and his deceased daughter Eliza. Hannah also gets all the household items. But on January 9, 1888, there is a codicil attached which revokes everything he gave to Hannah and her children and instead bequeaths it to his son Frank. There must have been a falling out, but haven’t been able to track down the story yet.
William requests in his will that he be buried beside his wife, which, even though he died in England, his wishes look to have been carried out.
BUT…
William has a gravestone in the Gainford St. Mary’s churchyard in England.
Why would they go to the trouble and expense of a stone if his body was sent back to Canada? The actual burial records haven’t yet been transcribed, but I think William is buried here in Gainford and his grieving daughter Hannah put his name on her mother’s tombstone as she is memorialized on the same stone.
Even though he cut her out of the will.
My grandma kept everything. So when I went on the hunt for pictures, records, documents, etc. in her house, I had to wade through high school exam booklets and lesson plans from her teaching days, every newspaper that mentioned friends or family, boxes of unsold Farmer’s Union cookbooks and other random things, all coated with a thick film of dust.
But there were treasures to be found and I’m sure there will be more when I get a chance to go through it again.
I found pictures with people that I didn’t know existed, but were obviously family.
I found pictures I couldn’t place.
I found pictures of people I knew were in the family tree, but hadn’t seen.
And found a wonderful picture. that my grandpa had to identify for me.
I also found a copy of the Meanook School newspaper from the 1920s. In it is a story entitled “Little English Mary” and was a longer version of the story my grandma told me about her grandmother Mary Ann Bowtell’s voyage from England to Canada.
“One sunny morning in May a young English girl in company with her mother, brother and sisters, left the busy city of London, the largest city in the world, to take the long trip across the Atlantic, heading for Canada. In those days they had not the swift-traveling steam ships that we have now, and they were on the water for six weeks. They called at the beautiful island of Ireland, admiring its bright green grass and white houses. On the Ocean, the young girl, whose name was Mary, was seized with the sickness which sailing on the sea causes, and this lasted through all those weary weeks. Following the vessel were seen dark shapes. These were the large, dreaded fish known as sharks. The sailors would say to one another: ‘They are waiting for the little English lassie.’ She was so very sick that they thought she would not live, and it was believed by them that the sharks knew when anybody was going to die and would follow the ship to devour the body. However, if this was the sharks’ intention, they were disappointed in their breakfast, for Mary was still alive, though very ill when they reached land. They continued their trip, sailing up the St. Lawrence, passing the old City of Quebec…and past Montreal… They made a home in an unsettled part of Ontario, within reach of few neighbors, and where the men had to walk ten miles carrying a sack of flour, as there were no roads over which horses could pass. this was a great change for the yellow-haired girl who had not before been outside the crowded city.” Little English Mary by Florence Hopps (my great aunt). There is supposed to be a part 2, but I haven’t unearthed it yet.
Mary Ann’s voyage took place in 1857 as a report in the London Gazette Aug 7, 1896 p 4536-7 states that her mother Harriet “emigrated in the year 1857 to Scot’s Town near Uxbridge Ontario in the Dominion of Canada.” Her gravestone states that she was born in 1836, so that would have made Mary Ann 21 at the time of the trip, not quite the young girl I pictured when I heard the story.
My mom’s cousin found out what I was doing and shared even more pictures with me that she was kind enough to let me borrow and copy.
next: how I found Mary Ann’s parents
Continuing Leo and Lillie’s story, I’m going to switch to Leo, son of a plantation owner who came from a long line of French nobility. Leo was a younger son of a younger son, so I don’t think there was much in the way of family inheritance for him in St. Lucia. His daughter wrote that he went to university in England and in the fall of 1904, he sailed on the ship Atrato which came from Panama and arrived in Southampton, England, Nov 3, 1904. I always thought it was strange that someone from a Caribbean island of French descent would go to England for school, but I’ve since found out that Leo’s grandfather, Dr. Charles Bennett MRCS, was appointed by Queen Victoria to be Provost-Marshal of St. Lucia, so it now makes sense.
As well, I found at least 7 Devauxs travelling between Southampton and St. Lucia in the early 1900s, so it was obviously an important destination.
Leo then left England for Canada in 1907, sailing from Liverpool on the ship Canada and arriving in Montreal on June 30, 1907 on the way to his final destination of Winnipeg. Lillie and Leo sailed from the same port within 3 weeks of each other, so there is a chance that they met briefly in England.
Leo lived in Winnipeg for 2 years before leaving to return to St. Lucia in June of 1909. He crossed the border at Buffalo on June 16 in transit to the West Indies.
This is the last record I’ve found of either Leo or Lillie until the birth of their son Paul in Minneapolis on March 10, 1910.
So I added up the dates and border crossings. Neither Leo or Lillie crossed back into the U.S. between Leo’s arrival June 16, 1909 or Lillie’s on April 8, 1908. Since the border records are fairly complete, it’s unlikey they were get married in Portage la Prairie in 1909. Also, Paul’s birth March 10, 1910 means he would have been conceived between June 9-24, 1909, not giving them much time after Leo’s arrival (premature births surviving at that time were uncommon).
I have a theory. Obviously Leo met Lillie in Buffalo on his way to St. Lucia, and I’m going to assume they met in England or Canada before Lillie moved to the U.S. That or it was a very brief acquaintance that resulted in Lillie’s pregnancy. Marriage records of that time are generally accessible for the U.S. and I haven’t found one, so I wonder if they were married in St. Lucia after Paul’s birth. Did Leo return to St. Lucia only to find out later he was a father? Or did he stay in the U.S.? Either way, the three of them did end up in St. Lucia as they came back from there through the U.S. on October 14, 1912, Lillie using her married name of Devaux, on their way to Montreal before eventually moving to Alberta.
A great resource I’ve found is local history books. There were a lot published in Alberta in the 1980s and families were encouraged to submit stories and information about their pioneer ancestors.
This was where I got a start on Leo and Lillie Devaux’s lives. Their daughter submitted a story to the Wheels of Progress: A History of Dapp and Districts published in 1982.
“Leo Devaux, son of Justin and Marie, was born in Castries, St. Lucia in 1881/1879. He went to college in England, then returned to St. Lucia where he had an interest in a sugar plantation. He went to Canada, and, in 1909, he met and married Lillian Whitaker in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. Lillie was born around 1873 in Halifax, Yorkshire and had come to Canada in 1908.
Leo and Lillie’s first child, Paul, was born in Minneapolis-St. Paul in 1910. They returned to the West Indies for two years, then came back to Canada. Leo worked for the Grand Trunk Railway in Montreal where their second child, Marie, was born in 1914. They then moved to Dapp (then known as Eunice), Alberta, in 1915 to get some of the free land the government was giving in the early 1900s. Leo received the land grant for the SW of section 30 62 25 W4. There, their third child, Hilda, was born in a tent in 1915. Marie remembered walking with Hilda about eleven miles into Dapp to get the mail. The Devauxs were very social, going to dances and even holding them in their house.
Paul married Aurora Primeau and had five children. Marie married Angus Rector and, in 1930, they had a homestead just north of her father’s. They had six children, Margaret, Martha, Pauline, Nancy, Charles and Sam. Angus joined the army in 1939 and the family, along with Angus’ mother, Sadie, went to Edmonton. Angus was killed overseas in March, 1945. Marie moved to Vancouver in 1959.
Hilda married Bert Shopland of Rochester on Oct. 10, 1934. He was 44 and she was 18. They had seven children, John, Lillian, Charles, George, Blanche, Dorothy and Henry.” pp. 182-183
But even children’s knowledge of their parents background can be flawed.
Many records are now searchable online and even though there was more than one Lillian Whitaker born in Halifax, Yorkshire in the 1870s, only one was born in 1873, to Richard and Elizabeth Whitaker. Yay, another name on the tree! Britain has indexed its birth, marriage and death records, called the BMD, and I was able to find out that Elizabeth’s maiden name was Pitts. Then I found the England census, which started in 1841 and was taken every 10 years. Richard and Elizabeth are in 1881 with Lilly and four more children. But Richard only appeared in that and the 1901 and 1911 censuses in a boarding house and a poorhouse. Elizabeth is in the 1871 census with the children and 1891 with Lily. So I went looking for Richard and found him in the local papers. He was a notorious, but not very successful, criminal. In 1869, he stole some pillows and assaulted a police officer, in 1870 was caught stealing leather, broke a window while drunk in 1872, stole a coat in 1874, a pair of boots in 1889 and was arrested for vagrancy in 1890 and had been in jail during the 1871 and 1891 censuses.
No wonder Lillie left for Canada!
On May 21, 1907, she sailed from Liverpool on the ship Umbria and arrived at Ellis Island, New York on June 2 on the way to Toronto, listing her sister Emily on her immigration record. In April 1908, she returned to the U.S. to work as a nurse in Buffalo. On her immigration card, she lists her closest relative as Mrs. Margaret Naylor of Clayhouse, Halifax, England and it’s noted that she is 5’6″, fair with brown hair and grey eyes and wears glasses. On the list of immigrants, however, her nearest relative is Mrs. Hannah Saxby, also of Clayhouse. Richard and Elizabeth did not have any daughters with those names. Instead, Charles and Susannah Whitaker, also of Halifax, did have a Margaret (who married Sam Naylor) and an Emily as well as Lillie, who was born in 1872. And the Hannah who married George Saxby had the maiden name of Drinkwater. Curiouser and curiouser!
You might think this made me happy, not having the pathetic Richard Whitaker as an ancestor, but there was a STORY there.
But Charles the carpet designer, son of Henry the fishmonger was quite respectable and we work with what we have.
So onward!
Much of the Devaux history has been well documented by Ian B. de Minvielle-Devaux in 1960 (translated by Gilles Devaux) and by Robert Devaux, Castries, St. Lucia which can be found here https://www.familysearch.org/photos/artifacts/13627388?cid=mem_copy To sum up the information, the Devauxs are descended from French nobility and the three Devaux brothers, Philippe, Guillaume-André and Henry, were granted 2000 acres of St. Lucia in 1713 by Louis XIV for services to the crown. My great grandfather Leo is the descendant of Phillipe.
Leo was also descended from Dutch royalty, specifically Baron Adrien Ram van Schalkwyck. The baron was a Catholic in a newly Lutheran society. Not wanting to change his faith, he continued to have Catholic services in his castle and was subsequently banished for this. I visited the area a couple years ago and it was slightly awe inspiring to see where my ancestor left his name.
The following detailed transcription of the edict is taken from “Condensed History of the van Schalkwyck Boisaubin Family – 1128 To 1899, With Additions Through 1921”:
“History of the Capture, Trial and banishment of Count Ram van Schalkwyck
more information can be found about him here https://www.oudhouten.nl/late-middeleeuwen/kastelen-in-houten/kasteel-schalkwijk-1/ and here https://www.oudhouten.nl/late-middeleeuwen/kastelen-in-houten/kasteel-schalkwijk-2/
Lori's family history