O.J. [Oliver John] Abbott, Home Child, singing “The Barley Grain For Me” with Pete Seeger, at the Newport Folk Festival, 1959-60: How/why did this English orphan from Paddington, London know so many of the old Irish tunes? Because when he…
Oral History
Da’s Rosary
by M.C. Moran • • Comments Off
So I was diving off the raft at the McConnell place, up at Little Cedar Lake (Lac aux Cèdres, en français, near Maniwaki, and God sue me, people, but I’m too lazy to look up the French html accent codes)…
Research Tip of the Day (Oral History Interviews)
by M.C. Moran • • Comments Off
If you read genealogy ‘how-to’ books, ‘researching your family history’ guidebooks, advice for oral historians, and so on and so forth, you’ve no doubt already come across this very obvious, but very important, piece of advice. But the advice (or…
Aside
A local chant, as told to me by my mother:
Perth! Perth! Get off the earth!
and let the green grass grow.
Smiths Falls! Smiths Falls! Get off the walls!
and let the pictures hang.
Perth = Perth, Lanark Co., Ontario. Smiths Falls is also in Lanark Co., Ontario.
Home Children: Open Secrets (Part 1)
by M.C. Moran • • 2 Comments
“Could you look up Mary Hogan?” asked my dad’s cousin Aggie. “I think she may have been,” and this added sotto voce, as if, even after so many years, there might yet be something to hide, “a Home Girl.”1 A…
When did my maternal grandparents meet?
by M.C. Moran • • 1 Comment
My maternal grandparents John (“Jack”) Eugene McGlade1 and Delia Lucie Derouin were married on 10 February 1931, at St. John Chyrostom RC Church in Arnprior (Renfrew Co., Ontario). My grandfather lived in his birthplace of Perth (Lanark Co., Ontario) at…
The Glenayr Kitten Mill (A Reminiscence)
by M.C. Moran • • Comments Off
(The year before I was married, which was thirteen years ago, I lived in Scotland.) One day, about fourteen years ago now, while perusing the wares at a knitwear outlet in Edinburgh, I felt a curious and unexpected wave of nostalgia.…
The Queen vs. Kelly: Part V
by M.C. Moran • • Comments Off
Continued from The Queen vs Kelly: Part IV (see also Part III, Part II, and Part I). What Happened to John Kelly and Mary Hourigan? When I wrote Part I of “The Queen vs. Kelly,” I had no idea what had…
Wilfrid Dontigny (Death Info Update)
by M.C. Moran • • Comments Off
Ancestry.ca recently extended their coverage of Ontario civil death registrations by a couple of years (from “Ontario, Canada, Deaths, 1869-1936″ to “Ontario, Canada, Deaths, 1869-1938″). In a previous entry, I suggested that Wilfrid Dontigny had presumably died of tuberculosis. This presumption…
Cause of Death: Conflicting Accounts
by M.C. Moran • • Comments Off
James Moran (1858-1899) James Moran was born about 1858 in Huntley township, Carleton Co., Ontario, the third of twelve children born to Alexander (“Sandy”) Michael Moran and Mary Ann Leavy. On 27 November 1883 (St. Patrick’s, Fallowfield) James Moran married…