An interesting article about Kildonan Church appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press this weekend. If you would like to read the online version of the article, please visit the Winnipeg Free Press website.

Thanks to Cathie for the heads up!

I picked up a Biblio Life reprint of this 1910 publication the other day. It is an interesting little booklet for anyone studying the settlers of the pre-1915 desertions. Essentially, it consists of copies of documents in the Selkirk Papers that help to identify exactly which people arrived as settlers in the 1811, 1812, 1813 and 1814 groups.

You’d think that would be a pretty straightforward thing to figure out – just look at the ships’ lists! In actual fact, though, it isn’t very easy at all. Some of the ships’ lists have gone missing. Not all the people who were recruited and show on those lists embarked on the journey. Some of those changed ships during the voyage. Some decided to work for the HBCo. before joining the settlement, others went directly to the Colony. Some were sent home before the rest made the trek from York Factory inland. Several died on the voyage and at Churchill Creek.

Although this booklet presents the extant lists as they occur either as lists proper or as part of a longer document, all the information presented is available on the Internet for free, or through interlibrary loan of the Selkirk Papers microfilms. A good detective will want to look at other documents to further determine who was actually present at the RRS in the early days and not limit themselves to what Martin has collected here. There is little biographical material on any of the settlers here – just lists.

This is a handy reference for the RRS research library, perhaps, but the lists are printed in other books. You might want to save $15 and invest it elsewhere!

Again, I return to the AGM at the end of September this year. The newly elected Vice President of TLSARL, Roy McLeod, stopped me as I was entering the venue. He’d found some articles written by my great-aunt in a couple of old copies of Saskatchewan History, and kindly, he gave them to me. Imagine my excitement when I found her contributions were (an annotated copy of) a journal her aunt kept while on a canoe trip made in the 1920s!

One of the participants in the forum I set up for Red River Descendants mentioned an ancestor, and I remembered collecting something on him some time ago as he was a relative of my own, too. I was able to send her the quote I’d extracted from a 1927 article in another Saskatchewanian historical society’s bulletin.

Another person who signed up at the forum mentioned she had a book on one of her Red River ancestors. It was one I didn’t have in my library, so I ordered a copy…. It came in yesterday, and I will write more about it when I finish going through it, of course!

One of the best ways to learn more about the shared history of the Red River Settlers and their descendants, to learn more about specific people within that group, and to learn where to find more material about them is to network with other researchers.

There are several ways to do that:

• Visit the blog here and read about our history – and discuss it through comments (free).
• Join TLSARL, if you are a descendant, get our quarterly Newsletter and participate in our Reunion every year (small annual fee – Contact Us for more information).
• Join the Red River Settlement, Rupert’s Land (Manitoba, Canada) forum at GenealogyWise (free).

You will meet people who are deeply engaged in their history, people who are just starting to explore their Red River roots, and undoubtedly you will acrue some new relatives! Discussing your stories, sources and knowledge with others will help deepen and re-enforce your understanding of your own history as well as bring others closer to theirs.

Another of the difficulties resulting from the now (fortunately) almost obsolete custom of “naming” was not only the duplicating but the quadruplicating of names in the one neighborhood. The people got over that part of the trouble by introducing the use of “nick-names,” derived either from personal characteristics or by prefixing or affixing some ancestral family name. This was well enough for the people themselves who knew locally “Black Sandy.” and “Red Sandy,” but since people at a distance did not know these fine shades of distinction, the primitive post-office or the mail-carrier confronted “confusion worse confounded” when a letter came addressed to a name owned by half a dozen different people in the parish. The difficulty was generally solved by some one of the name opening it, and if it was not for him he passed it on till the right party was reached.

- Rev. R. G. MacBeth, Red River Settlers in Real Life p. 59

MacBeth here touches on a Scottish custom that is still practiced in some families, but not nearly to the extent that it used to throughout Scotland and into Scottish colonies. The Scottish naming practice is something that genealogists know about and find a great aid to sorting out family trees. But as MacBeth mentions here, and particularly in an isolated colony like Red River, that boon can rapidly turn into confusion!

Many settlers had large families. If there were four sons in John McKay’s family, each of them married and having one son, and each of them following the Scottish naming practice, then right away we would have the original John, and at four other Johns. Scottish naming practice dictated that the eldest son be named after his paternal grandfather, the eldest daughter after her maternal grandmother, the second son after his maternal grandfather, the second daughter after her paternal grandmother….

I just recently finished reading this little gem of a book. I’ve had it tucked away on my bookshelf for years. About a year ago, a TLSARL friend sent me a URL that led me to a site where I could read it online if I cared to, and his thoughtfulness reminded me that mine was buried somewhere. I dug it out, but still didn’t read it for some time.

The Red River Settlers in Real Life is a valuable addition to any Red River Colony library. Although he tends to be a bit sentimental at times, and there is the odd historical error, the general insight the author gives readers into everyday life in the early days of the settlement is fascinating. I only wish he hadn’t put the writing down off as long as he did (read the introduction).

MacBeth covers everything from crops and social customs of the agricultural society at Red River, to the hunt, weddings and funerals and daily menus. Interesting anecdotes illustrate the facts, and for genealogists among readers, there is the odd mention of individual settlers! His coverage of religion at the Colony is far more sympathetic than that of Alexander Ross!

MacBeth’s book was published in 1897, and was long out of print until a print to order company began printing it again in 2007. It is not difficult to find a copy of the original edition for under $50, and if you want a copy for your library, that is what I would advise you to invest in. Then you can see the illustrations well. If you’d like to read it before you buy a copy, you can do so for free at ElectricScotland.

Christian Matheson & Angus Matheson, 1815 Group

The Digital Photo Archive is one of the projects I would like to see underway in the Genealogy department of TLSARL.

Genealogy can be a very dry subject. Purists might feel that it should be confined to the collection of vital statistics. I hold a radically different view. To my way of thinking, any information that can be gathered about an individual gives us a better understanding about who they were and how others within their community and through history saw them. Portraits in particular tell us a lot about the people we study – not just what they looked like, but what they wore and, depending on the photo, what they did and how they did it, even where they did it. And that’s just scratching the surface.

Our archive is woefully short of such rich sources. It should be a haven for them.

Descendant gravestone, Kildonan Presbyterian Churchyard, Winnipeg

Why? Well, in addition to providing researchers with valuable information, a photo archive also allows other relatives to see their ancestors. It might also be that those other family members in that photo get identified by someone who knows who they are, but otherwise would never see the picture. And what if the family collection is lost in a flood, fire or falls into the hands of someone who doesn’t understand what they have? How many of us have seen lots of photos or old albums at antique shops, for example? Or worse yet, the collection gets thrown out because whoever ends up with it doesn’t know any of the subjects?

Even if we don’t have the originals, at least we have copies that may be valuable references for future researchers. And today, it’s really easy to make good copies at little to no cost, and to send them by email!

If you are interested in contributing photos, paintings or sketches with Red River Settler or descendant

St. Peters Church

connections, please contact me via the form in the Contact Us page of this site. I will tell you what format I need the scanned file in, etc. If you’d like to donate originals or photographic copies to TLSARL, I can also tell you how to go about it. If you have photos in which there are unidentified people with Red River connections, perhaps I can help solve the mystery. I am also interested in historic photos of important buildings, homes, and artifacts (spinning wheels, furniture, etc.) connected to settlers. Family portraits of current descendants are also welcome – after all, in a few generations there will be researchers wondering what you looked like, how you dressed, what you did and where….

Many of the settlers, especially from the first two groups, left the RRS early in its history. By the time TLSARL was established 100 years ago, many of the relationships with those people had become so distant that the ties had dissolved. Some of those settlers left with very bad memories, and their descendants may not have wanted, in 1910, to have anything to do with remembering RRS history – who knows? In any case, their descendants often are not known to us at TLSARL.

Similarly, in the 1820s, a number migrated into what is now Minnesota, and another group went to Iowa in the 1830s.

I have been focussing on the earlier ‘deserters’, as they were labeled, their stories and finding their descendants. I began this project because some of my own relatives were involved, and I wanted to learn more about them. Descendants of these people are welcome at TLSARL, and I would be really glad to meet with you!

Scotch Grove has been a part of one of the Archivist’s work over the last year as she has worked on sorting out the various Sutherlands at RRS, and also the Livingston(e)s.

Work like this involves using an entirely different set of tools. To trace the families that left, we need to figure out where they settled, then trace them through land records and census data. Some of them had already died by the time of the 1841 Census, though…. Church records, where they exist, also help. It is challenging work, as some of these men and women moved around surprisingly frequently for any variety of reasons. And their stories are incredibly interesting…

A lot of this research is challenging to do at a remove. This is where volunteer members with experience in the field of genealogy would be most appreciated! If you are one of these ‘lost descendants’ we’d be very interested in hearing from you and learning more about your history together!

I have so many things on my to do list in this job. I wish it was full-time and paid… then I could really go to town! But, like everyone else working behind the scenes at TLSARL, I am a volunteer. So I chip away at the mountains little by little. Other members help out a lot by sending in their family trees, discussing genealogical problems with Chloe and me, by sending in stories and photos for the quarterly Newsletter, and by sending in news of births, marriages and obituaries.

For many years now, the Ladies Auxilliary has maintained obituary scrapbooks. One of the big projects I have started is the indexing of obituaries from this collection, and combing through older Manitoba newspapers looking for BMD notices of settlers and their descendants. I’m also hoping to digitize the collection as newspaper deteriorates in the best of environments. A digital collection is also far easier to search and use on a day-to-day basis.

As I’ve gone through the newspapers, I’ve also seen many stories and other information (accounts of community meetings, for example) that give another angle on the lives of individual settlers and descendants. These, too, I’ve copied and hope to index and digitize.

Chloe and I have been poring over the Selkirk Paper, too, looking for primary source information to clarify relationships, even identities, and to obtain correct dates for life events. We’ve been working with Church records, too, as did my predecessor, Kim Nelson.

Much of the information we have has come by word of mouth over a long period of time. And only those settlers with descendants that became members of TLSARL have contributed. So, there are also settlers for whom we have very little material – the 1815 ‘deserters’, for example. I’ll talk about them a bit tomorrow.

One of the functions of TLSARL in preserving the history of the Red River Settlers and their descendants, of course, is building and maintaining a genealogical record. Our database now contains over 18,000 individuals – names that have been supplied by members as their families have grown and changed over the last century.

For years, the Genealogist has been collecting data and checking BMD information of settlers and their descendants. My predecessors, together with other Executive members and volunteers, have published settler related genealogies in the past, too. The last one was in 1997, before privacy laws made such a publication nearly impossible to complete.

Currently, the Genealogist (me) and the Archivist (Chloe Clark) are working behind the scenes to correct mistakes in our record, add new material from period records, and to build biographies of all the original settlers. I’m attempting to build a digital archive of portraits of the settlers and their descendants. I’m also working through the Selkirk Papers to extract information on settlers named there, and also to develop a better contextual setting so that we can better understand their circumstances and daily life. In addition, we are drawing information from members, searching old newspapers, reading other publications about the settlement and so on.

Then there is the constant inflow of news that must be transcribed – reports of births, marriages and deaths as the lives of current descendants change.

I’m going to talk about my job a bit more this week.

A lot of people email in wanting us to provide them with genealogical information – information we might have about their ancestors, or even about ancestors of their friends, for whom they are doing genealogical research.

TLSARL only supplies this sort of information within the limits of Canadian Privacy Laws to its members. Membership is restricted to people who can prove that they are descendants, or spouses of descendants of original settlers (pre-1836). Membership is not expensive, but it is ‘limited’.

Members have also been asking for a forum to discuss with others their shared heritage as Red River Settlers.

It’s here, folks! <FANFARE; raucous CHEERING>

I’ve set up a discussion group called Red River Settlement, Rupert’s Land (Manitoba, Canada) at GenealogyWise. It is a place where you can meet descendants and learn more about where to find information on your Red River ancestors and their culture/history, and includes fur traders, First Nations, Scots/Irish/Swiss Selkirk Settlers, and Métis ancestors.

Of course, if you want access to the information we’ve gathered over the last century at TLSARL, you must still become a member. But there are lots of other places with information we don’t have, too, and this forum will help guide you in your own research and allow you to meet with other interested people anytime you feel the urge to connect.