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.

Another of the issues raised at the Annual Reunion/AGM this year was what the Association should do with its accumulated historical artifacts and documents, etc., specifically, a time capsule placed in the care of the City of Winnipeg Archives after it was removed from the plinth placed in 1912 at Portage and Main and intended for a memorial statue of Lord Selkirk, and several carousels of photographic diapositive slides and related notes that were used in school lectures given by Anne Henderson in the 1960s.

This issue pressed one of my buttons (oh dear!). I didn’t say anything at the meeting because I didn’t really think it was the time or place. There are perhaps those who think this isn’t either. But <swallow> here it is…

One opinion seems to be that these items should be placed immediately in the hands of the Manitoba Archives. Supposing, that is, that institution would like to have them. That was the opinion expressed at the AGM.

For me, the key word here is ‘immediately’. ‘Immediately’ is the word I take issue with, particularly in the case of the slides and related notes. But the issue has wider implications when we start applying our decision to other records we both obtain and create as an Association. And here’s why:

We have two very active Executive members, the Archivist (you can see where this is going already, can’t you?) and the Genealogist, who require a quality, working archive in order to do their work properly and efficiently. Both of us (even clearer?) require ready access to these materials. Due to the nature of TLSARL as an Association of dispersed descendants, we both live at some remove from the Manitoba Archives (I’m in Ontario, and the Archivist is in BC.).

I recognise the importance of preserving these items in Archives that have a controlled environment and personel with the expertise to care for these treasures, and also of the importance of making certain of these items available to researchers. I am a wholehearted supporter of Museums and Archives! I also believe that our original documents and artifacts belong in these institutions, particularly if they have special significance.

Here’s the ‘however’…. This is our history, and we are the historical orginisation that is actively and continuously working with this history. We should have COPIES of the material that is relevant to our work and research in our possession and at our disposal. We should be busy collecting more photographs and stories about our ancestors. We should also have an inventory of that material we do have in our own archive. As we do not have a building or office space of our own, storage of this material can present problems. Currently, however, we have that problem well in hand (because so much of our collected material has been deposited in the Manitoba Archives without our retaining copies, our working archive is VERY small).

Having these copies in our possession also serves another purpose. Should disaster ever occur and the Manitoba Archives flood or burn or blow up or whatever, all of our collected history is not lost, and we can help them rebuild their collection (Think of St. Mary’s Isle and the loss through fire of the Douglas (Lord Selkirk) family archive, the main primary source of inrofmation concerning our ancestors. At least 20,000 odd pages were saved because the National Archives of Canada had sent people over to make some copies.). I recognise that the likelihood is that it will be our collection that gets hurt first. And I’m not comparing us to the NAC. We do have a responsibility to ensure the preservation of our history – it is our mandate, in fact as TLSARL. And having a solid working archive of our own is a big part of that.