Neanderthals

 Did you know that 20% of our DNA comes from Neanderthals?  That should give you something different to think about today.  Neanderthals may have gone extinct from disease or doing battle with humans.  Some may have survived, moved on to better hunting grounds, prospered and their descendants took up residency in all parts of the world with their human relatives.   Who knows?  Makes me think of some of my Irish and Viking ancestors from the dark ages.   Something different to ponder during these uncertain times.  

Cheers!

A Family Story

 In this story I have mixed some family history with some genealogy.   I must have been 8 or 9 years of age when we made this trip.    

Happy Thanksgiving!

CANADA

 

It took four days to drive from our home in Willows, California to Lacombe, Alberta where my dad was born in 1922.  It was in the 1950’s when we made the trip to a family reunion.   It was all two lane highways back then, no freeways.  The first day we drove to Bend, Oregon, then to Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho and by the third day to Fort MacCleod, Alberta before arriving at our destination at Gull Lake.    Here we stayed in a cabin that did have electricity, but no indoor plumbing, so an outhouse was available and a hand pump outside for water.   My grandparents were there to meet us since they had taken a plane from their home in southern California to Edmonton where they rented a car.   Over the next week there were different relatives coming and going.  Some were descendants of our second great grandfather, Patrick Burke and Bridget (Gallagher), who had migrated from Ireland sometime in the 1840’s to the Ottawa Valley in Ontario where he took up farming.    According to a census in 1851 Patrick’s father, Michael Burke was living with them.  He was born 1777 in Ireland and died 1852 at the age of 75. 

Patrick and Bridget had 10 children, including our great grandfather Edward born 1849, who later married Mary Kenney born 1860 to John Kenny and Ellen Gallagher (not sure the relationship between Ellen and Bridget, maybe cousins?).   Edward and Mary had 9 children and possibly two more that died in infancy.  They migrated to Iowa, then to Nebraska where our grandfather, John Raphael or as we remember him as J. Ray was born in 1894.  Sometime between 1900 and 1910 Edward and family migrated to Alberta to work on the railroads being developed from western Alberta into British Columbia.   Our great uncle Dan was born 1896 in Nebraska.   He told the story about working as a clerk for the railroads as they constructed the railroad down the Frasier River canyon in British Columba.   The crew lived in train cars and one car was used as the kitchen.   He said venison was the primary source of meat as deer were shot from the train.    Ahead of the train was a steam shovel digging out the grade to lay the tracks.   He would describe landslides that would push the shovel into the river and the train would back up to allow another shovel to be moved to the front and continue digging.  

Our grandmother, Agnes (Caldwell) and her family also migrated from Alabama to work on the railroads and sometime around 1915 she met our grandfather and married.   Their first born son, Vernon was born in Alberta, but later died of pneumonia at the age of 11 in southern California.   My grandmother still had two living siblings at the time of the reunion, a sister named Mary and a brother named Gavin.    Mary and her husband had a farm near Red Deer where we stayed one night.  Here again no indoor plumbing.   The outhouse was near the back door of the house as I remember.   Great uncle Gavin was in the hospital in the small community of Rimbey after having a heart attack.   He was not allowed visitors inside, so my dad, grandfather and great uncle Dan talked to him through the window next to the bed he was in.     I remember they all were smoking cigarettes, including the patent as they talked.   Gavin and his wife Anna lived on the family farm near Rimbey.    Anna had all of us over for dinner, with roast beef, potatoes, carrots, green beans and much more, all from her garden.   Gavin Caldwell died a few years later.

In 1968 my grandmother and I went back to Alberta by plane and visited Anna at her small home in Rimbey, since she had sold the farm.  The only others relatives living in Alberta were members of the Foy family in Edmonton, offspring of James Foy and Jane (Burke), an older sister to our grandfather.   There are other descendants of the Patrick Burke family living in Saskatchewan.   The rest of us are scattered in the states. 

Grandparents

 Becoming a grandparent is one of those extra bonuses of life.    It is something we never gave much thought to in our younger days when busy with a career and raising a family of our own.   Now in our senior years it brings us much joy.  The only problem is we do not get to see them in person enough, except by Skype or pictures sent by email. 

Some of the fondest memories I have of my own grandparents was riding the Southern Pacific passenger train from Willows, in northern California to Glendale in southern California in the 1950’s with my maternal grandmother.   Each spring grandma would arrive by train, stay for a week and return home and this time my younger sister and I got to ride with her.  My parents would drive down a few days later.  It was a two- day trip and involved eating in the dining car and sleeping one night on the train.   Another memory is walking to the grocery store with my mother’s father, who was born in 1889.  He must have been about 65 years of age as we made our way down the back alley to the store some 10 or more blocks from their house.  Once in the store all I remember him buying was a can of Dinty Moore stew and saying, “better get this if we get caught short in case grandma does not want to cook.”  Later we learned he would make the walk by himself at times to replenish his supply of booze in his garage.   Most of his days were spent watching sports on the TV while smoking little black cigarettes and cussing out some politicians or telling us how he would tell solders in the trenches of WWI to keep their heads down as he was their sergeant.    He would mow his lawn with an old reel push mower with iron wheels.  He died at the age of 90 or 91 in a rest home after falling and breaking his hip.   Grandma died a year or two later at the age of 80 or 81 of cancer.  They both came from Pennsylvania and we know very little else about them or their ancestors. 

My father’s parents lived across the street from my mother’s parents making it convenient for visiting.  Both these grandparents were real estate brokers and worked right up until the day they died, my grandfather at the age of 68 and my grandmother at 72.   Both were smokers and died of strokes.   Going to work with them was an adventure showing houses to clients and helping put up “For Sale” signs.   My grandmother was born in Alabama in 1900 (?) and her family migrated to Alberta in the early 1900’s to work on the railroads.   My grandfather was born in Nebraska in 1894.  His ancestors migrated from Ireland to Ontario, Canada in the 1840’s where they took up farming.   Sometime in the early 1900’s after moving to Nebraska they moved to Alberta, Canada to work on the railroads and that is where my grandparents met and where my father was born.   

All I have to remember them by is a few pictures, some with writing on the back of where and when.   Hopefully my writings will be around for my grandchildren to remember me by.