Elsie Schell Cowan and Thomas Cowan, mid-60s? Gramma and Grampa, as I called them, my grandparents, lived a short walk away from my childhood home. Thomas Cowan and Elsie Schell Cowan were my daddy's parents, I came to understand. My mother called them Mom and Dad too, so it took my child's mind awhile to figure out that they could not be Mom's mother and father! Maybe this was why I was interested in the family history early on - I wanted to understand why I only knew one set of grandparents. Thomas Cowan My grandfather, Tom Cowan, immigrated here from Canada in 1924. He was born in Puslinch township, Wellington County, Ontario, on his family's farm, Juniper Hill Farm. His great-grandfather established the farm in 1832, when he and his family and some neighbors (perhaps relatives) emigrated from Yarrow Feus, Selkirkshire, Scotland to Puslinch in Upper Canada. The house they built still is lived in. Grandpa's parents sold the Century Farm between 1911 and 1921 and...

Lolas? Yes, my children had two grandma Lolas! My mother, Lola McBee Cowan and my husband's mother, Lola Kammer Zimmerman. Even more amazing, their birthdays are one day apart, although separated by some years. My mother was born 11 November 1926, 'Lola Z' November 10, 1919.  Lola Cowan and Lola Zimmerman, ~1997 And they were friends. My mom even briefly worked at Lola Z's business, The Herbfarm in Fall City, Washington. Sadly, they also died a day apart, although again, separated by some years. My mother died 19 February 2001, Lola Z 18 February 2004.  Lola McBee Cowan Lola McBee was born in Indianola, Iowa, the seventh of eleven children. Her father was remodeling their house when she was born, so her first months were spent in a tent! Then he sold their property for $700 and they began a trek up to Alberta, Canada where he believed he would strike it rich. They began by traveling to nearby Des Moines to say goodbye to family there, when illness struck. According to K...

Attention: Canadian Space Aliens! Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay  Did your 19th century Canadian immigrants arrive via UFO?  Did they, by any chance, mention if Katherine/Katy/Kittie unknown maiden name was with them?   I've been searching for Kittie Kinney for twenty years with no success.  I won't go into the facts and assumptions in this particular ancestor; this blog has a different purpose. While it is easy to treat searches at Ancestry or Family Search as if we were doing routine U S research, we are probably overlooking much available material at those sites and definitely missing other sites that focus on Canada. It is always easier to filter your search by location thus eliminating the hundreds/thousands of results you might get.  Ancestry At Ancestry you can select only the Canadian records by going to the regular search dialogue box, choose "Collection Focus" and then "Canada".  You can further choose Census or Birth, Marriage, Death ...

Recently, I've been doing some work in Lost Cousins, a site and idea that is unique. I get their newsletter and prompted by the "Free on Easter" section, started buffing up my listed relatives. It is unusual in that it promises  100% accurate automatic matching between researchers who share the same ancestors - and it does without anyone else seeing your data! -  https://www.lostcousins.com/pages/info/how_to.mhtml It is free to create a profile, and if you have ancestry in England, Scotland, Wales, Canada,  Australia, Ireland or New Zealand  this site can help you strike gold (cousins). As the home page explains,  ... the best people to help you knock down your 'brick walls' are your cousins - indeed, one of your cousins may already have solved the problem that you're finding so challenging. The more relatives from the census you can enter on your My Ancestors page, the more cousins you'll find. How to find more lost cousins In the past rese...

“Batty Brock and the Research Plan: The Search for the Marriage Record for Charles Beverly Brock Raymond and Marie Marguerite Richards” as inspired by Thomas W. Jones, PhD, CGL, FASG, FUGA, FNGS      My fifth cousin, Carol, is in the process of identifying all the descendants of her ancestors, Azariah Perkins and his wife, Elizabeth Moss, of New Brunswick, Canada, of which she and I are two.   She inherited the project from her mother.   In the midst of her research, she saw my query asking about another descendant, my great-grandfather William Samuel Winslow Raymond, also of New Brunswick.   Her question, “How are you related to William?   He never married and had no children” and my answer, “He did marry in Boston in 1902 and had seven children and I’m the granddaughter of the eldest!” sent us on a merry chase, which included much sharing of information, photos and more research.   I’m happy to say that it also led to a wonderful frie...