A Collection of Links

Today I posted four new links to From the Halls of Devon, and it got me thinking about links, and the quality of sites that are out there. Perhaps I should be more specific, not the quality of the site, but the quality of the search engine for a site. A final point before I launch into my reviews of the sites, they are all worthwhile. I wouldn't include them if I didn't think they were, but some have search engine issues which can significantly reduce their usefulness as resources.

Canadiana

As far as I understand Canadiana is a both a collection of collections, and a collection of its own. It contains magazines, photos, books, and other materials. A large amount of it is public domain. It is divided into two sections, Early Canadiana Online, and a Canadian Discovery Portal.

I have two criticisms of the site. The first is that many of the documents are only available by subscribing to the site. A related criticism is that there is only one subscription option, annual, and the cost is quite high for a site that is essentially a collection with very little "social" component. I suspect that they could significantly increase their subscriber base if they allowed shorter subscription times, or lowered their annual rate. Certainly it discourages casual research, and in my opinion limits their ability to raise funds for further digitization projects.

The second is that only one (Early Canadiana Online) of the two parts of the site has the ability to search for exact phrases. This is a very large drawback when searching a large online collection. Certainly when I am searching for my own surname I don't want every bingo hall, community hall, church hall, banquet hall, halls of power, residence halls, and well, I'm sure you get the idea, turning up in my search.

The Internet Archive

The Internet Archive is a very large collection of sound, video, text, images, etc., all in the public domain. My personal interest is the text portion of the archive. It has a very limited search engine, that searches only the titles of the documents, but you can choose which collections or sub-collections you will search. I have often found that the best way to search the Archive is to do an advanced Google search, and specify to search only in the Internet Archive domain. An added, major, advantage of the Internet Archive is that you can download the texts in a number of different formats, including those that can be read on e-readers.

The Canada Gazette Archive

The range of the Canada Gazette archive is from 1841 until 1997. As with most government of Canada websites, it is a little quirky (click the search links on the left of the page), and worse still, the search engine sucks. I don't know what algorithms they use, but they return the oddest results, and in the oddest order sometimes. Sadly there is no way to sort the results, and it would be really handy to sort by date. There are other issues too.

• In addition to the results presentation, there are significant limitations on how you do a search. You cannot specify your own date range. This is all the stranger when you consider that you can specify a single date.
• Word stemming is automatic and it does not look like it can be disabled. Word stemming means that in a search "halls" and "hall" are treated the same, i.e. the "s" is ignored, not what I want in a search for my surname.
• When you go back to the main search page to modify your search you have to retype your entire search as the form automatically clears.
• The results that are generated are shown in pdf or gif, which is fine, but the search terms are not highlighted in the gif version, meaning you have to read the entire page, or in a pdf, search again using the pdf search tools to see if the result is one that you want.

FamilySearch.org

The site has been redesigned, and I have to say I like what they have done. You can drill down through region and sub-region to see the documents you want. In many cases you can actually view the documents themselves online without ordering the microfilms. Much of their Newfoundland collection is now available with images. The Newfoundland collection is not indexed, but they have grouped the documents by date, location, and occasionally church. The same goes for many other collections, though there are collections that are both indexed and have images of the original documents. Finally, one can choose to search historical records, trees, and the catalogue for books, microfilms, etc.

They seem to have refined their search engine too. The results that come back are much more sensible, and specifying an exact match now actually shows the exact matches, which was not always the case before.

Can Our Ancestors Make us Smarter?

While it's not directly related to the Halls family, I thought it was interesting.

Apparently thinking about the hardships that your ancestors went through increases your intellectual performance. You can read this article from the Daily Mail, or you can see the original paper here (registration required to see more than the abstract).

A Portrait of James Halls and Family

Just prior to Christmas I was contacted by an individual who had a picture of James Halls and family (from the Exeter, Ontario area). I was very surprised to say the least. The name of the person was not any that I had connected with the Halls family, though I had seen it in relation to Devon. It was a beautiful photo, a formal studio portrait taken at Senior's in Exeter, about 1890 judging by the ages and style of dress. Sadly not every name can be associated with a face, but now I have a picture, so it is only a matter of time. It is the first group picture I have of that generation.

It was, all in all, a wonderful Christmas present.

The picture itself got me looking at the details in the picture, and what struck me most were the hands of Mary Ann and James.

James' hands are quite obviously arthritic, no doubt from a lifetime of working with stone and brick and mortar, farming and farm equipment, in all types of weather. His knees also look odd. I recognize the drape of his pants over his knees from the way my father's knees looked covered by the drape of his pants. James knees are terribly arthritic and swollen just like my father.

Mary Ann's hands are quite different. They don't appear arthritic, but the skin looks awful. It appears scabby or scaley. It looks terribly painful. When you look at Mary Ann's face she is terribly stern, almost as if she is gritting her teeth in pain. Admittedly her hair style is very severe too, but she looks not at all comfortable.

James looks very much the loved patriarch of the family. A full head of white hair, a full white beard, and with a daughter resting on his knee. He looks successful, comfortable, and content with his life. Obviously father and daughter are very close. I suspect that she is the youngest, Lillian (Lilly) Halls.

The rest of the family simply seems to be there, just in the picture. They seem content too, healthy, happy, and young. At least they seem that way as much as one can tell from a photo from a time when you needed to hold still for five to ten seconds.

The Mysterious Samuel Halls Jnr.

Well, I knew something was strange about Samuel Halls. I now have the first inklings of what might be going on. I found a story in the Chicago Tribune dated Feb 5th, 1912. The story headline reads:

Accused of Farm Swindle.
Samuel Halls Arrested on Charge of Mis-
using Money Given Him for
Canteloupe Scheme

The story then goes on to say that he was charged embezzling $6,128, and that he was released on $6,000 bail.

Happily I have contacts in Chicago who will try and track down what happened with the police and in the courts. Perhaps it will shed light on why his wife and son moved to the other side of the United States.

Stay tuned.

The Mysterious Samuel Halls and his More Mysterious Son Samuel Halls

The family of Samuel Halls is one of the most interesting, if not the most interesting, branch of the family that I have found.

Samuel Snr. was an observer for the British government during the American Civil War. He lived a long time, 85 years. His brothers were well known in the area where they all lived. And then this is where it starts to get odd. I have only found one reference to him in the local papers, besides his obituary, and that is a brief mention of him being an MC for the local Orange Lodge. I cannot find any marriage record for him and his wife. I cannot find any death record or place of burial for his wife. He died in the local House of Refuge (a combination of old age home and home for the unwell). His Ontario death record lists his nationality as Irish! He had no will, or at least none that I could find.

For the most part his children moved to the United States, in and around Chicago. His son Samuel Jnr. became a mover in high society in Chicago, living in the right neighbourhoods, being socially active. He was a highly successful builder. Sometime between 1910 and 1920 it all came apart. He appears to have been estranged from his wife and children. The 1920 census lists both of them, each claiming to be widowed. She was in Portland living with their son Allen Samuel Halls, he was in Chicago, apparently living in an apartment or boarding house. He died in 1930 in Crystal Lake, Illinois. Samuel has a will, but it has been misfiled, so like his father, we have no record of the final disposition of his effects.

There are no pictures that I have been able to find of either Samuel Snr. or Samuel Jnr.

All in all, very frustrating. Why can I not find pictures? How likely is it that the wills of both father and son would be un-findable? What happened to Samuel Jnr. that made it all fall apart? Why would Samuel Jnr. and his wife and son be estranged from each other? If Samuel and his wife were estranged from each other, why are they buried next to each other in Chicago?

Lots of questions and no answers. Stay tuned for more.

Reflections on Annie Halls and Emma Tanton

A few days ago I found a picture from North Dakota that has Annie Halls, and (probably) her brother Philip Halls in it. I had been to the Digital Horizons site before and not found anything, but this time, poof! There is was. It was a group picture of ND pioneers taken back in July of 1939 during a picnic. To be honest, they all look rather wilted by the heat.

On the other side of the world, 29 years prior to that picnic in the summer of 1939 is a picture of Emma Tanton, widow of Samuel Halls. In this case it is a stone laying ceremony for the local Baptist manse in Dolton, Devon. The picture appears to be taken on a cool day, and there are leaves on the trees and bushes. In so many ways the complete opposite of the North Dakota picture. A secular vs religious gathering. Warm vs cold. England vs America. Sunset of empire vs dawn of empire.

It leads one to reflect on the lives of Annie and Emma. Both pictures are taken not long before the World Wars. Annie lived to know that the Allies had won both wars, but Emma died in January of 1918 while issue was still in doubt. Emma had the added burden of fearing for the life of a child. She never knew if William James Halls survived the Great War, though I know he did. Annie never married or had children, though she took in at least two foster children/orphans. One of them may have fought in the WWI, but I can't find him.

I wonder if they knew of each other, and what they might have thought of their respective lives if they did. I suspect there was some contact between the families, for long involved genealogical reasons I won't get into here. They were both, in their ways, successful. Most likely they were well thought of by their communities. Certainly they lived very different lives. Emma lead a life that was secure, as far as I can tell from my place 100 year later. She did all the things a good English middle class woman should have done. Married, had children, supported her church. Her husband Samuel appears to have done much the same. Married, had children, supported his church. He followed in his father's and grandfather's footsteps, becoming a mason and builder, and generally supporting English society.

Annie did not follow a life path like that of Emma, or her cousin Samuel. She left her home in Ontario about 1900 and went to North Dakota. In Ontario she could have married, had children, and lead a quiet, comfortable life, with minimal hardship. Instead she chose to leave for an area that was still largely unsettled. She became a farmer, and never married or had children. One wonders why she made the choices she did, what she thought of the world she lived to see. She was born before airplanes, and lived to see men go into space.

In the end, I suppose I will always wonder. The chances of finding letters that give me insight into their personalities are small. On the other hand, Charlotte Halls has a letter posted to the Canadian Letters and Images Project, so there is always hope.

Health Records

I came across this site about a week ago called My Family Health Portrait. It is provided by the Surgeon General of the United States, and, as you might guess by the name, it allows you to create a health history for your family. It is available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese(?). My only complaint is that it is an online tool, with no software to download that I could find.

It did get me thinking that creating a family health history is a good thing. We have no doubt all come across patterns of disease in our families (if you haven't you may not be looking hard enough). In my own particular family I have found three different things. The first is from personal experience - both my father and his father died of respiratory cancer. Seeing as they were both heavy smokers we can guess what the cause of that was.

I don't smoke.

The second is that my great uncle and one of his descendants both died from ALS.

The third goes all the way back to one of the earliest official records of my line, Philip Halls death certificate from 1846, which states that he died from apoplexy. Now apoplexy, as used in the mid 1800's usually meant a sudden and catastrophic death from some sort of internal cause, for example a heart attack or a stroke. In the case of Philip I strongly suspect his apoplexy was actually a massive stroke. The reason I suspect it is because his grandson Samuel Pollard Halls also died from a stroke. Sadly, Samuel did not die as quickly as his grandfather. He lingered for a month after his stroke before dying.

Recent studies have indicated that knowing the medical history of both sides of your family is a very good idea. For example, it has been found that the risk of breast cancer on the father's side affects the risk of breast cancer in the daughter, which was not thought to be the case.

So don't ignore those little snippets of information. Find out what various family members died of, and if possible find out at what age they were first diagnosed with the condition that they had. Knowing this might allow you, or your children, or other family members, to avoid the same fate.