Thinking About the Cold

I started this post back in November, and only just got back to it today.  It is not terribly cold in London, Ontario today, only -3C, but they are expecting 10-15cm of snow over the next 48 hours.  Enjoy.

Winter has started to roll in.  This year is a bit later than most, but it is inching in.
My post from last summer about the heat got me to thinking about its opposite, the cold.  Both are dangerous, though in different ways.  Personally, my vote is that cold is more dangerous then heat.
My Canadian ancestors would have come from dealing with English "winter" to dealing with the winters of southern Ontario.  Frankly there is very little comparison.  Canadian winters are significantly colder, snowier, and longer.

For Thomas and his brothers, arriving in Canada would have been a race against time.  Even if they had left England in March, it would have taken at least a month, and possibly two, just to cross the Atlantic.  Then they would have had to get from where they landed to what is now Toronto.  Where would they have landed?  One of them appears to have come through New York.  That trip would have involved another boat trip along the rivers and canals of New York state to Lake Ontario, and then across the lake to Toronto.  Following the trip to Toronto comes the voyage on foot on the very poor roads to get to London.  The fastest any of the Halls family could have gotten to London, after leaving England at the beginning of March is the beginning of May.  More likely they would not have left until the end of March, and not arrived in the London area until the beginning of July.

Still they would be racing the cold.  They would want at least some food, which would mean clearing and planting at least a small area to grow root crops like turnip, carrot, or potato that would resist at least a light frost, and then they would need to build some shelter, most likely a log cabin with some sort of loft.  If they had sufficient money and had some horses, ox, or cows, they would also have had to build some sort of shelter for the animals.  Most likely the holes between the logs would have been chinked with moss, and then clay or mud depending on the land.

Once they had finished all the building and clearing, it would almost certainly have been the tail end of fall, with winter just around the corner.  Any additional time they might have had before the snow would have been spent clearing more land for pasture and crops for the following spring, or perhaps harvesting such root vegetable as they had been able to plant.  The women would have been busy too.  I suspect that they would have been the ones planting and tending the gardens after the men had cleared the land, not too mention harvesting the crops.  All while taking care of the children, cooking, cleaning, and dealing with all the other household chores that a pioneer wife would have needed to do.

As fall wound down the one major advantage that my Halls ancestors would have had was that the men were all skilled masons, and literate, so they could have found some work building houses, barns, stores, etc. during the winter, as well as that old Canadian winter standby, logging.  Whether or not they did, I do not know, but at least they would have had the choice to be able to earn cash over the winter to support themselves.

And then it would be winter.

Back on the Document Trail - Part II

So, the results are in and the winner is....  Nobody.

The birth record that I ordered from the GRO ended up being for the wrong William Halls.  This William was the son of John Avery Halls.  The will information that I ordered didn't have much more than was available on the website, evidently any copies of the will for Philip Halls have been lost over time.  Oh well, win a few lose a few.

Among other sources I used the indices created by the Devon Wills Project run by the Devon Family History Society.  You can find an excellent report on the project here on the Devon Family History Society website.

Facial Recognition and Unknown Ancestors

I just came across an article in New Scientist online about using facial ID software to determine if people in a picture are related.  Apparently the software was correct just over 70% of the time, which is marginally better than a person.  What the article didn't answer was how far back the software could determine relationships.  For example if I compared a picture of myself to my great grandfather, would it see a resemblance?  You can read the article here.

Thinking About the Dark

I recently completed reading Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light, by Jane Box.  I have to say I found it strangely compelling, and I finished it with a real sense of regret.  What I found most poignant were the chapters that dealt with light on farms and cities in the 19th and very early 20th centuries.  It is not that anything that the author wrote was not something I was wholly unaware of, but some of it she combined in ways that had not occurred to me.  For example, her writing about the joy that farmers felt when they could actually milk the cows in a barn with light, and not have to worry about the risk of fire or explosion.

Indeed, one of the major reasons our ancestors went to bed early was that there was no light to do anything.  While city dwellers had gaslight to light the streets, their homes were under the the same restrictions as farmers with only candles or kerosene to light their rooms, and in the country night must have fallen like a pall, without even gaslit roads for illumination.

What Brilliant brought home to me (again), is how much we may romanticize the past that our ancestors lived in, glossing over the warts, cuts, smells, and just plain drudgery of everyday life for our mostly rural (and urban) ancestors.  Not that there is not much that was good, but in terms of lights, in the countryside when the sun went down, outdoor life stopped.  Even indoor life slowed greatly.  As the 19th century progressed the quality of the light available improved as kerosene lamps took over from candles, but as anyone who has lived with kerosene lamps knows (as I do), they are nothing when compared to an electric light bulb in terms of safety, steadiness, reliability, and sheer convenience.

We have much to be thankful for.

Back on the Document Trail

So, it's that time again to track down documents from the Halls family.

When I have a document I'm interested in I usually wait until the document that has been banging around in my mind starts banging too persistently, or it strikes me as so important that I have to "Get it now!"

In this case I am ordering a birth registration from England, and the administration papers of a will (also from England).  The birth registration may be that of my gg grandfather William Halls.  The name and place are correct, but the date is wrong.  Until I get it into my hot little hands I won't know for sure.  

The administration papers are those of my gggg grandfather, Philip Halls.   I am kind of surprised about the existence of any documents relating to a will for a couple of reasons, first, it was my understanding that most people did not have enough money or have the property to make it worth creating a will.  Second, the vast majority of wills from Devon were destroyed in Exeter during the Blitz in 1942.  I already have two wills from Halls family members living in Merton between the 1820's and 1840's.  For there to be a papers of a third, is to me, astounding. As to why it exists, it appears that Philip died intestate, and on top of that, if I understand correctly, the value of the estate was in excess of the minimum value required for the records to be sent to London because death duties were to be paid.  Once again, I won't know until the documents come in from England.

Stay Tuned!

Missing Home

I often wonder what it was like for my ggg grandfather Thomas Halls (and his brothers) to leave England and come to Canada.  I don't mean the sea voyage, which I understand could have taken up to three months, I mean adapting to a new land.

In many ways it must have been reasonably familiar.  They had many family members living nearby, as well as other people from Devon, and many of the place names were from England.  Thomas lived in the community of Lambeth, southwest of London, in the county of Middlesex.  London was on the Thames river.  A little further away was the community of Stratford, on the Avon River.  The newspapers would have had both local news, as well as news from England and the Empire.  He would have sent letters back and forth to his brother William, who had remained behind, as well as his sister Charlotte.

All in all, there would have been a great deal of the feeling of home in the areas where Thomas and his brothers lived.  And yet.  And yet it would have been very different.  First, there would have been the wilderness, literally dark, almost impenetrable forest.  The woods would have been full of animals that were large, and often dangerous, animals that certainly would not have been in Devon - moose, wolves, cougars, and bears.  Many other animals had familiar names, but in many cases that would only have drawn attention to their differences, animals like robins, jays, and badgers, and plants like chestnut or beech.

Did Thomas (and his brothers) suffer from homesickness?  Did they regret coming to Canada, or would the freedom to make their mark in the world have made up for the hardships and loneliness?  I don't know, and never can know, much to my regret.

Regardless, all the Halls brothers did well in their new homes.  Their children were successful, their lives were full, and they were successful too.  It was not a story without sadness, and sometimes tragedy, but I think that in the end they did not regret the choices they had made.

Surviving the Heat

On the Thursday, July 21st evening as I began this post I was sitting on my front stoop, trying to stay cool, and doing an ok job of it if I say so myself. There was a very nice breeze, and I had a cool drink, so I felt pretty good.

The temperature Thursday was 34C, and that night it only dropped to 25C, plus humidity for both temperatures. Not at all comfortable, but at least I had a ceiling fan.

This got me to thinking about how our ancestors beat the heat prior to air conditioning. In some ways, in much the sames way as I do now. Find somewhere in the shade, with a breeze. Keep the doors and windows closed during the heat of the day. I can't close the shutters (don't have any), but I could install awnings to keep the sun out. Today I went to the beach with my family, and we all swam. That was nice. We took the car, 100 years ago we would have taken the train, but that is a detail, the broad outline was the same - picnic lunch, bathing suit, beach umbrella, and away we went.

So much for the happy view of dealing with the hot weather. The big advantage we have that our ancestors did not can be summed up in two words - Air Conditioning. When the heat simply becomes too much to bear, we can go to a mall, museum, cinema, or even mostly retreat to the comfort of our own homes. Prior to the 1920's (and the steadily increasing numbers of cinemas with air conditioning) the public had no escape as only the most specialized buildings and workplaces had any air cooling system at all.

Imagine living in a city in 1900 with temperatures in the low to mid 30's, plus humidex. The smoke in the air from coal fired water heaters and cook stoves. The smell of the increasingly common automobiles mixed with the horse dung and urine on the roads, and you live, like most people, in a two to five storey walk-up with no air conditioning or electricity. Add, on top of all that, the formality of the age when in public all the men were expected to wear long pants, a jacket and a hat at the least, and women were expected to were long dresses that went up to the neck and down to the wrists. At the very least one would be less than comfortable. If you were elderly, very young, or had breathing problems, an extended period of heat meant death.

Wonderful and idyllic as the past may seem to us now, it was by no means a bed of roses. While I do not have air conditioning myself, I am deeply grateful for the ability to escape to a mall, cinema, or museum when the heat becomes intolerable.