Hi from southern Ontario,
Chez moi/at home: what's happening here? Weather, it’s spring so the weather changes daily. Wednesday was warmish about 15 C, but really wet, torrential rain on and off all day, total 2 inches of rain, though I am not complaining, further north and east that same storm was freezing rain, major power outages in Ottawa and even worse in the Montréal area where 500,000 people have no power. Today will be 6C and sunny!
WikiTree: Alton Cemetery Project; I decided to work on the few unconnected people, there were 9 of them, 5 with no connections, 4 with 3 connections all to each other and now there are 8 .
The remaining 4 no connections people will likely stay that way, 3 of them have common local names, which seems like it should be helpful but the only record for them is the headstone with only the person’s name and, 2 were children born and died between censuses, the other has only James Hunter Died Mar. 10, 1885, Aged 76 yrs. I’d like to think he is a member of one of the 4 local Hunter families, but it doesn’t seem that is correct.
The 1 that got connected was a William James ‘Bill’ Hillock died in 2018, so no current records. I felt like a detective, I tracked him down through other relatives mentioned on his obituary, picked a sister to investigate, because she married a John Keast and it is such an uncommon last name. Obits and other social notices are a gold mine of information.
Turns out he was descended from the most prolific Hunter family in the area. I already had the immigrant ancestor David Hunter, and 19 descendants including his kids and their families, now there is another 20+ descendants. Connected through his grandson whose name appears to be David Abdash Hunter, or David Ahdash Hunter. The name on the original records for marriage, death seem to be transcribed correctly.
I looked up the name and it appears to be most common in Iran, Iraq and Ethiopia, so that is a mystery as the family origins are in County Tyrone, Ireland. One online tree has used Alex, but I see no evidence that is correct.
Other: I invited my family to visit next Sunday to view the new kitchen and have potluck dinner, so far 5 of 7 sibs will be here, that means at least 10 people, if the youngest sib and family are here as well that adds another 5 people and my DH’s stepsister will also be here. Plus my daughter who lives locally and her family adds another 4 people, about 20 in total, just a small group, when all my nieces and nephews were younger 38-40 people was common at family events.
I'm early because I have to create a presentation for the Tuesday night Horticultural Society meeting, the booked speaker has disappeared, no replies to emails, phone messages over the past 2 weeks, and he doesn't have an address for the meeting location. I am not amused.
