It's already been two weeks since my first post. So much for writing at least once a week. The trouble is I've been so caught up in researching Nanny's life that I haven't had time to sift through what I've learned so far.
My first step was to go online and try to nail down details of various births, marriages, etc. I lucked out and stumbled on free database that let me search for information and download public documents filed in various registries in Canada and the United States. It also let me view information others had entered about my relatives while documenting their own genealogies.
Almost immediately, I made two exciting finds. The first was a page from a 1930 United States census log, which confirmed that, as of April 7th of that year, Nanny was living in an apartment at 1272 Boston Road, The Bronx, with her sister Elva (aka Elvie), her sister's husband, Goodwin Meister, and her cousin, Frances Gates. The document notes that Melba had immigrated to the US in 1929, while Elvie had been living there since 1911.
That sent me running to google maps to see if I could "see" the building they lived in. In fact, I could. Google maps generated the photo below and, with a little more online research, I was able to confirm it was built in 1913 so must have been the one in which Nanny and her roommates lived in 1930.
The second document was Nanny and Grampie's marriage registration, which was helpful in that it explained why Grampie was referred to as a "farmer" in some of the materials I found online. So far as my dad knew, Grampie never spent much time farming so those references were perplexing. The other thing interesting about the document is that it confirms the happy couple were married in Nanny's mother's home, and that her brother and sister, Asaph and Elva, witnessed the marriage.
By the end of the same session, I managed to find an obituary for Nanny's second husband, Doug, together with an assortment of other documents that confirmed birth and death dates for Nanny's children and siblings, along with with one or two other documents that may make reference to Nanny, thought I can't be sure yet. All of which made me think I'd better come up with a good system for tracking all the information I'm gathering before I get too deep into this project.
There have been two other big developments in my research so far. The first occurred the week before last, when I got to spend four and a half hours with someone who knew Nanny well, her niece and close friend, Audrey. My mum and dad had been telling me about Audrey for years so I was excited to meet her at last. At 91 years of age, it's clear she can still run circles around people decades younger.
She treated me to a wonderful lunch of fresh homemade biscuits, beans, and three kinds of sweets, while generously sharing dozens of family stories, including many about Nanny, of course. I was astonished by how much she reminded me of Nanny and how easily she recalled people's names, key dates and relationships. And she sent me home with precious photographs of Nanny and her mother and siblings so that I could scan and enlarge them. One of the photos, taken in 1945 or '46, is featured at the top of this post. The second, likely taken a few years earlier, is reproduced below. In both, the children organized themselves by birth order, with Nanny on the far left.
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| L-R: Melba Leota, Pansy Pauline, Asaph Whitman, mother Melissa Sarah Ella (Gates), Elva Beulah, Ivan John, Elmer Otis, Alice Mae, Kempton Zabina |
Audrey's father was Nanny's brother, Ivan, who was born in 1893. According to Audrey, Melba was Ivan's favourite sister so Ivan and his family usually stopped in at Aunt Melba's house en route to family gatherings held at the old home place in Lake Ramsey. As Audrey remembers it, during the war years, Melba and Ivan would often slip away for a quiet chat out of earshot of the children before heading up to the home place. Audrey supposed Ivan was checking to see how Melba and the children were doing and whether they needed anything.
The other big development in my research was that I began reading a collection of Nanny's diaries my father inherited when she passed away. He has a total of six volumes, covering two periods from January 1957 to December 1961, and January 1968 to December 1987. I've only read five years' worth of entries so far but I'm already completely absorbed by what I'm learning - not least because Nanny's discursive approach to journal-writing resulted in entries that tend to generate more questions than answers. As I try to understand what was happening from one week to the next, I feel as if I'm assembling a giant jigsaw puzzle.
My next tasks are to finish reading the journals my dad had, and see if I can track down any others. I suppose there must have been a volume covering 1962-1967 though - come to think of it - my mother mentioned Nanny and Gramps had a house fire when they lived on Prince Edward Island, so perhaps that volume and others were lost then. I also hope to take a road trip with dad to New Ross to get reacquainted with key landmarks and visit another of dad's cousins. Finally, I'd like to get back to Audrey's soon so that I can return her photos, present her with copies of the enlargements I made, and ask a few more questions.
Once I've completed those tasks, I hope I'll have gathered enough threads to begin weaving Nanny's story together, one tiny piece at a time, even as I continue to search for more information about her life "back in the day". Stay tuned!
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