Connecting Past with Present
It brings family history to life if you link a place or activity 'back then' to how things are today.
Join me as I share findings with relatives, to connect how our family’s past led to our lives today – including some surprising discoveries!
It amazes me to see how some family history findings relate to our lives today. It makes my ancestors seem more ‘real’ to me. I can try to imagine their lives, not just see names on a family tree or tombstone.
It’s remarkable to see a physical object or place that connects our ancestors’ past with our present day. It may be a book, photo, family heirloom, house or other physical touchstone. Discovering these items and sharing the stories behind them helps to engage my current relatives in our family history, too.
Here are some of my experiences connecting tangible aspects of our family’s past with my relatives’ lives today.
House in the Neighbourhood
After my sister graduated from university, she moved to the city of Ottawa. After a few years, she bought a house and settled in. Later, I moved there too and lived at her place. We went about our lives, played mini-golf on a neighbourhood green, and rode our bicycles to the local rowing club.
We had no idea we had any ancestors from the area. We only found this out years later, when I began to research our family history. Once I learned our ancestors’ names, and found their birth and death dates, I saw that several of them were buried in the same cemetery. Records showed where they lived at the time of their death.
One of them, we had only heard of as “Gan-Gan”. Our mother and uncle had both said she was a stern grandmother, but we knew nothing about her and hadn’t seen a photo. I did a double-take when I saw her address. It was one block from my sister’s house! We had walked past it countless times.
I decided to make a trip there for ancestry research. I flew in from where I now live on Canada’s west coast, my cousin’s daughter came from her home on the east coast, and my sister drove up from the town she had moved to. We visited the cemetery, then went to see Gan-Gan’s house. My cousin was keen because she had inherited Gan-Gan’s wooden bed-frame and her Bible.
When we arrived at the house, the owner was outside and invited us in! From knowing little at all about Gan-Gan, suddenly we were on familiar ground and inside the house where she lived for years. It had stayed in the family for generations, and the next owners kept the heritage décor. It felt like we stepped back in time – yet still ‘here and now’.
Standing with my cousins ('once and twice removed') just after an unexpected visit inside our ancestor's home.
Turns out my sister bought her own house ‘down the street’ just 20 years after Gan-Gan passed away. Now we could relate our years in Ottawa to our ancestors living there before us. And our cousin got to see where her inherited items came from!
Story in an Old Newspaper
Through more ancestry research, I saw that Gan-Gan’s father had come over from Scotland to settle in Ottawa. Their family home – where Gan-Gan grew up with her siblings – was beside a river where her father worked at a sawmill.
My sister and I were surprised to learn where their house was – right near our rowing club! It was above a waterfall that flows into the river where we rowed every day. We had to keep our distance, as the waterfall is 11 stories high! They are named Rideau Falls – after the French word for curtain – because that’s how they look.
How Rideau Falls looked in the 1860s – at the time our ancestor lived nearby, worked at the sawmill, and ice-climbed the waterfall! / Image Source: Library and Archives Canada
When I got further into my family history research, I looked beyond basic info for the stories of our ancestors’ lives. I checked Gan-Gan’s father’s name in old newspapers online. I couldn’t believe my eyes!
In an article, an old man told the story of how he remembered a rare time when the falls froze completely over. He said he saw our ancestor and a friend ice-climb the falls right to the top! Good thing he made it, too, as Gan-Gan was born a few years later.
My sister and I were amazed to think we had an ancestor who did this as a young man, 120 years before we knew the place. My nephew – who cycles and hikes up mountains – was impressed to hear about this! It was fun to bring this ancestor’s story to life for all of us.
Take-Away: It’s fascinating to discover your family history and learn about your ancestors. You won’t always find things in common, but when you look you might uncover real-life stories.
The Scene of Family Lore
My grandfather (Gan-Gan’s son) died before my grandmother, and she moved into the city (Montreal) to be near our family. As a teenager, I’d visit her on my way home from running at the track after school. She’d have a glass of sherry and I’d have a Coke and cookies. She often told the same stories, but I didn’t mind.
Her favourite story to tell – or the one I remember most – was when she lived at Queen’s University as a teenager. While her father was principal, their family lived in a big house with a wide porch. The boys from the football team would sprawl on the porch on a weekend afternoon, to see their photos in the newspaper (which was delivered to the house).
The other story Granny would tell was to lament that when her mother was ill, she had to look after her younger siblings. I didn’t ask more about her mother at the time.
When I became interested in family history, my cousin’s daughter and I went to the Queen’s Archives to find out more about Granny’s father. We were glad to see they also had a write-up and photo of her mother. It matched the copy of a photo we’d seen of her sitting on outdoor steps beside a dog. I visited the old house on campus, and saw those same stairs leading up to the big porch!
My view from Summerhill's porch on Queen's campus, where my grandmother's family lived a century before.
Later, my sister found my Granny’s photo album in her storage locker. There was a photo of my mother as a toddler, sitting on the bottom stairs! Granny had gone home to visit, as a married woman with her first child. And who else was in the photos? Her mother-in-law, “Gan-Gan” (from the house story, above). So now we knew what she looked like!
It all came together for me when I was able to visit the house, imagine my Granny there as a young woman, and see photos of her mother, and her daughter (my mom) – all on the same porch steps. When I sat on that porch 100 years later, I was the fourth-generation in that line of women to do so! I wished I could tell my grandmother about all this, so I wrote a letter to Granny to share with my relatives.
Take-Away: I like to share family history in various ways to engage my relatives. It’s great if you get the chance to bring stories to life with photos, physical places and personal anecdotes!
Family Heirloom Passed Down
As a child, I loved a certain goblet that was kept behind glass in our family’s dining room cabinet. I was only able to touch it a few times a year, to get the fancy dishes out for a special dinner with guests. It was etched with flowers and “Our Colin, Sep ‘57”.
Family history 'relics' need not be 'fancy' – they are a tangible link to the past, and may hold clues to a bigger story.
At the time, I just knew it was from the past. Turns out it was my father’s grandfather Colin’s birth goblet from 1857.
Years after my father died, when my mother was about to sell the family home, I asked if I could have “Our Colin”. Now it sits in the glass-door cabinet in my dining room, 150 years after it came to my ancestors.
Only when I took an interest in family history, did I learn about Colin. He too lived in Ottawa, and was the editor of Canada’s parliamentary debates.
I was introduced to a second-cousin through ancestry research. She told me my great aunts donated Colin’s sofa –and some other pieces they inherited – to Upper Canada Village, a living history museum south of Ottawa. I loved going there as a child, with its old houses and boardwalks!
The furniture sits in the living room of the replica of a physician’s house. Colin’s father-in-law was a doctor from that region in that same time period! I intend to donate the goblet, to sit in the cabinet by the sofa as it might have done at Colin’s home.
I find it remarkable to ‘connect the dots’ from past to present, especially with the help of physical objects and places. To know the story behind an item, and the history of a place, really brings it more life and meaning. My sister took her children to Upper Canada Village when they were young. Maybe one day she’ll take her grandchildren, and have family history stories to relay.
I already have much info on other ancestors from the region, to craft into profiles and stories for my siblings and next generations. Although our Campbell ancestors are proving elusive, my newfound second-cousin gave me an oral history note from our Great Aunt Julia – with clues that may make all the difference!
Work Place and Home Base
My nephew moved to Toronto to start out his adult life and new career. He chose to live downtown, where he could walk to work, and baseball games, and most things he liked to do. It was a new adventure for him, and as far as we knew, a new location for our family.
When I learned more about our ancestor Colin, I found out he lived with his family in Toronto as a child.
I looked up their old addresses on the Census, plus where his father worked. Now a big urban area, Toronto was quite small at the time. Colin’s father walked to work and back home, as did most people in those days – unless they had a horse and buggy!
I made a Google map to compare where my nephew lives and works with where our ancestors did. Some 150 years before, they were walking down the same streets! Although high-rises are all around now, the street our ancestors lived on has been maintained with its heritage homes.
My nephew was familiar with that street, where he cuts through a university campus. And he cycles and runs at the historic cemetery quite often, as it has beautiful park grounds near downtown. He checked our ancestor’s gravesite for me, as I try to find where the family came from in Scotland.
Sure, things change and these people are long gone. But it’s neat for my nephew to know his ancestors walked the same streets five generations before.
Take-Away: It’s great if you can engage your relatives in family history right where they live, work and play – by sharing ancestor stories and connecting past with present.
written by Barbara L Campbell, 2024