Category Archives: Genealogy

In celebration of Mother’s Day, I wanted sum up what I know about each of my great-grandmothers, none of whom I think I ever met in the flesh, although I have gotten to know them a little bit through my … Continue reading →

Aunty Mary, who died over 30 years ago, is the primary source for much of my earliest Coulson family history. She was born in Wyoming but she must have spent a lot of time listening to her folks, because she … Continue reading →

When I was driving through Havre, Montana a while back I decided to stop at the public library to see if they had any books on local history. I wanted to investigate a story I had heard that my grandfather’s … Continue reading →

I never knew my grandmother. As far as I know she never knew me, or even knew I existed. I knew her name, but that was all. After she and my grandfather got divorced it’s as if she fell off … Continue reading →

In The Irish Connection, Part 1 we learned that my presumably Scottish family had its origins in Ireland. There’s more to the story, though. To help keep things straight, here’s the family tree so far. A is “young” John, the … Continue reading →

My grandfather John was a big fan of all things Scottish. He continued to speak with a brogue (or tried to) despite living in Canada for 64 years, played the bagpipes (until he chopped two fingers off, that’s another story), … Continue reading →

Today is the one-hundredth anniversary of the death of my great-uncle Frank (Francis Milligan) Elliott, 1/6 Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, who died in a field hospital in France on May 21, 1917. In commemoration, here is a page I wrote … Continue reading →

I’ve decided to resurrect this old blog of mine with musings about what I’m learning from genealogy. My grandfather, who died over a quarter-century ago, got bit by the genealogy bug a few years before he died, and he left … Continue reading →