I just had a comment emailed to me from a woman whose mother taught in Usk in 1945, which brought me to this blog - after 6 years! Her mom would have taught my older brother, Danny. I wish he were still alive and I could ask him if he remembered his teacher’s name. Not sure if I have already written this story but when he was in grade 1, he used to come home and say to mom that he needed this pencil or this ruler or something for school and she would get it for him. Then one day mom bumped into his teacher and she asked why Danny hadn’t been at school! Haha - he would walk to school and if the flag was already raised he knew he was late so just wouldn’t go - but he was wily enough to pretend he was going! I sure laughed. I don’t think I ever talked to him about it and heard what he did to while away the time until he could go home. Anyway, Susan’s comment about finding Usk on this blog has brought me back here and I will update the info, or should I say ‘lack of’ info on my paternal grandfather.
Last year while we were wintering in Yuma, I went to the Genealogy centre at the Mormon church and a woman there helped me search for my father’s father. I find it terribly confusing to look on either of the sites she uses - Ancestry and Family Search. She was great at trying to find him but I am no farther ahead now than I was all those years ago. And I think I am just about at the stage where I am going to be content not knowing what happened to him or if he had another family, changed his name etc.
Oh, I just realized that my previous post was in 2016 and in the summer of 2017 Stefan and I took a 4 month trip across Canada to commemorate Canada’s 150th birthday. We toured all ten Provincial Parliament buildings and thoroughly enjoyed our trip. We went in our Leisure Travel Class B Van and just loved camping in it. We were 100 days in Canada and then headed into the US and got to Yuma in mid October. We left home June 15th. Anyway, when we got to Manitoba, we went to the Vital Statistics Archives and did a search for my grandfather whose war records say he was born in Roseland, Manitoba. There is no record of his birth there. I even paid extra money and completed a ‘search’ form so someone would continue to search after we left. When we got home from Yuma in the spring there was an envelope there with a letter saying no records were found. Oddly enough, if he chose to change his name on his birth certificate, his original birth record would have been wiped out completely. That is what happened to my father’s original birth info. When I went searching for him under ‘Holmes’, he was not to be found. His brother, Bill’s birth info was there under that last name but not James Edward’s. Took me a while but eventually I searched under ‘O’Brien’ and there he was. He officially changed his name in 1954 and his 1914 birth as James Edward Holmes is no more. So that is what I think grandpa did and his info has totally been wiped out. Goofy.
Mother would have turned 109 on November 28th. I thought lots about her that day. The older I get and more I think about her, the more I admire the woman she was. I hope she knows that. :-)
So, that’s where I stand in my search. Should I ever find out more, I will post it for sure.
Cheerio,
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