This holiday of ours includes a hunting trip for bits of hidden treasure, only the treasure being sought is hidden in mountains of documentation. Literally centuries of paperwork.
I know where my ancestors came from in Newfoundland to about 1830, but before that I have only a series of names and scraps of information gleaned from sifting through boxes of family letters and materials (thanks Mom for saving everything you could), and from reading books and accounts online.
I had hit a barrier, so investigating further required being here in person.
Well, ta da.
On a cold but rarely beautiful day we spent 9 hours of it in the Rooms Museum's Reference and Archive Centre. Martin generously played research assistant, and we got stuck into looking through parish records and vital statistics to see if we could find anything.
Not much as it happened. But there were a few nuggets.
I knew my great-grandmother Emma Winsor Butler married her first husband John Gibbson, who died at age 32. What I didn't know is she had given birth to a son, John William Butler (named after her father), and also that her married name was Gibbeson. There was never a question about the two Bs but no one really knew for sure E.
Young John William Butler Gibbeson died in 1884, aged 8 months, only a few months before his father John Gibbeson died in 1885. That must have been one reason her brothers were able to persuade her to emigrate to Canada's west coast just after they themselves did in 1888.
9 hours work for very little new information, but we were quite satisfied. It was a signature day, being able to at least try. And we were not in some dusty basement, but in an airy room with a magnificent view over St. John's. Really, who wouldn't want to hunt for something hidden when one could look out on such treasure?
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